Mark Bell's Power Project - Power Project EP. 145 - Personal Development

Episode Date: November 27, 2018

Mark Bell is back from vacation and ready to throw some motivation your way. Today he spoke about how a lot of people counted him out before he ever got started and shared how personal development played a huge roll in getting him to where he is now. ➢SHOP NOW: https://markbellslingshot.com/ Enter Discount code, "POWERPROJECT" at checkout and receive 15% off all Sling Shots ➢Subscribe Rate & Review on iTunes at: https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/mark-bells-power-project/id1341346059?mt=2 ➢Listen on Stitcher Here: https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/mark-bells-power-project?refid=stpr ➢Listen on Google Play here: https://play.google.com/music/m/Izf6a3gudzyn66kf364qx34cctq?t=Mark_Bells_Power_Project ➢Listen on SoundCloud Here: https://soundcloud.com/markbellspowerproject FOLLOW Mark Bell ➢ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/marksmellybell ➢ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MarkBellSuperTraining ➢ Twitter: https://twitter.com/marksmellybell ➢ Snapchat: marksmellybell Follow The Power Project Podcast ➢ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/MarkBellsPowerProject Podcast Produced by Andrew Zaragoza ➢ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/iamandrewz

it's uh the stuff's crazy expensive like the the shot that i gave you is probably like um uh let's see probably well it's not that i mean it yeah that's expensive it's like that was like 10 bucks what i gave you was like 10 dollars worth which is crazy but hopefully like hopefully people find more usage for these things and hopefully, you know, it continues to grow and people continue to get pumped up about it. Yeah, I was just... Coming in hot. Yeah, I was actually just looking at the, what is it called? KetoAid? KetoAid, yep.

Their Instagram having like a sale or something. And I looked at the price and I'm like, Oh shit, this is not cheap. Yeah. It's still very expensive. I think it's just the nature of the ketone, uh, Esther.

Um, the, uh, so the way it was explained to me is that there's these ketone powders out there that are, um, that are in different formulas. They're, they're in, um,

they, they come in like a mint, they're, they're bonded to a mineral. They're bonded to sodium, magnesium, potassium, or calcium. And some companies have figured out a way to bond it to different, um, different minerals. So it doesn't mess you up. So you're not getting a crazy mineral load, if you will. And these ketones are... I heard myself for some reason. Oh, yeah, my bad. The ketones are... How do I say?

I guess in a powder form, it's hard to get the amount that you need without getting too much mineral, but I was getting too many minerals. Okay. So this ketone ester is like this free form of ketone and you can get the proper amount of it. So today, I think I took like 20, uh, milliliters of this keto aid product. You can check them out on Instagram if you're interested in this kind of stuff. This is the kind of stuff that Dominic D'Agostino talks about. And Joe Rogan has talked about it quite a bit. Matt Brown has talked about it quite a bit.

And it, you know, supposedly can kind of set your brain on fire. What it actually does or how it actually works, like I don't really know all the different science behind all these different things. I'm never one to profess that I'm an expert on those types of things. However, I will tell you that over the years by utilizing intermittent fasting and by utilizing low carbohydrate diets, I personally feel like it's done a lot for my clarity. And I know a lot of people, you know, throw that around a lot, just like they throw around the word inflammation. You hear that all the time. Oh, you know, it's less inflammatory, you know, don't eat carbs or they inflame the body. And, um, I don't know how much truth there is to those certain, uh, things, but I will say that I do know that for some people, sometimes carbohydrates

can cause problems. And for some other people, it doesn't cause any problems. So for me, you know, exploring a little bit more about these ketones also while on a ketogenic diet, it's something I wanted to look into a little bit more and I wanted to explore it more. And I'll let you guys know how I feel and I'll let you guys know what it does. But even just taking this little shot that I took today, I'm already feeling a little surge from it. Now I, that could be because I thought I took something that's supposed to give me a surge. And so therefore I'm believing in it and it's happening that way. Um, but it also could potentially be doing something i'll take it before some workouts coming up and let you guys know i'll have andrew uh tinker with it too and see we'll see what we

end up with out of it yeah i'm pretty stoked just because you know like i've said in the past like i just love tinkering with nootropics and stuff and i used to actually try to make my own and they would come out horribly and i'd kind of forget my name and other times it worked pretty good andrew's trying to say he likes to get high af yeah well you were just saying like uh about that guy who was talking about smoking like i just like to take a shit ton of nootropics because it's probably bad for me so i saw a movie last night a um a documentary an actual real documentary not smoky's version of a documentary uh it was about this guy climbing up some rocks and shit. This guy's a rock climber.

And the name of the movie is called Free Solo. And this guy climbs with no rope. And he's a badass. And we should try to get this guy on a podcast. He's a mutant. But during this thing that he was trying to climb he was trying to climb a mountain in Yosemite

and during this process he had people that trained him and people that worked with him and this guy said you know it was just kind of like conversation he was having with somebody else in the film and he said you know every once in a while I just like to allow myself to have a cigarette

he's like I know it's not good for me but you, every once in a while, I just like to allow myself to have a cigarette. He's like, I know it's not good for me, but you know, every once in a while, I'm just like, screw it. I feel like having it. And I thought that that was, even though it's towards something, um, that's not necessarily healthy nicotine, smoking cigarettes, like probably not a great idea, right? We can all get on board and understand that that's probably not the best thing for our health. But at the same time, I thought, what a healthy thought process that guy had. And what a healthy thought process it is this time of year around the holidays to say, you know what? I just enjoy doing stuff with my family and I love participating in what they're doing. And you can kind of determine how you want to celebrate that in your own way. Can you sit down for Thanksgiving dinner and stay on your diet plan? Or is it just more enjoyable

to join the crowd and just do what everybody else is doing? I mean, that's for you to determine, but you don't have to do everything that everyone else is doing. For myself personally, I always like to try to be in control of just myself. I can't control everything else that's going on. I'm not a control freak, or at least I don't think I am, but I do like to control what I do to myself and for myself. And so with that being said, whether it's Thanksgiving or whether it's Christmas or whether it's my birthday or whether it's my wife's birthday, it doesn't really matter what it is. I always like to control the food that I take into my body. I always like to control my exercise and try to control my own fate in some respect.

So on Thanksgiving morning, you know, I didn't have a plan to hit the gym, but because I was like the whole day, I spent the entire day with my family. And my wife and everybody else was nice enough to let me go to Science Strength a bunch of times while we were up there. But on Thanksgiving Day, I didn't do that. We did a workout outside. We did 21-15-9 of burpees, squatspees squats and pushups. And then after that, we ran some Hills and things like that. And we, we had a great time. We got a great workout in, got some exercise in, but all together as a family, as a group. And then when it came time to have Thanksgiving dinner, I had a couple of drinks. I had probably two or three glasses of wine with dinner.

And that's one of those situations where, yeah, I'm allowing myself to do something because I know I just I like the way that it feels. And that's OK to do that. You don't have to have regret about that. That's that's actually very it's a good idea for you to do that. And then how do you know know like when to join in on the party and when not to you know and so for me i was like you know what i'm gonna keep the food reasonable because this is gonna this is kind of a challenging this is a hard time to keep the food reasonable because there's just so much stuff around i'm not really big into pies like pumpkin pie and some of these other things so i I didn't participate in any of that.

The night, uh, unwound, everybody kind of took off and I had a, uh, at the beach house that we have, I had a, uh, a, uh, perfect bar that has like dark chocolate chips in it. So it's got like 30, yeah, it's got like 30 grams of carbs or 25 grams of carbs or something. Right. So that was my like treat at the end of the night. And I wanted to be in control for those, for that particular day, because I know on the next day that my brother-in-law makes this amazing clam chowder. And yeah, I could have had like one bowl of the clam chowder, half a bowl of the clam chowder and have it with no bread and whatever. Right. But I didn't, I'm like, he makes this shit once a year. This stuff is golden. It's amazing. And I'm just going to indulge on it. So I had two big bowls of it with a couple pieces of bread. It was freaking fantastic. Put butter on the bread and everything. So,

you know, when, when do you kind of let go and, and when do you not, I think it's something that you should prepare for. It's something that you should have a conversation with, whether it's with a loved one or just with yourself. Like, what are the rules that you're going to have? If you love, if you enjoy food, when you go to the movie theater, what's a reasonable situation look like? If you love going to the movies and you go five times a week, well then maybe eating bad every time you go to the movie theater is not a good idea. If you go to the movies every other week and you love the popcorn that they have, maybe it's totally reasonable for you to indulge on that popcorn and have a Coke or whatever. Just, it might make sense for you just to have, you know, whatever the hell it is that you want

on those particular days. Did you have any turkey on Thanksgiving? Yeah, you know, I had some because I don't mind some of the, can I get a hey now? I don't mind some of that dark meat, if you know what I'm saying. There you go. You know? But I, yeah, I don't really love turkey. You guys probably saw my post where I was bitching about how dry turkey is.

And then somebody wrote on there, turkey's drier than your mama's pussy or something. I was like, oh, come on. You know, we don't have to. That's pretty good. I know, I know, I know. You know, I respect, I respect when people go all in

and just, you know. And you know, I love when people hammer me too. I love it. I love when people talk shit. It's great. Yeah, I love that your post because I was feeling that. Cause we, I mean, I technically, I had three separate Thanksgivings, like just different families.

God, you're so fat. Out of all three though. I had turkey once just because I'm not. How do you not weigh like 240 right now? Cause I kept it pretty clean. Oh, there we go. The worst thing I had, I actually wrote it down. My sister-in-law, she makes a, it's called cherry cheese pie.

It's basically like a cheesecake, but like whipped. I like cheesecake. So that with the cherry sauce on top is insane. So I had that and this is in total out of all three, you know, uh, Thanksgivings. I had that. I had like a roll at one of them. And then at the, at the last one, Stephanie made, uh, keto, like keto friendly cookies,

which were insane. I had too many of those. Oh, like, you know, you're supposed to have a couple trips to the bathroom. You could have, no, no, no. Like you can have like one or two and it's like, okay, yeah, it're supposed to. A couple trips to the bathroom? No, no, no. Like, you can have, like, one or two, and it's like, okay, yeah, it's cool. You know, there's low carb, no sugar. Right. But if you have, like, five, then all of a sudden now you just went overboard.

Yeah. But the great thing about that is we showed, like, her family that you can eat a ketogenic diet and still have like your cheats that are okay right and you know we just she blew a couple people's minds like wait i can have this and there's no sugar in here and it's like no it's fine like it's just dark chocolate right and little to no carbs for each cookie as long as you don't go overboard you're fine and then so it's like okay tell me more about this keto thing right right which was amazing because we've been talking about it for a long time and finally it's getting, you know, it's mainstream now.

