Mark Bell's Power Project - Stop Hanging With Losers: Level Up Your Circle | Saturday School

Episode Date: November 28, 2025

Welcome to Saturday School. Mark “Smelly” Bell breaks down a hard truth: the people you spend time with are shaping your finances, your mindset, and your future. If you’re feeling burned out on lifting culture—or you’ve outgrown the same conversations—this episode is your permission to level up your circle without apology.CHAPTERS:00:00 - Intro00:50 - How to Avoid Burnout Strategies03:18 - Influence of Your Inner Circle10:15 - Impact of Words on Relationships11:57 - Personal Development Insights27:30 - Personal Development Techniques31:35 - Scoring Points in Life32:20 - Next Steps for Growth35:17 - Perception Changes with Success39:50 - Benefits of Financial Stability44:00 - Choosing the Right Environment45:54 - Investing in Yourself for Growth49:20 - Organizing Your Thoughts Effectively51:37 - Costs of Inaction52:58 - Importance of Presence54:27 - Investing in Opportunities55:47 - Personal Development Growth Spurts57:34 - Your Thoughts on the JourneySpecial perks for our listeners below!🥩 HIGH QUALITY PROTEIN! 🍖 ➢ https://goodlifeproteins.com/ Code POWER to save 20% off site wide, or code POWERPROJECT to save an additional 5% off your Build a Box Subscription!🩸 Get your BLOODWORK Done! 🩸 ➢ https://marekhealth.com/PowerProject to receive 10% off our Panel, Check Up Panel or any custom panel, and use code POWERPROJECT for 10% off any lab!🧠 Methylene Blue: Better Focus, Sleep and Mood 🧠 Use Code POWER10 for 10% off!➢https://troscriptions.com?utm_source=affiliate&ut-m_medium=podcast&ut-m_campaign=MarkBel-I_podcastBest 5 Finger Barefoot Shoes! 👟 ➢ https://Peluva.com/PowerProject Code POWERPROJECT15 to save 15% off Peluva Shoes!Self Explanatory 🍆 ➢ Enlarging Pumps (This really works): https://bit.ly/powerproject1Pumps explained: https://youtu.be/qPG9JXjlhpM?si=JZN09-FakTjoJuaW🚨 The Best Red Light Therapy Devices and Blue Blocking Glasses On The Market! 😎➢https://emr-tek.com/Use code: POWERPROJECT to save 20% off your order!👟 BEST LOOKING AND FUNCTIONING BAREFOOT SHOES 🦶➢https://vivobarefoot.com/powerproject🥶 The Best Cold Plunge Money Can Buy 🥶 ➢ https://thecoldplunge.com/ Code POWERPROJECT to save $150!!

The more that I got into other things, as I was powerlifting, the less I wanted to still hang around powerlifters. These people are chasing after these goals and these dreams and these things are awesome. But man, I think they might be missing out on some other parts of their life. You are the byproduct of the four or five people that you hang around with the most. As you become more successful, it's going to be harder and harder to find people to hang out with that are like quote unquote on the level. Welcome to Saturday School, everybody. I'm Mark Smelly Bell, a powerlifter of like 30 years, retired a couple years ago.

And one of the things that led to my retirement was some of the things we're going to be talking about here today. Sometimes what happens is you're highly motivated about a new sport. And it starts to sort of take over your life. It starts to become like almost everything to you in some. ways. And for some people, it does become everything. I didn't want to only power lift. I wanted to have other goals and I wanted to do other things in life. It was always just something I did that was fun. And at some point, it got to be more than just fun. It got to be something that did help to build my character, did help turn me into who I am to most other people. But to my children,

to my wife and to many others, my brother. The lifting stuff just, it's something that I do. It's not what I am completely. The more that I got into other things, as I was powerlifting, the less I wanted to still hang around powerlifters. And the less I still wanted to hang around people that only cared about being stronger. And even while I was powerlifting, I didn't find that to be that exciting. Yes, I wanted to be a savage.

Yes, I wanted to be the best that I could be with powerlifting, but I also had these other goals. And what I was talking to a friend about recently is he said, you know, the same things that excited me a year ago about the sport that I'm in don't excite me anymore. And I'm not motivated by the same people anymore. Sometimes in life, you're doing something, let's say you're bodybuilding. and you get really into bodybuilding you do a couple bodybuilding shows and you end up almost getting burnt out but you don't really get burnt out because you no longer like to train the body hard

and you no longer like to eat the same thing sometimes those things fry you out but it's it's the whole thing sometimes that really ends up bugging you if you take a couple steps back you know sometimes people say if you get like a 30,000 foot view right if you could be a a drone and just fly up and then see, you can kind of see like, oh, like these people are chasing after these goals and these dreams and these things are awesome, but man, I think they might be missing out on some other parts of their life. And you start to kind of question that. And once you start to question that, then you're no longer in the sport the same way that you were previously. We hear people say so often that, you know, you hang out with trash,

