REAL AF with Andy Frisella - Mark Bell On Struggle, Sling Shots, and Success, with Andy Frisella - MFCEO167

Episode Date: August 22, 2017

Among other things, Mark Bell is a former champion power lifter, entrepreneur, the owner of the Super Training Gym, and the inventor of the Sling Shot. The MFCEO's wide-ranging conversation about the story of Mark's success will leave you educated and motivated. From pressing on through adversity to inventing and selling a product, no stone has been left unturned in this comprehensive discussion on what it takes to succeed in business and life.

What is up guys, you're listening to the MFCEO Project. I'm Andy, I'm your host, and I am the motherfucking CEO. Guys, if this is your first time, welcome. Our goal here is not only to be a top-notch entrepreneurial podcast, but to teach the values of entrepreneurship and success, no matter if you own a business, if you work inside of a business, or if you just don't know what the fuck you're trying to do right now in life and you're trying to get better. We are here to teach you. We are here to help you. You have to understand that being successful in

life requires a certain skill set. And that's what we're here to teach you. It's not about get rich quick in five minutes, be balling out like Rick Ross overnight. This is about the real shit. This is about the grit. This is about the hustle. This is about what it actually takes.

As always, I'm joined by my co-host Vaughn, the pastor of Disaster. Uh-oh by my co-host Vaughn, the pastor of disaster. Uh-oh. What's up, Vaughn? I'm growing in badassery every moment I'm in your presence. I believe it. Yeah. Most people do.

Yeah, I know, man. It's just, you should bottle it up. You know what? That's a good idea. Sell it as cologne. I'll make a... Or like Jägermeister. Second form? Yeah. What's that? Second form.

Second form. Number two. A lot of you guys might be wondering who the third. Yeah. What's that? Second form. Number two. A lot of you guys might be wondering who the third voice is. It's Tyler. It's not Tyler. It's obviously a much more manly man than Tyler. And Tyler is not wearing his salmon shorts, by the way. So the podcast could be a total. Sandwich shorts?

Salmon. Oh, salmon. I thought you said sandwich. Like, you're making me hungry. I do. I would go for a sandwich right now. But we have a very special guest here, Mark Bell. A lot of you guys in the fitness industry know him.

A lot of you guys have seen him on Gary's show. You've seen him on, now, you just did Lewis' show, right? Yeah, Lewis Howe. Yep. Yeah, so, and he's- Bigger, stronger, faster. Yeah. A fucking movie.

Yeah, a movie. You guys have seen that? Netflix? I've seen that netflix he's he's he's he's big time in the fitness industry uh he's been there for a long time been you know world champion power lifter uh the ceo of uh slingshot slingshot and uh super training super training gym that's right um tell us a little bit about the history of how you got into the industry and and basically how you got into the entrepreneurial side damn i know it's gonna be yeah yeah you want some water because it's just one

what are you a thousand years old yeah yeah right right. This is going to be one question. It's going to seem like I'm a thousand years old. I'm 40 years old and live in Davis, California with my wife, which is kind of near Sacramento. I started in the fitness industry before it was the fitness industry. I started a long, long time ago. I was about 12 years old when i started kicking the weights around seriously started officially at like 11 but i was just messing around with like a curl bar back then dude that's how i started too yeah just a curl bar in our garage and i just was like you know let me try to build up my arms my brothers tried to show me how to squat and stuff and i was too

much of a pussy to try to figure anything out i'm'm still that way. I hurt my back too much. I was like, I need that pad. My brother's like, if I ever see you with that pad, I will kill you. I'll fucking kill you right where you stand. Basically, the story kind of kicks off with I was throwing a football around. I was always playing, not with myself necessarily, but by myself. And I was throwing a football up in the air. My brothers, you know, they were bored with me and stuff like that And I was throwing a football up in the air. My brothers,

you know, they were bored with me and stuff like that because I was much younger than them. So they didn't want to hang out with me. And so I'm just flipping a football up, you know, to myself, pretending I'm catching the game winning touchdown and all these things. And I did that all the time. You could go back and watch, you know, old footage of my brother playing football and you'll see me on the sidelines tossing the football to myself. And i was just at a park one day and i'm playing with the football and throwing it up in the air to myself and i hear someone say yo bell throw me that football and it's my brother's my brother's friend who we called the dirt dog because he was he smoked cigarettes all the time and he had the acid wash jeans he had the mullet going and his name was joe garlup so he was literally joe dirt yeah he was he was original joe dirt he had that tough

guy kind of look to him for some reason he had like pretty good biceps and stuff at the time i don't even know if he worked out he was just that way but uh i knew better than to throw him the ball because i knew he was an asshole my brother always hated him and we kind of hated their family they hated our family and stuff like that but i was like oh it would be cool to toss the ball around with actually somebody else rather than me just hanging out by myself so i throw him the ball he proceeds to catch it and then turn around and just kick it as far as he fucking could and he kicked it right into the fucking woods and i i searched for that ball for hours it was my favorite football and i was never able to fucking find it and so from that

day on you can cut to like a rocky montage and i'm hitting it hard in the basement learning how to bench learning how to squat learning how to deadlift because i'm like that has never happened to me again yeah yeah so it was just more like it wasn't like i really wanted to even fight him at the time but i was just like i just want to make sure i'm never in a position again if i'm bigger and i'm stronger it will more likely not happen that way you know so that's that kind of started my my lifting my brothers um do i think a lot of people yeah like they get into uh uh they get, they have some sort of negativity happen or even some sort of, like we were just talking about it out there, like a bullying thing.

Muhammad Ali. Right. Someone stole his bike. And I think Lou Ferrigno got into lifting for the same reason. Yeah. And, uh, and you know, it's interesting that like, I always say, you know, negativity is highly underrated as a motivation. Yeah.

You know what I mean? It can be really strong. Yeah. It can be really powerful. So, I mean, I just started kind of playing around with weights pretty much typically the way anybody else would. But my brothers were older and so they were showing me like some power lifting stuff. And I was, you know, not really knowing what some of it was about or not really understanding of what any of it would turn into and maybe fast forward like a year or two me and my brother are bench pressing in the basin my

cousin steven is over my cousin steven at the time is probably like 16 i'm probably like 13 some somewhere in that range and uh my brother my two older brothers gave me the nickname smelly because i hated to take showers as a kid. So they were always picking on me and they always had to fuck with me. So my brother tells my cousin Steven, he says, oh, Smelly can bench 185. And my cousin's like, what? He goes, yeah, Smelly can bench 185. He's like, there's no fucking way he can bench 185.

He's like, he's like, I can I can barely do that. And he's, you know, older. Right. And and uh my brother's like well we'll fucking show you and so we went down to the basement and we started working out my brother was always very careful with me and he always had me do sets of 10 and things like that and he always tried to have me utilize the best possible form I could and he was just very delicate with like showing me like how to do it the right way and it was he was really adamant about that I wasn't allowed to like max out. And so we started adding weight and adding weight and adding weight. And I get to 185 pounds and drop it down to my chest and just boom, just blast it up. Like it's nothing and rack it. And my cousin's just standing there like, what the fuck? So then

my cousin tries it. He, he needs assistance needs assistance to uh to get the weight up his legs are kicking everywhere but then we proceeded to go from 185 to 195 to 205 and 220 and so on and we just kept going up in about 10 pound increments all the way until i got to 240 pounds and i got up off the bench and my cousin was like i don't know what the fuck that means but that's going to turn into something yeah that's awesome and i mean i remember that day like it's i remember it uh so accurately um just having just such a good feeling about myself and so that's where it started that's where the flame uh was ignited and you know i'm i'm still as as excited today

to hit the gym as i was when I was that age. I fucking love it. I really do. Yeah, you still love the weight training? Because I know you're doing a lot of conditioning now. Yeah. I still love it. You know, on a daily basis, it may not be like,

I might not be like hyped up to get to the gym every day because I know the pain that's going to happen. I've been on this kick of lifting. It's like been 110 days in a row or something like that. And I'm starting to get really fucking sore. Yeah. And I could probably use a break. But it's it's more of a thing from a mental standpoint of like, just keep fucking pushing forward. Right. You know, just keep putting one foot in front of the other. And I've been able to do that in all aspects of my life because I've been able to find people that have been supportive. Luckily, I was born with awesome parents and they've been a

huge, whenever somebody tells me they've come from shitty parents and they come from, you know, some real shitty beginnings, I'm always amazed by that because I don't have that experience. Right. And I was too fragile as a kid. I would never made it and without my wife andy uh i would have never made it either she she's been a really strong she's given me like a backbone you know she's given me something really strong to lean on in certain situations as you know in business you get people pulling you in all different directions yeah you know who to trust and who to spend time with and who and who not to. And she always is stiff arm in the fuck out of those people. Yeah. Making sure those people don't get involved with us unless they're legitimate.

Right. Right. Yeah, dude. Emily, my wife does the same thing for me. She's runs the she runs the the bodyguard role for real. But one thing that's interesting and I think it's's cool especially with you uh having a lot of success in entrepreneur space um and you a lot of the guys i have in an interview they're not lifters right so like this is cool for me because we're both lifters and we're both around the same age and it's dude i could people that don't lift don't understand this, but it is literally the exact principles that you need to be successful as an entrepreneur. It takes discipline. It takes discipline.

It takes showing up every day. It takes intensity every day. You know, it takes you walking out of the gym every day exhausted. It takes you replenishing your mind and your energy, just like you would need to replenish your body parallels at a hundred percent. Yeah. Everything. And like, so, and the thing about power lifting and bodybuilding is that the discipline that it takes is 24 hours a day. And there's no other sport or activity, whatever you want to call it, hobby that's like that. And that's how entrepreneurship is. It's a discipline.

That's 24 hours a day everything you do will eventually become part of you being an entrepreneur when you see me out drinking a fucking beer there is business being done there you know what i mean you see me drinking 20 beers there's a lot of business being done you know what i'm saying yeah but your whole life it's the it really seriously does parallel and anybody out there listening right now that's into fitness can relate to this and one of my biggest frustrations with people in the fitness industry is that they can have all this discipline in this area of fitness which i actually think is harder it's harder for me than entrepreneurship my workouts will always be way harder than any

business meeting i ever go into. Yeah. There's no question about it. But then when it comes to like the rest of their life, it's like the rest of their life is a fucking shit show. Yeah. And it's like, bro,

how can you be so disciplined with your diet, your training, your workouts, your mental discipline, do all this shit, but you can't get your fucking regular life in order to earn a couple fucking dollars so that you don't have to be a fucking shit bum on your parents or whatever. Dude, you see these super successful people in the fitness industry who you think are successful, and you find out they're living in a fucking basement on a couch.

They live with their parents. It's like, what the fuck are you doing, man? Do you think that that's because they're doing it for a different motivation? They're doing it just to look good, whereas other people are doing it, yeah, to look good, but also to be as healthy as they possibly can. I think sometimes that's the case. Sometimes people have kind of the wrong intentions from the beginning. For me, in particular, I was kind of fortunate to have a weakness where I wasn't very smart in school. I wasn't either, man.

That ended up becoming a really, well, still still to this day it's a huge strength of mine you know people say uh you know don't put the cart before the horse well I always put the fucking cart before the horse dude I'll lift that fucking thing myself and drag it you know what I mean like I will figure it out like I don't always make the right decision or the right choices but I will work really hard to make those decisions correct dude i fucking 1000 relate to that i was a terrible student i had trouble paying attention it wasn't because i wasn't smart it was because i just don't do good in that situation this stuff sucks yeah and ignorance of dude i think the power of success a lot of it comes down to to to being ignorant to how hard things are going to be and making a decision.

Like we said last podcast, it's not about the commitments that you make. It's about making the commitments that you make the right ones. You know what I mean? And so many people want to, like, they do want to have an order to things. And, like, you know, that's so cool that you said that. I started texting you and I was like, I'm coming there motherfucker and i don't even know like i don't even know you right but why am i coming out here i don't know well i mean but some great things are going to come exactly exactly i don't know what's going to come of it but it's going to be fucking

fun yeah and i don't i also think that you know people that are listening to this people are just getting started don't feel like you need stuff from people. Like I don't need anything from you. Right. Come out here, hang out. Hopefully you have time and hopefully we can hang out and have a good time. But other than that, I don't,

I don't need anything from you. I'm sustained. Yeah. I'll never forget this. I was, uh, I was in my gym and, uh,

I've been fortunate enough to be friends with John Cena. I had a stint at pro wrestling. We use his, uh, his, his music as the intro on the podcast oh so good yeah he's got he's got a lot of great songs but you've been friends with John Cena for for many years my brothers and I got him actually into professional professional

wrestling and so he's somebody that's still uh in my life and he pops around whenever he can and and comes into super training well the last time he was at super training, he's, he slept, I tease him and I say that he slept in the parking lot, but he's sleeping in this like multimillion dollar, you know, vehicle or whatever the hell the thing is. It's like a tour bus, right? It has everything on it. So I text them in the morning and I'm like, Oh, you know, it's when someone's from out of town, it's kind of nice to provide some amenities. Like you guys got us a hotel and like, you don't always know where you're going. It's nice for somebody to make it feel a little bit at home. Yeah, yeah.