Right. But it's, you know, it's turning people's heads and people are listening finally. And yeah, for the rest of it, I had,

like I said, turkey once and then salad and ham because ham actually tastes pretty good. I like ham. Yeah. You know, I think that,

you know, you can keep, you can keep your meal pretty healthy. And actually, when you really think about it, like, how good does some of that stuff taste? I mean, that's for you to determine because we're all different. We all have different taste buds. If you really, really love the stuffing, then go for it. But, like, to me, it's like the stuffing just isn't that worth it. So like I had some stuffing and I had a small amount of, um, actually I didn't have any mashed potatoes, but I had something else, some other side. And, um, it's, it was just enough to be able to consume

the Turkey really. That's kind of what it was about for me. And, and, uh, I had some ham and some Turkey. I did have some gravy. Yeah. I do like gravy. So the gravy, the way I justify it, has had giblets in it. And the giblets have like a lot of nutrients in it. So I was like, I'm going for it. I always say, this has a lot of sodium.

And Stan Efferding says I need salt. So this is fine. That's the way you got to do it. That's the way you got to justify it. Yeah. But I think, you know that you don't have to um you don't have to go way off your diet it's like it could be just a day where you have some extra eating going on now of course you can also just go hog wild and go nuts that day

but what i'm trying to prevent people from doing is falling off i want you to stay on track i want you to stay motivated do more be more the less that you do the less track. I want you to stay motivated. Do more, be more. The less that you do, the less that you tend to want to do. Depression has no chance. Depression has no ability, has no stranglehold on your life. When you're kicking ass, when you're doing a lot of stuff, you will not be paralyzed. You will not just want to sit on the couch. But sitting on the couch promotes sitting on the couch. Eating junk food promotes eating junk food. And guess what? The

good news is, is eating healthy promotes eating healthy. When you eat healthy, when you make the right decision, when you make the right choice, you tend to gravitate towards that more because you understand how that feels. I have so many friends that say, look, man, you know what's the hardest thing for me to do? It's hard for me just to miss a day, miss a day at the gym. It's hard for me just to miss a workout. Well, how do you get yourself to that point eventually with food? That would be a great place for everybody that's listening to the show. Everyone that's been tuning in for a long time that has struggled with their diet. That would be a great place to end up. Well, you end up by making, you end up there by making better choices than you do bad choices. And you continue to do it over a period of time.

If we're just, just kind of break things down into some of its simpler forms, uh, for most of my life, I have worked out four days or more every single week from the time I was 12 years old. I'm going to be celebrating 30 years of lifting coming up on my 42nd birthday. It started when I was 12. The reason why I've done that is because four days is more days in a week. It's more days in a week than it's not, right? There's seven days in a week, is more days in a week, then it's not, right? There's seven days in a week. So mathematically,

if I do four days a week, then I'm exercising on more days than I'm not. I can Google it, but I'm not 100% sure about the math equation. But I think we can just assume that you're right.

Yeah. It sounds pretty good. I mean, we might have to bring Joey in on this to kind of run the numbers. But, and that's all you're really trying to do with your life. That's all you're really trying to do with your day. If you can figure out a way to have more good days than bad days, then you've achieved

something. And really, you know, over a period of time, as you learn, as you grow, as you mature, you'll have a lot more good days ahead of you. You have to make them though. That's the thing is they don't just happen. A good day doesn't just happen. Um, it's easy. It's easy to get swallowed up by a bad day. It's easy for that bad day to turn into a couple of bad days and end up being a bad week and a bad month. And I've heard people say it before, man, 2015 was rough. 2017 was rough, man. Like it was like it before, man, 2015 was rough.

2017 was rough, man. Like it was like, Oh my God, the whole year. Dude, what happened? That's pretty wild, you know? Yeah. Cause even if somebody died, like that is very tragic, but it's like, we all understand, like we all understand. I believe we all understand that people do die. Right.

So like it, it sucks. And there's, there's a, it can be horrific if it's a, your child or your spouse or someone you're close to. I mean, it's really, really hard, but that doesn't, that doesn't mean the whole year was awful because of that. Right. There there's gotta be, you can still generate more good days than you can bad. And you have to, but you have to make that happen.

You have to force these things to happen. Yeah. So the last time we spoke to the people on the podcast was before Thanksgiving. The peeps. Do you want to give a quick rundown on what you guys ended up doing for the Thanksgiving? Yeah, we had an amazing time. We went to my beach house, which I was just telling you how i kind of hate saying that i really do i don't i i uh when we were at cyan strength in um santa rosa by the way anybody in norcal you got

to check out that gym it's fantastic um but while we were there a bunch of people's like oh what brings you to the area and i was like oh we have a beach house and i was just like oh man i don't like the way that sounds. I hate saying that. Especially to like, I don't know, especially to these kind of younger kids. You know, they're not kids really, but they're between 20 and 30. And I know that they're struggling. So it just feels like I'm just taking out a big old fucking mallet and smash them over the head with it. But, you know, I don't know what else to call it.

You know, and I don't know. I guess I could just say I'm visiting family, but I guess I don't have to say beach house, but that's literally why we're there is because we have a beach house and that's what we're, um, we, we all got together and, uh, it was amazing. It was really, it was really a lot of fun. Now we been going there for about a decade. And we started going there because of my father-in-law, David Nielsen, who passed away. He had a heart attack just a few months back. It was a really tragic thing for the whole family to go through. He was a great person.

And that was like his favorite thing. He loved going to Dillon's Beach. He loved going to Bodega Bay. And he was kind of the one that introduced us, uh, into a lot of that. And so this year was kind of emotional because this is our first year, uh, without having him there. And, um, but it was special to me and my wife because, you know, now that we do have the home there, we'd always like rent out a house or we'd get a bunch of us and we'd rent out a house. Uh, well now we have our own home. Like we have a place that everyone in the family can call home. It's actually really funny because my, uh, nieces and nephews and stuff, they'll, they'll call it their beach house. They'll say that, you know, um, Hambone and Lachlan and Piper

and stuff. They'll say their beach house. My kids try to correct them. I said, don't correct them. I said, this is just as much of their home as it is yours. That's why we have it. You know, we have this thing to share. You know, this is something that we're all going to enjoy and we're all going to create a lot of memories here. So if they want to think that it's their house and don't go riding on their parade, go ahead and them think that and so this year was really it was really cool and um my wife and i got in some

good conversation uh with with uh my wife's aunt and um and uncle as well and uh over some turkey dinner and um or actually it was over the clam chowder i guess now that i think about it but it was kind of interesting because um andy's aunt was kind of pointing out like how andy and i are different you know and how how you know the success that we've had and and and that kind of stuff and it was uh not that we're different she was pointing out that she just thought it was special what we've created with the company and what we created, uh, in being able to obtain, uh, the beach house. And it felt good to have her say that, but it also was a little awkward, uh, you know, having other family members around and stuff like that. Cause she was kind of, uh, you know, putting us up on this pedestal kind of,

you know, and, um, but I understood what she was saying and I, I thought it was great that she, But I understood what she was saying and I thought it was great that she recognized, you know, this this all this stuff is hard. You know, I don't really ever talk about like the the actual work that goes into it because some of it's boring. But this is a this is a thing that we think about, you know, 24 seven. All the men and women here at Slingshot super training um at slingshot headquarters we all think about this job a lot and we all put a lot into it and it ends up uh being something that can consume you at times and so i thought it was really cool um for andy's uh aunt to kind of say hey look you know we recognize what you guys are doing it It's fucking awesome. And I thought that was pretty cool. That's cool.

And how much older is she? You said she was your aunt, right? Yeah, she's probably, she's got to be like in her 60s, I guess. Oh, okay. So, yeah, she's like a parental figure type in your life. So that's really cool to have her say something like that. Yeah, yeah. it was awesome. And then we just got kind of in conversation too, about, you know, being happy and like, you know, she, she lives in Oregon

and she was kind of talking about how they're thinking about maybe selling their house and just, uh, um, getting like, uh, um, like almost like a Winnebago type of thing and kind of like living out of like a camper type of thing and, uh, how they're just happy. Like they don't have, they don't have like this crazy excess amount of stuff. Although they, right now they have a house and they got some decent property and stuff, but she was just like, you know, that's, that's what makes makes us happy like we're excited about that every day and i was like man that's just that's it's just so simple like that's what it's all about get yourself in a position where you're excited about whatever it is you're going to do each day

she loves raising dogs she's an animal lover she loves horses um she's had all that throughout her whole life and i think she's just you know now she's getting all that throughout her whole life. And I think she's just, you know, now she's getting older. She kind of wants to downsize and move into some other things. But you know, when I'm, when I'm doing these seminars and when I'm on this podcast, I'm sharing things with people about being successful or, or I shared the message the other day about, um, you know, how I had this goal to make a million dollars, you know, that doesn't happen. Like everyone needs to kind of pick their own goal and pick their own thing. But, but also be very careful and very selective about what this goal is. Don't have your goal be my goal. Have your goal be your own thing that manifests from your own heart and from your own spirit.

Cause otherwise it won't really be true. Like you ever listen to somebody and they, they're trying to say something with conviction. They're trying to say something strong and it just doesn't land on you the right way. It just doesn't hit you the right way. Well, it's probably cause they might not fully 100% believe in what they just said. You know,

they might not truly believe the thing that they just told you. They might not really believe that, that, uh, they're going to be successful or whatever it was that they just said. You can kind of tell, like that didn't really come from like the depths, you know, and you don't know, I don't know what makes that happen, but I do know that it's important that you, um, you find things that you're really, truly love to do. Usually the things that you really truly love to do usually the things that you love to do are the things that not really make you happy because happiness is uh if if you only did the things that make you happy then you um you would actually probably end up being like heartbroken and depressed a lot of times if you just did things that were like pleasurable all the time right like like selfishly

pleasurable yeah yeah so it can't just be it can't just be, it can't just be like this, uh, you know, nonstop party all the time. Um, there has to be, you know, these goals and these things have to be worked towards, they have to be worked for and they have to be earned. You know, I've mentioned before that, uh, you know, life is not like a credit card. It doesn't, it doesn't like, it doesn't, um, it doesn't give you, uh, success like up front. You, you pay for it later. You got to pay for it first. You got to pay for it, pay for it, pay for it, pay for it. And you still might not get it.

Yeah. Like, it's like holding out on you. You're like waiting, waiting, waiting, waiting. And then finally you get a little, a little bit of success. You get something. And then everyone's like, oh man, waiting, waiting. And then finally you get a little bit of success. You get something. And then everyone's like, oh, man, that guy had everything. Or, man, I bet Andrew's family helped him buy his new car or his new house or whatever, right? Like that's, you're like, man, like I just was working my ass off for the last decade.

I finally made it somewhere. Somebody give me a high five, please. Somebody, a pat on the back, a pat on the tushy, something. There you go. So it seems like the story about your aunt wanting to kind of move out and just live in a trailer, essentially, but like wherever.