you become trash. You are the byproduct of the four or five people that you hang around with the most. Your finances are going to be dictated by what you read in the last few years, who you hang out with, and your other various inputs, the podcasts you listen to, and so on. I mean, if you're a gamer and you're playing, you know, video games from 11 to 2 p.m. every evening, and you've been doing that for 10 years. I mean, and you don't have a lot of other things going on outside of that, The likelihood that you are really kicking ass, you know, financially, it might be low. It's not impossible, but it might, it might not be very high. It's almost like you gave yourself, you know, a version of a night job, a night shift

without having to work a night shift. Like some people have to work a night shift. You gave yourself a night shift job that maybe is pleasurable, but it's all. also is maybe to a detriment in some other areas. As you become more successful, it's going to be harder and harder to find out, to find people to hang out with that are like, quote unquote,

on the level. I know some of this, some of what I'm going to share today might seem like not sensitive. Like I'm going to use terms like loser. You know, I'm going to use some of these terms, but they're my perspective. They're not actually true.

like just because somebody their only goal is power lifting and all they want to do is squat a thousand pounds and it means everything to them that does not mean that they're a loser however in my opinion and the words and the vocabulary that i'm going to use today i'm going to call that person a knucklehead i'm going to call that person a loser because it's a way for me to categorize somebody that i don't necessarily want to hang out with except for when it comes to being at the gym and working on squats. Does that make sense? Like I don't want to necessarily like take this dude out for coffee and like hang out with him because that's his only focus is this one thing. I want to learn and expand and learn about other things. I've squatted a thousand pounds

myself. So I don't, you know what I'm saying? So I don't need to double, triple down and just talk about that one thing all the time. What you're trying to do is you're trying to find people that are going to help you level up. And I've mentioned this many times before. I have. I have many great friends. And I have friends that are great in a bunch of different categories. Somebody like Jesse Burdick, who is a strength coach, a trainer, a mentor, and also a father figure. Jesse Burdick is somebody I admire on so many different levels. And Jesse Burdick has a growth mindset. When I hang around someone like that, it brings me. up a bunch of levels. So it's not always, you know, I want to make something clear here.

It's not always about the money that people make. I think that's where people maybe get a little too caught up because success, success can be like a wide, a wide variety and a wide range of things, in my personal opinion. And so it's not about like, oh, you know, your slingshot business made X millions of dollars last year. And so that means that now you have to hang around like pretty much only millionaires for you to level yourself up. That's a very narrow way of looking at it. That's a that's not correct. But what you want to do is you want to avoid hanging around with people that have low vibrations. You want to avoid people hanging around people that it's it's fine to hang around some people that are single like they have these particular goals. But you even

more so don't want to hang out with people that don't have any goals. People that complain, people that are the victim. People having that kind of victim mentality all the time. You start hanging around with those people too much. You're going to start to be like them. If you walk with the lame, you'll develop a limp. That was said by my mentor, Louis Simmons. And that could be sometimes what happens to you.

But what happened to my buddy recently, he was he was involved in this sport he's loving the sport he's been doing it for you know about two years all fired up and just hits him like i don't really i'm not really that motivated by this sport as much as i used to be i'm not as excited about it anymore and i'm also not as excited i'm not as excited about i'm not motivated by the same people and the same stuff anymore and that's a really interesting thing to have happened to you because you're kind of like whoa I was so fired up about this a while back like what happened well I don't think anything horrible happened and if if what you're doing is in the vein of health and fitness or what you're doing

is you know it would be wise for you to stick to it because of what it can still make you and what it can still turn you into, I would advise that you still figure out a way to do that thing because what will happen down the road when you go from being, you know, 30 to now being 40, when you're 40, they'll say, hey, you know, that guy's 40. He's in amazing shape. He's doing super amazing with his business. He's got a wife. He's got a couple kids. And then someone else will go, yeah and he's a black belt in taekwondo you go what so hang on to some of these things because over time i'm not saying that you're just hanging on to that thing just to say you're a black belt you're not hanging on to that you know particular thing just to say that you bench 315 or something

like that but it's important to stay connected these things that you've already been practicing you've already been working on them why not continue why not have those things still be part of your lifetime permitted, of course, because of the original reasons on why you got into it. You have to remember some of the original reasons why someone might get involved in something like jujitsu, like my friend Graham Tuttle, Graham felt that confrontation was not a strong point in his life. And he felt that he felt, I don't want to put words into his mouth, but he's not here, so I will. He felt, he felt, he felt, he felt. He felt, he felt, he felt, he felt, he felt that was a weak point for him and i got to be honestly that's a really weak point for me as well

um but something i learned recently from my friend ben alderman ben alderman said and this is at all timer right here this this goes right to the right towards the top of the charts of one of the best quotes i've ever heard sometimes you have to allow people to be hurt by your words sometimes you have to allow people to get hurt by what you said and that's really interesting because first of all you have no idea what you're going to say will hurt the person or not obviously i'm not talking about like just flat out being rude to somebody or saying something crazy to somebody i'm not talking about that i'm talking about just being very very straight up with somebody. For me, in my head, my block is that if I'm going to be straight up with somebody,

that's going to cause confrontation. And I don't have any idea whether that's true or not. I made it up in my head. It's almost like an angst. It's like an anxiety. And I'm not an anxious person, really, but apparently I am because I have some angst over that. And Graham, to his credit, thought, if I can battle somebody face to face, if I can confront, if I can go against another man and I can problem solve, he's trying to tap me out, he's trying to hurt me, and I'm trying to tap him out, I'm trying to hurt him, and I can problem solve to protect myself enough to where he can't really do hardly any harm to me, it's not to say that every wrestler and every jiu-jitsu player gets that from their sport.

