Mind Pump: Raw Fitness Truth - 1150: Mark Bell on How He Stays Lean & Jacked, SARMS, Business Mistakes to Avoid & MORE

Episode Date: October 28, 2019

In this episode, Sal, Adam and Justin talk with Mark "Smelly" Bell. The unlikely sports Mark did when he was younger. (1:57) How being wealthy is just as embarrassing as being poor. (5:12) The fine line between how much we push our children. (9:38) How would he define success for his kids? (11:35) The significance of having quality TIME in the Bell household. (12:36) The battle of managing digital wellness in today’s landscape. (15:47) Mark’s take on the vegan movement and the premise behind The Game Changer’s documentary. (23:20) What was his diet like before going carnivore? (28:33) How every plus has a minus when it comes to the foods we eat. (32:38) Why we should all have some caution with what we are taking: Mark shares the reasoning behind his supplement line and why he takes kratom. (34:52) How does he stay lean and jacked today? (45:41) Has there been anything that he learned from his bodybuilding training that he has kept in his current training? (50:07) Are there big differences in the anabolic substances used in bodybuilding in comparison to powerlifting? (53:30) If it’s not full it’s empty. (56:07) What are his views on SARMS? (57:50) The most common mistakes people make when trying to start a business. (59:45) What is the best advice he has gotten? (1:04:15) The importance of testing the water before you dive in. (1:06:08) The value of team building and what does leadership mean to him. (1:07:46) What are the greatest challenges for the CEO of a company? (1:11:03) What role does the podcast play in his business? How does he pick the guests? (1:17:37) One thing we would be surprised to learn about Mark? (1:22:36) Biggest insecurity? (1:25:02) His social media endgame. (1:26:51) Featured Guest/People Mentioned Mark Bell (@marksmellybell)  Instagram Chris “Boar” Bell (@bigstrongfast)  Instagram Charlie “Rocket” Jabaley (@charlie)  Instagram Mr Olympia Jay Cutler (@jaycutler)  Instagram Related Links/Products Mentioned October Promotion: MAPS Anabolic ½ off!! **Code “RED50” at checkout** Sling Shot Mark Bell's Power Project - YouTube The Game Changers Official Film Website | Documentary The War on Carbs - Book by Mark Bell A Leaf of Faith | Netflix

If you want to pump your body and expand your mind, there's only one place to go. Mite, op, mite, op with your hosts. Salda Stefano, Adam Schaefer, and Justin Andrews. Mark Smellybell was harassing me in my DM for months and months and months and months wanting to hang out. We finally had him down at the studio, hung out, had a great time. This is a good podcast. You guys will enjoy this I know he's got a ton of people That have been trying to get us connected and finally do one on the the mind pump podcast and so this is fun

Man, he's a big figure in the in the strength world very very nice guy super hospital to us when we whenever we visit him Yeah, he's the inventor of the slingshot, which is excellent tool to increase your bench press strength. It's actually brilliant invention, even though it's very simple. He has a podcast, it's a big fitness podcast, he's got great guests on there. It's called Mark Bell's Power Project.

And if you want to check out the slingshot to get your bench press numbers to go up, go to markbells or markbellslingshot.com. And then of course, you can find them on Instagram. He's got a lot of followers on Instagram, doesn't he? He does. He's got some controversial posts and some funny stuff too. He's got a cool, his Instagram page is at mark smelly bell,

which I don't understand why he's got that nickname. I sat next to him. He was wrestling. That was his wrestling. He talks about that a little bit. But he's not smell smelling. He's not going. Anyway, before the episode starts We have four days left for the biggest sale of the year map, Santa Bologna are most popular Muscle building strength building metabolism boosting work out program is 50% off you have four days left get the program. Here's what you do. Go to mapsred.com.

That's M-A-P-S-R-E-D.com. And use the code red50, R-E-D-5-0, no space for the discount. Hey, so we were talking out by when we were having coffee this morning about the sports you played as a kid. I didn't know you boxed, huh? Yeah. Yeah, huh? Yeah.

Yeah, it's unboxing. I did track and field. I did a bunch of stuff, but yeah, boxing, I went to the Catskills and trained with Kevin Rooney. Oh, wow. That's Mike Tyson's former trainer. So I learned how to throw some bombs and learn how to dodge some punches and stuff.

Mainly probably the first five, six months that I was there, he didn't even really show me how to throw a punch. And I was like, man, this is a drag. This is pretty boring. Like all footwork? Yeah, I was all footwork and all just head movement the way you saw Mike Tyson, obviously I wasn't able to mimic what Mike Tyson was doing.

But a lot of that, you know, just kind of like windshield wiper back and forth, just head movement Constantly was what they reinforced there. Do you have a lot of amateur matches? No, no, and I think a lot of that has to do a lot of that had to do with the fact that just I was a big kid And whenever I went to into somebody else's camp or whenever he went to Another person's gym. There just wasn't people in my weight class. So I'd still box them, but it was more like sparring

because I was, I've been over 200 pounds probably since I was about 13. Oh, wow. And at that time, I was probably 15, 16, between 22240. What the fuck were you doing in track? Yeah, I was just saying it was a shot put. I was trying to get away with just throwing a shot.

You ain't running. And just throwing the discus, but my track coach wasn't having it. The first day, she's like, no one on this track team is just gonna throw a throw. So she got a run as well. And I was like, oh my god. I'm a fat kid.

I'm just like trembling in my shoes. So I had to run and I did 100 meter. Oh, nope, no way. Four by 100 meter. I could actually run back in the day. Now, if I tried to run, I don't think I could stop. I think I'd do a hard part. Maybe the one who's like a juggernaut.

Or I might just blow something out, you know, blow out a hammy or something. legit ones the last time you run. I can identify something. He runs on the treadmill. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I'll run here in there. He's not like you. Sounds allergic to running. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I don't even know. I don't even know if Sal knows that it turned on the treadmill. No, yeah. I'm pretty sure he doesn't. Not at all.

An actual sprint. We had a speed golfer on our podcast. Not too long ago. What's a speed golfer? Yeah, I know. Right. Is that's an unreal thing? Hey, listen know, right? Is that the real thing? Hey, listen, he's a world record holder, okay? All right. In speed golf? How does that work? Guinness Book of World Records, what?

That's what my wife said the same thing. My wife's like, come on, you could be a world record holder or anything, right? Yeah, like you make up something and you could be a world record, isn't it, right? So they have to run from hold to hold? Yeah, you got to sprint from hold to hold. Apparently it's hard.

No, it seems to be difficult enough as it is. It sounds way more fun. Running in between. Yeah. No cards, is that the idea? Yeah, no cards. And you got people trying to tackle you. Shut up.

I made that part. I made that part. I made that part. They would get started on. I'm starting. I'm down. Start our own sport. Yeah, powerlifting golf or something like that. You've probably got to rush, you've got to hit the mall and then you've got to deadlift

double your body weight. You've got to go to the next one. I will be back. You know what I'm saying? So I saw you you post something the other day that I thought was really cool and I wanted to talk to you a little bit about it because you know what I know that once you once you reach a certain point of success, I think one of the things that's probably got to be really difficult for a father is to know how much of that you give to your kids. And I saw that you bought your son a new truck. Yeah. And actually what I was most impressed by it was that I know what you could have bought him.

Right. But you bought him kind of like an old seat. Which is a cool truck. By the way, it's a very cool truck to have for a young man no matter what. But I know you could buy him a brand new whatever. And you chose to buy an old kind of beat up C 10. Why is that? My son aspires to be like the exact opposite of me. He despises being well off. And you know, I recognize maybe a couple of years ago that maybe being wealthy is just as embarrassing

as being poor. Interesting. So like when he's had friends over the house and things like that, they're like, you guys live in a castle. And he, I don't know, it's just as a kid, especially as a young boy, I think it doesn't feel great for people just to think that you have no resistance. Because as a kid, especially as a young boy, I think it doesn't feel great for people just to think

that you have no resistance. Because as a teenager, you're just, you're flooded with all the same problems as every other teenager, whether you're white, black, or otherwise, or whether you're rich or you're poor. Like, we can all identify being a teenage kid is tough, you know. So he wants to kind of like identify with like things being a little bit harder. Oh, wow. Interesting.

You know, we bought him, you know, basically a piece of shit, you know, on purpose. Because he wants to work for it. He wants to like fix it up. He wants to, I mean, he'll wear a cowboy hat. We have a, my wife and I recently bought a new house. We haven't moved into it just yet, but he goes over there and he's always doing like yard work. He goes over there with my dad and they like mow the lawn

and they weed whack and do all that shit over there. And it's all stuff I would never do in a million years because I just pay people to do it. That's how it's like, he's, well, teenagers rebel. So it's his way, that's a cool way to rebel. I had some clients who were like, this is a long time ago, they were hardcore atheists and their kid to rebel,

became like super religious. And they were like, what the fuck do we do? And I'm like, kids will just do the opposite of what? That's so interesting, because I assume that was kind of you. I thought that was you kind of putting that on him, like, hey, just because dad has all these things. Yeah, maybe you should have challenged him by getting him like a really nice expensive car.

Yeah, I mean, yeah, I get him a new Tesla or something. Yeah, I thought I was like a Warren Buffet thing, like how he's with this kid. Yeah, he mean. Yeah, I get him a new Tesla or something. Yeah, I thought it was like a warm buffet thing, like how easy with this kid. Yeah, it was just like, you got to work for it. It is a little bit, because my dad, my dad is there with him a lot, doing this manual labor type of stuff, because my dad always like doing that stuff.

My grandfather had like a used car lot, and he was really good with his hands. He built his own home. He built a car. He rebuilt these cars and sold them and stuff like that. And so my dad is very familiar with using his hands. And that just skipped me. I never wanted to.

My dad would show me stuff as a kid. He would paint the wall. And he'd be like, here's how you do this. He's kind of like long strokes. And I would do it. And I would mess it up. And then he'd be like, no, no, it's more like this. And then half the garage would be painted already.