She's happy with what she has. Did someone like that do any Black Friday shopping? Yeah, she actually did. Because I was curious. I if you and andy did any no no no i i don't i don't think i've ever i don't think i've ever bought anything on uh on a black friday or i may have but i don't i don't think so um but yeah my aunt actually she bought um so she's actually was really cool because So I had the book Undoctored from Dr. Davis, who was on our podcast recently.

And I had Icon Meals that were shipped to the house. And then I also, I showed her some stuff because her lower back bothers her. So I showed her some stuff she can do with the hip circle just to stay active and just to move around and explain you know how the hips are kind of connected to everything and you know it's not always just your lower back that hurts and so on and so uh she ordered a hip circle she ordered icon meals and she ordered the book on doctor that's cool yeah she ordered everything and then uh my mother-in-law did the same thing she's like i'm gonna go order that stuff too yeah that's awesome i know we were

watching a documentary over the weekend it was done really well uh i can't remember the name but i was looking down and i hear someone's voice and i'm like that sounds really familiar and it was william davis oh cool and it was just a trip like oh fuck i'm watching netflix and i worked with that guy yeah that was pretty cool that guy's that guy's a damn that guy's a damn beast yeah he's super nice. But yeah, we had an awesome time at Thanksgiving in like Bodega Bay. It's just a ridiculously beautiful place. Like the whole time, like the house that we live in just has this huge glass, like the

whole house is like glass almost. And so you can just see out from every window and all you see is the ocean really. And the sun coming up and the sun going down. It's just, it's ridiculous. And just the air there was like, you know, the air quality was better than, than here in Sacramento with all the fires and everything. So that, that was, that was actually really refreshing because it was getting really bad around here.

And I was actually something refreshing because it was getting really bad around here and i was actually something i was worried about so i was like man i want to walk and i want to maybe run while i'm up there but i'm not going to be able to breathe and so all that was um all that was really nice but it's just it's cool that you can just kind of sit there and just chill and not really be doing much of anything and then all of a sudden you can just say hey like you want to go for a walk on the beach and i went with my daughter and my uh niece piper i mean just like just randomly walk like outside is cool enough it's nice enough it's fun enough to just go outside and just walk like there's not a lot of places that are like that um sometimes you go to a new area and it's new and exciting and yeah you want to kind of walk around and check go to a new area and it's new and exciting.

And yeah, you want to kind of walk around and check it out. But like most spots, it's just not that fun to really like just randomly walk outside and walk and walk around. But in Bodega Bay, it never gets old. No, I was going to say it's actually a lot harder to stay inside in Bodega Bay. Yeah. It can get cold or whatever, but it's so beautiful. It's yeah. And the crazy thing is it's not far away from where we're talking right now yeah you know when you when you think of like oh the most like awesome places to visit in the world you're just like oh shit well

hawaii that's too far or you know wherever socal and certain beaches are really nice but then you think like oh bodega bay that's less like two hours less than that. Yeah. And it's like, shit, how can we not go there more? Yeah. It's just a, it's just a two hour drive. And it's, um, I mean, that's what I was saying to my wife. Like, when are we coming back? She's like, not till like new year's. And I was like, why? I'm like, we need to come back sooner than that. I was like, what about my birthday? I'm like, we should come back for my birthday. She's like, I don't know. Like, we don't have to ask anybody. It's ours. Yeah. I know. I'm like, we should come back for my birthday. She's like, I don't know. Like, we don't have to ask anybody. It's all right. Yeah, I know. I'm like, let's, I'm like, let's just, let's just do it. You know, it'll be fun.

Yeah. But yeah, it was, you know, um, getting the whole family together like that. And, uh, you know, like, um, I cooked breakfast for some of the kids, not every morning, but a couple, a few of the mornings. And, um, it was just fun. We had a lot of family, a lot of friends over and just, there was a lot of family a lot of friends over and just there was a lot of a lot of drinking going on a lot of uh you know games and puzzles and just people just kind of putting their phones aside and just chilling just hanging out just talking having conversations and

i think you know as a kid it's really easy to kind of, especially like if you're like a teenager or even kind of preteen, but it's really easy to kind of complain about what you got, you know, and it's really easy to kind of be like, oh, here comes family. Like I got it. Oh, great. Uncle so-and-so is going to ask me about school. Those are all very normal things. That's very normal when you're a kid to think that way. But what I notice is a lot of, just in general, you hear a lot of people blaming and hear a lot of people kind of being upset about just the way that things are. And it's like, well, you can't really be upset about the way that things are because they just are the way that they are.

There are certain things that are within your control that you can handle and that you can manipulate. But it really doesn't do you any good to complain about stuff that you have no intentions of doing anything about, such as like the government or the state that you live in. Or we've talked about it here on the podcast a bunch. People will say, oh, man, you know, I don't have a super training near my house. It's like, that has absolutely nothing to do with you getting stronger. Yeah, it would be great if there was a super training down the street from your house, but guess what? There is not one down the street from your house. And also, I'm sure if the person was to pay attention and look,

there's powerlifting gyms in every in every city in every state and i know that we have something special going on here and it's super training is a unique place but you could find coaches you can find other people that are into strength it's just that you haven't looked for them and you're being lazy by just saying ah man there's no powerlifting around here nobody's really nobody's really into lifting those big weights you know all they got is planetlifting around here. Nobody's really into lifting those big weights. You know, all they got is Planet Fitness around here. It's like, really? I've been to every nook and cranny of this country,

and there's gyms all over the place. They're everywhere. And it's not just Planet Fitness, and it's not just 24-hour fitness. There's a place for all of us to go. There's places for all of us to make, you know, big improvements. I was making fun of somebody that will go nameless, but they were saying that in their situation, they don't necessarily know how to,

how to even work out correctly. And so I'm like, oh man, if only there was a person that you can pay, that can show you everything, they can, they can teach you how to train. Oh man, I even have a name for them. You can call them trainers that they can pay that can show you everything they can they can teach you how to train oh man i i even have a name for them that you can call them trainers that they can help you figure out how to use all the equipment so that way you can do it on your own later

it's a damn shame that doesn't exist though just trying to shut down every excuse possible and it i mean obviously it didn't end well, but I was so frustrated because it was, you know, excuse, answer, excuse, answer, you know, just one after another. And it's like, hey, like at the end, it's ultimately up to you, but like stop making these excuses. And that's exactly what it sometimes just comes down to. And I think that people think that things are going to change like 2019. 2019

is going to be different. The final answer that I got back was, I'm going to wait till the first. It doesn't matter. The first is going to wait till the first. Like it, it doesn't matter. The first is going to be so different. That's what I said. I was like,

every excuse you have that will push you out to the first is still going to be there on the first. Does not matter what it is. No, no, no. But when the first comes around, look at,

listen, I'm cutting out carbs. I'm not going to drink anymore. I'm going to stop smoking. I'm going to go to the gym five days a week, Monday through Friday, 5 a.m. every day. And I'm going to eat more vegetables. And, you know, every Saturday night I'm going to have one like cheat meal. And that's it.

Sure. That's funny because. It's like, wow, you just changed like 75 things. sure that's uh it's funny because it's like wow you just changed like 75 things and you're and by the time by the time that date rolls around whatever date it is that you laid out you're going to start to really pile up the excuses um so that you don't have to really fully commit to it and you're going to be like well you know i said one cheat meal but friday you know it's my brother's birthday and that's going to be a fun party to go to. So, and then Friday, Saturday, Sunday, boom, boom, boom, boom. And now like you probably, you did, uh, you know,

three days of just eating shit and maybe even a fourth day. And now you had more bad days than you did good. And you're already off the team. Oh, way off. Yeah. Uh, to literally take a page out of Aubrey Marcus's book. Um, you know, he's kind of, he's a little on the hippie side, but I finally. That's okay. We still love him. Yeah. I finally finished his book. What is it called? Owning the Day. Anyway, he was talking about building your ethos, meaning have like your saying or the thing that you know you're always going to do. It's like, but don't go out there and say, I'm never eating sugar again. Yeah. It's like, because come lunchtime, your coworker is going to give you a couple of cookies and you just broke your ethos and now you're depressed that you couldn't stick to anything. Right.

Like, so have something that's a little bit easier to obtain at first and then, you know, shoot for the stars with whatever it is that you're building. Right. And I thought that was huge. And it's kind of what you're saying right now. Like this person is going to build all this, uh, all these chips against them. And then, oh, it's going to start Monday. Then they start building anxiety. Cause it's like, oh shit, like this is all supposed to happen tomorrow.

And I haven't even started. And then that's when the, like the depression kicks in and it's like, oh, like I'm never going to get in shape. And you just see it, you see it time and time again. And we're all guilty of it, you know, and we're guilty of it in different, we're guilty of it in different areas. You know, each person is guilty of it in their own way. And sometimes it's easy for us to point out, oh, well, you know, I can't get so-and-so to commit to this like fitness program, or I can't get so-and-so to commit to this diet. What a loser. And it's like, well, no, you're a loser too. Like let's not, let's not place the blame on them. They just struggle with their diet. It doesn't mean

they're a piece of shit. It doesn't mean that they, um, that they're not motivated. It doesn't mean that they're not a great person in other ways, right? It just means that they're fallible, which we all are. We all have mistakes. We all have holes in our game and we all need to try to work on kind of tightening these things up. But what I love to share with people is look, man, you can get better. You can be better. You just have to keep trying. You got to keep, you got to keep kind of working towards it. We got a guy in our gym here that, you know, he kind of gave me the excuse that he works nights. And I was like, wow, like the excuse of working nights literally has nothing to do with your weight. You know, those things are, they're not, they're not related now. Okay. We can get into a thing about, you know, human beings are not like nocturnal and right. Okay, fine. But this is, this is what

you're dealing with. This is what's in front of you. You can't complain about the way things are unless you're going to try to change the way things are. Don't go complaining about the government or don't complain about taxes unless you have wrote up a tax reform. Don't complain about your area unless you're planning on doing something about it. Don't complain about the violence that's in your city or in your town. Why complain about it? Why not try to do something about it? People are breaking into cars around your home.

Start a neighborhood watch. Like be proactive. Do something. Get off your ass and do something. And these complaints, they don't do anything. They're 100% negative. They don't get you towards your goal at all. You sometimes hear someone say, oh man, like, you know, I, I can't really, uh, I can't

really exercise. You know, I'm just, I'm too sick or I'm too depressed or it's like, man, if you can walk, you can, you can move. And if you can move, then that's exercise, right? I mean, you're fine. And I heard Joe Rogan say this kind of recently. He was like, man, if you can walk to your mailbox and he's like, that's something, you know, everyone needs to kind of get out of their head about how their workout can't look like the rocks workout, right?