But that's what I'm going to kind of get to next is I think that there's a big difference between a meathead, a knucklehead, and somebody that just gets it. I don't know what other way to put this, but, you know, there's the quote, civilized the mind but savage the body. And it's a really interesting quote, but I think to me that makes a lot of sense like you you want to you don't want to just lift just to be big and strong it's a part of it but you want to take that and say hey I wasn't really

much when I started but look what I turned myself into and then you can do that with Jiu-Jitsu you can do that with basketball you can do that with baseball you can do that with football you could say man when I was in when I first started baseball I struck out all the time I um when I try to steal a base I'd get out you know I get tagged out I was too slow um and you could be you could work on it and you can improve upon it maybe you're not the greatest of all time but you can get better you possess the ability to improve a lot and I think there's a lot of people in strength and in fitness, they almost don't even see it. Like you don't understand how beautiful and how powerful

and how strong you are. You have no clue. It's right there in front of you in plain sight. You used to bench 135 and now you bench 315 for reps. Your warm-ups that you used to do, your, I'm sorry, your working sets are, are now, you know, are now on a level that you never thought was possible for yourself. You're, you're now warming up with weights that would completely annihilate you years ago.

You're doing a 315 deadlift for a set of five just to warm up to do a couple sets and reps with 500 pounds. And sometimes people don't recognize the personal growth that happened in that time frame. And what happened to a friend of mine is he started just going down this personal development rabbit hole. And it was almost like, it was almost like this awakening of like, oh, man, like, okay, this is the way I should organize my life for me to advance and for me to grow and for me to get ahead.

But holy shit, Stephen over here and Brian and Jason and so forth, these other people they're not doing any of that or at least it doesn't seem like that when I talk to them about the stuff seems like it just goes right over their head it seems like they don't care and then so that's what you might end up happening is that you're not no longer motivated

by the same people now it doesn't mean you have to avoid those people like the plague it doesn't really mean that they're losers but to me I can sometimes categorize people and just say I don't think that guy is really trying to improve.

I think he's just like idling. He's just kind of, and if you're idle, or I think you're idle, I'm not going to hang out with that much. I used to say this when I was a strength and conditioning coach. If you're not sweating, I'm probably not going to have a lot of conversations with you because you're not putting in the work.

And I'm not saying that I think everybody wants to hang out. out with me and that you know bunch of people around me are like working out and working hard to just hang out with me um that's not a thing i just what i am saying is that i want to be around like-minded people and i want to be lifted by other people and i want to be able to lift other people if you if you're a runner and you've been going on some runs here and there you do three miles five miles eight miles ten miles kind of bounce around some different mileage here and there. How excited are you going to be to run with somebody?

You're normally running nine minute mile pace. You're now flying through pretty good. You're running, you know, three miles and well under 30 minutes and stuff like that. And you're feeling pretty good. But you want to get your buddy into some running. And, you know, he's not fit. He just hasn't really ran much. Okay, you're going to, you know, hey, let's train together.

and you run with them here and there you run with them maybe even run with them on and off for a whole year but it's not going to make up the majority of your training because you have other shit to do you have other training to do because that person is kind of slowing you down for that particular day so you're you know your workout with them or you might even work out more you might be I have some friends I'll work out with and then I'll work out again my wife does the same thing our workout sometimes with our friends is just like a small little workout that we'll do in comparison to something else that we're doing for the day and it's because if you want to be better then you have to do better or you have to bump up against doing better than you

have before it's not about you doing better than somebody else that other person you know running like a 14 minute mile pace how long do you want to run at that pace for like you don't want to do that all the time right and so you have to get around people that want to get better and you have to constantly work on getting yourself better and once you get involved in personal development i mean i don't know how many people even know or really understand the term personal development i mean it's been around people have discussed and people have talked about it for a long time and there's many different ways to go through personal development, I would say signing up for Jiu-Jitsu, yoga,

signing up for an event, signing up for a, you know, signing up to actually try to learn or do something. I wouldn't say that like, I wouldn't say that signing up for an event, it can fall into the category of personal development. But I know a lot of people that do, I know a lot of people that do a sport or do a thing, but they don't do anything else for it. I know a lot of people that golf. I know a lot of people that, well, I know a handful of people that play tennis.