Make someone feel at home. So I'm like, you want me to bring you coffee? Like you need anything? Like I can cook something here. Like just like whatever. Like I know he eats, you know, he eats healthy and stuff. And he like, no, dude, I'm good. And then we texted back and forth a couple more times

asked him if he needed anything else and uh he just wrote sustained like i wrote i'm sustained and i was like i'm never gonna fucking forget that that's a great way to live your life and what a what a comfortable way to feel yeah like no i'm good yeah i don't need anything yeah you know if you want something and someone's willing to like offer it or something that's that's how i feel kind of one thing i feel like that everywhere like everywhere i go and i almost feel like when people like i don't like people doing extra shit for me because that makes me feel like almost like i don't want to put them out so i'm so i'm always like just in my own world you know what i mean of like of of sustain like it is a good feeling yeah and you know you shouldn't um i just think that when people are trying to climb the ladder they're like oh it'd be cool

like if uh if i did this with someone or if i did that or if uh someone you know someone gave me money for this or that and i think you're just better off saying rather than thinking in those terms how do i how do i work towards that how do i just do it myself right you know be sustained like be be you're be in charge of yourself right be in charge of what it is you're trying to accomplish right yeah man i mean i get that all the time in emails and people they think that like they're like how do i connect with this person or what's it going to take to get on your podcast or what's it going to take to come hang out or this or that? I mean, like, I'm just like, fucking show up.

You can work out with us in the back every day at fucking 430. We're not going to tell you to leave. You know, who knows what will come from that? You know what I mean? Like, that's how I would look at it. It's just like, I was talking to... But not show up at your house. No.

Yeah, that happens. But don't do that. Yeah, got to clarify that yeah but but i mean it's it just takes a little bit of balls right like hey you know there might be some assholes out there that tell you to get lost but what the fuck you do that 10 times you're going to meet seven cool ass people right you know what i mean nothing's ever going to come from from not having resistance and a struggle. And to go back, your point about lifting is lifting represents that times a thousand. You can't get strong in one workout. You actually technically make yourself weaker every time you work out.

That's right. You might bench press 315 pounds during the course of your workout. By the end of the workout, you're distraught. You're fucked up. Right. But you should take all those principles that you know from training at the end of a training session somebody might ask you a question you're like discombobulated you're like uh you can't even really answer it that clearly

because you trained your ass off your work day should be the same way right you go home from work your hat should be all sideways your shit should be all messed up and you should be like you should be ready to kind of like drop like fuck man like god damn today was fun but shit like put a lot of put a lot of effort into it and you feel like wiped out yeah i think you could take all the different lessons that you learn from your training and apply them into your everyday life you're to get strong takes a minimum of 10 years 10 fucking years like what a terrible thing to try to sell somebody yeah like right hey you want to come in and power lift i got a great plan for you andy it's called the 10-year plan i'm gonna get you really strong and at the end of 10 years yeah you're gonna be like actually competitive in the sport and you'll

be like fuck man yeah 10 years of just kicking the shit out of myself that's what it's gonna take i went to the uh ana academy uh recently and was down there doing doing a workout and this kid comes in he's like 17 years old he squatted 765 pounds for five reps holy fuck yeah and i was like what this kid was a bowling ball man he was he was a big kid and beautiful squats too the form was fucking on point and i was like god damn i'm like son of a bitch i'm like i think this is an outlier like i always tell everybody take 10 years yeah and i'm just sitting there shaking my head and i'm like my theory can't be wrong it can't be wrong so i'm watching him you know work up and go up and wait

and he's just he's just crushing these weights and i i go over to his dad and i tell his dad i say this kid has one of the most beautiful squats i've ever seen his form is unbelievable a lot of times these guys are young and strong they're just young and strong right just like reckless yeah right right this kid's form was spot on and so i i tell his dad and his dad goes well it fucking should be started when he's seven there you go like my theory is correct yeah but i mean it's gonna take a long time and what do you know about business when you've been doing it for three years no and that's the parallel right that much the parallel again 10 years you know dude i in my fucking and dude

now with the internet technology and the ability to like yeah podcast and be accelerated learning yeah totally and so like i don't i always say 10 years but that's in like my era of when i started you know there wasn't internet there wasn't podcast there wasn't social media no computers back in our day no no and and and now you can't accelerate that but you can't you you still have to put in the time, man. And like, when you think about like why fitness and entrepreneurship are so parallel, you know, for that 10 years that you go in to train, you know, you're not every day thinking about,

you know, hey, I'm gonna be fucking world champion power lifter. You actually come in today with this goal of like, hey, I'm going to be fucking world champion power lifter. Right. You actually come in today with this goal of like, hey, I'm going to fucking do this today. I'm going to bench this day. I'm going to squat this today. And when I walk out, I'm going to feel that sense of pride that I did the best that I could. And it's about today. It's about winning today and linking those days together over time.

And you fall in love. Real entrepreneurs, they fall in love with the process. Just like powerlifting or bodybuilding. Those guys who are excellent, they're not necessarily thinking for the show or the meet. They're thinking about killing it today. And it just happens to be that every workout fucking matters to them that much and that's what ends up making them great.

It can be overwhelming when you try to think about being great. Right. You know, I think everybody has this mindset that they want to be great. But then if you really try to break it down, like, what do you mean great? Great in whose eyes? Right. For me, I got three people I need to be great to. And that's it.

It's my wife and my two kids. If other people think I'm great, then that's fucking cool. Yeah. That feels like a good pat on the back but uh the love i have inside inside my home you know the um one of the greatest quotes i ever heard is uh you know if you want to have the greatest impact on the world go home and love your family like yeah what a what a cool what a cool statement because that's where it needs to start like why do i need to matter to you right that much right we don't know each other that right right i need to matter to her i need to matter to my kids my son said something crazy

a couple weeks ago where it just like floored me it was it was pretty pretty over the top but basically just uh we were talking and I think I was talking to him about maybe his cousins because his cousins have uh Hamish and uh lachlan these these kids are crazy they beat the hell out of each other all the time so i can't that's their names yeah that's crazy we call we call the youngest one we call him ham bone these two are like straight out of the wwe they beat the fuck out of each other all the time and so we were talking about you know them being brothers and jake he only has his sister quinn and he kind of said he wish he wish he had a brother or something like that so we were talking and i was like oh, and he kind of said he wished he had a brother or something like that.

So we were talking, and I was like, oh, yeah, it's kind of cool because, you know, Hamish, he gets to look up to his brother, and I got to look up to my brothers. And then Jake said, yeah, and I get to look up to you. And I was just like, whoa. Like, you know, I understand that I'm a dad, and I have been for a long time, but what a goddamn wake up call to like really understand like this guy's watching everything I do and everything I say. And I need to really pay attention to that a little bit more. Yeah. Yeah, man. Crazy.

You know, uh, we don't have any kids yet, but I know like I've raised, I've quote unquote raised a lot of kids within the time of the 18 years we've been in business right hundreds and uh you know i i forget that sometimes like we talk about leadership and um you know like i just talked about we when you got here i mean i was on the phone and i was on the phone with a guy who recently left the company and I was doing an exit interview and I like to do exit conversations with people when they leave for a couple reasons. One, you know, if they're leaving under some sort of like disagreement, which this happened to be that case, I want to know, I want them to get it off their chest, whatever it was. They know going into it that it's an exit interview. Yeah, yeah.

They already know that they've been yeah right let go and and so and so i i want to hear their point of view because a and a lot of ceos they get really upset with their employees they quit or have an issue like they're right like dude i try to look at his learning experience like okay um what are the issues is it a legitimate issue do i need to fix certain things and we had a really good conversation about uh about some of the things that could potentially be better and i think that you know even as a and i consider myself a pretty pretty good leader i think most of the time i'm doing a good job especially leading example but he pointed out a couple cases of really small shit that that i hadn't forgot i

even fucking did right that meant a lot to him right you know what i mean and and were legitimate points that he made you're trying to make people more productive you're not sitting here trying to make people feel bad no you're not trying to knock people no no no but and if you say something that's too harsh or too right over the top sometimes it comes off the wrong way and it could really be super negative to dude exactly that person maybe a bunch of other people and if i have a downfall in my leadership ability it is that it is that when i communicate it can be very direct like very direct right and i feel and where i see it as very direct like hey i'm trying to fucking help you that's my job because I'm not your friend.

I'm not your fucking buddy. I'm your coach. And your coach cares about your performance because they want you to fucking be good. And that's how I look at it. So when I see somebody doing something, I'm very fucking direct with them. And sometimes dudes just ain't hearing that because they hear the emotion behind it. And they hear it as, you don't like me or you're upset with me or you think I'm a piece of shit when in reality that's just how I communicate. So it's, if I have a downfall in leadership, it's definitely that. A lot of things can be

misinterpreted through something like a text message or something like that. Absolutely. Different than a phone call. Absolutely. And, uh, but you know, my point to, you know, the, you know, those guys do look up to, and sometimes I forget how much they do. You know what I mean? I forget how much somebody's paying attention. And if they see you cut a corner or they see you do something. Could be anything. Could be you just not being on your diet anymore and gaining weight or not lifting anymore.

Or saying something and not following through with it. Something even small. You're going to be around them all the time. A lot of guys in business, they don't realize how close their employees are paying attention to them. You know what I mean? Yeah. I mean, they're watching everything. So let me recap a little bit.

I want to draw out some of the things that you've said. Daily discipline, obviously. You said, I love the statement you made of not putting the cart in front of the things that you've said. Daily discipline, obviously. You said, I love the statement you made of not putting the cart in front of the horse. I always put the cart in front of the horse, which I would, the way that I interpret that is you don't overthink things, you act. Yeah, I do.

And then you just kind of trust that things are going to work out. But you do it and you figure it out. Yeah. Well, we have an interesting, my wife and I have an interesting relationship. I'm a dreamer and then she's a doer. She's someone that can handle a lot of tasks in one day. She's very, very smart and very organized, which is quite the opposite of myself. So when you have somebody kind

of dreaming of something, but then somebody else who can help with the follow through and the execution of it, uh, that ends up making such a huge difference. And the belief factor too. Like, dude, you know, uh, the, the,

have someone there who, when you say something like it could be, it could, cause you're going to say shit to your spouse. It hasn't always been that way. Right. You're going to say some shit to your spouse. I don't know how much belief there was in the beginning,

but there's a lot now. The good thing about accomplishing a few things is that you, the belief becomes stronger on what you can accomplish. Right. You know? like i know like i can say anything to emily like hey i'm gonna fucking become an astronaut and she's gonna be googling astronaut school here's where it starts it starts you know do you want me to book your ticket you know what i mean and that's a good type of relationship to have man you know a lot of a lot of people don't have that we get a lot of relationship questions for the podcast right about like how important it is to have people in your life that support you, not just your wife, especially your wife, your husband, but not just that. Like,

dude, the people you surround yourself with, who you communicate with, dude, you don't need to have a trillion friends. You don't need to have a thousand friends. You're good. Have dude, I got like three friends. I got a bunch of people that I fucking know. You know what I mean? I got a lot of people I care about, but not that I would call and say, hey, here's what I'm thinking. Right. You know what I mean?

And I only call people I know that trust the abilities that I have because, dude, it takes so much energy to build something from scratch. Right. That you can't afford to let people. It's an enormous effort, yeah. Yeah, you can't afford to let people who don't have that opinion of it's possible in your brain. You just can't let it. We were just in Malibu, California on some vacation.

That looked awesome, by the way. Oh, it was fucking fun. Malibu is beautiful. How was the water? Was it cold or was it good? Well, these guys, my wife and way. Oh, it was fucking fun. Yeah. Malibu's beautiful. How was the water? Was it cold or was it good? Well, these guys, my wife and kids. Oh, man. Yeah, they were swimming and everything in there.

I'm not about to get in the ocean. Yeah. I'm not a risk taker when it comes to that kind of stuff. I like to keep my fucking feet planted on the ground. No skiing, no skateboards. I saw you when you guys were in Tahoe and you were on the boat. Everybody else in the fucking water. Yeah, yeah.

I'm like, yeah, I'm not doing any of that terrified i don't swim i don't swim very well you're not jumping in if anybody sees a fin or anything i'm good at drowning that's about that's probably probably about my i was wondering what the fuck you were doing on the boat snapping everybody else is swimming yeah everybody's always like there's always pictures of everybody else and you don't have any any pictures like doing whatever it is they're doing but um you know people ask a lot of times how do you how do you balance stuff you know and i i want to address that just a little bit because i think and you you probably said something like this similar because you probably recognize as well is that when people are truly gifted and truly talented and you end up with somebody like an el Musk or the owner of Amazon, you end up with

people like that. Those people are not going to really have a lot of balance, at least at some point in their life. They're going to be like very unbalanced. When I was a competitive powerlifter, my best numbers are squatted 1,080, benched 854, and deadlifted 766. I was unbalanced. That was my passion. That's what I lived for. 24 hours a day. Unhealthy, too.

You know, 330 pounds. I could lift like a motherfucker, but I wasn't balanced. Conditioning-wise, I had none of that or anything. But the way that I've been able to pull balance into my life is to be more inclusive rather than exclusive. So when it comes to family and business, I usually just bring them together, you know? So like on this trip that we went to Malibu, I went a day early. My family joined me the next day. I got a couple things done the day before, met with Lewis Howe, met with Charles Glass and a couple other people for YouTube content and just business stuff in general and then the next then a day or two later

I met at Bulletproof Coffee with my brother and and my wife and my kids with the owner of Quest Nutrition and also the owners of a startup company called Keto Cookie. And just, you know, it's like they don't have to not be part of that. Like having my kids at a business meeting, having them hanging around and like fucking around would be inappropriate. So my kids, they went with my brother somewhere. But my point is that everything always seems so difficult or everything always seems so hard, but it's really not. If you just break things down and try to slow yourself down for a second and just make some sense of it. And so

that's what I'm always trying to do in these different things that we're, we're working on. I really felt strongly that we need to come out here. We need to see you. And I'm in the middle of, of opening up a new facility for the gym. I walk into here and boom, instantly I'm inspired. I'm going to be fired up for a long time after coming here and boom instantly i'm inspired i'm gonna be fired up for a long time after coming here like this fucking thank you very very cool what you built and and i and i knew like i knew before i even really contacted you that i just something i wanted to do i saw a couple videos saw a couple podcasts and stuff i'm like that would be really cool to meet this guy i don't know why exactly, but I'll figure it out.