That's fine. The rock, there's only one of them, you know, there's only one guy that's six five 270 pounds carved out carved out of wood a hot piece of ass the brahma bull the great one right there's only one there's only one rock walking the face of the earth right and there's only one guy that goes at it that hard that way that wakes up at freaking three in the morning and trains and goes through a whole day of making movies and selling under armor shit right all day long. Right. There's only one guy that does that. And so there's no reason to compare yourself to that. There's no reason to compare yourself to these people that have an eight pack. Right. Just compare yourself to yourself. What have you done lately to get better? What have you done towards

your fitness to, to make an impact on yourself? You already know the answers. Like if you need a book to keep you in check and you need to read that book and have the information in that book keep you accountable towards your diet, then go buy a book. Go get a book. Go listen or listen to an audio book. There's a lot of options. If you need something to kind of motivate you and lift you up a little bit, all these things are fine, but get, figure out a way. How can you get consistent? How can you start to make an impact, uh, on your own personal philosophy? And that's really what we're chipping away at. I know for myself that I probably had this kind of like quote unquote awakening.

It probably started about five or six years ago. And then my brother has followed. I feel I'm having a big impact on you. I feel like I have a big impact on the others in here. It's not that anybody in here was, was worthless or a loser. And then I came along and saved their lives or anything. It's nothing to do with any of that. It's just that the point that I was at in my life five or six years ago is is uh I can recognize that in other people and I can kind of see it and I can go. Oh my god This is this is actually awesome because this person has so much potential. They're about to light this whole damn building on fire It's just a matter of like kind of tweaking a couple things I need to get this person to believe in themselves a little bit better

I need this person to stop saying I can't, or I need this person to stop. How many people do you know that say, ah, you know what? I'm not, I can't help with that. I'm not creative. And it's like, well, of course you're not creative because you just shut down that side of your brain by saying that, like, that's horrible.

Like, don't say that about yourself. And I'm, I'm very guilty of this too. Like, ah, I can't be organized. I can't, I can't help it. You know, I, I'm always going to be, I'm always going to be late and I'm always going to like mess shit up i mean i'm i'm more unorganized can't do it and it's like well why have that mindset about yourself why not give yourself a little bit more positive reinforcement and sometimes negative reinforcement is actually

good too and say you know what i really do suck at that, but, but I'm not going to sit around and watch myself just always suck at it. I'm going to figure out a way to get better. So I'm going to like make more notes in my phone and I'm going to put stuff on the calendar and I'm going to use a pen and I'm going to write stuff down and I'm going to learn how to communicate better. And I'm going to work on being smarter. I try to work on learning more shit every single day so that I can deliver a more powerful message to more people all the time. When I go and do these seminars, they seem to, each and every time I do a seminar, they get better and better. They get better every single time. Sometimes there's like a step back and that's just, that's

part of the learning curve. That's part of the process, but in general, they get better every single time and they get better every single time because I try to go into these things prepared. I try to, I try to, I may not like sit up there and read anything that I wrote down, but I certainly do think about it a lot. I think about what is the message that I want to deliver to people. And when I did this last seminar in Bodega, um, you know, I, I'm just really excited about the future and excited to do seminars that aren't always in a gym setting. Cause if they're in a gym setting, then, uh, Mark Smelly Bell is forced to, uh, show you how to bench squat and

deadlift. But I feel like I have a lot more to offer people than just that. I feel like my life experiences have carried me to certain points that I can explain how things have happened to me. I can explain what has unraveled for me and how things have worked out. I can explain how I had to make these things work out. out. I can explain how I had to make these things work out and I can inspire a lot of people and I can move a lot of people and have them understand and have them have a better belief in themselves. I was told some really absurd shit when I was a kid by different people and so have you. You guys have been told the same thing. You guys have been fed the same bullshit lies that i was fed that you weren't good enough at something you weren't tall enough you weren't strong enough you weren't thick enough you weren't

skinny enough you weren't this enough or that enough pretty enough whatever it was we've all been like robbed we've been robbed of the things that we wanted to do as a kid it's been stripped away from us and then you're left with being like, oh, I'm just going to be like a mechanic because I'm kind of halfway into cars and that's what I know how to do. And I'm just going to go to that job every single day and I'm going to fish on the weekends and hopefully I can squeeze in some time

with my wife and my kids here and there. Yeah, I hate that. Which all that's fine. Like, you know, if that's what you want to do, but you can do more and you can be more like maybe rather than just thinking. I'm just going to be a mechanic and maybe that's something you really, truly love. Maybe you own the shop or maybe you're a kick-ass mechanic and you, you work for like a NASCAR, you know, you know, you work for some high end thing like where you're doing something on a much higher level. But if if you already have knowledge in that space, you can learn more shit and you can do more and you can become more.

You can become more valuable to the people around you and become more valuable to yourself. You know, I remember this like it was yesterday. I was just talking the other day, uh, to, to one of the people here at Slingshot and we were kind of laying out this idea for a commercial. And I was like, yeah, I'd love to like some of this negative shit that I've heard over the years. I'd love to like play that over top of like me waking up at four o'clock and me, you know, making a protein shake or eating breakfast and then coming here and then kicking some ass and then going into like meetings and shit like that.

Just, you know, have that footage playing as I'm talking about my, you know, guidance counselor that told me I would never go anywhere because I'm on a third grade reading level, you know, that, that kind of shit, you know, and and i and i know that you guys listen to this i know that you've all been you've all been told all these things but what happens is it's like that shit sticks to your ribs that stuff sits around that stuff manifests and it turns into bad ideas and bad concepts for yourself and you end up with a shitty philosophy your own personal philosophy is no longer strong anymore because you don't believe that you can do these certain things.

Even if you just shrug it off and try to be like, oh, that doesn't bother me. Like, I'm too cool for that shit anyways. But I had my counselor in high school just look at me and be like, there's no way you're going to graduate, so I'm going to get you ready for, was it called continuation school? Or like adult ed or whatever? And I looked at him and I'm like, so it be like, there's no way you're going to graduate. So I'm going to get you ready for, was it called continuation school or like adult ed or whatever? And I looked at him like, so it's like mathematically impossible for me to graduate high school. And he's like, well, no, it's possible, but not for you. And that was the negative, like a reinforcement that I needed. So I ended up,

I graduated late, but I still did um you know the year I was supposed to but you're right like at the time I was like uh whatever you know it doesn't bother me but then I became super depressed because I'm like this is weird like all of my friends are going to graduate and I'm not like what the fuck and then I ended up figuring it out but drives me crazy that my son my son is my son is so smart like he he knows it doesn't matter and it and it drives my wife crazy that's so good though he oh it's great it's great like i i don't want to rob him of that but he knows he knows the secret he's he's so like it's not even like smart but he just has this he just has this like uh something inside of him that understands like that shit don't matter that's

not where life is at like life life doesn't begin and end with homework you know he he knows that that shit doesn't doesn't matter and it will it will make my wife absolutely crazy. So I'll have conversations with them all the time and say, hey man, like, look, you know, we got to get this homework done. And he's like, why? And then what they used to sell you on was college. You got to get the homework done because you need grades for college.

Well, now they don't really have much to sell you on anymore because going to college isn't what it used to be right i'm not going to say that going to college doesn't have value it has tremendous value there's so many things you can learn from going to from going to to further your education there's a lot of things you can learn however you can learn all that same shit by furthering your own education you can learn that stuff faster in opinion, by throwing yourself out there in the real world.

Absolutely. And seeing whether you can sink or swim or not. Yeah. What if, um, what if, uh, you know, what if your guidance counselor, right? These guidance counselors, I don't know what's with them. They seem like evil people. But what, what if this guidance counselor said, Andrew, like, listen, man, you're not doing your homework. Like you're not, you're not very responsible.

Like you're not, you're not doing a great job in school. And you know, I don't, I don't, it doesn't look like you're heading towards graduation the same time everybody else is, but what is it you like to do? What do you have fun with? Like, have you ever tried photography? You ever tried music? Like, you know, some people just don't like school, Andrew. Like some people like, you know, they just don't love, uh, academia.

They just don't love studying books and, and shit like that. Have you ever tried, you ever tried messing around something different? And you'd be like, well, I don't know. Well, maybe you should, maybe you should take a photography class sometime, or maybe you should see if you're interested in something else because you might have, you might have a career in something different if your brain's not working so great for this particular work in school. Like maybe you're not going to be a teacher. Maybe you're not going to be a doctor. Maybe you're not going to be a lawyer, right? Like

we can start to rule out some of these things that you probably don't care to be since you don't really care that much or seem to care that much, at least right now about school. And then you might've found something easier, something faster. And then how awesome would it be at 16 or 17 to be like, you know what? All I want to do is photography. So as soon as I graduate school, I'm going to latch on to the best photographer in the area. Or I'm going to move to Detroit or wherever. Wherever there's a good photographer. I'm going to move there. And I'm going to hang out with that dude as much as I can, even if he doesn't want me to.

Or you're going to try to find a job. You're going to find, like, as you already did, right? You're going to try to latch on to something. Like, where is there somebody that knows how to shoot good photos i'm gonna hang out with that person i'm gonna learn you're gonna learn a lot more there and you're gonna learn going to college probably yeah is my guess yeah absolutely i mean talking to uh chris griffin uh head of media over here um from when i started to i don't know maybe like about a year or so ago. Um, and he told Ryan this not too long ago too. So maybe it's just something he tells everybody, but he was like, no, like you've

progressed more than the college students I went to school with from like, uh, for, uh, film school. Like, you know, from start to finish film school, you've progressed way more than they have. And that's me as a photographer, just because I'm engulfed in the media you know here and i have to do it every day like you know so we learn on the job same thing with ryan he didn't go to school for any of it either and he's way better than i am now and i've been doing it longer but just because he does it so much now it's you know you're right on the job or just being in the culture you learn way more than a piece of paper is going to ever teach you well and that's where somebody might and i'm talking about complaining about like kind of where you're at you know and complaining about like the way

things are like um we bring someone in and we say hey we pay x amount this is what we pay for photography this is this is your amount of money and then someone's like well shit man well how am i gonna afford my life you know and how am i supposed to be able to do well at this stupid job if this is all i get well because it's not about what you get it's about what you can become right and if you can if you can work in an environment like this and you can expedite your learning process you should be fucking paying us to work here i mean obviously you have to get paid for what you're doing right but the point is is that what a wonderful opportunity is to come into some of these smaller companies and really learn at the ground level. I mean,

if you hung around here long enough, you could ask a couple of questions in our warehouse. You can ask a couple of questions to Jessica Smith, who runs a lot of our social media. You can pop into the media room and kind of find out what they're doing. You can run over and talk to little Smokey and realize that he doesn't do anything for this company. You can go talk to Josh Kim and figure out what the fuck he does with himself all day. But you could really learn and absorb a ton. And it would be about way more than photography. Because when you sign up for photography or you want to be a photographer, you might think, okay, well, I just want to snap some really cool, legit photos and I'm going to