I don't know a lot of people who play tennis. And the people that I know that play tennis, they actually do other shit. And they do other stuff kind of because they like tennis. So they stay in shape for that. But a lot of people I know that play, golf, they just, you know, mainly just go and like swing the golf club and then they have injuries and they have, you know, and they're not really addressing those things. And you want to

hang around people that are doing stuff that goes above and beyond the some of the other things that are trying to get good at because you can see it with a kid, with a young kid, you know, someone's like, oh, so-and-so loves baseball or so-and-so loves football. And if you really love baseball or football or even with my own kids. I'll use them as an example. They didn't do a lot. They did a little bit. They didn't do a lot outside of their sport to get better at their sport because they didn't love their sport. They liked their sport. And my daughter Quinn, she took some extra classes and stuff and had had some one-on-one help with a coach and stuff like that because she liked it. She liked it enough to want to excel at it and want to be good at it and so forth and things like

that but you you want you want people that are really like if you want to get better at stuff then you want to be around people that have like this burning desire to be awesome at stuff you want them to basically love some of these things and what I've seen over the years you know when I was powerlifting I was in the middle of my power thing career I was building slingshot and then later you know I built out some other business is from there, but powerlifting, you know, I was, when I was at the height of my power lifting career, which I don't know exactly what year it was, but I had like a year or two where I was pretty on fire, and I don't, again, remember accurately what year it was, but probably between

like 2012 and 14 or something like that, somewhere in that time frame is where I was doing really, really well with powerlifting, maybe even slightly before that, somewhere in that range. But the slingshot came out in 2010. I still had Power Magazine. I still had a magazine company that was talking about powerlifting. So I was doing these things simultaneously. And it happened that way, it happened that way for a very specific reason. It's because I was in this like growth spurt where I was getting better at like a lot of different things at one time. I no longer felt dumb. I no longer felt like I did when I was a kid. I had some issues with learning when I was a kid. I still, you know, I don't even really know. I don't know what you would call it. People can call

it whatever, whatever they want. It doesn't bother me. But I do have a hard time with I have a very difficult time with something like reading comprehension and sometimes I even just have a hard time with comprehension period. Like I might need something explained to me several times. I don't know exactly why that is or what or what that is. It can be limiting sometimes. It can be annoying. But for many years, because I had that kind of hiccup, I thought it was dumb. because I thought I was dumb, I didn't really understand how much improvement I could have. So that's where a lot of people go wrong. They don't really realize, like, just because you, maybe you are dumb. Maybe I was dumb. Maybe I was dumb to think that I couldn't learn further.

But you might hear me in some videos every once in a while say, there are no limits on what you can learn and know. I think that's pretty damn fascinating. There are no limits on what you can learn and know. Want to know something else? There's no one on the planet that can tell you how much you can learn and know. There's no one on the planet that can tell you how much you can grow. I mean, they might be able to tell you how much you can grow heightwise, because maybe they do some calculations or something like that, but there's no one on this planet that can tell you how much, how little, how much you can expand your mind. you know i went from i went from being 210 to 220 before i started powerlifting and

you know went to 242 and 275 and 308 and super heavyweight went all the way up to 330 pounds turned myself into somebody that really struggled with a squat you know i remember like you know putting 275 on my back and just like really struggling with it and had just it was shitty i mean i was young but it's just i just i just was not a squatter i sucked at squatting sucked really bad um even as i got a little older i sucked at squatting and then i went on to squat a thousand 80 you can really make a crazy amount of progress and i changed i had a metamorphosis i went from you know like i said around 200 something pounds natty into this 330 pound juiced up monster and then now I'm back I'm back where I was so I guess they're right I guess

he can't change too much I didn't necessarily change I just changed back into who I was when I was 16 or 18 changed back into who I was when I you know graduated high school or something along those lines you know one of my favorite songs you know I think I think everybody knows the song from Queen and it says we are the champions and sometimes maybe that's all people here we are the champions it says it over and over and over again right but it also says there's no time for losers remember earlier i was saying you walk with the lame you'll develop a limp there's some people that have been in my life that are knuckleheads there's people that have been in my life that are again i don't look at people necessarily as losers

but sometimes it's easier just to categorize people a certain way so that you can move on and so that you can keep cruising. But some of the people that have been in my life that were hyper-focused on just the one thing and they didn't care about like, I don't know, learning more. Like they didn't want to like excel in business and they didn't want to, just because you don't want to excel in business doesn't mean you're a loser but they didn't want to excel anywhere else except for like lifting like

as an example some of these guys would smell they'd stink some of these guys um their clothes would be all like ratty and stuff like that some of these guys their lifting bag would be disgusting their knee wraps would be disgusting it just they look like they crawl out of a trash can i mean seriously they did because the only thing that they gave a shit about was lifting the heavy weights and unfortunately a lot of these guys they weren't even that great at that they were they were good you know they did pretty well uh but as as powerlifting is a tough sport to be a really good power lifter is not an easy thing uh to try to figure out a way to be good at all three lifts or to try to put together a really good total and it takes a lot and it takes a lot more than just dreaming