And then I would kind of just lose interest, you know, because I probably had some ADHD, along with probably a million other problems. And I'd be off just throwing around my football or something and he painted the whole garage. So a lot of that stuff, I just, I would never found really a lot of interest in. My dad was also like a nine to five blue collar IBM employee for many, many years and I always saw that. And I was like, whatever the hell that is, I know I don't wanna do that.

Like I gotta wear a suit and tie every day. And then he took me to work with him one day and like he was just at his desk and he's like, I don't know, he answered like a couple calls. He like wrote some shit down. And then he like took some balls out of his desk and he's like, I don't know, he answered like a couple calls, he like wrote some shit down and then he like took some balls out of his desk and started like juggling them. And I'm like, this seems pretty boring. Like obviously that's not what he did every day,

but I was like, this seems kind of boring, whatever the hell it is that he does, you know? And so I always wanted to be kind of the opposite of him. And now that I'm older and I have a much better understanding of like who he is as a person, there's nobody that I aspire to be more so than my dad. So that's strange. So you wanted to be the opposite of your dad

and your son wants to be the opposite of you. Right. It takes right after you. Now did you have any challenge with that? Was there a moment when he was starting to grow up and you, because I would assume you worked really hard to get to the place that you're at now. And I feel like I have only a 10 week old right now.

And I imagine that, and I've busted my ass, I waited a very long time till I even had a child because I wanted to be in a place financially. And so I imagine if he was coming up and I had nice things, which I would have when he's growing up, if he almost kind of resents me for it, I think I would struggle with that a little bit. Yeah. Yeah. I don't, I don't worry about it too much. I mean, I know what you're talking about though. I just try to be there for my kids and, and I think, you know, if I have a weakness, it's maybe that I don't push them enough because it's hard to figure that part out. Like how hard do I push them on something? Like, uh,

some parents push their kids so hard on stuff that the parents hate them, but it still ends up being like in the kid's best interest. And the kid still ends up being like a doctor or a lawyer, or at least acquire some form of success that we would all agree upon, that looks like success in today's culture. So I don't know what that line is.

I don't know how hard to push. By son played baseball and he played some other sports for a little while. And when he was playing baseball, we were just like driving to a practice and he was like, you know what? I don't really like baseball. And I was like, oh, am I okay?

You don't have to play baseball? He's like, we don't have to go to practice today. I said, no, well, you gotta go to practice today and you gotta finish out the season because you agreed to be on this team and it's kind of part of, you know, part of the way it, part of the way it's. Yeah, it's part of the commitment of it, you know, so he played out the rest of the year and then he never played baseball again, you know, so it's like, I don't know that line. I don't know if anybody does. No, I think some kids push themselves

so hard that and that's why it's, it's, I think some kids push themselves so hard, and that's why it's an individual thing. They push themselves so hard that if you add more pressure onto them, it could be a disaster. And then other kids, I think need it. How would you define success for your kids? Like if you could pick out their futures and consider them successful, what would that look like for you?

I'll start by saying success for me as a parent. It's just to not have my kids be an asshole. I just don't want my kids to grow up to be like disrespectful of other people. And so far, they've been pretty good with that. They've been handling that pretty good. Success for them, I hope that they find something that they really enjoy.

I hope they find something that excites them. I hope they find something that makes them happy, something that makes them feel complete. And that's all I'm really looking for. Hopefully by seeing what my wife do, my wife and I do on a daily basis, hopefully they kind of get that vibe of what my wife and I are working for and working towards and the reason why we love working so much is the fact that we take great wife and I are working for and working towards and the reason why we love working so much is the fact that we take great pleasure and we take great pride in it. So hopefully they're seeing that. I think it's having an impact on them. You're such a driven person. And for me, one of the biggest challenges was figuring out

how to balance being an involved father and work. I did a terrible job of it early on and I'm learning now how to do a better job of it. How do you balance those things out? Are you very involved in your kids' lives? I know you're successfully got multiple businesses. What does that look like for you? Yeah, I'm very involved in their lives.

I see, I get to spend time with them every single day. Yeah, I'm very involved in their lives. I see, you know, I get to spend time with them every single day. One thing I think maybe people are, I think people are always trying to have like quality time with their kids or quality time with their relationships they have. And it doesn't have to be anything fancy. It doesn't have to be anything, you don't have to take him to Disneyland or I think even taking him to Disneyland, I think is a little bit faking away because it's like you spend so much time away from them.

Now you're taking him to Disneyland and now you get the picture of you and them and you post about how much you love your family on Instagram. And I think that that's, that could maybe come off the wrong way. But I'm always there for my, I'm there for my kids a lot. And when I'm not there for my kids, I share with them. I communicate with them a lot. I talk to them as if they're adults and I say, I'm not always going to be here for you because I might be working. I might be doing something. And I was like, it would be a disservice to you if I was there all the time. You gotta get yourself out of shit sometimes.

You gotta figure out stuff on your own sometimes. So I think the way that we spell love in my family is T-I-M-E. We try to spend a lot of time with each other. Sometimes it is quality time. Sometimes it's great. Sometimes all of us will go for a walk at the same time. And other times we're just like all in the same house. But no one's doing anything with each other. Like we're all individually on a phone or something like that. Those are all things that we try to manage as well. My kids put their

phones away at 7 p.m. every night. We all put them on a charger. My wife and I got a shut-ar shit down too, because we found that like it wasn't working to say these rules will exist for you, but they don't exist for us. And so we try, we try. We really do. We try to make an effort. And I'm fortunate in the fact that my kids, they love the family aspect of it. They love when we go somewhere as a family. They love when we go to Thanksgiving and we're there with their cousins and nephews or my nieces and nephews and stuff like that. They really look forward to it. They talk about it a lot.

When we're at the dinner table or if we go out to dinner, we're only allowed to have one phone and we just think like one phone, just in case some sort of communication. Sometimes my wife and I might go out with my son Jake and we might leave my daughter behind. Maybe she's tired from volleyball practice or whatever. And so that's the reason for like the one phone, but we normally phones are away when we're eating phones are away.

Like just these small things that have helped us to be able to spend better time together and more time together. Speaking of phones and technology, I mean, you grew up a similar time to us where we grew up without such ease of access to technology and the ease of distractability. And now we live, obviously, and we conduct our business through all the stuff. How do you foresee that challenge just from a health perspective? I mean, you're in the, you're in the health and fitness space. I mean, do you see that being the next, we predict that being the next big, the next big challenge is figuring out how to, how to manage digital wellness. Shea, I think people are dying on social media. I think most of the big players in social media are feeling incomplete.

They're depressed. They have a lot of anxiety. They're not getting out of social media what they originally thought they would get from it. And I do think that you'll see more movements of people saying, hey, put your phone away for a day or put your phone away for the week. There might be a week dedicated to it or something like that or a month.

I don't know. But it's hard because there's just so much going on on social media all the time. It's hard for people to detach or to get away from social media. But if you go back to the original reason, why all of us have decided to try to take our own path, it was to have like our own business and to not have to be on the hook for anything.

But as you guys see, it doesn't work that way. I don't really work for myself. I work for every customer that I have. I work for, you know, I do work for social media. I work for anything that I have to do. Work for, I have to produce that amount of work. And as soon as you don't produce that amount of work anymore, then you don't produce that amount of work anymore. And your worth, it's possible that you'll feel that your worth has decreased because you have less likes or less views or less people. And it can be a really horrible trap. I feel fortunate that I have an amazing

team of people around me. I have an amazing family. And so, just like anybody else, a bad comment or not as many likes doesn't make me feel great, but it also doesn't put me on a downward trend of really worrying about, you know, man, I better come with something really good to post tomorrow. I better bench 500 again, otherwise people aren't gonna care. Well, I think about this stuff a lot.

I have kids too. My son is 14 year old, how old are your kids? 16 or 15 and 12. Yeah, so my boy's 14 years old, and old are your kids? 15 and 12. Yeah, so my boy's 14 years old and I have these conversations with them because it was so different. I mean, I couldn't imagine having a camera around, because there's cameras all over the place, right?

Cause of phones. I couldn't, well, not just in here, but I mean, everywhere. I couldn't imagine doing some of the stupid shit that I did as a kid. I mean, when I was a kid, you know, you get your ass kicked, it was over. That's it, nobody knows.

Now you get your ass kicked, you could be a video of it. Oh, your friends have to watch. Yeah, next thing you know, you're, you know, 38 years old, you had a bar trying to talk to some girl, and they're like, hey, that's the dude, remember you guys, ass kicked at the, you know, whatever. So it's very different. I can also imagine what I would have done

with a phone, with video capacity, with my girlfriend when I was 15 years old. Do you have these conversations with your kids? Yeah, so my kids aren't supposed to have social media where they have it or not. I don't know. I don't snoop through their phones. I try not to get, I try not to, I try not to helicopter too much. I try my best with that, but as you know, that can be really difficult. I have had a lot of conversations with them about a lot of different things. I mean, I mainly would like for them

to interact with people in person. That's the hope, whether they follow through on that, I'm not really sure. It is all very complicated. It's very hard to make sense of it, because, well, you developed this business via the internet and via social media. And then now you're telling me that I can't, you know, I can't have social media,

I can't use some of these things. I am very cautious with how much stuff I post of my kids. I was just going to ask you do you post pictures and stuff? Yeah, here and there, here and there. And I asked them, you know, I just flat out ask them, like, hey, it's okay to take a picture. And they know, like, if it's okay to take a picture, that probably means that I'm going to post it somewhere. But I try to be cautious of that. I mean, even what you just said, like, what about your four years old

and you come down for Christmas and you open up your presents and stuff and your clients, you didn't get the thing that you wanted. I mean, we all have these things that have happened to us as kids. We don't really want to amplify it. And then there's the parent showing, oh, Timmy struck out in baseball. And here he is throwing this fit.