get some scenery. And like, I don't know, every once in a while, maybe I'll like shoot a wedding because that's just good money. Right. Um, but you're not thinking about like, oh, I need to make stuff. Uh, so it's for Instagram and I need to you know configure these things this way for like somebody wants it for ig story oh somebody wants me to make an album for them for their facebook page with music over top of it right and then it starts to get then you're like oh man oh shit they thought that i could do they thought i could take pictures and video oh shit okay well maybe i just tell them i'll just make it up as I go and tell them I'm fine with doing both, you know, and you end up, you know, you end up in these, uh, you end up in

these situations anyway, that school would otherwise not prepared you for it in any, in any way, uh, to begin with. So, I mean, there is a lot to learn, like, like the process of going to college, especially if you go away to college, um, you mean, there is a lot to learn, like, like the process of going to college, especially if you go away to college, um, you know, getting an apartment and all these things and like living with other people and trying to, um, trying to have a like kind of minimalist lifestyle while you're going to school and, you know, not overspending, having a budget, like all these things are, I mean, those are all huge, but you certainly don't need to go to college for that. You just need to get kicked out of your house for that. Yeah. And I, my, uh, my nephew, I think I've said it on the podcast before he was,

he was kind of having a hard time with school because he had that same kind of thing. Like it doesn't matter. Like, um, this isn't help. This isn't this, uh, homework's not going to help me be successful at my job later. And I just told him like, hey, you, like, it sucks. You've already learned everything you need to know. Like, you're not stupid. Like, I'm telling you right now, everything you're learning from here on out kind of doesn't matter. Like, but you have to finish school.

So that way you can accomplish something. Because if you don't finish school, you're just going to quit everything for the rest of your life. Right. And he kind of had to wake up. so he's doing fine now yeah but and i'm definitely not helping because i'm uh for his birthday i got him uh some computer part to help him build his gaming pc and so i sent it to him just to make sure it was the right thing and he's like yeah that is cool like all right and this was during school so that's even worse okay cool get back to learning stuff you're never going to use the rest of your life.

He just started laughing. He's like, all right, cool, thanks. That's great. I can't imagine Jake being as smart as Andy but with your attitude. That's terrifying. I know. I think it's great, though, man.

Yeah, no, it's kind of I think it's great though, man. Yeah, no, it's kind of, it's kind of, it's, you know, it, I think it's, I think it's great too. Like he, you know, he's, but what you said about, you know, knowing like everything, like knowing the basics of what you need to know probably already happened, you know, and it happens pretty early on in school. And, you know, how do you, how do you get a kid to understand the value of his homework the kid's going to have to understand like the value of themselves to really try to figure that out man what a tough thing that is to try to have a 12 or 13 year old kid to try to

figure out uh when they're just dealing with so many other things like they're they're most likely they're not going to come to that realization you just need to be more mature to be able to understand your own, your own value and what you're capable of doing and kind of taking pride in representing yourself. Like it'd be, it'd be rare. You'd have to be raised that way to, to kind of always, you know, put forth your best effort. And, um, and yeah, it's just, it's like, what, like, what's, what's your reason? What's your, you know, they say like, what's your why? You know, what's, what's the reason behind, uh, like, why do you need to be responsible

for your homework? Let's just, it's, it's a hard, it's a hard sell these days, in my opinion. And where you could, where you could potentially sell it is you could say, look, man, your ability to communicate with other people and you being sharp and you being intelligent is always going to matter. It will always matter. So you know what? Like if you don't graduate high school, it doesn't really mean that you're dumb, but

it's not going to help towards any of the goals that you may have. Like, like pretty much everyone graduates high school. So let's just, let's just do that and let's not uh let's um you know at least put in some effort to the homework let's get some of the shit done and i think that you can even agree with them and say you know what you're kind of right like it doesn't matter that much uh for what you're thinking down the road, but everything matters and everything ends up shaping you. For me, like I was like that in school because I struggled in school, but it just took me

a really long time to develop too. It took me, you know, 30 years to develop. And so hopefully for other people, it just doesn't take them that long. Maybe other people don't have that much time. I had that much time because I have, I have awesome parents. Um, and then I, I ended up meeting Andy and Andy was the breadwinner for the family. She made the money. So, uh, I was able to kind of continue to dream and, uh, and grow and develop during that time period. But like, man, I was, um, you know, I, I took a lot, I took a long, I took a long

time and maybe somebody that's raised by a single parent, or maybe somebody that doesn't have a significant other that pulls them up, then, um, maybe they don't ever, ever get the shot. And I, I don't think, you know, I wouldn't be standing in front of you today if I didn't have, uh, people that like were supportive of me, that like nourished me, that turned me into what I am today. And now, you know, as I moved forward, like I'm, I'm more productive, uh, uh, I'm more like self-motivated and some of those things, but I've always been, I've never had a trouble with motivation. Um, but I certainly did have some problems with trying to figure out like my own like self-worth, I guess.

I was never depressed and I never thought I was a piece of shit. But I also didn't have enough under my belt to really feel that great about myself. You know, as a as a I would say as a man, but as a person, period. I actually think it's just important. You got to build it. There's got to be some points that you put up on the scoreboard. There's got to be something and something that you truly know that you did. Like I, I did that. I did that on my own. I, you know, that, that was, you know, you may have done it for other people or whatever, but you did something on your own. Like that is a really,

uh, that is a great place to be. And that is a great, that is a really great feeling to have that. that is a great place to be. And that is a great, that is a really great feeling to have that. Yeah, you definitely have a, I will agree, say that you have a really positive impact on my life for sure. One thing that happened over the holiday weekend also, Stephanie had asked me like, what do you want for Christmas? You know, what are we, what are we going to do? Well, like, I don't want anything. Of course. That's the typical answer. When deep down,

it's like, Oh fuck, it'd be cool if, um, so I just told her, um, we have our son room and I wanted that to be our develop, our personal development room.

Like, but it just needs a big ass desk. You're right. You know, that's all it needs. A straight desk, nothing fancy desk and a chair. And over the weekend we got it.

So I'm really pumped about that because i'm like holy shit like every day i get to come in here and work on personal development that i learned from this fat guy over here and you know who knows we'll see what happens but why why do you think that people like you know the personal development thing maybe sometimes it's hard for people to really understand but let me just kind of break it down for everybody in a little bit easier terms. Really, all you're doing is you're. It's going to sound weird to say it this way, but you're planning for your future. That's all you're really doing.

Like you're not you may not literally be writing down what's going on in 2019 and 2020. down what's going on in 2019 and 2020, but you're learning more shit just so you're prepared for, for what's next. So for example, let's just say that, you know, I set Andrew on this path of being on a keto diet and then Andrew likes Aubrey Marcus. So maybe he goes back and looks at Aubrey Marcus's book and be like, I think Aubrey Marcus talked about the keto diet. He goes and he looks and he's like, Oh, okay. Well, he learns more about the keto diet than maybe he's sitting there and he's on his laptop. And he's like, well, that was kind of cool. What Aubrey Marcus said, let me type in a couple other things. Looks up a couple other things. Well, now you, I gave you some information. You went out and researched it on your own. Something that Aubrey Marcus said stuck to you better than something I said.

You read that. You researched a little bit more information. Well, now you have information that you have both extracted from me and from a few other people and turned it into a couple things that you can digest a lot easier a couple of things that are going to stick with you a lot easier. And now when someone says, Hey, why are you on a diet? You're not like, I don't know. My boss told me, you know, and like, you're not like a raging idiot, right? Like you're like, well, actually, so here's what I did. I decided to cut out all the sugars and I replaced it with fat and protein. Uh, I'm

switching my body over into being able to run off the fats and actually I'm feeling pretty good. I went in the gym the other day. Uh, I hit a PR double, uh, on the bench and my energy levels are good. And this feels pretty good to me for right now. And I'll probably switch the diet up in a few weeks, but you know, uh, this is what I'm doing. I mean, ketosis, you know, and, um, so it just, the, the more, the more you can figure out the reason on kind of like why you're doing something, the purpose, um, of, of why you're doing it, then the more, the easier it is for you to follow it. The, uh, Russian athletes, they broke them down and they, they, um, they kind of figured out why the Russian system was so effective for weightlifting. And one of their

philosophies, one of the things that they had in there was, um, and one of the principles they had was called the principle of awareness. So they, they recognized that in order for their athletes to do well, they had to understand why they were doing it. They had to be aware of like, what's this for? Like you told me to do, you told me to do a hundred, uh, a hundred snatches with the bar, um, after my workout. If I don't know why I'm doing that, then I'm going to do 49 of them and say that I did a hundred. And then the next week I'm going to do like 30 of them. And the week after that, I'm not going to do any. And, but if I understand why, if they say, Hey, look, uh, Alexiv, who's the most decorated

Olympic lifter in the history of lifting, uh, he used to do this after his workouts and he found that it helped his central nervous system recover from his workouts better. And he was able to be stronger every workout after that because he recovered faster. Then he'd be like, oh, shit. Okay. All right. Well, maybe I should try that. And then maybe you try it.

And, you know, A, because the coach told you it works so well, it probably feels good. And B, maybe there's actually something to it. But now you have something that you can continue to do. And B, maybe there's actually something to it, but now you have something that you can continue to do. And you got something that you're made aware of. You understand what the hell's going on. And that's, that's what personal development is all about. It's all about trying to figure out what the hell's going on. Yeah, that's great. And somebody had asked, I think, I don't remember if it was the power project instagram or if it was my personal one but they just kind of wanted to know what your process was when you're journaling or you're

scribbling around doodling in your composition book but essentially that's basically it right yeah um i'm trying to um i'm trying to like arm myself. You know, they say like the pen is mightier than the sword, right? Like, well, knowledge is really powerful. Knowledge is power. Knowledge is strength. You're not always going to be able to like muscle your way at everything. You're not always going to be able to beat the shit out of people. And that's not even really what life is all about.

And even if you were to beat someone's ass, you're still not going to probably be able to convince them of your way anyway, right? You, you probably, it probably makes more sense to have perspective into their life where they're coming from and be smart. And to say, you know what? I understand your perspective on that. That actually makes a lot of sense, but here's where I disagree. And then when you explain why you disagree and you lay down the foundation of some really informative stuff that has some facts in it then you're able to kind of take that person and and have them say yeah man actually he's right the more that you do the more you can the more that you can do like he's actually got a point there i mean really life is is it's not like that for me.