about it. So in some aspects, in some of these sports, you do have to be in pretty hard because they're pretty competitive. But I also think that you're missing out on so many things when you're only all into the one thing. And maybe I'm blessed and maybe, you know, I ended up with some pretty cool circumstances to be able to excel at power lifting while doing some other stuff at the same time. but you know you do have to be careful on who your friends are and as you go through this

journey of personal development that's one of the first things that you're going to learn I also learn some personal development skills from where everybody else learned it from which would be Tony Robbins um Tony Robbins you know he um once you start watching that you'll get in your feed you'll get uh other people in your feed and um you know you know just like listening to some of this stuff sometimes people think it's corny or people think it's weird and that's when you're sometimes telling some people about these kind of things and you see that they they're interested in what you're saying just kind of fades and uh they're not like-minded they don't have some of the same goals that you have and just what these people say or what these people do i mean

someone says hey uh how come you're so fired up lately like why are you all motivated and and and pumped up And then you tell them, oh, yeah, I was watching a Tony Robbins video and they might think it's corny. Well, that person, you know, they're not at not at the same point in their life that you are. And as you work your way up the ladder, as you become more successful, it might be harder and harder to hang around people that just want to F around. It might, it might feel uncomfortable. It might feel squirmy. And that's why some people don't seem like they have a whole lot of friends. It's because, you know, if somebody has a business, somebody has a bakery, let's say,

and the bakery is doing really well and they're excited and they want to tell someone about it. They're like, hey, man, you know, the bakery last month made 20 grand. Like, oh, shit, that's awesome. And then the bakery makes 30 grand, the bakery makes 50 grand, you know, does this, does that, like per month. And eventually there are certain friends that don't want to hear about that anymore. And there are certain friends that think that you're kind of bragging them. You're not really bragging necessarily.

You're sharing with your friends that you had an improvement. But there's a big difference with sharing with your friends that you had an improvement. And now you bench 315 versus sharing with your friends that you just benched 854 pounds. like it feels like you're trying to you know one up them or what i what i felt has happened with myself and i know that i probably changed and i think that's good thing because sometimes people say money will change you well i think that like life and time just changes you anyway um and i i hope i'm not the same person i was when i'm 20 i hope i'm more developed and smarter and have less blind spots and all those things i know we had john anderson

on the podcast, multi-millionaire, me, another fellow meathead millionaire. And John Anderson had that journal that he kept talking about. He's like, I write down everything. He's written down everything for like 30 years. He's got like a bunch of different books, just stacks of stuff where he's got notes and he's just been writing stuff down endlessly forever.

And it's by no mistake that John Anderson is also accumulated, not just money, but he's accumulated a handful of businesses. And he's also accumulated a pretty good amount of followers on Instagram and TikTok and had some videos go viral. It's because he's a student. And I guess that's my main point here today is that you want to hang around students. You want people that are hungry to get better and that understand that they can learn every single day and they can just step by,

step over time they can continue to put up points on the scoreboard of life you guys may have heard me talk about that before what what does that mean putting up points on the scoreboard what does it mean to kind of like you know just put one foot in front of the other well picture this picture that you know you're i always like to just kind of give the analogy you're dragging a sled once i love to drag a sled right dragging a sled with like four plates on it but it's behind you you're walking normally when you're dragging a sled and it's got that kind of weight on it your head is down heads down and all you're really concentrated on is your next step and let's say you're walking and walking let's say you're trying to do like a half i say you're trying to do like a half

mile with this amount of weight that you're pulling well that would be very difficult and it would just each step would get increasingly tougher and tougher and tougher but if you concentrate on just that next step what's the next step what's the next step what's the next step as you start to make more money what's the next step what's the next step what's the next step that's all you're focused on what's the next step oh i had a shipment of stuff and it's all messed up um it's damaged and um i can't sell it what's the next step what's the next step what's the next step um you know oh my god you know we thought we were paying $50,000 for something and it turns out that's only half of the inventory and it's actually 100k and we didn't really balance our money you know the

way we needed to so this is all screwed up this is all sideways what's the next step what's the next step oh my god we had an email blast go out and we don't even have that product in stock anymore what's the next step what's the next step just always thinking about what the next step is what will happen is as you continue to put one foot in front of the other either your bank account will be massively increased or people's view of you is going to change quite a bit you'll hear people talking about it'll say hey you know that was great or this or what you're doing is great and you'll keep hearing that hey what you're doing is great keep going you're doing such a great job keep doing what you're doing it's unbelievable this is

great this is awesome you're the goat you're this you're that and your head is still down and you're like hmm i wonder who they're talking about and then you pop your head up and you look there's people telling you that you're great and you're like huh why are they telling me that like what what's going on here and it's people that are admiring how far you came it's people that are like saying holy shit man you've come a long way because people they really admire obviously people are going to admire somebody that's made you know two billion dollars or something crazy right but if you think about it we admire improvement a lot maybe even more so right the um yeah because it seems like the person that has the greatest improvement, which like, you know, I know it's like the most

improved trophy kind of thing, you know, kind of goes to like sometimes the kid on the team that sucks, right? But we do admire, we put a lot of value in improvement. And there's a lot of people that are just kind of pumped about where they're at, which is fine. But it's hard when you're somebody that wants to improve and there's a bunch of people around you that don't care about it as much. One of the things I observed as I became more successful was, and I did mention earlier about how, yes, I've changed and I'm glad that I've made some changes and stuff like that.