And they think it's funny. And maybe it is kind of funny. It's comical to everybody, but at the expense of what. You know what I'm more worried about? I'm worried less about that kind of stuff and more about, because you see like big celebrities, right? Their kids have huge social media pages simply because they're the child of whoever. And I feel like when you get that kind of admiration

and fame at a young age, that can be very damaging. Oh, you get all this attention, everybody thinks you're so cool. And you did nothing. I think you'll blow up your ego, blow up your, you know, how awesome you think you are. And then, you know, one day you're going to realize you're not that cool. And that will all come crashing down. That's my big, where else? I don't post too much of them. Yeah. And I, I mean, I don't know. They see me like with like fans and stuff. I just don't know where their minds are at with that kind of stuff. I don't know what they, I don't really know how they truly feel about some of that stuff,

whether they want that life or whether they don't want that life. I'm not sure, but I know that they have a lot of admiration for my dad. My parents live right next door and probably the coolest thing that ever happened, you know, out of, you know, building a slingshot and building a business was being able to buy a house for my parents that are right next door to us. And we get to see them every single day. My kids know that my dad is real.

My dad's a dude that just, he just goes to church. He's really good to people. And as a result, a lot of good things happen to him. He's had a lot of shitty things happen to him from a health perspective, but he's always just plowed through him. He's always just kind of kept his head down. So I think, I don't know what influence I'm having

or impact I'm having, I can't really say. To be determined, I'm trying to try my best. But I know for sure that I got somebody really good with my mom and dad being right know, being right next door. They get to see that as an example. And then even further, my wife is one of the few people in the world who's never taken a selfie before. She doesn't even know where to look on the phone to even try to take a selfie.

So I think my daughter sees that like my wife, not that there's anything wrong with like sexualizing stuff or feeling sexy about yourself, but my wife just doesn't go down that road ever. And so my daughter is in like a 3x baggy hoodie that's mine. She's 12, so who knows, two years from now, you probably do wear something totally different. And she's getting in the volleyball.

So they got the short shorts going and stuff already, which I'm not too pumped about. But I think she has some good role models around her. I guess is my point. And I hope that my kids are identifying with that. How much changed gears with you a little bit? Do you watch game changers? I didn't know. You haven't seen it yet.

The documentary on plant-based and- Oh, I haven't seen it yet? It's the documentary on plant-based. Oh, I haven't seen it yet, no. Yeah, what do you think about this? Arnold Schwarzenegger thing. Yeah, I mean, you've been in the space as long as I have, or if not longer. I've seen diets come and go. And at one point, it was low fat, and then it was low carb,

and then it was keto, and paleo. But this new vegan plant based push seems a little different to me. Are you are you feeling the same thing? Yeah, you know, I would just say like I've never tried a vegan diet so I because of that, I don't know anything about it, you know, well they don't eat meat. Yeah. Yeah. Right. I do understand that side of it. Um, I just think about my own experiences. So like, you know, I did powerlifting for a long time. And while doing powerlifting, you know, CrossFit came around and people made fun of CrossFit. And I was like, well, wait a second. Have you ever tried CrossFit? If you've been to a CrossFit

gym, have you ever done a CrossFit workout? Have you ever done a CrossFit workout? Do you know a good CrossFit coach? Cause maybe CrossFit's not that bad. So I've always been a little bit more open to it. Did you do a CrossFit? Have you ever had a CrossFit? I have done many CrossFit workouts before. They suck right.

They suck right. And now you know. Yeah, that's how I was gonna say CrossFit's stupid. No, I was gonna say, I actually enjoy CrossFit. I think it has a lot to offer. I don't think it's everything, but I do think it has a lot to offer. A lot of great things in there. Then when it comes to bodybuilding, power lifters and bodybuilders are always going back

and forth. Power lifters are super jealous of bodybuilders. Bodybuilders are jacked in tan. They look great. They're usually pretty strong too, but power if there's always like, that can't ain't that strong, but they probably don't realize the guy can turn, the 500 for five, six reps on a squat,

he could probably turn it into 600 or 650 if he worked on stimulating essential nervous system rather than just building muscle all the time. And so I think there's a lot of great things that come from other things that were so quick to shut off. So I don't know anything about veganism because I've never really tried it. I don't know if it's something I would try. I've tried many, many styles of diet.

But to cut out meat just doesn't seem like it would be anything that would fit my needs. I think also too, I think, people are just trying to do the best they can in this world. And they're trying to just figure out, what are some ways they can contribute? What are some ways that they can feel good about them? So if you feel good about yourself, then you can contribute.

And I think people are also figuring out ways of not destroying the planet and stuff like that. So, some people that do, some people that are vegan, you know, believe that, you know, in, you know, the slaughtering of animals can, you know, affect our, our, our cysts, you know, affect our, affect our climate. There we go. Effect our climate, which I don't know. Like there's science that shows both ways. So it's like whatever, but there's some people

that just don't want to harm animals. And, you know, I don't know by you saying, like I'm not gonna eat meat, and you're gonna only eat vegetables. Maybe that's a different harm for animals, because maybe you're eating some of their fucking food. I don't know. But I'm not gonna sit here and pretend

that I know anything about veganism when I've never tried it before. But have you ever seen a movement, a diet movement become super political? What politicized and shrouded in morality? I've never heard anybody say, I eat keto because it's moral or I eat paleo because I'm a better human. Right, right, right. This is if I never heard it be, you know, been done this way before. And I know you eat mostly carnivore, right?

You eat mostly meat. Yep. You getting your shit for that? Yeah, here and there. You know, people are, people are, they always wanna see your blood work. They're like, let me see your blood work. And it's like, cause I carry that around everywhere.

Yeah, yeah. I mean, I do get blood work. Yeah. That's my point all the time. It's like, show me your blood work off of your burger king diet or whatever it is that you're, you know, normally eating. So, um, I think there's, again, I think that people are just, they're trying to do the best job that they can with the information that they have. And so somebody, somebody asking about cholesterol on a post that I make, And so somebody asking about cholesterol on a post that I make, you know, talking about meat, I think they're just, the cholesterol thing

is a blockage for them to not try the diet. Yeah, no pun intended. Yeah, right. Yeah, it's a reason out for them, you know, or the finances. I hear that a lot. Oh, that diet's way too expensive. And so like for a week, I did a fast food fitness challenge,

and I went to McDonald's every day, or McDonald's, or just wherever, for fast food in an out burger, that kind of stuff, and got some patties, and it wasn't expensive. It was easy to do, and I lost weight doing it, and it's like, you know, you can try these things and you can, or you can sit there and bitch about them and try to figure out reasons on why you're not giving it a shot.

What were some of the effects that you noticed for your body when you started to reduce, like, how, first off, how was your diet before different than it was after you started going carnivore? Because you weren't, you thought you were vegan, you just ate more starches in carbohydrates from plant sources, then you pretty much eliminated those, right? What were the differences that you noticed in yourself? So I've always been a fan of low carb diets.

I wrote a book called The War on Carbs, and I firmly believe that most people should probably eat less carbohydrates. I mean, if you're already only eating 20, then you probably don't need less than that. But most people will find that they can actually be, they can run pretty efficiently without eating a lot of carbohydrates.

And maybe that's not true for every single person, but it's true from what I've seen, from the people I've worked with. Well, it's a pretty good general rule considering how sedentary we are today. Yeah, yeah, a lot of people can probably come down from 400 grams to 300 grams and probably feel better without even changing their like protein or their fat, you know. And then if you want to start to come down lower and lower, then you might have to equate for that. You might have to change your

your protein and your fat calories. But I've always done like kind of a almost like a ketogenic diet. I've been doing them since like the mid 90s. And. This was when Dave Palombo was really, he was really, you know, promoting those, I think. Yeah. Dave Palombo was probably even more into like early 2000s. This, my stuff came from like, Dandu Shane. Oh, right.

You know, he wrote body opus diet. Oh, that's the classic. Yeah. And so I got into it, you know, I got into it pretty early and always liked it. And it always worked well for me. What I discovered was through going through a ketogenic style diet and through messing around with body building style diets, the easiest thing for me to do is to just not eat.

So fasting works really well. Sometimes it's a quote-unquote bulletproof fast, aka like a liquid fast, where I fast for 14 or 16 hours on a day. Sometimes a little bit longer, sometimes a little bit shorter, depending on the day, and then I usually eat twice. And kind of how I ended up landing on the carnivore diet, feeling really good for me, is the two meals that I ate to try to get the most amount of nutrients in and to try to get the most amount of calories in.

It was a carnivore diet, so just eating meat like twice a day. I think there's a lot of people listening to this podcast right now that are probably heavier than they want to be and they probably want to try to make some changes and it might sound crazy to not eat. But the option to not eat is a lot better than having options. When you have too many options, sometimes you don't know what to do with yourself. Now it also say that fasting can be dangerous and you might not want to fast every day. Like if you fast on a Monday and you're binging on Wednesday, then your fast didn't work very well. So you have to kind of, you got to learn it and you got binging on Wednesday, then you're fast didn't work very well. So you have to kind of, you got to learn it and you got to make sure that it's something

that's manageable because we want stuff. We want stuff in our life to be easy. We want stuff to, in our life to be simple. And if stuff in our life is simple, then it can be repeatable. And I know that we do want to challenge and want shit. We want to like throw down here and there and have things be hard and like fight through stuff, I get that side of it too. But we're not even going to get anyone to get there if we don't keep things simple. So I feel that it's very, very simple to try some intermittent fasting and maybe for somebody

else who's never done it before, maybe they do, you know, eight or 10 hour fast. I mean, maybe it's just literally just a little bit longer than their sleep duration. Maybe they just skip breakfast or something like that. And then again, for me, having those two meals mainly be meat, I was still able to train really hard. I was still able to get in some good workouts. And then from there, I can audible it, depending on how I feel, depending on how I look,

depending on how lean I am, or depending on how lean I'm not, I can shift into saying, okay, well, I should probably add in some potatoes, I should probably add in some fruit, or I should add in a cheat day here and there, something like that. So you do throw in those foods occasionally. What are the foods that you allow on your diet for the most part?