But the second I stepped foot in here, I was like, boom, that was it. I could go home. All I need to do is see the facility. Like hanging out with you is a whole other thing too. It's awesome. But just seeing the facility and seeing everybody flying around in their first form shirts, I mean, I probably ran into 40 or 50 people. Everyone came right up, introduced themselves. You know, i forgot everybody's

name so many of them coming at me uh but what a cool thing everyone everyone's wearing like the same shirt yeah everyone's fucking on board there's people busting their ass in the warehouse yeah really we're fortunate man we got a good crew here um the the you know we connected through tony uh cinema yeah real world tactical. So, uh, goddamn savage and a half right there. Well, dude,

when he, when he, he's like, Hey, cause I knew who you were. I, we just never connected. He's like,

Hey man, uh, I want you to connect with my boy, Mark Bell. And I'm like, fuck yeah. So I mean like that was what we were talking about before the podcast. Right.

You know, I love Tony. I love hanging out with Tony. He's my kind of dude. He's nuts. Right. And if he said, yeah, exactly. But when guys like that recommend to meet somebody, you have to say yes.

You know what I mean? And it's going to work out awesome. Right. I like what you said about integrating the family and business. And I feel like if you look around and you really have eyes to see, you can see that a lot of the movers and shakers in every industry have done that. I know now the greatest coach in college football is probably considered Nick Saban. But there were those two or three years where Urban Meyer was just knocking out. And I know that his whole philosophy of running a program was we're going to be a family.

And, of course, that's the way First Form is. The whole company, it's a big family. Yeah, for sure. Dude, you spend that much time together, you're going to naturally develop those relationships. It's helped shape the Manning family. Yeah. Even though the New Orleans Saints sucked,

they weren't very good, but they had a very family-oriented organization and they would invite the families to practice, I think like twice a week. And so Peyton and his brother Eli, they were at every practice with their dad all the time right they got to kind of witness that firsthand and see what it takes right now they're you know unbelievable yeah see i have that's interesting takes because i can't that i'm glad that you brought that up because i you know when not having kids it's it's not an issue for me right

so I've never been able to like whenever we've addressed it I've always but it's important that your wife knows who you're meeting with who are these people oh yeah say oh you remember you met so-and-so yeah like her meeting them is so much different than you just saying oh yeah I'm going to meet with this like fitness chick because we're going to do something with her it's like that's she might be like well wait a second right right right especially in the fitness industry right right yeah but like what i always tell people especially when they're young and how it was for me and this is i think how it was for you with power lifting you know balance can be looked at a bunch of different ways and the way i always looked at balance was i'm gonna give everything everything I have for the beginning part of my life,

like the 19 years old to basically, I don't know, three years ago, where I had no fucking life. And then I would live the rest of my life with whatever the fuck I want to do. You know what I mean? And that's worked well for me. And I encourage younger people, if they're wanting to be successful entrepreneurs, to really think about what balance means to them. Because a lot, most people we ask what balance means. They look at it on a daily scale.

They look at it as like, okay, I got to go to work at eight. I got to be home at four. I got to spend time with the family from this time to this time. And then I watch TV and that's my balance. I got to have my TV time and that shit ain't gonna cut it right you know what i mean uh you you have to be all in at some point to be great at something and when you have to you know when you're trying to cut it up on a daily scale you've got all you're competing against people that don't fucking do that right and so you know instead of if you're a young entrepreneur instead of trying to live by the, you know, instead of, if you're a young entrepreneur,

instead of trying to live by the list, you know, get married, have kids by the time you're 20 fucking two, you know, like, how about this?

How about you think about what you really want in your life and plan accordingly? And like Gary says, it's a lot like punt your 20s. I agree with that because that's what I did. You know what I mean?

I didn't do shit in my 20s and I did a little bit of shit for the last three or four years. But basically, it's still work every day. Right. But it's, like you said, it's more inclusive of a life. Right. You know what I mean? Like, we live in a nice house now.

And, like, we got a pool. So if we go do business, people come over and they barbecue and shit like that. Right. You know what I mean? Or, like, I'll have some of the guys from the store over and we'll talk about this or that it you know while we're hanging out it's still considered work but it we created a family atmosphere and culture in our company to where it doesn't feel like it like it never really feels like work here to anybody i don't think it doesn't seem like it yeah even though you're obsessed with it right exactly

like nobody here is like you know there's guys that get burnt out you know what i mean but um and there's times that are tough like there's times a year that are a lot harder than other we gotta get a lot of shit done um but at the at the end of the day you know most of the time it's like yeah we're doing this and that but it's still it's still a family atmosphere you know what i mean i want to circle back at something you were talking about, Mark, you were saying that it was actually an asset for you that you weren't super book smart. Andy, you said the same thing so that you don't overthink things. You don't go deep into it, but there's a lot of people that listen to us that I know are not, are not like that. They, they, they actually are very smart. There are three dimensional thinkers. So what would you tell them about how to get mentally tough

to where you're not overthinking things? You're strategic. You're thinking about things from different angles, but you're not just killing your action with overthinking anything. Do you have any practical tips, either one of you guys? Yeah, a lot of people will have analysis paralysis. And the same thing happens. You see it with – it's happened to myself

with training. Like you start to learn so much or nutrition is a great example. Eggs are healthy. Eggs aren't healthy. Carbs are good. Carbs are bad. Like what the fuck, what do I do? And then, so you just don't follow any plan and then you just self destruct and you're not anywhere. Right. You're three days in on something. You're like, fuck, this isn't working. You switch it up. you're right uh my main advice to people that are going to be uh strategic um is just to kind of understand they're going to have to take they're going to have to take some risks and they're going to have to do something uh depending on what they're shooting for like if you want to be average and you want to just kind

of sit in the middle then maybe you don't ever really need to take much of a risk. But for myself, even though I'm a dreamer, there's never really been a time where I put myself in a compromising position, especially from like a financial standpoint. I mean, the first order of slingshots, we put out like 25 grand or something like that. So, and when you don't have any money, that's an enormous amount of money. Oh,. You don't have any dough. Yeah. That's 25,000 times more than the money that you actually have. It's it, that's a lot of money when you don't have money, but in the grand scheme of things, you talk to any business person or somebody who's been doing some big business for a while, $25,000 is not really much of anything. And so in terms of like, just because I'm a dreamer doesn't mean that I'm

still not calculating in, uh, some of the risks. Um, I guess a more accurate statement would be like, I'm somebody who kind of already taxes in a lot of the ups and downs. Like I already know, I can't always ensure that everything will be, will get better, but I can ensure that things will be bad sometimes. Like ensure that things will be bad sometimes like they for sure will be bad there's gonna be bad days for me days where or even months where slingshot sales are lower than they were before so for me personally i know he said he's a numbers guy i don't look at any of that because i don't want one thing to blow me one way or the other like i don't want to be like a leaf in the wind and get swept away towards thinking one thing or the other. I always just try to, um, whatever I'm thinking, whatever

those gut feelings are, I try my best to react off of those, but also not have those reactions be, uh, anything that could really cost me. So those people that are cautious and those people that are calculated i would just say that they need to just take that they need to take that first step something that everyone needs to kind of look at like he was saying in the gym and this really resonated with me but he said in the gym like you know when you're first starting to work out and you're first starting to like squat maybe somebody squats two plates. Well, once they squat two plates, they might be thinking like, oh man, it'd be cool to squat three plates someday. Right. But they're not really thinking about squatting 800 pounds at that moment. Maybe that is like a

lifetime goal or whatever. But in my opinion, you have to be able to see what's in front of you, the steps in front of you. And you also have to be able to see the horizon. You also have to be able to see what's way out in front of you. Like what's that, you know, what's at the top of the stairs as well as like what's directly in front of you. Yeah, I think a lot of people ask that too. A lot of people are like, well, what am I better doing, setting gigantic goals or day goals?

Both. Yeah. Both. You break it down. Well, also too, you know, in terms of goals, like why not make some of your goals like really easy So you can feel fucking awesome all day. I saw a cool video on that just last night. It was this it was a retired Admiral I believe and he's like

If you want to be successful in life start with making your bed. He gave this really cool speech on it I saw you put up a thing about somebody wrote a book, right? Or maybe somebody else put it up. I don't know. I was on Josh Brolin's Instagram is where I saw it. It's called Make the Bed. Yeah. And he gives this little speech about making the bed.

He's like, look, when you get up and make the bed, you feel a sense of pride about the task that you accomplish. And that's going to make you want to go on and accomplish another task and then that task is going to make you want to success right and then and then he keeps going on and on and he's like it was cool it was funny he goes and then some days they're just going to be shit but when you come home your bed's going to be made you have some consistency in your life right and I just thought it was such a good point. Like, and you know,

dude, I'm, I'm terrible making the bed. So if I even claim that I do, my wife listens and she'll make fun of me for lying. But the point is, I just never thought of it like that. Like literally something that small.

Yeah. Keep your goals really small. I mean, it might sound like a, it might not even sound like a goal. Like I'm'm gonna get my haircut today yeah well that is that is something you accomplished because you had a bunch of other stuff to do in that day and you got this other thing done right um i'm gonna work out today or

what about just like winning like an hour or winning a moment like we're gonna win lunch because we got a steak salad that's right. And just these kind of small victories can really, really turn into something much larger. I think in nutrition, that's super important, too. Like, dude, for me, I, for the longest time, have had the hardest time going out to eat and being able to order something. Like, having the discipline to not order like a pizza, right? And like now, even to this day, like if I go out to eat and I order something that's on my plan, so to speak,

dude, I feel like I'm like, fuck yeah, that was a good, I did good there. Yeah. You know what I mean? Well, and then you really start to feel just really incredible in a lot of ways because you're winning when you're here. You're in control. You're winning when you're here you're in

control you're winning with your diet you're winning at home and it just starts to spread even more and more and you're like you know why why can't i be ripped and rich at the same time why can't i be a meathead millionaire like you you can be yeah there's things you gotta you gotta chip away at them over a long period of time. It does take a long time. But when it comes to your diet or it comes to anything that you're doing, you have to kind of break it down into its smallest form so it's a little bit more digestible so you can understand it a little bit better. When it comes to any diet, you're always one meal away from being back on your plan.

You're always one meal away from being back out. But you're always just one meal away from being back on your plan you know you're always one meal away from being back out but it was just one meal away for me the keto style diet works so great because i love to eat out yeah and eating out and trying to be calorie restricted is really hard i'd probably be only be only able to eat like once or twice a day right with that uh kind of restriction but not eating uh carbohydrates it's like you can go to almost any restaurant in the country and get something that doesn't have carbs, like a steak or something. It's a matter of replacing the mashed potatoes with vegetables and things like that.

Pretty easy. You get to eat butter, bacon, cheese. I mean, it's fucking awesome. Right, right, right. Yeah, dude. I think it's important to acknowledge the small victories. I think people especially when you do have big goals because i preach huge goals a lot but it is important you

know on a day-by-day basis to see your victories you know that's that's part of the planner that we just launched um that i was telling you about that was sold out of you know the powerless planner basically it's just a list of five daily things that you need to win today right you know for for you to count the day as a win and you know you go to the next day and if you win your five days because i believe there would be a huge mistake for you to sit here and think oh you know first form's not in this position so it's a failure it's a disappointment right exactly like no no no it's this is this is an awesome victory and why not keep that fucking momentum going right wherever you foresee it being right five years right and it takes you know when you're a driven person it takes some

it takes discipline to not feel disappointed because you always feel behind yeah satisfied athletes suck is what i always used to preach dude as a football coach was like you don't want but at the same time you do have to appreciate the's like you don't want but at the same time you do have to appreciate the stuff that you have you really do yeah the people around you i struggle with that man like like it's not easy like with uh with well you're overstimulated with business wise yeah you know what i mean because like it actually annoys me when people say oh congratulations on all your success i'm like success we haven't fucking done anything you're getting started like this is one tenth of what we're gonna do right you know and but they don't realize that they're being

polite you know what i mean but like it i have to literally pull myself back and say okay dude you started at the back of that fucking retail store sleeping on a mattress that had a piss stain that you didn't make you know what i mean you know, PJ had a really good, on his Instagram, he had a really good distinction the other day between satisfied and gratified. Right. That successful people are never satisfied, but you can be gratified. At the end of the day, you can say, man, I'm thankful that I reached this level today or I advanced this much today.

And I think that's a good distinction to make. You can still be a little frustrated that you're maybe not as far along as you want to be right definitely definitely room for that i think one of the things i see in in one of my favorite uh whoa who let the dogs out well mailman's here yep mailman just died dog attacked him yeah had a dog attack out uh outside the studio, guys. Yeah. One of the people that I admire right now a lot is Conor McGregor. Yeah.