But what has changed even more has been people's view of me. And I just was telling you that story about dragging the sled to your head. head down and eventually you pop your head up and people are telling you did a great job or that you did something great or that you're great and that's exactly what happened to me I you know put in this like body of work I felt like I've been the same person all the time I don't mess around that much on here you know when I'm doing a lot of these YouTube videos and stuff but in life in general you know normally it's not easy to get a direct answer for me. Normally you're going to get me saying something stupid or funny or silly as the

first thing. But yeah, the biggest change over the years, the people around me as I made more money changed a lot. They changed a lot because their perspective and view of you just gets altered and I don't think they can help it. It impacts everybody. And even to have a successful business in the first place, and maybe people don't even realize this, but it leaves a trail, you know, it leaves a trail of, it leaves a, like, it's not all happy, you know, not everything. There's like a little trail of sorrow attached to it because there, you don't know what to do with your money. So sometimes you try to help people out with your money, sometimes, and sometimes that works out great and feels incredible. and sometimes it works amazing for everybody but then there might be another family member

or friend with their handout and maybe you don't want to or can't afford to help them and they don't understand why and part of the reason why when it comes to money like that you most of the time

if you give people money that are that haven't earned it then they will it's not a great idea to give people money that they didn't earn as somebody with experience with that is you start to become a little bit of a bank

somebody usually comes with their hand out again you know you gave them five grand and they're like, oh my God, what a blessing. This is unbelievable. And then the next year, their air conditioning goes out. And they say their wife, oh, man, an air conditioner. And they say, hey, why don't you hit up your, why don't we hit up your sister or your brother or whoever, you know? It's like, so that's the way some of that can work out.

And then also the view that everybody has around you is they just think that your life is cushy. they might just think that your life is like so easy and that all your problems are solved because most people just what most people do with money by the way what most people do with money their strategy for money is to do what is to fantasize about it that's most people's strategy with money most people's strategy with money is to gawk and fantasize and say holy shit look at that guy's watch wow oh my god you said girl's wedding ring holy shit it's unbelievable they'll say uh they'll go on a drive and they'll drive by some of the homes on the beach and look oh my god they'll go down a strand or something and they'll look it up they'll zillow it right there

on the spot and say you know hey how well this place wow wow i didn't think that place was worth 10 million holy shit so other places five million other place is eight million and and people get they get uncomfortable maybe people are uncomfortable right now hearing me kind of talk this way and hearing me talk about money but cash rules everything around me i didn't make it up that's the way that's the way it goes that's the way it is it can really can really alter you and it can alter the people around you for sure um but for myself personally um some of the achievements I've had with lifting and some of the other things I've done in my life, they, you know, they all feel great. But having enough money is an amazing thing. And that might be something

else that people don't realize because a lot of people are striving or a lot of people are again fantasizing about money. But they maybe don't understand that if you have the same you got the same you know phone as me and you have some of the other same uh conveniences that i have i mean yes you should have some personal development and yes you should learn how to continue to grow and expand and to earn more money um but this dream or idea that things are going to be so awesome when you have you know a million or two million you don't really have a strategy for it is not a worthwhile thing to even think about, and it's not necessarily going to exponentially make you any happier. Having enough money to have convenience to kind of do things

the drop of a hat is really wonderful, to not have hardly any limitations. It's a beautiful thing. But I'd also think, and this is for your kids and so forth, like, you can kind of ruin, so poverty can ruin, poverty can be really hard on a family. You know what else can be really hard on a family? Being super wealthy. My brother Mike was completely shocked when he went into rehab centers and stuff. I've shared with you guys before. My brother Mike, he died of good 15 years ago or so, bipolar disorder, many issues with drugs over the years. And anyway, when he went through some recovery, he was completely surprised about who was in there. He was like, man, I thought it would be, you know, he's like some people were like this,

but for the most part, most of these people were really, like a lot of young people in there, a lot of almost like kids, teenagers. and he was like and they're from some really wealthy families and he was kind of surprised by that and it makes sense because sometimes when you

when you have it all there's maybe not enough excitement in the household there's no there's no there's nothing like butt up against there's no dang it what's the word

there's no friction there's no friction and a teenage kid um you know they they thrive off of things being you know a little dangerous here and there things being a little bit you know a little bit off the rails right so uh i think that that's where that comes from they're looking for something exciting something kind of crazy so people think that money is going to you know just swoop in and just solve everything and it can solve a lot of stuff but for most people in america for being honest, these people that fantasize about money, all it's going to solve is the debt that they have. So it's just going to bring you back to baseline. You know, think about it. If I think about it, you're listening right now and I gave you 50 grand, what would it do? You know, for some, you might be