I would say that, probably like so other than meat I eat cheese I eat eggs I'll eat fruit here and there I have yogurt so sometimes some dairy sometimes there's some heavy cream in there too if I feel like throwing in my coffee or something like that and then occasionally I just eat whatever I want occasionally I just you know go out and have a couple drinks with my wife Wine is like my other carbohydrate I would say alcohol The wine diet. Yeah, yeah the wine. I could see a few million Yeah, well, I would actually be stealing it from John Cena He's he's the creator of the wine diet, I think really

For a while there was the only carbohydrate source For a while there, there was the only carbohydrate source. It was wine, but so I'll sometimes just, just because I like to enjoy a glass of wine here and there, sometimes that's my carbohydrate source. And then usually with wine comes me being like, ah, fuck it, you know, and I'll have like some ice cream or something like that, but that'll usually try to get back, you know, back on the plant.

So some people are like, how do you deal without having any fiber, how do you deal without having any sugar? And it's like, well, there's some, you know, some of it creeps in there here and there. And I'm not afraid of vegetables. Like, I don't think, I don't think vegetables are making people fat. I know people talk about anti-nutrients, but I think with any anti, there's a plus to it too. Everything that has a plus has a minus almost always, as far as I've seen. And so like, you can make a case and say, oh, I think meat has a lot of positive

or a lot of negative side effects. Well, yeah, I'm sure that we probably can sit here and maybe agree upon a few of those, but we could also agree and say, yeah, probably has a couple positives. So people might say the same thing about broccoli or kale and say, oh, it's really rough on. So people might say the same thing about broccoli or kale and say, oh, it's really rough on your system

and it could give you gas. And maybe some of the stuff that those things do and maybe some of those fibers, maybe it pulls out stuff that's damaging our body. I don't know. And as far as I've seen, and all the people I've communicated with, which is some of the best minds in the world

when it comes to nutrition, they don't fucking know either. As you guys have probably found out yourself, right? For sure. How's mine bullet going? It's going great, man. That cratum. Yeah, it talked to me a little bit about that. I got a little cratum in my blood right now.

Do you? Some cratum and some caffeine. What's, so how much do you normally, when you take it, how much do you take and then how often are you taking it? I take all of it. I put it in a blender. It's too much. So how much do you normally, when you take it, how much do you take and then how often are you taking? I take all of it. I put it in a blender. No, I take, you know, with the pills that we have, there's 750 milligrams per capsule.

I usually take about three at a time and I'll do that sometimes, some days, you know, three times a day and some days, none. Just kind of really depends on the day, depends on what I'm doing. I do like taking it before we do like a podcast or something like that. What I've, what I've noticed from, from cratum specifically is that it just puts you in a better mood, you know, and it, it tends to just make everything kind of, um, because you're in a better mood and because you're in less pain, it makes everything feel a little easier back to what I was saying earlier. That's the whole invention of the slingshot, just trying to make shit a little easier.

Oh, my shoulder hurts every time I bench. Well, let's figure out a way around that. Let's figure out a way to get some pain out of your elbow. Maybe you'll still like bench pressing. Maybe you'll still like doing push ups. And so I think the same thing goes for Cratum, it just for me, it puts me in a little bit better mood. And you guys know like when you wake up in the morning,

you hop in your car and boom, all of a sudden your favorite song is on, your best friend you haven't talked to in 10 years calls. Like just for some reason, things are stacking up. It's like how much energy does that give you? Because now all of a sudden you're feeling good and there's really nothing different about the day. It's just that like things happen to land

just right on that particular day and you have a lot more energy. So I notice a huge energy surge from it as well but I think it's just because it's putting me in a better mood. Now where's Crate and Matt currently in terms of the legalities behind it and how do you source it? And is it like basically over the counter anywhere? That was a great question, man. I think I'm about head to jail.

Oh shit. The way some of this stuff is going here and there, you know, I don't... It's kind of gray market right now, right? Yeah, it's band in some states. It's band in some cities even. Like in San Diego, if you're in San Diego, you can't order it off my website. Oh wow. It's just, it's kind of just, you know, it's in a weird spot. But I think that people are so accepting of certain things, you know, of people are so

accepting of like CBD and you see a lot of stuff being made out of like vaping and like nine people died. It's like, I feel horrible about those nine people died. It's like I feel horrible about those nine people. However, there's lots of things that are killing people really, really rapidly and to only have nine deaths really isn't that much when you consider how much shit kills so many other people, how many people die of a heart attack, how many people die of diabetes, how many people die of just taking a fucking aspirin, you know what I mean? So I think some of these things get a bad reputation and maybe it's justifiable in a sense that like

maybe everyone should have some caution with what they're taking, whether it be MCT oil or whether it be some other type of supplement or whether it's cratum. Maybe we should all just pump the brakes and ask ourselves, like, what's this for? Why am I taking it? And am I going to be utilizing this for the next 10 years, 5 years, 3 years? Do I really like it that much? Is it worth it?

As I said, there's going to be a positive and negative to everything right we take creatine and we utilize that for long periods of time We can all agree and say look there's been a lot of great science behind creatine It looks like it works pretty good But I'm sure there's a lot of negative behind it as well. So that you know I think everyone should be cautious with everything they put in their body. Are there any studies like that? everyone should be cautious with everything they put in their body. Are there any studies that you reference constantly about creatin that people can kind of do more research on? There's some stuff on my website where we have information.

There's a couple videos. It's just one of those things. It's one of those areas where you can have a hundred studies say that it's bad. You can have a hundred studies that say it's good. I just try to go off of my own life experiences with it, and I try to go off of the data that we're gathering from people that are taking it.

Now, there's a good amount of people that are taking way too much of it. And I feel like a moderate dosage of it feels great, and maybe these people are becoming addicted to it. It's definitely a moderate dose. I think a moderate dose would be around six to nine capsules a day. I think that sounds totally reasonable. I feel good with that.

Now, do caution people against taking it every day? No, no, and it can be addictive. But so is caffeine. I mean, a lot of things that are addictive. So I don't want to sit here and try to like make excuses for creatives. I think it's just a great product. And I think that it's a product that a lot of people could utilize, could help with creativity, could help put them in a better mood, could help with pain management. It does alter consciousness. So it's one of those times. Now you said addictive, and one of the definitions of addictive is that there's a withdrawal when you go off of something.

What are the withdrawals of going off-cratum-like? I don't know, because I haven't gotten off it. I've been utilizing it. Wow, it's great. You've just been off the whole time. I've been utilizing it for probably about two years. I have come off of it for like a week and stuff, but I personally never noticed anything.

And maybe that's because the dosages that I was using, like maybe they weren't high enough. Yeah, you have to be quite a bit higher to feel. You have to be up like 12, 16 pills that are 750 for you to feel any sort of like withdrawal symptoms. And I've pushed it that high before and came off and it's a similar feeling as coming off of like any other opiate like vikadin or percocet or one of those just a lot milder. I remember when I went through my vikadin

addiction and when I came off of that I was up to like what like nine pills in a day. I came off of that and that was like a fucking nightmare. I mean cold sweats and shaking and for like a week I felt that way. With the cratum, but similar, right? I'll have like a runny nose. I'll feel those same symptoms that you'll get from like a like a percussed or viking in addiction, but gone in a day, gone in a day. So that like the first night of coming off of like that high of a dosage,

probably feel restlessness that night, anxious, the next day a little bit, but I have found like within a day or two, it's pretty much gone, and it's nowhere near the same feeling that I ever felt from. But it's also what they equate about, eight or so 750 milligram pills

to what one vicar didn't would be. So in order for me, imagine how many of those cratums I'd have to take to get the same feeling as I was getting from seven or nine vicar didn't. You would have to be chewing the whole bottle down to get a similar type of effect. But because it does, it works with the same receptors.

Yeah, it works on the opiate receptors from whatever. What are the opponents? What are the legislators saying? Why are they trying to ban it? Is it because of the potential withdrawal off of coming off or like, how are they selling that they need to make it illegal? In other words, yeah.

Some of the theory on it is that People are concerned that it could replace, you know, it could replace pharmaceuticals because it is powerful because it does actually work So I mean that's usually what you see you see that in the supplement world too. Sometimes something works really well Look at Sarms, you know, Sarms seem like people were growing seem of people were getting a little bigger off of it and You know, farms seem like people were growing, seem like people were getting a little bigger off of it. And for whatever particular reason, they want to try to restrict that. I don't know the exact reasons why,

but it appears that when anything is powerful or anything works, then they're like, hold on, we should patent that, we should try to figure out a way to make money off it. Cradle is just a plant, and I don't think they could figure out, maybe they can't figure out the same way to patent it and make money off it the maybe they can't figure out the same way to patent it

and make money off it the way they can, which makes it like it. Did you watch his brother's documentary? No, no, I didn't watch it. No, I've seen a lot of, is that when you really got into it, Mark? Yeah, around that time, yeah. Did you know about it before Chris did the documentary?

No, no, I didn't know anything. My brother introduced me to it. My brother I think would be dead without freedom because I think he would have killed himself. Got him off of opiates? Well, got him be dead without cratum because I think he would have killed himself. Got him off of opiates? Well, got him off of opiates, but I think he would have killed himself because he'd be in too much pain every day.

Oh, well. Because coming off the opi, he's still in a lot of pain. He's still in a lot of pain to this day. And it just, it causes a lot of problems for him, but cratum at least blocks the pain enough to where he's able to get out of bed and able to do a lot of things that he still loves. What really sucks is that I think you and I talked a little bit off air one time about this.

It's like you can't market it that way, right? But it's unfortunate because in my opinion that's the best application of it. Coming from somebody who has several family members who have been addicted to opiates, experiencing it myself, I wish I knew of it when I went through that whole thing. Yeah, my oldest brother could possibly still be here if we knew about Cratum. I mean, if I just had some of the knowledge I have now in terms of nutrition,

there could have been a possibility there. He was bipolar and he was very reckless with drug abuse. So who knows? You know, he always kind of said that he wasn't meant to be here for very long. And so that may have been the case, other way. Well, I'm always a huge proponent of personal responsibility. And I think if you want to do something to yourself, I think it's strange that we have laws that will say, hey, don't hurt yourself. If you try and hurt yourself, we're going to throw you in jail.