And I just love the way that that guy is able to diffuse situations. And, yeah, like he's real brash and he's over the top and he's going to be like cocky and everything. But he took that loss that he had. Dude, that was awesome. To Nate diaz wasn't it yeah he took that loss like a real champion you know he was like he's humble he was the better man for today yeah i tried to do a couple things and i and it didn't really work and um had i stayed at this body weight a little bit longer i think i would have done better but he didn't discredit him and he didn't say i would have beat him no dude he's like i think i could have done better yeah but he's he's got a very uh like stoic mindset where he's not letting anything uh pull him in the wrong direction and he's talked himself into this mayweather fight yeah he's gonna win yeah like

it's in his fucking brain he's gonna win yeah he knows it for sure yeah and the momentum is mounting and a lot of people are now like he might win yeah well now the advantage and all that momentum and all that energy inside that building on that night is gonna be on conor mcgregor's side it is with every punch and every whether he lands one or not the crowd's gonna go fucking crazy yeah that's gonna play into mayweather's strategy yeah and who the fuck knows what can happen then, I think that's the best thing about that fight is nobody fucking knows. Nobody knows. Yeah.

And everybody's, all the guys picking Mayweather. Yeah. They're, you know, they're like, oh, yeah. Greatest boxer ever. Yeah. And it's like, dude, look, man, there's at least enough doubt in this fight that you can't say for sure who's going to win. There's just no way. And McGregor you can't say for sure who's going to win. There's no way.

And McGregor is the one who has planted the seed. Yeah. And Mayweather, Mayweather can't go through throughout his whole career unscathed. Yeah. They talk about him being the greatest boxer of all time. Well, you can't be the greatest of all time until there's been a really, really harsh struggle. Yeah. Really a lot of, as we talked about throughout the whole podcast, a lot of resistance.

Yeah. And he really hasn't had much. Right. You know, Ali had to lose to people that he had to come back and beat. Yeah. Really a lot of, as we talked about throughout the whole podcast, a lot of resistance. Yeah. And he really hasn't had much. Right. You know, Ali had to lose to people that he had to come back and beat. Yeah. Shit like that. Yeah. Where Ali beat George Foreman.

Yeah, the greatest boxer of all time isn't record. And it's not money made. Right. It's how you overcome adversity. It's the story. It's the legacy. And Mike Tyson, unfortunately, probably the most talented, most explosive, one of the most athletic.

And most self-destructive. People of our time the most athletic. And most self-destructive. People of our time. Yeah, super self-destructive. And I love Mike Tyson. I love Mike Tyson, too. But he's not going to get the credit as being one of the all-time greats. He never really avenged a loss. Once he lost to Buster Douglas, which is the biggest upset in boxing history.

It's kind of over. It was kind of over. And then you kind of forget about how dominant he was but like yeah who is he dominant against he dominated so well there wasn't enough resistance right there for for you to view him as like uh being great meanwhile ali had to beat like joe frazier you know ali got his jaw broken in the first round against joe frazier still finished the fight even though he lost i mean all kinds of crazy shit like that. Yeah, the cool thing about Ali and Foreman, too,

is they both fought like fighters from different eras. Yeah. And did well. You know what I mean? They kind of like bridged the gap. You know what I mean? But, dude, I'm pumped for that fight. Yeah, it should be pretty cool.

Who do you think is going to win? Man, honestly, I don't know. I don't know. I'm hoping McGregor wins. I love McGregor, too. For the same reason that you said, I think humility and cockiness both have their place in life. A lot of people shit on cockiness like it's the wrong thing. I believe that in preparation, you should be humble be humble in competition you should be cocky and you know

I think I just love everything that he is like you know like I get not afraid to say he's the greatest no he's not afraid to just but you look at saying it for years you look at anybody who's like great entertainer which is what he is. He's an entertainer. You know, he's, is he an athlete? Yes. But he is an entertainer, which is why he fucking earns the money that he makes. He's figured out how to make money. Yes.

And you look at The Rock. The Rock on, he's playfully cocky a lot. And then he's humble. You know what I mean? Like, it's a good dynamic. It's a cool dynamic. Yeah, and I just, I don't know, man. I really hope that he wins.

To ask me who I think is going to win, logically, I really don't know. I would say the fight is probably going to go a lot like Mayweather's fight. He's going to move around. Conor's going to have a hard time hitting him. I do think if Conor hits him, though, he's going to do a lot of damage. Yeah, you might feel that. And on any day in a fight, that's the good thing a hard time hitting him. I do think if Connor hits him, though, he's going to do a lot of damage. Yeah, he might be able to.

And on any day in a fight, that's the good thing about a fight, dude. You know, it's like any given Sunday. Any given fight, it only takes one hit. So I don't, I mean, I definitely do not count him out. I want him to win. One of my friends, George Lockhart, does a lot of the diet and stuff for a lot of the UFC fighters. And he's been working with mcgregor and i was on the phone with him and we podcasted with him while he was working directly with him when they're out in ireland and he just said like he's like man he's like

i've worked with him before he's like this is different he's like he's he always trains really hard he's always one of the hardest workers i ever worked with but he he's like, he's on another level right now for this fight. And I was like, fuck, man, that's cool. So he's got everybody in his corner. Yeah. You know, feeling the same way that he does when he's talking. He's not like talking out his ass. Like he really he really feels like he has a great chance to win the fight.

And he's convinced himself of it. I really think that's true. I admire that mindset, dude. It's a necessary mindset to do big things. Right. Dude, it's a necessary mindset to do big things. I mean, if you're going to do big things, I mean, he's got half the world saying he's fucking crazy right now. Half the world, 50%, maybe even more, maybe 70% saying, dude, there's no chance. There's no fucking chance. And that's such a big obstacle for people who want to start a business because they'll come out

or they want to be good inside of a company you know they'll come out and say you know they're a warehouse guy and say one day i want to be vice president of the company people like dude you just sweep the fucking floors and that's the kind of shit they hear and and dude developing the ability to believe your own path is such a huge deal of success and i think if he really does believe that he'll probably fucking win you know what i mean yeah i you very rarely see somebody who is that has that much conviction in their plan in their in their mission that that just doesn't that doesn't happen you know i'm a big believer in law of attraction like uh and that when you put thoughts out there and focus on them yeah that's back to you they do and uh you know if he's really if he really believes it from his

heart it's gonna be hard to beat him i always think you know the fight you know i saw that quote that you have on your uh table out there and i've i've been a firm believer of that for many years that the fight is against yourself yeah you know so here's conor mcgregor talking himself into uh pulling off this insane upset against what's viewed as the greatest boxer of all time many of us talk ourselves out of stuff every single day it's really easy for you to come in here uh on a certain day on a monday and you have a meeting everyone's all fired up yeah this is what we're gonna fucking do and then then all the follow through that happens and all the struggle and all the resistance that happens from trying to put some of those plans in place, they hit you in the face and you're like, ah, and then it starts to be very easy to talk yourself out of some of those things.

Something as simple as, uh, waking up at 5am. What's the, what's the, who cares about what time you wake up? Like time is made up right like we we made it up so that we can fucking get up a certain time and be in sync with the sun or whatever it really doesn't matter that much but what does it show you it shows you a form of discipline it gives you a form i said i was going to do this now i'm doing this i said that i was going to set out to do that now i'm'm going to eat better. It's very easy to talk yourself out of stuff, though. You might you might be watching TV and maybe you're fucking eating some Ben and Jerry's and you're like, you know what? This is the last fucking thing. This

is it. I'm throwing this away. And then tomorrow I start my plan. Well, the next day pops up something. Your buddy text you and he wants to go grab breakfast. He wants to go grab all you can eat pancakes. And there you are eating motherfucking pancakes. Right. You know, it's so easy to talk yourself. Things, things just always seem like they're so difficult and they're really just, they're not that hard. Um, but the, you know, the, uh, sexiness of, uh, of not, of not doing the stuff you're supposed to do is, do is more attractive a lot of times than doing what you're supposed to do. But each and every day we're faced with these corners. Everybody's faced with these corners. And I think successful people go, they go around those corners.

They continually go around those corners and they make squares and rectangles. And people that fall short are making circles they're going in circles there's dude there is no fucking doubt that is the biggest difference between people who are successful at anything they set out to do and people who who never can do it it's it's doing circles versus squares yeah you know what i mean we have a lot of people that we're friends with, um, that we,

that we hear talk about stuff all the time. And my wife and I will talk about it later. And we're just like, man, I'm just really disappointed. Cause I know that they're not going to do that. Like I wish they did. Right.

I wish they did do that. I wish they went through with that. But then you're like, they, they've been saying a lot of that stuff for a long time. They probably aren't going to do it. And you're like, fuck. Yeah. And you know, dude, the thing about, you want to see him like, Oh saying a lot of that stuff for a long time they probably aren't going to do it you're like fuck yeah and you know dude the thing about you want to see him like oh enjoy some of the stuff no question no question but the the biggest thing about the circles and the squares that you're talking about and you did a video on instagram i loved talking about that where you're

actually walking around yeah yeah it's the fucking truth the success i always dude i give a similar talk the success is always found in the corners it's not found truth the success i always dude i give a similar talk the success is always found in the corners it's not found in the middle that's where everybody is it's at the corners and when you cut the corners you're cutting a success and that that the the i think the thing to note here for people listening is that that is a fucking habit that's a habit of yours if you're doing the circles and your workouts and your business you're doing them everywhere else you know it's a very contagious habit you know what i mean and that's why you that's why you see people who are you know crazy jeff bezos who owns fucking amazon

yeah basically the richest dude on the earth right now dude that motherfucker don't cut corners look at his business look at his physique the guy's fucking ripped he's in good shape yeah you know what i'm saying like he used to be like when they were when business was bad he was like a skinny little nerd yeah now business is good and he's fucking jacked he's getting into doing stuff in space now yeah he's like what the fuck but he ain't cut no fucking corners i guarantee you that and you find that with every successful person i mean dude if you follow the rock on on instagram motherfuckers up at four o'clock in the morning doing cardio then he's lifting weights at three in the afternoon every day with a schedule that's 10 times harder than any of ours and if you were to ask him if he can do a better job he'd say

fuck yeah yeah exactly there's always more you can do dude tim grover talks about that that's the sign have you read that book relentless Relentless by Tim Grover? Dude, you must read fucking amazing book. And he's an amazing dude. He's Michael Jordan's performance coach. Oh, I've definitely heard of. Yeah.

Um, Kobe Bryant, Dwayne Wade, a ton of big athletes. Right. So, but he's mainly like, I mean,

he's a physical coach too, but his main thing is like mental coaching. Right. And dude, he has this uh this term for people who are like obsessive fucking uh basically obsessive obsessed with success and he calls it a cleaner and how you know as a cleaner is that you always feel like there's more to do right like no matter what you achieve you always feel like you could have done

better and he said that's the number he said And he said, if someone thinks they're a cleaner, they're not a cleaner. Because it's the guy who thinks that he always has more to do and can always do better that is the true cleaner. And I found that interesting because him and I were talking and I was talking about myself. And I'm like, I don't know, man. I read your book and I'm like, man, I don't know if I would fit into that cleaner. He goes, that means you're a cleaner. That means you're in. Yeah, right. And he explained why. And I'm like, man,'t know, man. Like I read your book and I'm like, man, I don't know if I would fit into that cleaner. He goes, that means you're a cleaner. That means you're in. Yeah.

Right. And he explained why. And I'm like, man, that actually makes pretty good sense. Yeah. You know, I still don't feel like I'm a cleaner. Even after he told me that. I'm like, I don't know. You know, but the thing of it is, is that the, the, the cutting the corners, man, it's

real easy to get, that's a slippery slope. You know, it's real easy to cut a corner in slippery slope you know it's real easy to cut a corner in one area of your life and then all of a sudden you're doing it everywhere right and it's it's it's also contagious the other way if you make a commitment to to put in the actual attention to detail in the corner that makes the success at work eventually you're going to start looking at your physical self and then when or vice versa and eventually it all kind of melds together you know that's why people who have their shit together have their shit together because they're not cutting the fucking corners off anywhere i had a friend of mine uh came into the gym a while back and i was working on him with uh for for uh

some squats and stuff like that and i haven't known him for that long but as i'm communicating with him i've noticed like he won't look me in the eye and he's real shy and timid and like even when he like does a lift he's like he's pretty like timid and i'm like oh you know okay that's just like his personality whatever you know everybody's everybody's different some people like get real fired up before they do a lift i like to make a big a big fucking scene of it just because that fits me well and i feel good that way yeah everybody's a little different when it comes to some of those things but as we got talking a little bit later in the day he mentions to me about his son playing baseball he's like my son you know he's like 13 playing baseball and he's like he's like it's a mean

thing to say about your son he's like but my son's kind of a pussy you know like he's just real timid he's up there barely holding the bat he'll barely swing at the ball and i'm just thinking like bro yeah he's yeah he's an exact replica yeah i didn't i didn't say that but i was kind of thinking that in my head and i said hey you know what i said it's really hard to think back to when you were younger the way that you really were right so you got a war like everyone has a warped image of the way that they were yeah and for you or i to sit here like we're sitting pretty in a lot of ways right we have things really fucking good we have a really enjoyable life and we have a lot of fucking fun every day it's kind of easy for us to look back and be like i don't get it why aren't you fucking savage yeah well a lot of us didn't start out that way a lot of us started out very timid like for myself i was i was crippled by the fact that i wasn't quote-unquote smart

that like damaged me forever i couldn't i i quote-unquote couldn't i didn't think i could do a lot of things i didn't think a lot of things were available dude i'd fucking teach i didn't think i could have a regular job i had teachers straight up tell me you're not that fucking smart yeah dude i had a teacher tell me i was on like a third grade reading level and stuff i mean it was dude when i took my act i had i had a teacher tell me that if i got an 18 i should be fucking thrilled i fucking went out the night so i'm like fuck it i don't care about the act right i'm you know because i told him i wanted to go to like duke or something and he goes i didn't know where the fuck i want to go i just thought duke was cool and he goes he goes yeah he goes andy i'll never forget his words

he goes andy duke's for like the cream of the crop he's like out there yeah and he's like you you need to like think about if you get like an 18 maybe getting into like a state school or something that's where you see that's where you belong and i'm'm like, all right, well, fuck it. I don't care. Dude, you know what I scored on ACT? A fucking 30. Yeah. And they thought because my grades were bad that I wasn't fucking intelligent. Right. And it turns out that their classes were too fucking boring and not challenging.