like, oh shit, like that's pretty cool. I can do A, B, and C with it. But for a lot of people, it's like, oh, man, I got credit card and student loans and I got, you know, they got all these other things. So that would be awesome too. It would be nice to wipe out some of the payments that you owe um but yeah i mean there's just been some of my experiences over the years and you're better off hanging out with yourself than you are hanging out with people that are going to slow you down you don't have to be rude or be a dick to anybody um but i think it's in your best interest to categorize people a little bit little bit, some of the people in your life, and use them a little bit. I know that people

don't like that, but it is what it is. I'm going to use these guys, these people. I'm going to use them when I go lift so I can have a great workout because they're great lifting partners. but to improve myself outside of this I'm going to choose to go to a seminar I'm going to choose to go to a weekend where there's multiple speakers and it's people talking about leadership and that is where I'm going to spend more of my time I'm not going to spend a ton of my time watching porn. I'm not going to spend a ton of my time playing video games. And that's where you'll kind of hear the entrepreneurs get into this little thing about like it's a sacrifice, you know? I don't really think it's a sacrifice. I just think like you're, you're just choosing

things that you think are more productive. But those things that you think are more productive, it's not all just, it's not, the things that you think are, are more productive are still pleasurable. They're still fun. Like, I love going to seminars like that. Like, I've only been to a few. And I should probably go to another one just because they just amp you up. But you're just choosing to manage your time a little differently.

I was, you know, I was trying to be protective of my friend. I didn't want to use a name because, like, sometimes you don't know. you know, someone's reaction, because you don't know how many people listen to the show, but Andrew, Andrew Zaragoza is comfortable with me using his name and saying that, you know, it's Jiu-Jitsu. You know, he fell in love with Jiu-Jitsu. He still loves Jiu-Jitsu. I think sometimes you've got to, like, let a little time go by just to kind of make sure you love it a ton,

but he's been out of it for like a month, and he's just not motivated by the same stuff. But he also left me a message, you know, to try to cover some other things. and something that I've shared with people in the past, you know, sometimes people are like, oh, this seminar, this thing costs a lot of money. You know, I've been to a lot of seminars. Some of the seminars not having anything to do with real personal development necessarily, but some of them being, you know, powerlifting seminars, going to see a Dave Tate or Louis Simmons. I've been to Charles Poliquin's seminars. And yeah, man, some of the stuff, I remember like Charles Poliquin's seminar was like $2,500 or something. I didn't have $2,500.

I think I talked with like a friend of a friend that knew him and I was trying to get in for like a little bit less. I think I think it was like, you know, I bought all his books and had all his stuff. And so I think somebody, you know, knocked like 500 bucks off that tab or whatever for the two day seminar or something like that. Looking at it now, I'm like, man, that's like actually really inexpensive almost for like what I learned and for how excited it got me. me and what it led to. And same with, you know, the Louis Simmons seminars and Dave Tate seminars, they were much cheaper. I think they might have been like 500 bucks or something, which, again, probably for some

people, like, damn, 500 bucks. And, yeah, 500 bucks is no joke. 500 bucks, a lot of money. Especially when you haven't accumulated much wealth, you're young. And, man, you're like, man, I don't want to spend 500 bucks. But I think looking at it from another perspective, perspective, what does it cost you not to do it? And I think, you know, nowadays, I mean, there's just so much access. You got Alex Hermose. There's a lot of people talking about, you know,

how to make some cash, how to make some money. And there's these mentorship programs. And I know Badros Kulian along with like Andy Fricela and a lot of these guys have these programs and these things. My buddy, the muscle, he's been very successful with helping. He's been very successful with helping people navigate that part of their life too like how to how to how to become like financially literate and how to you know make some money and how to you know grow a business and I think some people just think it's bullshit and they just they're just like no like I don't but having someone help you organize your thoughts is not bullshit and I think when it comes to a consultant or it comes to um

when it comes to, you know, seeing a therapist, you know, sometimes, you know, it's a good idea for people sometimes to go and see, get some counseling, you know, whether it's just counseling just for yourself, just to organize your own thoughts, maybe just, I don't know, maybe something happened, maybe you lost your job and it doesn't feel like that big of a deal, but like you don't know what you're going to do next and so it's like just just try to find a therapist like go go try to find or try to learn something new or different you know go go to the seminar take the risk roll the dice a little bit get your mind off of whatever just happened and get yourself kind of maneuvering in a different direction but the crazy thing is is what the therapist is going

to do or what the consultant is going to do, is there basically just going to have you, they're going to help you just organize better and they're going to help you organize your thoughts. What a therapist will do a lot of times will just have you say something and they might have you repeat it and say, oh, you get your feelings hurt when so-and-so does this and then you're like, yeah, and then you say it again. And it's not like you feel stupid when you say it, but you just get more self-awareness. and if you're to say certain things out loud like yes i would really love to figure out a way to make more money and say okay you want to figure out a way to make more money how much have you how much time

have you how much time have you thought about that and what are some strategies you think that you could have to make more money and say well i don't know that's why i'm here i'm here i'm getting I'm getting consulting from you. And they would say, okay, well, here's the things that you do. And, okay, hey, would you think this would be a reasonable way for you to make more money and say, yeah, you know. And then you add to it too probably because you probably know already a couple of ways that you could increase your income or make more money in less time or whatever the thing is that you're kind of looking to do. And that's all we're really going to do. And so sometimes you just feel like, well, that's not that valuable.