It's like that for everybody. You're always trying to make a sale. You're always trying to sell people on something, some concepts, some idea, some belief. You're trying to get people to believe in some of the things that you're communicating. And so for me, when I'm, you know, scribbling down stuff and, uh, writing down different things in this, uh, personal development journal, that's what, that's what a lot of this is. And like, I, I, um, I don't have any restriction on how I write or how big I write. Um, I, you know, if something's a big deal, I'll write it bigger. Um, if something, you know, is, uh, needs to be

underlined or capitalized or, you know, whatever I'll, you know, I'll to be underlined or capitalized or you know whatever i'll you know i'll write these write these things out um like i mean i have stuff right here uh that's written down that i'm looking at and it talks about like isolated victories you know and that's something i kind of came up with more recently through hearing other speeches then they didn't say an isolated victory but they they basically kind of said you know like uh try to do things one thing at a time and i kind of thought about the image of you know in a basketball game when you clear out the court and the basket the guy with the ball is dribbling and he waves everybody off with the hand and he's's like, all right, now I'm going to go one-on-one. I'm going to take the game winning shot.

How foolish is it to live your life and to let other people take the game winning shot for you when the game is your life, it's your own, it's your own life. So if you don't make plans, then other other people aren't really going to make plans for you either. And so you'll kind of be, you'll just be, you'll just be left on the sidelines. You're not going to have a chance to even shoot the game winning shot when it comes to those kinds of things.

Or, you know, what type of plans people are probably going to always make for you. They're probably always going to make really small plans for you. Probably not going to really make really big plans. They'll make huge plans for themselves. And, and that's, and I'm talking about all human beings. This is the way, this is the way that we're wired. This is the way that we are. Um, but you shouldn't have small plans and small goals. You should have some big, you should have some big ones. You want a few small ones too. You want a few things that are easy to acquire, easy to obtain, easy to strive for, such as, you know, one tiny thing

added to your diet is, is a great place to start. I'm going to start eating fruit every day. Eat one piece of fruit every day. Eat one serving of vegetables every day. Like just these small little things. Okay. Well, I actually ate a piece of fruit every day for seven days. You know, there you go. I actually ate, you know, a serving of vegetables every day for a week. There you go. Like that's progress. That's, and that's huge progress. And that's stuff that should be celebrated.

And it's really important to recognize too, that celebrating stuff, celebrating your, your, your victories that you have, um, is not a sign of being immature. It's a sign of maturity. You should be able to celebrate the things that are going on in your life. And that's why I made a video the other day. Um, I was out in front of my, uh, my pink house that I lived in a few years ago. And actually I did not really realize how different that neighborhood looked compared to the neighborhood. I live on the block that i live on now but i you know i uh like moved myself off of that block you know by the work that i put in by the work that i did

and i didn't even really know like the the where i lived before it wasn't bad it was still a nice area it's still great the house i lived in uh you know i i still loved it it was still a great house to raise our children in and that's where the slingshot was uh slang out of the garage out there and um you don't have any regrets towards it but it was interesting walking back down that block and looking at that street going oh my god like where I live now looks nothing like this block. You know, it was a huge, it was a huge upgrade, I guess is what I'm trying to say. But that upgrade didn't just happen. Like I made that shit happen. I forced that, I forced those things to happen. And a lot of it has to do with my own personal development. If I just got dumber than I wouldn't be in the position

I'm in, you have to get smarter. You have to acquire more knowledge. Some of the knowledge is just going to come from life happening anyway, but some of it has to come from you sitting down and you figuring out, okay, what are some things that I should be working on? What are some things that should be working towards? They can be, these things can be things that you like. It's totally fine. But like when I sit down and I try to learn, I don't sit there and look at

workouts. I don't sit there and, and look at information about diet. I mean, occasionally I do occasionally I go off into that, but once I do, I'm like, you know what? I already kick ass at that stuff. I already know quite a bit about that stuff. I don't need to sit here and like research that. Leave that, leave the research to the nerds like Lane Norton, right? I'm going to sit here and I'm going to, I'm going to work on, I'm going to work on something that maybe like, what do, where am I weak? Where do I think I'm not that good?

Maybe I communicated with somebody a few days ago and maybe I hurt their feelings. How do I get better? How do I get better at that? How do I not, how do I not hurt people's feelings? Or was that person just soft? And I ran them over by accident, you know? Um, these are things that you can evaluate and you can, I mean, there's so much information on the internet. You can learn, uh, you can learn all kinds of things. I learned something a few weeks ago where the guy said, um, you know, instead of like, uh, asking somebody, Hey man, like, uh, you got any time on Tuesday to meet up? Like instead of asking somebody in that way, um, you might make that person panic and they'll be like, no man, I don't have any time on Tuesday to meet up. Um, you know, instead of wording it that way, maybe you word it in a different way and say,

you know what? I'd love an opportunity to chat with you. I'm free this Tuesday, but I'm sure that you're really busy. And the second you say, I'm sure that you're really busy. Or the second that you say, I'm sure your schedule's overload. It's probably not possible to squeeze me in on such short notice. Then the person wants to be accommodating. They come from the other side and they say, no, no, no, no, no. Tuesday's fine. Meanwhile, they have a dentist appointment and they got all this other shit going. They got a haircut. They

got a lot of shit going on that day, but they now want to be accommodating because this, because of the way that you asked them, you know? And so there's, there's lots of shit you can learn from working on your personal development and it can, it could look, it could come in all different shapes and sizes. You could, uh, you can read about philosophy. You can read about fricking George Washington. You could read about great inventors. You can read about musicians. You can, um, I mean, there's just, you can explore all kinds of stuff.

What I wouldn't suggest doing is I wouldn't suggest getting too trapped into too many things that you just like. Because you're going to have to dig a little deeper than just the surface of the things that you like. Yeah, I've been kind of trying not to spread myself too thin because remember i was telling you about like the the music mixing stuff that i was doing for a little bit uh i definitely want to get back to it but i just feel like there's more important things i need to get to first but then i started giving myself uh kind of not anxiety but like uh i felt the pressure of like, dude, I bought this fucking mixer and I haven't touched it. But then, you know, when I started taking personal development a little bit serious, it was a lot easier to let go of stuff that wasn't too important in the moment right now. But you're right.

I was thinking about it the other day. I'm like, dude, I could easily take like a DJ course or something online and figure out how to mix shit better. But the worst part is when Jasmine had asked me, like, why do I have to go to school? We have Google now. I'm like, man, like you weren't supposed to know that right away. That's awesome. I got to pee really bad. I know that right away. That's awesome.

I got to pee really bad. I'll be right back. Tell them about your triple Thanksgiving that you had. Triple Thanksgiving. Well, actually, I can talk about my... I set a new world record. Yeah. As you guys know, Mark had mentioned that for every world record that is set on the platform using our gear,

Mark's going to send you guys $1,000. So I took him up on that offer, and I set a world record for the platform in my house on Thanksgiving Day. I just hit a 225-pound deadlift, obviously just playing around. But it was fun man i i uh i trained at home with my fiancee the entire like um thanksgiving day week whatever and what was funny is i had planned on just kind of like getting like a like a participation trophy i guess you know like oh i'm just gonna train at home with with the wifey or fiance and just move around, not really taking it too serious.

It's more about trying to get her a good workout in. Every day I woke up extremely sore. It was kind of awesome. I put up a post saying that I was thankful for the gym that we had put together ourselves. It's all just stuff based out of necessity. I hurt my back, so I wanted to use a trap bar. We bought a trap bar. Stephanie wants to get a bigger butt, so we bought a squat rack. It's been pretty damn awesome. And yeah, we did have three Thanksgivings. Had one with my side of the family Stephanie's side of the family and

then Stephanie's other side of the family and but throughout all of the families I didn't eat anything too gross I didn't get weird I stayed on the diet and then Mark actually had me do two days of fasting oh yeah how was your fasting I was really what's funny is the night before the first day i made myself hungry by thinking about what i couldn't eat it was dumb like i in the moment i realized how stupid it was because i i was like dude i'm i would never be hungry right now like i had a big old ribeye steak like i was good and then i was like damn i'm not gonna be able to eat till like started counting like it's gonna be like three o'clock when i can eat again like oh fuck i don't know if i'm gonna do this and we we took jasmine to go watch venom which was cool i was like as long as i can get to the movie

i'll be fine because as i'm in the theater i won't think about food wrong every time the like uh the premiere uh previews would would turn off like during the preview i'd be like oh man my stomach's like i'm starting to get hungry it gets silent like oh my god like there's a kid next to me he looked over jasmine looks over at me and then stephanie's like is that your stomach like yeah this sucks and i just ended up drinking a bunch of water and it all went away but uh the second day was way easier because i realized that it wasn't that bad yeah fasting's awesome i think you know it teaches you a lot it teaches you like you don't really need you don't need the stuff that you think you need it's it's almost always a false alarm um and that that goes for food and that goes for all kinds

of stuff. You don't always really need this stuff. You just kind of think that you do. You think that you need food. You think that you're hungry. And there's a lot of benefits to fasting and a lot of that's been researched. A lot of people talk about it. But what I like about fasting is just a simple act of learning about yourself, learning about how hungry you truly are, learning about when you should be eating, maybe when you should be kind of starving off that hunger that's hitting you real hard. Cause like you're not always hungry, um, by learning some of these techniques and by doing some of this, you can start to learn that after you eat dinner, you don't have to have another snack. Like after you eat, you don't need to eat again. And for a lot of people, that's really a problematic thing that happens to them.

You know, sometimes almost, you know, two or three times a day it might happen where you just get so hungry that you want to eat. And then you get done eating and you still want to just for whatever reason want to indulge more. Yeah. Eat more. Yeah. I just I thought it was weird that just by thinking about me possibly being hungry made myself hungry. And then in the middle of all of it, I just like, man, black coffee is, it's amazing.

Like it made me appreciate black coffee so much because Mark said I was allowed to have that. Yeah. And then the first night when I started eating, I took it slow, exactly as you said, and I felt fine. The second night, I was like, I was good the day before. I'm going to be fine today. And I ate pretty quick and I ate a lot. And my stomach was kind of like, hey, we don't know what's going on here.

And I kind of hurt myself. But all in all, I felt fine. I did find that cognitively I wasn't really there. I think that could be just from no caffeine in the morning. Because if I have caffeine in the morning without food, my stomach will get kind of weird. So I didn't want to risk that. But that's what I noticed out of everything. And I thought it would actually be more clear.

But I don't know. But that's what I noticed out of everything. And I thought it would actually be more clear. Right. But I don't know. I just. Right. It depends on how, you know, it depends on your experience level and how much you've done it before. And how long you fast for. Like, because things come and go. I have found myself, you know, both being like more aware and less aware. I've had, I've experienced both.

myself you know both being like more aware and less aware i've had i've had i've experienced both um sometimes like if you're fasting for too long sometimes you'll start to kind of lose some steam and you'll start to forget things it just depends on how long you're doing it for but yeah intermittent fasting i really think is it is it's it's a hard thing to to tell people because it is such a you know just don't eat you know it's hard it's a hard it's a little bit of a hard thing to tell people because it is such a, you know, just don't eat. You know, it's hard. It's a hard. It's a little bit of a hard sell. However, if you just told people, you know what, like have your first meal of the day, be it like, you know, two o'clock.