Right. So I didn't give a shit. You know what I mean? So, but the point is, is like, dude, people, I've had people straight up tell me to my face. Yeah. Like, dude, you're not fucking smart. You're not capable of this.

And when you're a kid, why would you doubt it? Right. You know what I mean? Right. And so my point is, though, if you're listening to this and you're trying to get yourself heading in the right direction and you think it's overwhelming or you want to figure out a way to be rich or whatever it is, just take it one step at a time. Start working on something every single day. Maybe you set aside 20 minutes. Maybe the only thing that you do right now,

maybe the only action that you take, maybe all you do is read for 20 minutes or watch YouTube for 20. Like if you don't like to read, like I'm not a big reader, then I'll watch YouTube videos. I'll watch all kinds of different stuff to try to learn things that are kind of outside my comfort zone. I've done all kinds of things that haven't been comfortable for me. My wife and I own a publication called Power Magazine, and I'm the editor of Power Magazine, a guy that finishes high school on a third-grade reading level.

So you've got to be, you know, kind of willing to do some things that are outside your comfort zone. I made a fucking rap video. It doesn't get any more uncomfortable than that. I don't know if you guys ever seen that, but you got to see it if you never have. It's just me having fun. It's just me like not being scared to kind of make some of those jumps.

And my point is I haven't always been that way. I became a savage or became a meathead millionaire through the process of fighting a lot of resistance every single day. And recognizing at some point having this clarity of, oh, my God, I'm like swinging punches at everybody else. But it's like Fight Club. You know, I should be swinging punches at myself. Yeah. I need like fight club, you know? Yeah. I should be swinging punches at myself. Yeah. I need to straighten myself the fuck out. Yeah.

I need to get myself heading in the right direction. So don't feel overwhelmed. There's nothing to feel overwhelmed about. There's no rush. There's no rush to be successful. There's no rush for your, your product to sell, uh, 200% more. Like it'll just, it'll just keep happening. Right.

As long as you created a great culture, keep a great positive mindset, continue to work every, you're going to art happening. Right. You created a great culture. Right. Keep a great positive mindset. Continue to work. The work's already going to be done. You already know that's going to happen. All those other things are going to fall into place. So let me, something you said there I think should be noted is, you know, you spoke about the adversity, right?

Like, and how things, you're doing things that are uncomfortable and i think when you when you teach yourself to make a habit out of doing things that are uncomfortable and you tell me what you think but because i do i do the same thing you you start to realize that there's nothing to be afraid of right and it's just it's another parallel to the gym right like like the more times you go in like the resistance that you face it's just it's another parallel to the gym it's huge right like like the more times you go in like the resistance that you face it gets lighter it gets easier yeah it gets easier to move and when you when you start to do things that are outside your comfort zone and they're they're you find out that not only is there nothing to be afraid of it's you actually enjoy

it yeah you know and a lot of things that you're most afraid of there nothing to be afraid of, you actually enjoy it. Yeah. And a lot of things that you're most afraid of are going to be the things that provide amazing experiences that you'll remember forever. But I definitely think the most valuable thing there is once you make a habit of doing things that aren't necessarily comfortable, you lose the fear of doing things. And I think the fear of doing things is what ultimately keeps people in the same spot. Yeah, and there's nothing more scary than not moving forward to me. I agree.

So that's what that's- Or frustrating. Yeah, that's- It drives me insane. That's what drives me. And to try to stay in your comfort zone all the time, you're not gonna really get a lot of great results out of it. A small example of it is like,

I do a video every week called Hustle Mania. Follows me around to some of the different things that I do. And it gives you some perspective on the business side of things. And view wise, that's not going to have the same amount of views as if I bench 500 pounds for a few reps. But the whole point is, is that we're trying something different. We're showcasing something totally different and we're getting out to a new audience. If we just keep doing the same thing, we might pick up some new people here and there, but it's not going to have the same impact as trying something different. The pain of change seems greater than the pain of staying the same. But staying the same is the worst because if you're not getting better,

you're getting worse. Right. You're technically kind of going backwards. Yeah, dude. It's like when people boil frog in boiling water, you put the frog in there in regular water and it won't jump out. And you slowly turn the heat up until it's boiling, it won't jump out of the water.

And that's what staying the same is like. Right. How how do you know all this good do we do rich shit here in the midwest you gotta you gotta test certain things out a certain way yeah i gotta peter calling me um so i have one final question for you guys but do you want to take a second just to no i want to i want to ask how how he got slingshot going because I'm interested to hear about that. So like for a guy who doesn't consider himself smart, you know, you came up with a pretty badass invention that's really affected an entire industry in a really good way. So tell people, first of all, what the Slingshot is because a lot of people aren't lifters. And then also let's talk about how, you know, because you didn't own a business before that, right?

That was just, okay, I'm going to create this invention. So let's talk about that. Because a lot of people, they're like, oh, I have this idea, but they don't know how to do it. You know what I mean? I'll tell you, you know, just before I dive into some of the beginning stages of that, the hardest thing of all this has been being somebody who has some creativity and being somebody who is an inventor of three United States patents. Inventing something and owning a business are not related to each other. Right.

It's not like they. You just invent this thing and all of a sudden millions of dollars come. come yeah it's not like they really don't have any correlation at all exactly um although you know being the inventor of the product i might have some insight on how to market it maybe differently than somebody else but that's about it right uh i'm not going to know how to like manage a warehouse or or have um employees or i don't know anything any of that so all this was very foreign to me the slingshot started out by me getting injured in the gym multiple times I tore my pec three times the slingshot is a supportive upper body device I created to allow me to get like through and around a lot of these injuries that i was facing every time i tried to increase

my bench strength i'd end up just tweaking my pec i must have tweaked it 15 different times i did the same thing and had about three tears yeah i was like what is going on so then i started learning more about the body i started learning more about okay like dude this is kind of dumb like you're working the front of your body a lot you're not working the back of your body You're not ever stretching and the muscles in the front are getting tight and they're pulling you forward and this and that. So I worked on a bunch of different things at the time. I was trying to do anything and everything I possibly could to get stronger and to figure out what was standing in my way of getting better. And so I was in the gym one day by myself and I threw on a bench shirt. Well, a bench shirt is a powerlifting device that allows you to handle a lot more weight

than you can normally bench press. Originally, the bench shirt was designed with similar intentions to a slingshot, where it's supposed to simply be supportive enough to get you out of pain. But then over the years, as competition got greater, they made these bench shirts insane. They made them really tight and really crazy, and they allow you to lift 100 pounds 200 pounds over your best so I'm wearing this big bench shirt in the gym one day and I just I'm just coming off a torn pec and I was like oh let me just let me just try like 135 you know even though I shouldn't be touching anything because I I have it wasn't a full pec

tear but i'm injured you know and so i try 135 while wearing this like large bench shirt and i was like i was like man that worked i was actually able to do it and i didn't experience any pain and so i just kind of sat there for a little bit and i was kind of looking at this bench shirt i'm like well this thing's fucking ugly and And pain in the ass, too. Yeah, no one in their right mind would ever buy one of these to, like, just work out. Right. I'm like, how do I create something that you could just, like, work out in?

It's a little bit more casual. That looks a lot cooler. That is easy to put on and comfortable. Like, the bench shirt's really uncomfortable. It takes multiple people to get them on. You can't even really normally train in a full range of motion unless you have like 110 of your max on yeah you guys have to realize it's like put a straight jacket yeah put on your your fucking little brother's shirt but it's made out of like super stretchy material that like has the ability to make you not be

able to move unless you're under tensions yeah in some cases it would be made out of, uh, uh, denim. Some, some cases you're made out of like what your jeans are made out of. It'd be really just a super powerful material. And I knew that that wasn't going to be the ticket. And then plus those things were very expensive and just unattractive looking and X, Y, and Z. And so I started playing around with a bunch of different ideas on things that I thought would work really well. And I was putting my shirt on one day and as I was putting my shirt on, I put the shirt over both arms before I put the shirt over my head. And I was just kind of sitting there and I was shoving my elbows back with this shirt kind of crossing over my chest.

And I was like, oh shit, I'm like, that would, that would be it. Something that supports your elbows. And I started thinking like, where do you spot somebody when they do like inclined dumbbell bench, boom, right on the elbows. And then I started thinking about it more and I'm like, that really makes a lot of sense. Cause the only thing that really travels anywhere when you're bench pressing is your elbows, everything else is just kind of sitting there. Right. So I started playing around with a bunch of of different ideas all of them were pretty terrible i was uh i i bought like really tight under armor shirts and tried to put them just over my arms and see what that would do none of that was really resulting in in anything i kicked the idea around

to some different companies um that were popular at the time in powerlifting and in the fitness space. And they're like, sounds like a horrible idea. We don't know what you're talking about. So that happened several times. I'm talking about talking yourself out of something. That negativity talked me right out of like moving forward. I was like, you know what? Like that's like the third person in a row that told me that's a fucking bad idea so maybe like maybe it's a shit idea you know then i have this

conversation with my with my dad and my dad my dad's amazing i think every time he talks there should be like a little bit of music should hit behind him because everything he says like this epic speech solid gold yeah and he's like hey he's like you know did you know that this guy tried to do this this many times and uh heinz ketchup it's got the 57 on it's like this because they're 57 thing uh the model t ford it's that it's t it's from the the alphabet they had a b c d all the way to t and then the model t is famous forever right the ford company and everything so he's giving me like some positive reinforcement. I'm like, oh man, I just don't, what am I going to do? Like make it myself?

I'm like, I don't know. Like that's making me, how am I going to make something myself? I don't have a business or to understand any of that. I don't know what any of that means. Let me fast forward about a year of this idea, just kind of dying and just kind of sitting around a little bit. And I still was thinking about it constantly, but I just didn't know what to really do with it. And my oldest brother, Mike, who some of you may have seen in Bigger, Stronger, Faster, he passed away.

He was bipolar, drug addicted, kind of the whole nine yards. Very similar story to many of the people listening to this that probably have a relative or friend who's gone through something similar anyway when he died that made an impact on me like you know what dude like who gives a fuck what people like don't be so tied up with what people think or other or or concerns that even i have myself just go try it like just what's the worst thing that can happen? Just go do it. You know, my brother's fucking dead. He loved working out. He loved training.

He's the one who showed me how to work out. And I'm like, I kind of like, I owe it to him to figure this fucking thing out. And my goal and my mission is to make the world a better place to lift. And I better fucking get going right now. I went to sleep that night and it was maybe a night or day or two had passed since he died and uh it was craziest dream

i don't believe in like uh in aliens and like weird shit or anything or ghosts or anything like that um but i swear it felt like somebody was right in my fucking ear, and it just said, think, and I woke up with chills, I was like, I didn't, I felt sick, I don't know what the fuck was going on, I was just terrified, but it made me think, and then, so I started from that day on, I was like, I need to fucking figure this thing out myself, I need to get going on this project right away, and so that was just kind of start of it i started playing around with different materials um i uh had a wrist wrap that i that i held together in the middle um my or my dad was holding it together in the middle and i wrapped it around both arms we like rigged up this

piece of shit looking thing and i go to pull my arms back and my dad's standing in front of me and the the velcro pops off of it and it hits him in the face he's like well shit that ain't gonna work and i was like no you know what though that was the feel that was that's the way it should be that's that's the way it needs to be and so need a velcro spotter yeah yeah yeah you need someone to kind of protect you when you're wearing a damn thing right so once i once i kind of had the overall concept down now it's a matter of like getting material so i was like okay if it's made out of like a wrist wrap or knee wrap that would be the consistency i'm looking for and i played around with a few different things and i found a material that i really liked and i was like just like sewn together you know two knee

wraps sewn together and then yeah that I think that would work really well so I met with my wife's friend my wife's a swimmer and uh she swam for the University of Kansas and and still swims today in a master's program and one of her swim friends uh made swimsuits for a lot of a lot of their friends uh out of like this lycra material. And my wife was like, I think that she would maybe be able to sew this thing together for you. And so I met her out of Starbucks, right like within 50 to 75 feet of that Starbucks was a Fitness 19 gym. And so when I met her, I met her at Starbucks one day, told her the design, told her what I was looking for. She's like, yeah, I can do that.