but it could be life-changing. It could be a game-changer. Just going to one seminar, just talking with one coach, just talking with one consultant, one time, even just for 15 minutes. Or even you want to be cheap and just look shit up on YouTube,

you can do a lot of that as well. But you want to start to look at things from a different perspective and wonder, what is the cost of not doing this? You know, what if this seminar, what if this seminar costs, $5,000 and I don't, I don't go to it and I just make the same amount I normally do or I'm just the same as I've always been because it doesn't always have to be about money.

It could be, you know, a seminar where you're learning, you're learning particular skills that could then therefore transfer into you either making more money or becoming better at a particular task, a particular thing. It could be jihitsu powerlifting. I said the Dave Tate seminars and things like that. But yeah, what's it going to cost you to not be there? It's a really interesting perspective because, you know, maybe normally you make 10 grand in a month.

Well, maybe if you go to this seminar, it might pop up some ideas to where maybe now you're making 12 grand a month. and maybe that's not such a great it might not sound like a crazy increase but maybe that 12 grand the following year turns in a 14 and 50 and so on so you can get this kind of like snowball effect um i felt like many times in my life i just had really good momentum in certain areas in my life um and had great momentum probably six or seven years ago with slingshot like slingshot was just on fire. And it was, you know, a lot of it has to do with. There wasn't other companies out there yet. We didn't have the Amazon rip-offs of the actual slingshot product. It's not easy to

defend a patent all the time. And then a lot of other companies came into the mix. And I think they've seen what we've been able to do. And so, you know, just end up with competition and ends up making it more and more difficult to, like, get a, get a sale. But, you know, could I still go to seminars and learn more to get the sales back up? I mean, I'm doing stuff like that all the time. I'm learning a little bit more, maybe not every day. I'm not, I don't have the same learning curve that I did when I started this business because that, you know, that was like a hockey stick, you know, learning along with, you know,

making the money was pretty interesting and crazy thing. But it also just seems like, hey, if I just put more time into it, I'll get more out of it. And that's exactly what it is. And I might have to put more money into it, too, to figure that out as well. The other thing is, too, there's a little bit of a pay-to-play thing that you should think about. If you have an opportunity to be in a room with people that are a bunch of savages, you have an opportunity to be next to some people that are a bunch of beasts in whatever it is that you want to do. You want to try to figure out how do I get, not take advantage, how do I take advantage with the opportunity to get to go to this thing?

I mean, let's just say you are a writer and you hear that some famous writer, you know, trains at this gym all the time. well shit man start training at that gym you know just whatever way it is that you can like level yourself up um you hear many stories about you know people uh you know going to these you know seminars and driving across the country and not having a lot of money and running out of gas and and uh or you you know hear stories of people that um kind of pushed some of their other other stuff they had going on their life to the side just for this opportunity to do this thing that they just felt in their gut was going to be like the best thing for them. And they do that and they're able to like really turn it into something. So it's just it's an unbelievable feeling to have personal

development and to go through a growth spurt. I don't know how to put it into words. I can't really explain it. I mean, maybe it feels a little. little bit similar to like newbie gains in the gym is about the only thing I can really think of. But it's a, it's like a wonderful kind of burning feeling that you have kind of in your brain, but also throughout kind of your whole body. You're just like, man, this is awesome to be like learning this stuff, be able to apply this stuff. And it helps you feel a little bit on fire every day like you're motivated and inspired every day because you're just figuring out these little pieces of the puzzle and again it's not it's not like your bank account is

increasing every day immediately after you went to the seminar but you're figuring out more and more stuff uh that is getting you closer and closer to to figuring things out um things that you probably always had uh things that you always probably had questions about so what's the cost of you not doing these things what's the cost of you not you know taking these risks and how do you you know it's not just about not just about figuring out how to get away from certain people that might be distracting you or taking you away from your your goals but it's also about how do I really level up how do I get to some of these other people that have already been a success because I can basically take a lot of what they share with me and I can

could start to implement it on a daily basis and then I should be able to turn myself into a success the same way that they have. Let me know in the comments below what you guys thought and what you guys think and what you'd like to see next from a Saturday school. But I'm Mark Smelly Bell and hopefully you guys were on page 43 the whole time because that's the page that we're always on. Strength is never a weakness. This week this is never strength. Catch you guys later. Bye.