What? That makes no sense to me whatsoever. So I'm a huge proponent of personal responsibility, and against laws that don't have a victim. But in terms of of Cratom, I know it's based out of, like was it Thailand or where did, where is there some, where is the, yeah, where's the, where's the, the tradition of Cratom use from?

Cause I know it goes back quite a bit. And what are there? Cause I would be curious to see what their attitudes are towards it since they've been using it for so long. That's in the documentary. Yeah, it's been it's been utilized for many many years. You guys can check out my brother's movie, Leaf of Faith. I'm not a cratum historian by any means. I just love the product and my brother and I decided to come together and start a business off of it. I just like it.

I like utilizing it. That's stuff I've been doing since the beginning with slingshot and the other products. Anytime I find something that I like, I'm like shit, maybe other people enjoy this too and I try to just bring it to market and bring it to people. Yeah, switching gears. I noticed that you're leaning jacked pretty much all the time. I'm trying man. I'm trying is I mean you went from powerlifting and you know very intensely For powerlifting a k being fat right then switching gears and going to that

But now I mean this is this wasn't just a one and done kind of a thing It's not like you're getting up on stage to prove a point in all all this. Is this something that you can see yourself doing continuously? Yeah, I'd like to stay in shape. It feels good. I would say the carnivore diet has allowed things to feel a little bit easier, where I did a bodybuilding style diet, a bodybuilding diet is like,

where you're not really eating hardly any fat and you're feeding yourself about six times a day and you're eating protein carbs and fat, but the fat calories are really low. That was just really difficult. It was difficult to prep the meals all the time. There's a pan in the ass to walk around with Tupperware. I don't like doing anything.

I don't meal prep. I only cook when I'm at home base when I get back to my house because I get home at like four or five o'clock and I cook. And then if I still feel like eating again, I'll eat again at like seven and I cook the meals again. But the diet that I've landed on now, it just feels pretty easy to maintain this way. This is not a fight or struggle. I would still like to be lighter, but I'm not really trying to force that because I don't wanna lose the weight just to gain it back again. And so I've been kind of consistently at 240,

and I mentioned you guys earlier, I was 240 when I was 16, so my body's just like, hey, this is a good weight to hang out at. It looks different though. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think you look better now than even when you were competing. Yeah, thank you. Yeah, no, I think you look, I think you look,

I think you look, yeah, yeah, yeah, no home home. I just, I think you look better, I think you look healthier, I think you look fuller. You could see, I feel like I could see the stress on your body when you went through the body building. No, it was hard, it was really, really difficult. And that's why I like to share with people is like, I found something for myself that feels good, that feels right.

It doesn't feel complicated, it doesn't feel like a struggle. Deprived, I feel deprived once in a while because I'm a fat kid at heart and I love cookies and I love peanut butter cups and I love ice cream and I love pizza. All the same things that most people really like. And so I think sometimes in the fitness industry, I think people might look at some of us and say, oh man, they got it easy because they figured it out. They all started training when they were young. And so it must come easier to them. Well, it's still really hard. And I don't know how hard it is for you guys, but it feels really hard to me in terms of, you know, kind of shutting off that side.

It's gotten easier over a period of time, and again, the carnivore diet, because I think because the fact that I get to kind of stuff myself, I think that helps. I kind of, I like to like overeat, you know, and I get to do that like twice a day. So I look forward to it every day. Every day I look forward to eating a steak,

which might sound weird to someone. So I was like, how could you like eating steak that much? Well, it's easy to say that when you're eating other options often, when you're eating a burrito and you're eating pizza, how many of us have had food left over in the fridge? That's a much better option for us than what we ordered. You know, we ordered Chinese food,

or we ordered pizza or something like that. And there's the chicken to sitting in there, all lonely by itself. It's not gonna get eaten. You're not gonna get around to it because you're filled yourself up with something that you probably shouldn't have. So I just end up landing on something that,

while I'm talking about, you know, sometimes the, sometimes there's still cravings there. I will follow through on those cravings, but I push them off. I try to say, okay, well, like, what have you done? You know, like, have you strung together for five days? You know, if we strung together, five days or 10 days, then maybe I'd kind of look at a certain date

and be like, oh, yeah, that's my brother-in-law's birthday. And we're going to the 49er game that day. And maybe I should just go and eat whatever I want. You know, so it just kind of depends, but I try to have the ability to audible and to do something different. I think you just make friends with the uncomfortable feelings of being hungry or having or craving. It's not like you don't have cravings. Yeah, you just make friends with it It's a different experience I would say is there anything that you picked up that you've kept Permanently in your repertoire from your bodybuilding training because bodybuilding training and powerlifting training There's some similarities, but there's a lot of differences Is there anything that you learned from that that you've kept now and in your training? I guess long term

Yeah, I loved in in the bodybuilding training just trying to move through stuff quickly, trying to have quicker transitions. In powerlifting, it might take you 60 minutes or 90 minutes to get through a squat session. Yeah, a squat session or a deadlift session. I mean, think of somebody that squats say like 700 pounds or something. It might use 550 to 585 for some working sets, and they might do five sets of it. And it's like, well, there was 15 or 20 minutes of warmup before you even touched a barbell.

And then that warmup time, especially when you start to think about, you might have people in a group. That's gonna take pretty long time. And then to get through your group. That's going to take pretty long time. And then to get through your top sets, that's going to take a long time. So you could be on an exercise for about an hour in bodybuilding. It's like, let's try to get the most out of this. Not necessarily in the shortest period of time, but let's get the most out of this. Let's get everything that we can squeeze out of it and let's get out of it. So you might do like bent over rows and you might as soon as you're warmed up,

as soon as you feel good, you might stack on a good amount of weight, maybe try two or three more sets that way and boom, you're done, you're onto the next thing. So trying to keep a good pace in my workouts and trying to once you get into like a circuit or once you get into like a super set, trying to really stay true to like, you know, trying to be poignant with just every minute on the minute type stuff. Hmm. How about the pumps and stuff like that, where those just totally different for you?

I'm still feel like I'm learning them. I feel like, yeah, it's the pump. Yeah, I suck at it really, to be honest with you, I'm like, I can get them, you know, I can get them here and there, but to, they're tricky to like sustain them and to hold get them, you know, I can get them here and there, but to, they're tricky to like sustain them and to hold onto them, they can sometimes be a little elusive for me.

Well, it's hard, you're low carb. That's one of the biggest differences that I noticed when it's very true. I went keto because I did it right around body building time, was, my pumps sucked. They were nowhere near the same as when I went in with 400 grams of carbs. 400 grams of carbs, half a gallon of water.

I fucking blew up, looks like I had 30 pounds in my workout. When you're keto or carnivore, you don't get a lot of the carbohydrates getting shuttled in there, which also pairs and holds the water too. So just the pumps kind of suck in comparison. So yeah, it's not as good.

And then like I said, to try to hold a pump for a period of time is is a little bit more difficult and the In my opinion, it's important to try to you know, once you get the pump, it's important to try to maintain it really for as long as you can. I mean, you're not trying just to Totally kill yourself with it, but you you are trying to make it difficult and you're trying to sustain that for a period of time. And it starts to, that's what I had to learn. That was probably the hardest thing for me to learn was how to get a pump in my biceps

or in my triceps or in my shoulders. Like I've experienced some of it before, but not to that level. And in bodybuilding, it's really important to make the muscles grow and to make the muscles kind of look 3D. Yeah, totally. What about the anabolic use differences in powerlifting and bodybuilding? Is it just super similar or are there different favorite anabolic for powerlifting versus? Because I know in bodybuilding, you don't necessarily want to hold a lot of water, unless you're

in the off season or whatever. For powerlifting, it's like, I don't care, it's going to be a strong spot. Are there big differences in the an season or whatever, and for powerlifting, it's like, I don't care, it's one of the strongest, but are there big differences in the anabolic usage? In powerlifting, you know, many powerlifters don't really care about the estrogen buildup as much. Because it makes your joints feel better. Yeah, and it can help keep you strong too. And then also by taking an anti-estrogen, you're plummeting down your good cholesterol as

well. And so that could be problematic. Cause now your red blood cell count is high. Your blood is sludging through your system. Your heart is working harder. And you're starting to create some issues. So the anti-estrogens a lot of times aren't really used as much in powerlifting, I would say.

When do they use it just if they get like really bad side effects on them? Yeah, if they get like gyno, they start growing some boobs, they might throw it in there. Although they can lower, they can shorten the range of motions. Yeah, yeah, yeah, get some bench press and some titties. Might be beneficial. You know, yeah, there's different steroids for all kinds of different things. So, you know, even like a growth hormone and even like sarms and insulin

They all do such different things So do powerlifters take those do they take growth hormones and insulin and stuff or they mainly just the good ones do really The good ones just do whatever it takes, you know, they take any and everything they can to try I mean why not right? You're already injecting yourself with a bunch of other shit, so why not double down and get a little bit bigger, even though it is dangerous. But the prize is that you get to your goal, right? And that's the same prize that anyone else has,

whether they're natural or are not natural. The difference between bodybuilding and power is the thing I would say, that most of the time in body building, you're taking stuff that maybe is a little faster acting, and it doesn't turn and convert to estrogen as much, so you wouldn't look as bloated. That's why, like, trend-belone is extremely popular because it makes you insanely strong, and it helps keep you lean. It's not going to make you lean if you don't have a good diet, but it helps keep you lean. It's not going to like make you lean if you don't have a good diet, but it helps keep you tight, helps keep you lean even while you're able to lift a lot or,

you know, be strong. And testosterone is going to be something that is going to come with, it's going to aromatize and turn into estrogen as well, which can make you strong, but you'll be strong and bloated. Interesting. What about dose wise? Because I know that bodybuilders get a lot of flack for taking the most, like, oh, they do there are on tons and tons of gear.