That's not I mean, that might be kind of difficult for some people, but a lot of people will say, you know what? I probably don't really eat that much anyway in the morning. And if you're just eating something shitty, then it might be one more spot to cut out a crappy meal. Yeah. And I think what you, what you told me was like, because we are eating clean and I was eating a lot of fatty foods and stuff anyways, it made it way easier. Had I been eating, you know, fries and hamburgers it would have been really hard because I would have been starving but the the the mindset you know just the second day was so easy because I'm like oh one I've done it and two it's it's not that long from right now right like I'm gonna be fine I think everybody should give it a shot you know try a 12-hour fast try a 16 hour fast um the 24 hour fast and things like that like they're

they're also great to try but you know start out small start out with 12 hour fast first see what that feels like that's probably not going to feel too bad a lot of you probably have done it already just by accident um and then try you know a and, and build your way into it and try, try some different ones. Um, I've done a 48 hour fast before. I felt that was excessive. I felt it was like, um, I felt it was like too stressful, like to do that, like once a year or something, it seems like it would be fine, but to do it, uh, too often seems

like it might be, uh, a little bit too much, but you know, we were talking about some other stuff, uh, earlier. And, uh, as we were, you know, we were talking about some other stuff earlier. And as we were, you know, we were kind of diving into this personal development thing, you know, during your time when you're doing the personal development stuff, it gives you time to reflect on all kinds of things. You can start to go over your diet. You can go over your training. You can think about just some different goals that you might have. You can think about like, oh, I just want my arms to be bigger. I want my shoulders to be bigger. Well, you can kind of write out like, what does that look like? You know, what, what is that, you know, to the kid that, you know, is,

you know, not doing their homework, the kid that, you know, is, is a little bit lost, the person that's a little bit lost, not even necessarily a kid, but, you know, we were talking about, you know, your child not wanting to do their homework and some of these other things you could then ask them okay well what you know what is it what do you think you would like to do or like forget about being an adult because that's like a hard thing to envision what what's a what's a job that you would like to do and then if they say well you know i want to uh work at the movie theater well Well, then you'd have to say, okay, well, what actions do you have towards that? And they would say, well, I don't really know. Like, I don't, I don't, I'm not sure how to do that. Okay. Well, you know, getting your schoolwork done when you're supposed to get your schoolwork done can help you for that job because you have

to be at that job at a certain time. And they're going to ask you to do a lot of things like scrub the toilets and things like that. They're going to ask you to do shit that you probably don't want to do when you don't want to do it. And so therefore the homework is a good example of, you know, you can get, get this, get this stuff done that you don't want to do when you normally don't want to do it. And it can kind of be reflective back towards, uh, your schoolwork with your own goals. When you start to set your own goals, um, I want to have bigger shoulders or I want to be leaner. Well, okay. Well, what are the things that you're going to set in motion towards that? What is that going to look like? You know, maybe you write down two

or three steps. Uh, I want to be leaner. I want to be, I want to be lighter. Like if you, you know, uh, I want to be leaner. I want to be, I want to be lighter. Like if you, you know, if you weigh 200 pounds and you want to weigh 185, okay, that's 15 pounds. What are you going to do? You know, what's, what's your move, um, or moves and you don't have to change 75 different things. It's only 15 pounds. So just, but you need to kind of think, how am I going to do this? And you can kind of, you can do a lot of that stuff when you're working on your personal development. It really is a plan for the future. And you can plan for a short-term future. You can plan for tomorrow, or you can plan for like more long-term. But in my opinion, a lot of people don't ever really sit down and think of these things because this is all stuff that they want to sweep under the rug. These are all things they really

don't want to think about. I don't really want to think about, you know, where I'm going to be in five years. I'm probably doing the same damn thing. And so it's easier for me just not to think about it. And you want to plant, you want to plant, like, what does it look like for you? What is, what do you want to do? Uh, what would you look like for you? What do you want to do? What would you like to get out of the next couple of years? What is it that you'd like to get out of your life? What are you aspiring to be? Or what are you challenging yourself or demanding yourself to be?

Once that's written out, once that's figured out, okay, well now, like, let's figure out, you know, what are we going to write down to get us towards that message? Get us towards that, that thing that we're looking for that get us towards that thing that we're pushing for. You know, they say without a plan, you know, then you're planning to fail. And that, that is definitely, uh, something that that's true. You have to kind of plan out. You got to think about when are you going to do this? Even when it comes to your own personal development, I'd plan that out. I'd write it out. I'd write it down. When do you want to do it? Remember, I've, I've shared this before about finding time to work out. Don't find time to work out. Just write it down. And then it's found.

You don't have to look for it. You already got it. You just need to write it down. You can create time. You can kind of make time. It's like a cheat code. You can prepare yourself for stuff by just writing out what you're going to do the next day. I've said this a bunch of times. You already know where you're going to be each day. You have at least a general idea. And then I always get the one guy who's like, Oh, my schedule's crazy. You don't, I don't know. Right. But you, in general, you know, where you're going to be schedule the things around that so that you can be prepared that you can plan ahead. Um, you know, it's, it's a great time of year to talk about all these things because someone will, um, someone will go to a holiday

party and then they'll eat cake and they'll eat a bunch of stuff that they didn't want to eat and have a bunch of drinks that they didn't want to drink. And they'll overdo it and they'll wake up hungover the next day. And they'll be like, I shouldn't have done that or whatever. You can prepare yourself for, you already know that these things are coming. You can make your own decision, your own way on how you're going to handle that. And, and you can just go and party. You can say, I'm going to just go there and, you know, I know, uh, there's going to be cheesecake there and I'm going to smash that shit. That's fine. But at least you already made up your mind on, on what you're going to do, or you get there and something unexpectedly is like something that you don't want to refuse.

Well, you can audible, you can audible and you can say, okay, well, I was going to actually cheat tomorrow, but all right, well, this is in front of me today. And, uh, hopefully I can be strong enough to not cheat tomorrow. And I can, I can enjoy this. That's the way, that's the way you're going to kind of maximize, um, your potential. That's the way you're going to maximize your ability to kind of plan and audible and be able to move in and out of these different things so that you have more good days than you do bad. Yeah. And writing something down, it has kind of two things that happen. One, we can't really explain. You write something down and all of a sudden it starts happening or

something falls into place that was unexpected. I don't know what that is, but whatever that is, that can potentially happen. The other thing is when you write something down, you just don't forget it. I can sit here and say every morning at 5.30 a.m., I'm going to work on personal development. Come tomorrow morning, that alarm clock goes off, and I hit snooze or whatever happens, and I skip in like, ah, fuck, that's right. I was supposed to do this. So when you write it down, you actually schedule your stuff out. Again, it just happens. And when you don't forget it, it usually happens. And when you write it down, you usually don't forget it.

At the end of the day, you know, when it's 6 p.m. And you, you know, just got done eating dinner and you're talking to your significant other. You're like, hey, what are you doing tomorrow? And you check your thing. They check their thing and you chat about it. And you're like, oh, yeah, 530 tomorrow. You know, I'm going to be doing that from 530 to 630. Already in your head, you can start to plan out what does the rest of the night look like?

What time are you going to bed? Well, you know, if I'm going to be up at 530, then it probably makes sense for me to at least, you know, I need to be heading towards bed at nine o'clock, you know, so I can get a good night's sleep and be up at 530. That way when that way the alarm doesn't even go off. You just wake up because you were laying in bed for so long, you know, get yourself, get yourself in position, you know, when you're thinking about, um, when you're watching, uh, sports, you know, like, let's say, let's say it's baseball and say, there's a, you know, a pitcher, um, uh, you know, a pitcher against a certain batter that has a certain style to his swing. Well, the outfield's going to adjust to the guy that's at bat

in accordance to who the pitcher is because the ball's going to ricochet off that bat a certain way. It's going to hop a certain way. So maybe the shortstop plays a little deeper. Maybe the second baseman comes in a little bit. Or whatever the case is, adjust your day. Adjust yourself to whatever it is that's going to happen in your day. Make these small adjustments ahead of time so that you can make the play,

so that you can end up controlling your own destiny. When I was talking in front of my house the other day, I talked about this thing that I wrote down and I used to write down all my goals and I haven't really talked about this, um, on the podcast before, but I used to write everything down on my bathroom mirror and, uh, not everything, but I used to mainly write down because at that time, all I was obsessed with was numbers, you know, the numbers of powerlifting. And so, you know, every morning I would, um, you know, take a shower and then I would write down, you know, in the fog that's on the mirror, I write down, um, what I wanted to do. And so I'd write like 804 because these certain numbers are associated with these kilo, uh,

weight. So, uh, you can't just bench 800 pounds or deadlift 800 pounds. It's gotta be 804. That's the number that comes up. And so I write that down, you know, every single day. And then for a long time, um, I did a thousand three squat first, I believe. Uh, I wrote down, you know, a thousand three, a thousand three, a thousand three a thousand three a thousand three and i saw it every day and my wife was always like what are you doing with the mirror you know she'd kind of see it every day and then it was you know by the

time she got in there it was like halfway smeared off or because you know it's like running off and it's not foggy in there anymore but i used to write those numbers down and obsess over them and when i started slingshot and i started this business and i started getting this business heading heading in in a in a good direction you know created the product and created another product around it probably a pair of wrist wraps or something like that i can't remember exactly what it was i remember going to a starbucks and i wrote down this number and i just, this was just some, I was messing around on my calculator. And I was like, you know, uh, at that point I already sold

a decent amount of slingshots, but it wasn't, I wasn't like, wasn't wealthy or anything like that. Um, but I was just like, kind of looking and I was like, man, like, you know, what, how do you, how do you become a millionaire? Like what, what is, what even goes into all that? Like how to, how does that even a possible thing? Like, what do you want me, let me just, let me just add it up. Let me just see what the math looks like. If I was to try to make a million dollars in one year, how much money would I have to make?

Typed it into the calculator. You know, I did, you know, we got what, 365, 365 days. Right. And yeah, how much money do you need to make per day to make a million? So I think I, whatever, divided it or however I did it. And I ended up with 2,750 is the number and i was like wow 2750 and i'm like i'm just sitting there for a second i'm like okay well i gotta make 2750 bucks a month to make a million dollars and i was like no wait that's not right i i think i calculated it for the day i'm like then i'm looking at it i'm like how do you make 2,750 bucks every day

that sounds ridiculous and then i just was thinking about it more and i was like well i was like i you know i i didn't know how i was going to make the money that i'm that i've already made um and i don't know how i'm going to make this money, but what I'll do is I'll just set my goals up to be in line with trying to make this amount of money, man. Now we'll just kind of see what happens. And so I told my dad about it and I told my brother about it. I talked to my brother today about it. My brother's like, I remember that day.