I was like, it's got to be strong, you know. So she's like, I'll just use strong thread. It shouldn't be a problem. So met her like the next week. She had a couple prototypes done. I walked in that Fitness 19 the way I walk into every single gym like I own the goddamn place. Because that's the way you get through the front door without ever paying. Because I'm a cheap bastard. I'm never going to pay in be like hey is bob here like pretend that you you know someone there i can walk right to the bench

and uh throw the slingshot on and try to bench 135 with it i just started repping it out like it was nothing and i got up off the bench and just head to toe, uh, goosebumps. I'm like, this is fucking it. I'm like, this is going to be, this is going to be a fucking big idea. So I went back to my wife's friend and said, Hey, I need you to make like a handful of these. Cause I got to test this shit out in the gym. And there was a matter of like finding manufacturing and stuff from there. And it took, you know, a little trial and error. Uh, the first batch that we had sucked and uh for some reason had some crazy smell to it because of the dye that they used and so my wife and i tried to we tried to wash them at home and and get some of that dye out and it actually ended up breaking

our fucking washer which is the last thing we need because we were we were already broke and we had the possibility of losing our house at the time and so it was a big investment to eat to try to get the damn thing going but that's kind of how the product came to be and then I ended up having some fortune which I'm sure you had a little stroke of fortune here or there along the way that were kind of pivot points for you and this was really something that was awesome. I had two friends that were going to throw in a little bit of money. One friend backed out. Then my dad stepped in. He's like, yeah, I, you know, I'll try to help. So my dad was going to throw in a little bit of money for this first order. And then I had another friend on the hook for it too. And like last

minute he backed out. And so we thought that we would get you know get the money out uh to the manufacturer we thought that we just had to give them like half the money then they would send the product and we give them the other half we had like a misunderstanding uh they wanted half and then before they shipped them they wanted the other half we're just learning the ropes we didn't know what the hell right right so uh now we're on the hook we need the money within a couple days because uh these people manufactured this product for us they're waiting for the other half of their money and i start to think of my friends and as i was mentioning earlier like i don't really like to ask people for stuff so this was a huge deal right to ask

somebody for something but i had a really good friend. His name is John Hennigan. He used to be a professional wrestler, used to be on WWE. Now he's working on directing and writing some of his own feature films and stuff like that. And so, you know, I call him up and he and I became pretty good friends while I was in OVW, which is a professional wrestling training ground for the WWE. And I was telling him, I was like, Hey man, I was like, remember that idea I was telling you about that product that I had, I was telling you about that slingshot thing. Remember all that? And he goes, yeah, yeah. He's like, he's like, how's that going? I said, well, I said, I made him. I said, the problem is I was like, I was like, I need some money. And he's like, he's like, what do you need?

And I was like, well, kind of a lot. He's like, just, he's like, just tell me, I don't care. What is it? I was like 25 grand. And he's like, he'll be at your front door, front door tomorrow morning. He overnighted a check for fucking 25 grand. Oh shit. Just that one shot of fucking generosity. Yeah. I mean launched our family into something that's been super beneficial and amazing for us forever. Yeah. And, you know, I'm still thankful to him to this very day.

You know, I remember I had the conversation with him. I was like, dude, I'm going to pay you back. And like, like I can because I was so I was so into the product. I thought for sure that these things were going to like fly off the shelves like hotcakes and that we were going to make all our money back right away. And I was like, I'll pay you back in six months. He's like, you know what? I kind of have a feeling that it's going to take you longer than six months just to pay it back. And we ended up paying him back.

We did end up selling all the product that we ordered. My prediction was that we'd be able to do it in a year. And it took us about 14 months. So we were able to fly through a product that people at the time didn't even know existed. Didn't know existed and didn't know they needed. Right. So when I look back on it now, I'm like, man, I was really. You're creating a market.

Yeah. That's a lot different than launching a product for a market that exists. Yeah. Protein powder. Oh, yeah. I'm familiar with protein powder. Oh, this one tastes better than that one. I'm going to buy that one.

Right. But the first guy that created protein powder had his fucking work cut out for him right you know you're creating a you're creating an entire market which involves education process it doesn't involve just selling some shit yeah so you know when you take 14 months you're listening to this realize that how extremely fast that is for what they had to do. Yeah. I think it was about, Andy, it was about 5,000, right?

4,000 slingshots, something like that. Yeah. About 5,000 slingshots or something like that. Fuck, now you see them everywhere. Yeah. Dude, I can't even see. I mean, I don't know how many of you guys have sold, but like, dude, it's changed the way people train.

I think we've sold about half a million of them. Yeah. Yeah. Somewhere in that range. That's crazy. So it's safe to say this was overnight success've sold about half a million of them. Yeah. Yeah, somewhere in that range. That's crazy. So it's safe to say this was overnight success, right? Yeah, absolutely. Yeah.

Yeah, I mean, all you have to do to invent a product and to be wealthy is just tear your peck a couple times. Yeah, no shit. Put 600 pounds in the bar and I'm sure that'll be... I've torn mine a couple times, bro. Yes. That ain't no joke. And then, I mean, pretty much from there, it's just a matter of creating products around

the brand. And then I didn't know pretty much from there, it's just a matter of creating products around the brand. And then I didn't know. So is that what you're doing now? Are you doing line extension products? So you have the Slingshot product. And then what else are you working on? Yeah, so we're working on other variations of Slingshot. We're working on a, we call it Slingshot Sport, which is more designed for push-ups,

like specifically to help people that really struggle with push-ups yeah to hit a little bit more of that general fitness crowd that's a great idea yeah the slingshot itself works great for dips and it works great for push-ups but we wanted to create something that still sometimes a slingshot when it comes to something like a push-up uh i still see some women struggle there's a huge huge market for that exists in crossfit world too you know people who are who are having to scale their workouts because they can't do push-ups right right yeah that's a great idea so we made we made a bunch of offshoot products like that that are more of like a sport line the things are a little bit more passive when i originally made the slingshot i didn't really realize that

i didn't have an understanding. You were kind of mentioning earlier, like, you don't understand sometimes when someone's lazy. Sometimes I don't have a comprehension of what strong or weak is because I'm around some nasty motherfuckers. All day. That's right. So, like, I kind of lost my perception of. Right. Oh, you bench four plates?

That ain't shit. Yeah, that's cute. Right. Exactly. Pat on the back. Right. Where you go to any other gym, the dude who's benching four plates that ain't shit yeah that's cute you know right exactly on the back right where you go to any other gym the dude who's benching four plates is the strongest motherfucker in there yeah people are all excited yeah and so for me i didn't really realize that that first slingshot that we made was going to be a little bit too strong for a lot of people yeah the assistance that you gave that it gave you uh was almost ended up being like a

too stiff of a resistance for them to keep their form on the way down. So I had to go back and make one that was more flexible. Right, right. So that's when I made the reactive slingshot. And then we were also having an audience chiming in. You probably get this all the time. Oh, it'd be cool if you made this. And if it makes sense, sometimes you do, right?

Yeah. It's always good to listen to your customers, but sometimes you got to know what to not listen customers always wrong yeah that's the saying right and then so we had a lot of stronger power lifters like oh man make a double ply version so then we made a mad dog one and that pays homage to my oldest brother mike who passed away and then we made uh another one named after my brother chris who's still alive um called the full bore slingshot so now we have four different types of slingshots and now now we're adding a fifth addition to that we make uh knee sleeves we make a product called the hip circle and hip circle is basically just uh just what it sounds like it's a circle that goes up over your knees and i've been really proud of that product because it's just something that's so simple yeah and see that everywhere too man yeah i know a lot of people have been using like bands and stuff for years but

i feel that we created a better product a little stronger we have some variations of that product coming out and i think it was about a year ago or maybe two years ago now uh and speaking to rogue fitness they're one of our vendors and i said hey you know that hip circle man that thing sells really really well on the site i was like oh that's cool because again i'm not a numbers guy so i'm unaware of like what sells where i don't know what's going on i'm just paying attention to yeah making cool shit pretty much and uh i was like oh that's cool he's like no no like it's selling really really well and i was like all right cool guys like no no it's it's it's a number one selling product that we have i was like oh like you mean like out of slingshot stuff that's that's

cool they're like no no it's the number one selling thing we have on the entire fucking site and i was like oh okay that's awesome yeah i was like that's that's pretty fucking dude i think i'll take that pat on the back you know what You know what I mean? Dude, the products that you guys have put out have revolutionized the way people train too, which is really cool. Yeah. You know, I mean, the business side is cool, but it's always, I think, personally way cooler to see the difference you're making. Thank you. I appreciate that. Yeah.

You know what I'm saying? Yeah. And I think if more people – I think something that you're saying there is extremely valuable. You're making a joke about not being a numbers guy. And that's such a huge advantage that people don't realize because a lot of people, they don't focus on the customer.

They don't focus on the difference they can make. Like for us, in our industry, which you're familiar with, most people are trying to make the cheapest shit and sell it for the most expensive price. And they're doing it for themselves. They don't have the customer's best interests in mind. And we take the opposite effect.

We make the best shit and we price it where it should be. And if you can afford to buy it, you can. If you can't, I understand. But I'm not going to go to sleep at night knowing that we make shitty stuff. And the point of it is, the reward of seeing people go out and lose 70, 80, 90 pounds or gain 30 pounds. I've had so many people tell me they lost all kinds of weight. Dude.

That's the best feeling ever. Exactly. And I was going to transition into something that I want to talk about next. Even though this is going to be a longer podcast, I think it's all valuable shit. We're going to go for four hours, motherfuckers. Be one of those Joe Rogan styles. That's right.

But dude, you've recently made a huge transformation yourself. Yeah. You know, where did you start and where are you now and how did you do it and what made you do it? My wife told me that she's going to leave me unless I lost a lot of weight. She said I wasn't looking so handsome anymore. So nothing like that.

Actually, she she doesn't mind when I had a little extra fluff. I think she maybe she preferred it. I don't know. Maybe she's a chubby chaser. But basically, you know, a lot of the stuff I did was was purposeful. It was for a reason. Like I was big and heavy for power lifting and to be able to handle the amount now sometimes sometimes we justify things and we go a little too deep into

stuff you know so for me that was definitely the case uh i took way too much uh peds i uh gained way too much weight uh i was just kind of excessive with everything but i was trying to just i was trying to do the best that i possibly could so to me it made sense right i made it all make sense right um i fell years ago with a 1085 squat which some of you guys may have seen that video before took a pretty nasty tumble and then for about three months I was pretty fucked up. Um, my ankle was all jacked up. Both knees were all jacked up. Um, I'm just too stubborn to like even fucking go to the doctor.

I'm like, you know what? Doctor's going to tell me that I'm screwed up. Yeah. And I already know I'm screwed up. Yeah. You know, so I'm just going to,

when you're in that situation, you're telling you you're fat. He's going to tell you you're unhealthy. He's going to tell you you're right. You need to quit using your PDs. Right you're gonna fucking die tomorrow right you know yeah and so i'm just like ah fuck all that i'm just gonna see how i see how every day goes right i'm a day-to-day person so it fits with my mentality so i just kind of see how i was doing day-to-day i remember there was one uh case where i was so jacked up that I went from our recliner to our couch because I couldn't go upstairs to our bedroom.

And our couch has like a fold out bed. So my wife, she did, you know, she got the bed ready for me or whatever. It took me it took me 45 minutes to go from our our recliner to our pull out couch, which is probably, it's like a workout itself. It's probably like, it's probably not much further than the distance of this room. It took me forever to try to get up out of the thing and to try to figure out how to kind of crawl into the bed and,

and then like, you know, getting up. So you were really fucking hurt. I was really jacked up. Legs were really, really swollen and stuff. And so that gave

me time to kind of like reflect and kind of look and say all right you know what dude like maybe maybe you didn't reach every single thing you wanted to do but i i did set out to squat a thousand pounds i did set out to bench 800 pounds that's fucking insane i did set out to deadlift 800 pounds but i never did deadlift 800 pounds so that's kind of like the one thing that I didn't get a chance to do. Those numbers, by the way, are equipped. That's with powerlifting equipment on that assists you in a lift just so people aren't so confused by the numbers. Still insane. Yeah.

And it was a lot of fun. I'm like, I did all the things I wanted to do. I got out of powerlifting what I wanted to get out of it. And I feel good about it. I know enough about it to teach it to other people and stuff like that and so I was like I just need to fucking move on yeah and so at that point I started to lose weight got in better shape now just like any other retired athlete you can't really stay retired and so about a year or two goes by maybe about two years goes by i'm in pretty good shape and stuff but i'm starting to get a little bit bigger again i go to bench press and i bench 535 in the gym

just on a whim like out of nowhere like the most weight i was handling in most workouts was between 400 pounds and 450 now i bench nearly 100 pounds more than that out of nowhere and smoke it and uh i was like oh man you know what like you got the bug again yeah i always wanted to bench 600 pounds raw i'm like fuck i was like i should i should you know i should try give that a give that a try so i talked to my wife about it she's like i don't think so we talk about a little bit more and i was like i'd really love to just try to i feel that i'm that strong i feel like i can do it know? So I go to make a comeback. I bench 578. I go to bench 600 pounds and there goes Peck again. And so that wasn't enough for me to leave it alone.

A hundred percent. So I go back at it one more time and she's like, Hey, this really, it's kind of like Rocky and Adrian going back and forth. Right. She's like, this really needs to be like the last time I'm like all right you know so i start preparing for a competition i go up to bodybuilding.com and did some content for them it's the strongest i've ever been and i got 505 on the bar and i'm just flying around with it now i should have known better because like it's not the normal bench i use not the normal bar i use and they got like they don't have a competition style stuff there at all. It's just regular.

These benches are thinner and stuff. And it was definitely a recipe for disaster. Right. It wasn't anything. Right. But you're out there, you're there, you're in the moment and your adrenaline is kind of going. Yeah.