Do power lifters play with similar doses? Or is it fair to say that bodybuilders are the ones that take the highest amounts? I always had a saying when it came to syringes that if it's not full, it's empty. So you just you you load it up and it doesn't matter what sport you're playing. You load it up no matter what. I think people are going to point the finger at each other. Yeah.

People are going to point. Well, there's no, I mean, you're already shooting yourself of shit, right? You may as well, you may as well go all out and get- You're not with the new 6cc, you know? Yeah, it's not any really struggling. But people are gonna point fingers at each other and be like, oh, they're on tons of shit. I mean, people do it with CrossFit all the time. You're a great person to talk to

because you've openly talked about that. You've power lifted and you bodybuilding personally. Which one did you use more in? Bodybuilding. Okay. Okay. Yeah. I think Sal was trying to get to that. Yeah, yeah.

All right, thank you. More frequent too. You know, so it's like, I'll go back and look at some of the videos and stuff and I'm like, fuck, man, I'm still pretty strong, especially coming down to those like last two weeks and I'm like, oh, yeah, I was sticking myself four times, you know, four times 12 or four times three is 12, so 12cc's a Whatever the hell shit it was. I don't ever really like I don't I'm not a I don't count anything I'm really weird that way. I don't look at any numbers that we have from slingshot and I don't I don't count calories

I don't I don't count grams of testosterone. I just I just utilize Go off how I feel. I feel pretty fucking good. We're all right. What do you think about this? Because we get a lot of questions on SARMS. And the way we answer it is always like, all right, SARMS haven't been around that long.

We know what testosterone does. If you're going to go that route, you might as well go test OSTRON. I mean, SARMS and I broke my cup. I'm dead. Damn. What are your views on? Because that's kind of new.

That's newer on the scene. What are your views on? Because that's kind of new. That's newer on the scene. What are your thoughts on serms and those types of peptides and all that stuff? Yeah, and I think that they're working for people. From what I've seen, it seems like they're working for people. It seems like they're helping people add some muscle mass. It seems like they're helping people with strength.

There are a bunch of things that are called serms that aren't always even directly SARMS because they fall into a very specific category, but it seems like it's effective for what people are trying to do. And anytime anything's effective for what something, you know, something that someone's trying to do, people are gonna go for it and people are gonna do it.

So I hope that more information continues to come out because whether they're like, whether they're more dangerous than steroids, I don't really, I don't have a good understanding of. Well, that's just it. We just don't know a lot. Yeah, I'm not sure. And I guess the reason to take them, it seems like there's a lot of compelling reasons to take them. Because, you know, a steroid, there are steroids that you don't have to inject, but it's with steroids, it seems like it's just more involved. It seems like you're going to be really messing with your testosterone levels a lot. It's also black market versus brown market. Yeah, right, right.

And yeah, you don't know where to get it from. And it's like kind of, you got to meet some dude in front of a safe way or something to get them. It's a really weird thing or you can buy them on the internet, right? And you know, it's way too accurate. I know. It's very safe when a two-toned, like six o'clock, you know.

And the Delhi section is more than a sandwich. Yeah. Mark, do you get a lot of people ask you business questions? Yeah, here and there. Yep. What do you think is the number one mistake that people make that are trying to build something similar to you?

When you see a lot of these up and coming kids or up and coming people that are, they look up, they aspire to be like you or build something like you've built. What do you think there's some of the most common mistakes you see made? Don't try to compete with me, I will kill you. Oh, it's a big mistake. Man, there's, I think people need to just move slow and have, and maybe lower their expectations

a little bit to try to think that you're gonna land this multi-million dollar thing and that it's gonna be this crazy thing. I still think, even if you did think that about something, let's say you had an idea for an app or you had an invention, those are all cool things, but you still wanna kinda take it slow. And I know that everyone else is gonna have the other, everyone else wants to kind of think the other way.

The reason why I advise that is, it's easy to spend other people's money. It's easy for me to come into this room, give it hits you guys with a really cool concept, and be like, all right, you're in for 50, you're in for 20, you're in for like whatever you guys can do, right? And I go and do that to a bunch of other people too.

It's easy to like fundraise, you know, and it's easy to like blow people's money. But the best thing that you can do in business is be try to be in business for yourself as much as possible and try not to go involve other people. People are always so quick to try to involve somebody else. And even like, even within my own business, my father-in-law, who was a good businessman as well,

you know, he told me he's like, hey, don't ever forget the fact that people are hopping on this train that you started when you were 12. You know, like, if they, if they've been with you for three or four years, they're like, that's really cool. That's awesome that you have people that have been with you for a while, but they weren't with you when you were 12, when you first started powerlifting, you first started it. So in a sense, it's like, be careful how much shit you try to share with other people. If you want someone to be in on a business with you, maybe you can do it on your own,

maybe you can do it more by yourself, or maybe you can just have people that are part of it, but they're more like employees rather than like investors. I see a lot of people making that mistake. They'll bring on a bunch of investors and you're like, man, you got six or eight people involved in that shit. It just gets watered down quick. And then I don't know, what if your ideas, like the mission and the drive and the goal changes?

It's cool if it changes for one or two people, but if it changes for one person a lot and doesn't change for everybody else, now you're kind of stuck. What was your first business? First business was slingshot. Wow, wow, so you hit it out of the park first time? Yeah, but how many years though in the making?

Yeah, two years. Two dads point, right? Yeah, it all took a long time. I think probably my first introduction to learning business was probably more through pro wrestling than anything else. Pro wrestling, you're selling yourself and you have to figure out a way to, you got to figure out, a way to like captivate people, you got to figure out a way to stand out, and

you got to figure out a way to stand out amongst 50 or 60 people, and they all look pretty much the same, like everyone's got a great body, everyone's super athletic, everyone's insanely aggressive, everyone seems to be pretty sharp on their feet. Everyone seems to be pretty good on the microphone. So you're like, what the fuck am I going to do to stand out in front of these animals? This guy's 6'8 and this girl can do a backflip off the top rope and this guy's got purple hair and wraps on command or whatever. You're like, I don't even know. So I'd learned a lot through that.

I've learned a lot of almost, I guess you'd say, like marketing type stuff. What was your stick? My stick. I just used my own thing that I had since the time I was a kid and that's smelly. The nickname smelly. It's always stuck with me. And so when I was a kid and that's smelly. The nickname smelly. It's always stuck with me.

And so when I was wrestling, I was the kid that was picked on that couldn't take it anymore type of thing. Oh, they're very cool. Do you remember Mark, the single best business advice anyone ever gave you? I would guess I'd have to say no, I don't remember. I've run into a lot of great people when it comes to business. I guess more like life advice, you know, stuff has come from my dad and that's always helped

me in business as well. My dad's always said, you know, part of knowing who you are is no one who you're not and that's always really helped me because in business it's easy to kind of like look at what someone else has and go, oh my God, that's really cool. Like we should do that. I was like, well, no, maybe you shouldn't because maybe you're not them. Maybe you should kind of, you know, continue, continue on your own path. But yeah, we have a lot of good people that we communicate with. On business, Ron Pena is somebody I look up to a lot. They recently sold Quest Nutrition. and somebody I look up to a lot, they recently sold Quest Nutrition. And there's several people involved in Quest Nutrition.

They recently sold Quest Nutrition for like, what was it? A billion dollars or something. Yeah. And you know, he was just like, you're not gonna go anywhere without a good team, you know, and you need to have good people around you. Do you remember the first time that advice helps

that your dad gave you about knowing who you're not. It will help me more so in powerlifting than anything. I was driving myself crazy with the numbers, trying to be as strong as I possibly could, trying to squat 1,100 pounds and bench 900 pounds and deadlift 800 pounds. I always tell people be very, very cautious in your pursuit to try to reach some of your goals

because it can be a real pit. And it can, you know, in your pursuit to try to reach some of your goals because it can be a real pit and it can, it's, you're not going to be any happier when you get there than you are right now. And so I think a lot of people think, oh, when I do this, this is going to happen. A huge one. That's what I move into that new house. This is going to happen. I get that new car. This is going to happen. It's like, no, man, if you're a miserable bastard, you're going to probably stay that way regardless of like what watch you have or what car or what house you have. What were some of your biggest mistakes along the way?

I've always moved pretty slow, so if there's been any mistakes, maybe I've moved a little too slow in certain spots, but I haven't really had anything where it was like something completely, you know, blew up. I haven't gotten there yet. Nothing's completely blown up in my face just yet, but that's because I always test the waters. It's not a sexy thing to say, but I always stick my toe in the water first. Check the temperature of it. If it feels right, then I might start to get in slowly, but I'm not going to jump off

the diving board. I just never had that mentality with really anything. So I always want to like, I always want to try something and like learn, like learn more about it. Even something as simple as an Instagram post of, you know, a new product being in the background or something. Like, if I don't really hear anybody asking a question about it, then maybe I'm kind of like, oh, maybe I shouldn't order as many of those as I thought. Like maybe that's not a cool of an idea as I thought. So I'm always trying to proceed slowly, much like you would do in powerlifting. And much like I had, I was forced to do that in school because I felt like I wasn't smart.

You know, I was putting in special classes and stuff like that. So that slowness and that, you know, drawing things out and taking a long time, taking my time with stuff was actually something that ended up being a strength later on, especially when it came to powerlifting because I just didn't care how long a power if the workout took. It could take four hours or five hours. I'm just going to sit in there and figure it out. It's like it's stronger. What about employees or partners? I mean, you strike me as someone. You have such a big heart. I feel like, and sometimes your greatest strength is your greatest weakness. Have you ran into a situation where you gave too much

to an employee or someone that's in a partnership and it's kind of been a hassle later on or something you had to deal with in the business? Yeah, like I did say, you need to build a good team, but that doesn't mean you need to have a bunch of partners. The only partner in this and the only partner that I think anyone should ever have in a business setting, and maybe not ever have because there are certain circumstances where you just need more finances to really make it work is just just a significant other. And so like I haven't had stuff. I've had employees that I put a lot of time into and then you know they moved on to do other things but I don't I don't regret any of that. I think that was all still worth it.

Like they got a lot out of it. I got a lot out of it. Good learning experience to be able to move forward from. But yeah, I'm a pretty big believer in the fact that I think that people are trying to involve other people when they maybe just, they probably shouldn't. What about, what are you learning with like leadership? I mean, obviously to run something your size and to have a team that you have and you're the owner, you have all these employees.

What are you learning about yourself and leadership over this whole process? What I'm really proud of is we have a team that, when people come in, we try to make them feel like they're part of the team. We try to make them feel very welcome, we try to make them feel like a family in a way. And we had Charlie Rocket,

I'm sure you guys have seen him on Instagram before. We had him come in just yesterday. And he was like praising every, you know, he was like, man, it really feels like family here. This is really cool. He got kind of bombarded with people when as soon as he walked into the door. And you know, that's something that I'm really proud of.

And it's something that we really try to work hard at. Like I want people, you know, we're not like, you know, trying to be like overly happy or whatever, but we're trying to make people feel good. A lot of times, I think everybody thinks that everyone's like looking for money and that everyone's looking to be like famous and stuff, but really what people want is a fucking hug and a pat on the back and they want recognition. And so when you have someone come in and you got people saying, oh man, I know you from Instagram,

I like that post you did the other day. People are like, huh? Like you're falling, you're paying attention to me. And maybe we're just paying attention to them for that week because we know that they're coming in, but it doesn't make any difference to them. Makes the person feel good at the moment. And so from a leadership perspective,

I think it's important to try to showcase what you feel is important, you know, the things that are, you know, the dollars and cents, those things are great. It's great to try to move the needle on those things, but we don't have a business unless we have a team, you know, working, working in an effort that makes sense,

having everybody on the same page all the time. So it's like, we could sit here and like fight or argue or be mad about this didn't get done on time or that could have been done better. But really in the grand scheme of things, people need to feel good in order to be able to move forward at all. Single greatest challenge is a CEO of a company.

in order to be able to move forward at all. Single greatest challenge is a CEO of a company. And I, I, I, I, I, I feel like, I feel like every day is just fucking awesome. Like I have a lot of fun every single day. I wake up early, I train, and I, I, I try to be at peace with stuff the best that I can. I try to not overthink or overcomplicate things. I guess it maybe is not like, quote unquote, hard for me to be like an owner because I don't think about it that way and I don't even look at myself as an owner or a boss. Like I work for slingshot, just the same way as everybody else does. And I, you know, I would challenge anybody

that works for me, like work as hard as I'm working. And you know what I mean? Like I'm not leaving the building, you know, I'm gonna be there early every day. I'm gonna work my face off. And obviously there's more of a word for it because I own the damn thing, right? But I think that the other employees see that.

And I like, fuck man, I know that he's waking up at like 4 a.m. I know he's getting to the gym and he's getting after it. And I just saw I'm going to a podcast and I just saw I'm going to a meeting. And so it's not like I have it easy, you know, it's not like I'm calling the shots from a beach house or something like that. Have you had to fire anybody? Yeah, yeah, we've had to let people go before. Do you do that or to someone else? Have you had to fire anybody? Yeah, we've had to let people go before. Do you do that or do someone else? I'm trying to think if I ever actually fight. Yeah, I've had to do it before myself.

Yeah, it's great. It's great. Well, that's tough. That's a hard thing to do. Yeah, yeah, fire in people, or even just telling people, just how you truly feel sometimes is difficult. My wife and I talk a lot about the business, I talk a lot about the business to my general

manager over there, Smoky. We all try to just communicate as much as possible in that way. That way things don't get too weird. If you do need to be released, we're hoping that it's not a huge surprise to you, but we're always a little bit surprised that it's not a huge surprise to you, but we're always a little bit surprised that it is a surprise to them. But it's all stuff that we agree upon, you know, we'll talk about it a lot because I don't want to just, I don't want to just have like a revolving door, you know, I don't want

my business to be that way. All the people that have come to me, most of the people have come to me, it's all been just very organic. They've come and they trained in the gym. They saw the gym. They came to a seminar. They maybe even did something for me. Andrew over there who does our photos and who does our podcast as well. He came to a seminar. He snapped some pictures. And then he was asking, hey, can I do some more stuff for you? I'm a photographer and he gave me his card and boom, now he's working for me.

So I have a lot of situations like that where there hasn't been a resume, there hasn't been these probably normal procedures. I don't even know if these guys have formal educations or a prison background or something. I don't know what they've done or what has happened in their past, but I just know that they feel right at the moment.

And so that's what we react to. And now we're trying to make it harder. So that way we're not just hiring our buddies off the street because that's happened before too. And then that gets to be really awkward. But just like in any relationship, there needs to be a lot of communication. And for some reason, we're also hung up on,

man, I was, I was, guys gonna really react if I tell him that the garbage bin is full all the time, but that's his job and you're like, I should probably just tell him. Maybe he doesn't even know. And you have this fear that the guy's gonna think you're an asshole or whatever. And it's like, I may as well just say something.

You know what I mean? It's never as bad as you think. It's usually fine. Or you kid, I can't, I'm doesn't care. Yeah, you know? If he's an asshole, right away says it. Are you in the care? No, I'm not at all.

I'm a direct guy. If your job's to take the trash out, you don't take the trash out, take the fucking trash out, guy. You know what I'm saying? It's that simple. Get that shit done. What's on the horizon for the business? I don't know, man.

We got a lot of stuff coming at us from a lot of different angles and I have to sit back and try to think what makes sense. See, that's a hard thing as a CEO. Why the fuck you not say that? Yeah. Yeah. You know, I tell you what, one of the thing as a CEO why the fuck you not say that? Yeah, yeah You know that's I tell you what one of the hardest things in this business And I tell people this all the time is that when you get to the kind of level where you're at There's always fucking opportunity. Yeah, it's learning what to say no to right?

I mean, I got to think the same thing for you that way that better answer I know I can we start? Can we start the whole start from the top? Right. Is it though? Like, is that is that? No, it is. No, it is. That is the hard thing to do is try to figure out and figure out like who has good intentions

and who's trying just to get your product. Yeah, who's kind of just trying to wiggle their way in? Who knows why? You know, who knows why someone's trying to like wiggle their way in or whatever, but You know, I've learned some good things over the years You know just even going to some seminars and things like that and you know one of the things I learned is they said You know you can't win the Kentucky Derby with a donkey and so you have to make sure you don't have a bunch of donkeys around You want to make sure you know that there's the saying you know that Eagles You know they only they only fly with each other when they're at their highest altitude.

You're not going to see another bird up there. And that's what you want to have. You want to have an office full of eagles. And every once in a while, you might go somewhere and do something. And out of nowhere, you hear, eewww. And you're like, fuck, I thought we went through with this guy enough. But apparently, we have a donkey in the office, you know. And so sometimes, sometimes

you got to go back and clear things out. But yeah, that is, that is a really difficult thing is to figure out, like, what's in our best interest in the past that's always just been like, what's in my best interest? Like, I like these compression cuffs because they help get rid of elbow pain. I'm going to sell these. This slingshot seems kind of neat. Like, I think other people will enjoy it too. Now it's like I need to think about wearing shit that maybe I wouldn't normally wear. You know, I gotta think about

because it's gonna drive in more customers for us. It will help us retain more emails. It will help us in a lot of ways, which can help everyone in the business. And that's really the goal is to not to try to grow the business. So I can say, I'm worth a hundred million dollars or whatever, trying to grow the business. So I can make more people that work for us more money.

What role does in your business when you look at it from the top? What role does the podcast plays? Is it more of a way to use new media to kind of build the brand and authority, or is that, do you view it as like a separate business itself? Yeah, you know what, we probably have to think about our podcast a little bit more than we do. The podcast gets just a huge response. We have so many people that we run into.

And usually it's, you know, people like, man, I watch your podcast. I have people that come up to me and they tell me they listen to everyone. I'm like, how's that even possible? Like we put out a lot of content. We do like two or three every single week, maybe even more and each one's like over an hour. Like how do you even, what a waste of time.

You're killing yourself over there. What are you doing, you know? But yeah, we probably do need to put a little bit more business action behind the podcast We really don't put hardly anything into it when it comes to that. We don't really truly like sit around and think about it much This the money comes from slingshot and slingshot's already going and so that's why you know from a CEO perspective our owners perspective It seems like it's all moving along pretty seamlessly, but a lot of it's just because a lot of things have come together and a lot of things have been put into place over the last two or three years.

So there was some periods of time where it got a little harder. But I also like, I don't have it in my, it's not in my, it's not in my vocabulary to try to like, be like, oh man, I was really in there grinding it out. I'd rather try to keep things more simple because it's like for the health of my brain, I need to feel that everything's fucking easy. Well, I think that's part of your secret sauce right now too, is that I mean, you built slingshot,

and I think one of the things that made it really successful aside from being a brilliant idea, is the model that you built with the gym. I mean you offer this free access, you're giving, you're giving to all these people and I try to explain this a lot when I do interviews that you know if you give people so much value it's not a hard sell to sell them a 30 to a $70 item that may help them again because you've already provided so much value. And it seems like you've done the same thing now with the podcast. You're less worried about how am I monetizing it

or making a bunch of money off of it. Let's just provide a ton of value for people and the money will come. So I actually think that's probably part of your success is that you've led that way. Whether it be by accident, dumb luck or not. But I definitely think that's a big reason why you have. How do you pick the guess for your podcast

or just people you're interested in? Or pretty much, yeah, pretty much just people that I'm interested in and people that I feel like can grow from. I wanna have people in there that I really feel like that, not just me, but my employees can grow from as well. Really learn stuff from having someone come in that maybe has been in the industry for 10 or 15 years.