Shit's going good. It's like if you guys, if you guys had a sponsorship deal with like Hussein Bolt. Right. You're not going to get Hussein Bolt to come here and run a hundred percent. Right. No matter how much fucking money you pay him. him right he does that for gold medals and that's it right right he does it on the day of competition and and for myself i should have treated myself a little bit more like professional athlete i shouldn't probably done that but i went to do 505

and uh i'm blasting it up just rep after rep like a goddamn machine it's feeling so good and i go to blast up on like the fifth rep and just i feel and i was like fuck so tore my pec again so then i go back into training again and i'm like i gotta still see like where i'm at because it wasn't really a crazy like pec tear it wasn't something that was going to keep me out for months went back into training and then my elbow started bothered me my elbow just started saying you know what you're you need to retire motherfucker like you're done yeah and i'm i kept trying to resist it i got into a training session one day where i was doing 485 for uh like three or four sets of five reps or so and my pain level was a nine and i'm like this this is the definition of being fucking stupid right here this does not make any sense i'm compromising my own life and my own

health like who knows what could happen right like my arm could my tricep could blow out and the weight could land right on my fucking face right you'd be dead and there's nothing any like you can't spot that that fast you know what i mean so like this is just this is not this is this is not a good way of doing right and and i was pissed yeah i was fucking pissed when i went and worked out i was mad because i was in so much pain kind of like you know older person they get arthritis and these different things and they kind of become grumpy because they're in pain i was in tremendous amounts of pain i wasn't uh fun to be around the gym that's for sure. And I was like, this is not why I do this stuff.

I do this stuff because I want to have fun. Right. And now I'm miserable. Right. So what I share with people a lot of times is like, be careful what you wish for. You want to be great. Well, being great can be maddening

and it can turn you into a fucking psychopath sometimes. Dude, I told you when we were in a warehouse, when I was telling you that story, And it can turn you into a fucking psychopath sometimes. Dude. You've got to be a little cautious with it. I told you when we were in a warehouse when I was telling you that story. Yeah. I mean, dude, I definitely have my fucking psychopath moment. Sometimes it costs me. Yeah. That's my biggest weakness as a person.

Yeah. You know what I mean? I totally get it. So passionate about it. Yeah. Right. So from that point, that was really it. And I was like, you know what?

I need to make a change and so from the time i was uh in high school i've played around with ketogenic style diets basically just a high fat diet uh low carbs um moderate amounts of protein for me i i probably take a little bit more protein than most because most of the people that are talk about the ketogenic diet they're usually pretty uh skinny They don't usually look like a whole lot. A lot of times it's coming from doctors and stuff. They're generally not athletes. Yeah, they're generally not athletes.

Anyway, I use that style of diet to drop about 60 pounds. And then, you know, more recently you've seen a lot of my Instagram. I'm helping a lot of people lose weight. I'm trying to have an impact on people's day. Like, let's get you to eat a little bit better you don't have to necessarily necessarily do the diet that i do but there's some easy steps that you can take towards getting in better shape number one is and i think this is the easiest thing to incorporate i'll just give you a couple things to incorporate number one is like just start to

drink more water dude you know just drink more water um this is going to be you know some people might not understand this part of it but if you are exercising then add some salt you know add some salt to your diet there's more and more evidence that salt will actually help you lose weight not only will help you help you lose water weight which sounds opposite of what it does, but it can also help burn fat. There's a lot of information coming out about that right now. So add some water, add some salt, get to bed. It's not about how cool you are about when you wake up.

It's about getting to bed early. That's my biggest fucking entrepreneur. Oh, I wake up at 5. It's like, well, that's cool if you do and that's your style, whatever. It doesn't matter. You've got to get your ass to bed so that you can get the rest that you need doesn't matter how much you sleep matters how much you get done while you're awake right 100 100 i think a lot of people in terms of their health though they should start be at least thinking about bed at 9 p.m every

fucking night and if if that's something where you're like way off you're going to bed 11 or 12 i just think that our body is i don't know i can't like way off, you're going to bed at 11 or 12, I just think that our body is, I don't know, I can't tell you about when we're designed to wake up. I don't really know. Probably when the sun comes up. Right.

But I do know that for me, it's helped me health-wise, helped me so many different ways. So were you having apnea and shit when you were big? Oh, yeah, terrible. I was too. Getting to bed between nine and 10 has helped me a lot. My wife likes to go to than i yeah than i like to she does a lot more shit in one day than i do so she's tired when when time comes but just getting to bed a little bit earlier i think will help a lot

of people um and then the last thing and probably the easiest thing is is go for a walk i can throw in some walking try to walk i mean dude try try to walk once a day for 10 minutes. And that's such a good point. Like everybody, and you know, both of us do different versions of HIIT cardio and things that are intense and hard.

And I think people who are overweight and have, you know, a lot of progress to make, they see that as like an intimidating thing. Like we post those videos because like, dude, that shit's hard and we're like proud of it, right? Right. And we're like, look how hard we're working. It's sort of like an intimidating thing. Like we, we, we post those videos cause like, dude, that shit's hard and we're like proud of it. Right.

Right. And we're like, Oh look how hard we're working. It's sort of like an ego thing. It might scare off other people. Exactly. And like, dude,

you don't have to do it that way. Like you guys know I've lost 70 pounds and fuck, I've lost almost all of it walking. Like I didn't go out and fucking running. I'm not fucking running. Like people were like, dude, you're drenched in sweat.

Are you running those Hills? I'm like, fuck no, I'm not running. like people like dude you're drenched in sweat are you running those hills i'm like fuck no i'm not running i'm walking motherfucker yeah you know that's a great that's a great uh note though for a lot of people that are heavier yeah don't run you should like don't fucking hurt yourself and then you'll be that much further behind you'll be too upset right walk and if you can lose some weight and you can get enough momentum to where you think you can run then yeah and if that's what you want to do you don't have to do it to lose weight right you know walking will take the weight off you just do it consistently yeah you do something interesting too about that you do and we talked about this a little bit through text but this is really cool and i always had this idea and this is a little bit off the topic of entrepreneurship but fuck

it you're here we'll talk about it so when i was back when i had only uh one store and chris and i were basically living in the store yeah this is after we were actually living in the store we were basically living there at this point i had an exercise bike and i always felt like doing like 20 minutes three times a day will be much more effective than doing 60 minutes at once because of the disruption that it had on your metabolism. And you do something similar and, and you do multiple walks throughout the day. And is that why you started doing that? Is that thinking or? Yeah, there's just, you know, like I, I'm, uh, I can't keep up with all the different information that comes out all the

time but i used to but i have friends that do you know and i have friends that are up on the latest whatever you know and stan efferding is the one who turned me on to it and he he basically just said they're starting to see that uh walking you know several times a day broken up into at least about 10 minutes uh has a significant impact on your A1C, which is, I could be saying that wrong. I'm not a technical person, basically your ability to, uh, deal with carbohydrates and blood sugar in your, in your system and stuff like that. And so he's like, I think it'd be great. It'd be great for you to start to do that. Cause when you get heavier, uh, it's one of the first things that gets messed up. And so I was like,

all right, well, let me, uh, let me start implementing it. And I started to implement it. Uh, I feel like I've lost weight. I feel like in some weird, crazy way, it's helped with the conditioning a little bit, even though it doesn't sound like it would be much when you get walking. I mean, sometimes I walk kind of lazy. I'll admit I'll be some sometimes pretty slow, but you get a brisk walk going. It can be really great for you. And I think that a lot of people in fitness, they lose sight of the conditioning side of things. Yeah. You don't really understand.

I know you've been around it. Most people don't really comprehend how in shape a high level bodybuilder is. When they train, they're hard to keep up with. Well, no, I mean like on. Oh, yeah, yeah. But conditioning wise. Yeah. Well, no, I mean like on – Oh, yeah, yeah. But conditioning-wise. No, on a conditioning workout. But like I'm just saying like even just getting –

like the amount of stuff that some of those guys can get done in the gym, like when it comes to, say, doing 12 sets of back. Oh, yeah. They can go through that shit like a savage. Right. A lot of the guys that aren't smart enough, that aren't smart enough to understand how they can accumulate more muscle mass by being in better shape are are kind of the more bodybuilders that aren't winning you know those are the guys that aren't that aren't collecting

trophies at the end of the day because the the faster that you can recover from one set to the next is also the same ability that it takes to recover from one workout to the next right and so by incorporating any forms of duration or any forms of conditioning even something like a 10 minute walk can start to assist your body in being able to recover all the things that you always do for yourself will always impact you a lot more than things you have done to yourself right so yeah you can go get a massage and work out the king side of your legs but you'd be better off getting on the bike and doing 20 minutes right right right that kind of stuff yeah and dude and i mean if you go look at pictures of of you when you were big and pictures of you now i mean you look like a fucking savage now dude yeah you look awesome man thank you yeah i've been inspiring i've been really working hard at it and uh you know the

next the next thing i'm i'm working on on is really diving into the keto diet even a little bit harder. Because I did the keto diet for a while. And then for some photo shoots, just to kind of look a little fuller, I brought some carbohydrates back in. I'm not a person that believes carbohydrates are bad by any means. They have their function and they are the most functional energy source that we have. There's no question. I mean, there's too much evidence pointing towards that. But the keto style diet for me has helped me just in a lot of ways.

Maybe I have some ADHD or something, some shit like that. And I feel like I'm a little bit more creative. I feel like I work a little bit better. I feel like I'm just like a little bit sharper. do you feel, do you feel like when you do the keto, do you, you're not like pissing on sticks and shit? No, so I don't.

Or do you just kind of avoid carbs? So because I'm writing a book called The War on Carbs, I'm going to dive into doing some of that stuff. Right. Just so I have a little bit better knowledge base of it. I don't want to speak poorly about things that I've never tried. Right. So I'm going to at least experiment with some of that. But I don't count calories. I don't want to speak poorly about things that i've never tried right so i'm gonna at least experiment with some of that but i don't count calories i don't pee on sticks i don't prick my finger right um i don't do any of that i i and i just you know i'll stick butter in my coffee

and coconut oil and these different things and i i cook stuff in some oil um some different things like that but the thing that i love the most about the ketogenic diet is how flexible it can be with your lifestyle. I'm no longer like a slave to food. Right. Like these six meals a day and this bodybuilding style thing. Which they're fighting more and more is bullshit anyway. Yeah, it's such a pain in the ass to try to keep up with that amount of protein and that amount of food throughout the day and so for me it's like i eat three or four times a day i have a protein shake once or twice a day and then i'm i'm done that's that's that's kind of all i needed and

of course i um you know i go off the diet yeah just like anybody else i'll eat throw down some pizza and stuff how often you do that um it just kind of depends on like where i'm at like right now i'm kind of in a mode of like let me get through about three weeks of being pretty strict once those three or four weeks are up then i'll probably you know uh start to mix in more cheat meals and things like that but but like life happens you know don't don't allow don't allow your life and what's going on in other people's lives to overrun uh your goals but at the same time someone's birthday have a fucking piece of cake right exactly you know what i mean like um if it's meaningful to you like if if that if the company you have or whatever is meaningful dude it's about creating sustainability right and and

your ability to adhere to a program over the long haul you know like for me my i started like two january 1st 2016 i was 330 pounds like 331 nice yeah and now i'm like mid 260s that's big yeah i need to be like in where you are like we about 240 yeah about 245 yeah i need to be in the 40 to 50 range right but um but i mean i've been able to stay in the 60s for a year right which is a victory for me because usually dude like i'm all in or all the fuck off yeah you know and like i've i've created a sustainable lifestyle now that allows me to maintain and i know that if i just grind my ass off to get to 245, I can live how I'm living now at 245. You get what I'm saying? Yeah, yeah.

So I've got a good lifestyle now. Now I just need to dedicate myself for another 10 or 12 weeks and just get down to that next level and stay there. But, you know... I think, you know, as you become more successful and you earn more money than going out to eat and having a steak that costs $100 and these different things, it's not as hard. It doesn't have as big of an impact on your wallet. And so going out and drinking and enjoying some really great food and desserts. It can happen real easy.

Yeah. And you see it a lot you know people they get they get like happy and and and wealthy and fat and yeah it's uh it's totally understandable because but you're not but you're not fucking happy but what a cool thing to be like i'm not gonna be like those other i don't need that fucking piece like when i when i sit down at know, to eat and stuff and I watch other people kind of engorging themselves and food and stuff. I'm like, I, that's fine for them, but I'm so happy that I'm not falling into that pit.

You're in control, right? Dude, I take a lot of pride. This is a weird thing to talk about too, but it kind of goes along with what you're saying. You know, I'm 38 and I look around at other dudes that are 38 and they're fucking like,

they look like to me, like they look like they're fucking 50. Yeah. And I'm like, bro, like I'll see somebody I haven't seen in 15 years. I'm like, bro,

what happened to you? And they're like, I don't say that, but I'm thinking, right. And I can tell they're not happy. Cause dude, the first thing they start doing is like justifying themselves.

They're like, cause I, you know, I'm in pretty good shape right now yeah and they're they're like fuck dude you look great and i'm always like thank you thank you they're like yeah you know i got these kids you can't say anything back to them right and they're starting to like justify themselves i'm like bro you know if you're that unhappy let's fucking do something yeah you know what i mean changes right and that aging that way you look the way you feel you you you don't understand how much reversal process that can have yeah on on the way just eating right i've had people uh right on my instagram they're like you look 25 years younger i don't know how

old they thought i looked before but well see i recently i didn't really follow you until you were in shape and so like when i went and saw pictures of you before when you were i was like fuck you don't even look like the same dude yeah you know legitimately you don't even look like the same person i mean i could tell in the face but yeah barely and it's it's amazing dude you know and it's inspiring and i just think it's really cool to be able to be fluid and transition because you see so many guys get stuck in a certain area like bodybuilding or powerlifting or crossfit and they never transition from into something new right you know what i mean it's cool it's reinventing yourself yeah and for me i just kind of think why not just why not be strong in all areas of your life you know it's again i i'm i'm not going to try to talk people into doing something so radically different from what they're currently doing,

but everyone can go for a walk. Yeah. You know, everyone can start to eat a little bit better, whatever that means for you. You don't have to like not eat carbs, but the ketogenic style diet to me is the only diet that corrects really bad habits.

And I've kind of referred to it before as the fat guy diet because with heavier, with heavier dudes man like people don't understand people don't understand what it's like to be so fucking reckless with your food like yeah I can I can knock out a box of oreos or just fucking kill tons of Ben and Jerry you know I mean like a lot of people don't I eat a whole fucking a lot of times in the fitness industry it's skinny people preaching to more skinny people yeah it's like well or genetically gifted people yeah pretending like you've never really built this shit yeah right

or or you see it all the time with the with the females uh a lot of times on instagram they'll post a picture that maybe isn't their best picture and like oh i don't mind being a little overweight and you're like you're in great shape that's like an embarrassment to people that are struggling out there like dude they have real life it's hurtful it's like an embarrassment to people that are struggling out there. Dude, dude. They have real life struggle. It's like hurtful. Like people. It's like, oh, you're 150 as opposed to 140 or whatever the weight is. You're like, that's not a big deal.

Right. Fuck. Dude, I, that shit drives me crazy because it's really. Like I want to be transparent. It's really discouraging to people who are, who have an issue for real. You know what I mean? And myself and my family like there's been a lot of obesity so i look at that i'm like man like that person's never been truly

like fat so they don't really get it dude i would listen to someone in nutrition a million percent more who has been extremely overweight and built something right out of it versus someone who looks the same way at 16 as they do at 26 36 yeah because they're genetically gifted there is a such thing as genetically gifted physiques oh yeah for sure you know what i mean and it it's just crazy to me how many people use like their genetically gifted physique to then act like they know everything so they can fucking take money from people and they show people how to make abs and all the fuck out of here. You've had abs since you were fucking four, dude.

Right. I haven't had abs once my whole life. I got like fat dude abs. I'm like, look at this shit. I'm fucking ripped. You get a little shadow going. Yeah, that's right. I stand under the light the right way.

And I'm like, fuck, you look pretty good today. I'd probably do you if I had six beers. You know what I'm saying? Like, dude, it's it's a it's, it's just a fucked up industry, man. Yeah. And I always respect you keeping it real and the realness that you do because it's the truth. Just trying to give people something that's sustainable.

You know, here's the thing about keto. That's what I was going to say when I said I agree with that. I do agree that keto is a sustainable, it fixes bad habits, like you said. The issue with keto that people have is whenever they do it and it's not a lifetime lifestyle. Right. Because it doesn't teach people how to eat the other way. Right.

So like a lot of people will lose 50 pounds on keto. Right. And then they go back to eating the way they ate before and they eat like a fucking animal and they haven't gained any habits. And then what happens? They blow up right so you have to be conscious that if you're going to go down a path of you know a lifestyle you got to think of it as a lifestyle right you know what i mean i recommend some intermittent fasting for people like dude that shit works there's you know when you when you were when you were younger and you were you know sleeping in the back of the supplement store

right you were hungry like maybe not physically hungry but you were hungry to get better you were you know sleeping in the back of the supplement store right you were hungry like maybe not physically hungry but you were hungry to get better you were hungry to do more and there's something magical about being hungry like there's not really magic to the ketogenic style diet there's not really magic to intermittent fasting but there is a lot of magic there's endless amounts of magic and discipline oh if you can discipline yourself where you're like you know what i'm not gonna eat till fucking 4 p.m meanwhile you see everybody else eating all day long yeah and by by 1 p.m you're fucking struggling yeah you're like wow i'm actually really fucking hungry yeah but you're not gonna die right you

know you're not gonna you're not gonna die you're probably gonna be able to meet your goals a little bit faster than than you normally would. So I just think anybody listening to this that struggles with their weight, give a ketogenic-style diet a chance. Try it out for like a month. And don't count your calories. Don't really worry too much about any of that. Don't over-engorge yourself either. Don't get overly wrapped up in the details.

The other thing about keto style. There's so much micro stuff. Because I do like a modified keto diet as well. Like I't i don't go straight keto like i'll fucking rotate my keto and ice cream he calls it yeah right right i do keto for my first five meals my sixth meal is not but uh i'll do like a rotation like i'll do three days low carb one day traditional type diet you know i don't go crazy but something that's fitting yeah right what you can do and um and like dude what i do is i do like monday tuesday wednesday low carb wednesday night i have a carb meal one meal and it was not like shit meal it's just meal carbs right like what

i like to do is breakfast burritos oh yeah sounds so good right so then then thursday friday saturday i go back to low carb and then sunday i I have a full carb day with a cheap meal. And dude, it allows me to chill on Sundays and hang out and just have a day of hanging out with Emily or whoever I'm hanging out with. Eat normal fucking food. And dude, I lost 70 pounds that way. You know what I mean? It's about finding sustainability that you can live with. And if you didn't make any progress, maybe you would chop something out exactly i mean you'd be like right now i'm

to the point now where it's not that same thing is i'm not seeing the same results so i've got to make an adjustment yeah you know kick it up a notch right i'm gonna have to that sunday is gonna have to i'm gonna have to cut one less beer no it's gonna be i'm gonna have to cut out the beer that's a problem because sunday in uh in business you know i have some friends that kind of have just started a business you know or some friends that even had had a business for a little bit and i i kind of think to myself like oh shit like you're just getting started right now and sometimes when you when you lose a bunch of weight you think oh things will get easier but well they don't really get easier they get like harder but you develop discipline you

develop discipline to make it easier right um even even train even like lifting you know if you if you develop the ability to start to squat like 500 pounds yeah um it just take your workouts just take longer yeah they're not shorter they're longer because somebody else might have been able to get in and do three sets of 10 with 135 well Well, you got to do three sets of 10 with 405. So it takes you that much longer to warm up to it. Right. Odds are your muscles are tight. You got to stretch and prepare and all these other things need 10 pre-workouts.

Right. Before you start your workout, like you need to be all fired up for it. Yeah. And so things, you know, they have a tendency to get a little bit more difficult, but that's when you really just buckle down. You know, you put your fucking chin strap on and get ready for it. Get ready for what's next.

And take a lot of pride in knocking down those hurdles, those things that are in your way. Dude, in the discipline building, you know what I'm saying? Like, dude, I do the same thing. And that's the planner. Like, I'll show it to you once we get off the show, but it's designed so that people,

it's really what it's designed to do is for people to develop their discipline. Right. And dude, make the things that are hard today, 30 days from now, they're a habit. Right. You know what I mean? Because people always say to me.

So they're second nature. Exactly. And so people say to me all the time about business. They're like, fuck, I don't know how you do all the shit that you do. And I'm like thinking like in my head, I'm like, fuck, I really don't do that much shit. Right. And shit right and you know but they see what i do get to sit in here and fuck around for two hours yeah exactly but they see what i do from the outside and and they see it

as really hard but because i've been doing it for so long i equate it to like getting in a cold swimming pool like if you just jump right in yeah it's fucking sucks yeah but if you ease your way in you know and then eventually you don't even notice it's cold. It's just what it is. And I think that's the same way with dieting or fitness or business. Once you're conditioned to it and you've built that discipline, it's just what it is. You know? I agree. I think, you know, sometimes like even when it comes to lifting, you know, some of the most talented people i've seen in lifting they won't always realize

what they just did was spectacular right we had a kid come in the gym and he uh squatted 750 or 725 in a pair of knee sleeves for two reps weighing under 200 pounds and he's like he got done with it and he just kind of looked at us like why are you guys amazed almost like we're like that's like world record weight. Like, what the fuck's going on? Yeah. We had another guy come into the gym. This is a few years ago, and it's the first time anybody's ever,

it's kind of like Bigfoot or Loch Ness Monster. It's the first time anybody ever caught him on camera. A guy by the name of Eric Spoto, who eventually ended up breaking the all-time bench press record. And I'm warming up with the guy. And once you start to see somebody have some weight on the bar then you get an idea you know where they are strength wise even though it's just a warm-up so this guy had 315 on he's just chucking around like it's zero and then he did 405 like the same way and I'm like I have not seen that before

yeah I was like this this mutant is not from the league of mutants that i already know yeah this is a different type of dude right here yeah and so i was like dude like what do you what do you bet i mean you got a bench over 600 pounds he's like oh yeah well over 600 and i was like 700 he's like yeah i think i'm like in that range i'm like do you know the record is 710 the all-time like that's the most weight anybody's ever bench pressed on the fucking planet he's like yeah yeah someone someone was kind of telling me about that i was like well you should go break that fucking record yeah and then on that day he benched uh 635 for two reps it's unbelievable but like my point is that he's been working so hard for so many years he

accumulated all this muscle mass and all this strength and it was just normal to him right he's like oh this is just me right it's like oh you don't recognize that having 20 inch forearms is on is like yeah but dude not normal that's how fucking success happens dude people fall in love with the day-to-day work right like dude you know when people say you got to love the process or love the work or love the grind or whatever the fucking word is you got to not notice that it's work dude it's just what it is. And it's every day. And eventually you get to a point and you're like, oh, I'm fucking worth $10 million.

I didn't even fucking realize it. You know what I mean? Or I'm worth $100 million. Or whatever the fucking number is. Or you know what? Fuck, I can bench press 500 pounds. You know what I mean? Or whatever it is.

It's just, it's concentrating on winning the day and dude fitness and business are literally the exact same principles uh to be successful you can you can practice every day by hitting the gym right exactly business you you may not always get a chance to really practice that that way yeah because you might not even have a business yet right but you can practice a lot of the same principles that you need for business in the gym every single day. Well, yeah, exactly. And, but even if you don't, like, let's say there's no, you know, business gym. I mean, you could still do work every day that contributes to those skills.

You can watch YouTube videos about your subject. You can listen to podcasts. You can read. It's all about making that day count you know in that area The internet has more than just porn. Oh, yeah, it's like a lot of news news to a lot of people dude I said I you always tell that joke whenever I'm speaking and sometimes it goes over great Dude, I would get I said it at 10x. Nobody fucking laughed. There's 10,000 people in the fucking room It was like everybody's looking each other. I know every one of the motherfuckers looks at porn It's like look you guys whack at each other. I know every one of the motherfuckers looks at porn. It's like, look,

you guys whack off just as much as I do. Dude, that's what I was thinking. I'm like, I had to go save myself. I'm like, it's okay to laugh. And the guy in the front's like,

ha ha. I'm like. The one pervert in the crowd. I'm like, all right, I'll move on. The one pervert in the crowd laughs way too hard at your joke. But that's the guy

I'll drink a beer with later. That's right. Well, dude, tell people where they can find you at. Where can they tell them about your podcast and your social? Social security number? Yeah, yeah. Last thing I'll close out with is, you know, I think people just, it would really help a lot of people if they viewed things from a different perspective.

No, wait, wait, wait. I'm going to ask for your social and then we're going to close out. Okay, good. You're fucking up the show. I'm messing it up. All right, so. And you need to make to make the announcement i will i'll let you make the announcement okay because you're the announcement nerd all right all right i can do that so well i'll just i'll just get this in real quick all right i just think in general i think if you just start to replace the word uh work with opportunity that you'll end up in the position that you're talking about yeah that's a great point. Just stop thinking about it being like,

oh man, it's going to be so hard to lose weight. I love that. It's going to be so hard to make money. It's going to be so hard to, don't look at stuff as like there's a big mountain or a giant set of stairs in front of you. Just think about getting your foot on that fucking first step. Yeah.

You can find me at howmuchyoubench.net. That's where we have all our products we've got slingshot we've got knee sleeves we got everything you possibly imagine some of the strongest stuff on the market check it out at howmuchyoubench.net and then also you can find me on instagram and twitter it's at mark smelly bell and then my youtube is super training 06 and that's pretty much it. You have a podcast, right? I have a podcast called Mark Bell's PowerCast.

Cool. Check that out. It's on iTunes. We have it also on YouTube as well. Yeah. Most of these guys are obviously listening to podcasts. So you guys need to check out his podcast. It's really cool. Very entertaining.

Thank you. Appreciate it. We're going to have you on there soon. Yeah. I can't wait. I'm excited to come to the gym and train too. Yeah. You'll learn some shit.

You'll love it. I've been lifting learn some shit. You'll love it. I've been lifting my whole life, but I've never really learned. You never really lifted until you've been to super training. There you go. So I've never lifted before. That's right. You don't even lift, bro. Vaughn, what's the announcement that you wanted to make?

He's been talking about this a lot. We've been having this review contest. You send in a review. What do you get? 48 hours with Andy Frisella? How does that work? If it were up to you, that's what they would get. In the Bahamas. Yeah, exactly.

You get 20 to 30 minutes Skype with Andy. We're going to give out five if you send in the review. But as of today, you guys are going to be hearing this on Tuesday the 22nd of August. We're in the future? 2017. How'd you do that? And as of today you guys are going to be hearing this on tuesday the 22nd of august we're in the future 2017 and as of today it's too late so wow too bad for you but we are going to be announcing the winners on tuesday august 29th 2017 so make sure you listen to all of the podcasts

coming up i'm so confused. Cool, dude. Thanks so much for coming out and making the trip out here. Thank you. Thoroughly enjoy. This is, I hope everybody enjoys listening to this podcast as much as I enjoyed the conversation. So I can't wait to slide down that fucking arch tonight,

man. It'd be great. Yep. Yep. Me too. All right, bro. Thanks a lot.

Thank you. Can't wait to be on the podcast. Thanks guys. See ya. Rappado!