We just had John Barardi on the podcast more recently and the guy sold his business for like I don't know 100 million or something ridiculous, precision nutrition. Having somebody on the podcast, he didn't come into the actual facility, but just what we learned from him in that two hour time frame, those are things that sometimes can last a lifetime again having someone like Ron Panne come in, Jake Cutler, like Rubin Elbows with these people,

like you have no choice, you have absolutely no choice, but to be better, you got no choice, but to be motivated and inspired and fired up from these people. Jake Kotler was, I don't know if you guys ever had him on your show. We're working on actually having more of that. Oh man, he's.

He's smart business guys, ain't he? It's gonna drive you guys nuts. How much are you gonna dig the stuff that he says, man? He's super smart and really, really nice guy. Do you stay just in the fitness space with your guests or do you ever venture out for people that are interesting but outside of health and fitness? Yeah, we try to get into some nerds here and there.

People have written books about keto or something like that, but they don't maybe look the part or we've had people come on and talk about mental health or heart health or kind of a wide variety of things, but usually it's in the fitness or health domain of some sort. I kinda think that, I kinda think that if you don't lift, I don't really wanna hear you have to say.

I want people around that that are, I mean, at least exercising in some way. That value that. I just think that exercise, it does so much for your brain. A lot of people are thinking about what it does for their body and it does stuff for your body. Your brain is part of your body. Yeah, yeah.

I mean, it's the driver of everything, right? That's right. And so I think maybe we should be thinking a little bit more about How exercise can benefit our brain and if we're trying to make big improvements to our Body in the way that we look that's more through like what we eat You know, is there something about you that that isn't so well known that people tend to be surprised like is there something that you know People are like, oh wow you're into that You talk about like weird fetishes and maybe cosplay or maybe I don't know is it no Is there something that people are like, oh wow, you're into that? You talk about weird fetishes, maybe.

Maybe. I don't know. Is there something about you that would be so always like that, like these dress up questions. We don't have to error this part, sometimes I'm a unicorn. This is for personal use for him.

Yeah, I don't think there's anything. Like are you into anything, are you into any hobbies or anything that's not fitness, health related that? Or that you just don't talk about or show on Instagram. People don't know about, Are you into anything, are you into any hobbies or anything that's not fitness health related to that? Or that you just don't talk about or show on Instagram. People don't know about. No, I'm pretty much a meathead.

I love weights. I love talking about nutrition. I do find something that's pretty interesting. The guy that taught a lot of people how to bench squat and deadlift is now teaching a lot of people how to lose 100 pounds. I get a lot of people that hit me up and they're like, I lost 50 pounds, 80 pounds, 100 pounds. I mean, I get that constantly. And so I find that that's kind of an interesting thing.

I was teaching people to get like big and fat and as strong as possible. And then now I'm teaching a lot of people on how to lose weight. That actually feels better to me than just the, just, you know, here's how you brace on a squad or here's what you do when you do a bench press or something like that. I've always loved cartoons.

I still like cartoons a lot. So like if bugs bunnies on, like, I'm going to watch that shit and laugh my ass off, which I don't really like, I like to laugh. I like to have fun, but I don't, you know, I don't like laugh all day and I try, I try to spend too much time like, I don't know, just, I don't like laugh all day and I try, I try to spend too much time like, I don't know, just in fucking around too much because I like to kind of keep going and keep pushing. So I guess that would be like,

kind of a one side thing. My brother-in-law was like creeped out by it one day. He was like, he's watching, you're watching, you're watching, you're watching, you're watching, you're watching, he thought Jake was in there with me. He's like, I walk in the room and there, you are laughing your ass off to Bugs.

Money. I'm like, Bugs, Bugs, Money's amazing. Well, the old one, especially the old one, Tom and Jerry, the old Tom and Jerry, which super violent. Super violent. Yeah, it's amazing. Nowadays, but hilarious. I got some serious meat sweats going on over here from the, that omelet cafe that we

went to, the, was called scrambled, you went to that shit hole? Yeah. I know. We got like, we got like double meat and, God, you wouldn't get, you wouldn't do that shit hole? Yeah. I know. We got like, we got like double meat and yeah, yeah, I'm sure. I think I'm gonna blow it out. I was, yeah, I was pretty, pretty bum that we, they opened up and I was excited at first and then, ooh, we tried eating there for a couple weeks and said, nah, that's not good. Yeah.

All right, biggest insecurity. Um, psh, uh, wow. that's a tough one. I don't know, I think I probably worry about what people think of me, maybe too much here in there. Really? You know, I probably put a little too much stock in that. I really don't give a fuck about a lot of things, but when I boil things down, I think it's almost impossible to not care about, you know, care about how people think of you. So like, for me, it's like, I don't know, like,

some of the stuff I do is like for fun. You know, like the meathead millionaire stuff and like some of that stuff is for fun. And then some people get, you know, like butt hurt about it. Some people get offended to buy it. Some people are thinking that I'm a certain way. And I'm just like, ah, kind of sucks. I got a sucks that they think I'm that way. That kind of sucks that they think that I'm all about money. I love making money.

And making money is awesome. And it gives you a lot of great freedoms. And it's great to be able to travel like first class everywhere. It's great to be able to afford, you know, all kinds of things that end up being, you know, convenient, end up being entertaining, end up being a lot of fun.

But it's annoying when somebody kind of thinks that it's like your main mission and you're like, no, man, like, I've been doing all this before there was ever like a way for me to monetize it. You know, for basically decades, I was doing it before, before there was social media, before I had a product to sell, I was still, you know, going to the gym and killing my stuff, still randomly recording stuff on YouTube for no reason since 2007, just because I thought it was cool just because I wanted to share it with people. So sometimes I guess that would be something that I think that would be something

that I think about. And something that I'm very concerned with as well is just even the whole social media thing. Like I don't wanna, you know, I see some of my friends are depressed or having anxiety and stuff. I don't have any of that. I've only been depressed like one or two days

in my entire life and didn't even know what it was because it's so foreign to me. And I don't really have anxiety, but I just see that that could creep in. And it's like, well, what about like, I don't know, what if, what if something kind of shitty happened? And I was down a little bit and I had that shit going on kind of simultaneously. So I'm trying to figure out ways of like exiting the social media game, but I don't know how to do it. Well, about a year, I don't know if it was a year or two ago, you did a post and I thought, oh, let's see what happens here. And this was right in the middle of the Everybody Hate's Donald Trump period.

You posted a picture of yourself in a mega hat. And I was like, okay, let's see what happens. How was the blowbac with that? Did you lose followers? I was like, okay, let's see what happens. How was the blowback with that? Did you lose followers? Was a bunch of shit or? It was great. I lost and gained people.

And I think in the end, it's for the better. If someone's gonna get that hurt over it and they leave you for it, then maybe that's someone you don't really even want listening to your information anyway. Agreed. I think that it gets to be really hard to make sense of it all. You know, you look at how many like followers you have

and you think that having more followers is gonna somehow do like more for you. But I don't think it really does. You know, I don't think it really, I don't, it doesn't do what you think it's gonna do. Like I mentioned earlier, it's not gonna make any happier. You know, where you are, your mind is as happy as you make it up to be, right? Like you can be as happy or you can look at stuff as mad or pissed off or sad or happy

as you'd like. And so I think that the perception is that like, oh, when I get more followers, like shit's going to be, that's like how many more followers do you want to have? You know, some people are in the millions. They have a crazy amount of followers. It's just frustrated at me sometimes. I don't know, I just, I've been in this for a long time and I sometimes, maybe it's like an arrogant side of me, but sometimes I'm like, I don't wanna be compared

to those motherfuckers over there. Like I want, I want my own slot, on my own space, but then I'm like, well, I'm competing with them because I'm posting the same shit they're posting. So maybe I should just drop the mic and if I can move on my way. Yeah, I don't think it's so much about the number of followers, but the right kind of followers. Right. It just makes sense that you'd want people following you who kind of know who you really

are. Otherwise, it's all bullshit. I have left social media before I deleted it off my phone, probably for a good six or eight months, and that felt pretty good. That was probably about a year ago, so I'm like, yeah. Why'd you do that? Just for the exact reason I was talking about, you know, I just... Did something set it off to something happened? No, no, it wasn't like an incident, but I'm'm like foreseeing that there could be potential damage from it.

So I'm like, it's not so much like a comment. You know, I'm not worried about like one person saying, like, hey, outcome, you're not as ripped as you were for the bodybuilding show, you know, or something like that. I'm not, that's not really the concern. The concern is putting too much value and putting too much self-worth in social media.

Like it really, it should not matter at all. But like what person on this earth has the ability to not care how other people feel about them. Like if the people that have committed the most heinous crimes, what do they do? They put them by themselves. You know, we're not designed to be like an isolation. We're not designed to be by ourselves. It makes us, it makes us fucking crazy.

So I think that we need a pad on the back. We sometimes need those legs. We sometimes need those comments. But as I'm kind of examining that, I'm like, how much a part of that do I want to feed into? Because I have a tendency just like anybody else to sit there and start scrolling and start looking at what other people are doing or what other people have or whatever. And it's just like, I just don't think, I think it's more damaging than it is healthy for me.

Agreed. So I need to figure out something to do with it. Agreed, man. Well, thanks for coming on the show. Yeah, thank you guys. Appreciate it. Appreciate it. Always your time, brother. Thank you for listening to Mind Pump. If your goal is to build and shape your body, dramatically improve your health and energy,

and maximize your overall performance, check out our discounted RGB Superbundle at minepumpmedia.com. The RGB Superbundle includes maps and a ballac, maps for performance, and maps aesthetic. Nine months of phased, expert exercise programming designed by Sal Adam and Justin to systematically transform the way your body looks, feels and performs. With detailed workout blueprints in over 200 videos, the RGB Superbundle is like having Sal Adam and Justin as your own personal trainer's butt at a fraction of the price. The RGB Superbundle has a full 30-day money-back guarantee and you can get it now plus other valuable free resources at MindPumpMedia.com. If you enjoy this show,

please share the love by leaving us a five-star rating and review on iTunes and by introducing MindPump to your friends and family. We thank you for your support and until next time, this is MindPump. We thank you for your support and until next time this is Mindbump.