He's like, I remember when you called me. I remember when you talked to me about that. I talked to my buddy, Jesse Burdick about it. And I talked to Kelly's to read about it and Kelly's business was doing well at the time. And he was like, race you to a million, you know? And I was like, well, shit, like I'm going to be way behind. Uh, cause you're, cause that, you know, I think he was, uh, I feel that he was more successful than me at that time. And, um, you know, I just kind of like from, I kind of forgot about it, but I wrote it down and I was like, I'm just gonna, you know, make that a goal. It wasn't something I obsessed

over. Cause you know, that, that is obviously an abundance of money. It's not, um, it's not necessary, uh, to live, you know, it's not, um, but you know, I didn't know some of the things I know now, now I understand how important it is to make that kind of money and the reasons why, because it, it helps fuel everything that we have going on here now. And it helps for everybody in the building to grow and expand. But at the time we didn't have other people. Um, and so, uh, we didn't have, we didn't have a lot of other people working for us, but that number started to really kind of grow on me, and it started to really be something that I wanted to try to strive for.

It was just a goal. It wasn't just like a goal of me writing down 804 on the bathroom mirror. That's not for anybody else. It's for me. Like, what does benching 800 pounds give you? I don't know. I can't tell you that other than some torn pecs and a bunch of injuries. But it gave me experience that other people don't have. And now look what has happened with the experience that I have of squatting over a thousand pounds of bench pressing over 800 pounds and, and doing some of these things, some of these, uh, heavier lifts, uh, raw as well. Now it gives me a platform to speak from and people are listening because they're like, well, there's a guy who did it. He's done this before. You know, this isn't just a, this isn't just a fly by night company. This is not something that somebody

who has a business sense, just invested in. This is a powerlifting company created by a powerlifter. All the products that you still see on markbellslingshot.com, all the things are a manifestation of things that I needed. Like I didn't even necessarily, it's not that I wanted to use them. It's that I needed them because I kept getting hurt. I kept getting banged up. I created the compression cuffs because I had elbow tendonitis. I created wrist wraps because I invented the slingshot. The slingshot allows you to handle more weight. So it doesn't make any sense to handle more weight than you can normally handle, but then not have wrist wraps to protect your wrist with the weight that you have in your hands.

The strong knee sleeves, the strong knee sleeves were created out of a necessity because I got wiped out by 1,085 and can barely get up off my couch. And so I had to make stronger knee sleeves. At that time, we already had the slingshot knee sleeves, but the slingshot knee sleeves were not strong. They were not compressive enough for me to still be able to squat. So I was taken out of the game for a while.

I couldn't even barely squat when we got the strong knee sleeves. Uh, when we, when we brought those to the market, those allowed me to get back in the game. Those allowed me to get back into squatting before that. Like I said, I could barely get up off the couch because my knees were so wrecked. Um, and even a better testimonial for that is that my knees are totally fine now and nothing's changed. I didn't get surgery. I just wore knee sleeves for a while. Now I don't even have to wear knee sleeves, but I don't want, I can squat with or without them. It doesn't, um, my knees don't hurt. They're, they're, uh, they're in good shape, but basically that 2750 that I wrote down, it made me kind of think, okay, I don't have multiple revenue streams. My revenue stream is slingshot. Basically. Um, I have power magazine, but power magazine is not,

wasn't really like a real huge profitable thing. I have a gym, but the gym's free. Um, I don't really know how to make supplements and, uh, I can't sing or dance and I'm not a, uh, I'm not a doctor or a scientist or a lawyer. So I don't have to know how to make money in any other way other than from like what I have, you know, what I already have in front of me and the invention that I created. And so I'm like, okay, well, why don't I have, you know, what I already have in front of me and the invention that I created. And so I'm like, OK, well, why don't I just maybe what I should think about is. How do I just protect everybody head to toe? You know, initially that was the goal anyway.

As soon as I made the slingshot, the next goal right after that wasn't 2750. The next goal after that was to protect everybody head to toe from their toes to the nose wanted to protect everybody head to toe i wanted to be able to make shoes for lifting i wanted to be able to make knee sleeves for squats i wanted to be able to make a lifting belt for deadlifts i wanted to be able to be able to create a slingshot for bench press and elbow sleeves wrist wraps i wanted to cover able to be able to create a slingshot for bench press and elbow sleeves, wrist wraps. I wanted to cover up every joint that you have in your body so that you can lift regardless of how much pain you were in. And it took a really long time. It took a really long time. Head down for a long time, plowing forward, one foot in front of the other, one foot in front of

the other. Knee sleeves came along. Wrist wraps came along pretty quick, pretty easy. Elbow sleeves came along. The knee and elbow sleeves took a long time, took a long time to produce those products and make those products right and to get them dialed in to where they are today we've had you know and originally when we made the first few uh thousand uh slingshot knee sleeves they used to rip they used to rip all the time somebody'd go to get it up their calf they had a pretty big beefy calf and the thing would rip and uh i learned back then a really valuable lesson um a few valuable lessons number one is you got to really you know you got to really do more uh research on your own products and you can't just run off you can't just randomly run off um some prototypes and think that the prototypes are the

exact same as the assembly of uh of all the manufactured stuff that you have in inventory that it's going to go to the customer. You got to test those things out too. So I learned that lesson. But I also learned an even more amazing lesson was that when somebody's knee sleeves rip and when a customer is pissed off, that is a great opportunity to make that situation right. And it's a wonderful opportunity to build your business. And so now you got someone who's super pissed, like Jesus fucking Christ, I came to your site.

You know, you're Mark Bell, you're supposed to be this big lifter and you made these shit knee sleeves and they ripped on me and they tore and all this stuff. And all I had to do was get on there and say, oh my God, this is embarrassing. I'm so sorry that happened. We're going to send you a new pair.

I'm going to send you a slingshot with an autograph on it. Is there anything else that I could get you? Sorry for the inconvenience. That person would flip out and they would be so pumped. And they'd be like, hey man, like that's great. I'm going to tell people you got a great company. That's, that's awesome. And we did it kind of one person, you know, at a time that we kept building products and building products and building

products and the million dollar thing, the 2750 thing. By the time I got around to figuring out how to make freaking belts, which took a really long time. Um, that time I got around to that, there was no million dollar goal. It was over with. It was, with it was i i blew right past it there was no opportunity to ever even really look at it i i don't even think i ever uh i don't think i ever even recognized that number before i knew it two three and more was coming so but it was it was um it started out as a dream you know it started out as a dream, you know, it started out as a dream and it started out as me just kind of writing it down and me saying, look, man, I don't know. I don't really know how this is going to happen, but I'm going to figure out a way

to make this happen. I don't really know what's all going to be involved or how long it's going to take. Um, but we're going to, I'm going to, I'm going to figure this shit out. And this is, this is what I'd, I'd like to do. And eventually, um, the goal became small. Like the goal was huge at the time. It was, I don't, I didn't know. I'm like, man, that's 2750 a day. Like that's really far away. I don't, you know, on our best day, we didn't have anything like that. So I could not figure out how to, how that was ever going to work out. But with the simple conversation to myself of, I want to outfit people head to toe. I want to protect people. I know that people have wrist problems. People have elbow problems.

People have shoulder problems. People have shoulder problems. People have knee problems. People have back problems. I want to cover all that shit. And then maybe I can come up even maybe with a pair of shoes if I can figure out some sucker to help me make some shoes. And that was Reebok, right? So it was being resourceful. And there was a lot of things involved in that whole process, a lot of people involved in that whole process. But that's how it came to be.

That's awesome. And so Tim asked early on. What's up, Tim? So when you first started, did you guys sell Slingshot Gear on a website? Yeah. Yeah, it's always been. And that's why Cyber Monday is kind of a special day because it's all been internet. We sell stuff through other vendors, but even they sell stuff online too.

So it's not like you can go to your local sporting goods store and pick up a slingshot. You've got to buy it on the interweb. So yeah, it's always been e-commerce for us from the beginning. I don't know how else we would have done it if it wasn't for the internet. Yeah. Levi, I think that's how you pronounce this person's name, asks if the gym has always been free. The gym has not always been free. It's always been a goal.

It's always been a dream of mine to make the gym free. Um, it, it's always been a goal. It's always been a dream of mine to make the gym free. But, um, for the first two or three years, uh, I couldn't have the gym be free. I had to, uh, in order to get the gym going and in order to get it running, um, I had to charge and basically just needed to try to figure out a way to keep the place afloat. Um, the original super training cost about 900 bucks a month and i had about 12 members and we charged 100 bucks a month and uh so that worked out to where uh i was able to make you know three four hundred bucks a month off of uh having you know a few

extra people pay and then as we got more stuff i I charged a little bit more. And then we, um, we, we moved the gym and there was still a fee for it. And then right around the time that I moved to Midtown strength and conditioning was probably maybe six months or a year later. Uh, when we finally were able to like drop, you know, I, I always wanted to make it free. It was always in my head. I was like, I need to figure out, but I didn't want to lose money on having a gym. So I had to charge in the beginning. And then ultimately got to a spot where, you know, once I started making money with the slingshot, I was able to open up the gym and keep it for free.

All right. You want to take a diet question? Sure. All right. Jonathan, he's lost 55 or 45 pounds. Oh my God. In 55 days. Wow.

But he's hitting a plateau. Said he's tried doing more cardio, tried cutting out carbs, but he's still stuck and he wants to lose another 75 pounds more. Wow. I know. It's a lot. But you've talked about plateauing before.

I just can't remember which podcast it was or else I would have told him to listen to that. So instead, we'll just do it here. Yeah. Did he say how

he lost the weight? Let me check. Where did he go? He didn't say anything about like the type of diet that he did or whatever, right? Yeah. Changed out his diet and then added a workout routine, including cardio.

But no, it doesn't say exactly. It said he's cut out pasta and rice, even did the HGC diet. I don't know what that is. Oh, yeah. HCG, yeah. Yeah. I don't know what that means, but yeah, that's all I've got so far. Yeah.

Yeah, I don't know what that means, but yeah, that's all I've got so far. Yeah. So usually like when you get stuck in anything in life, it's time to probably make a change. You know, it's time to try something different. You know, you can't just keep doing the same thing and expect a different result. That's the definition of insanity. You're not going to end up with a different result until you do something a little different. And so in this guy's case, sounds like he's busting out cardio and sounds like he's trying to diet the best way that he knows how, but your body might need a little bit of like a reboot.

What I would suggest is, and it's so hard to tell someone to take a break from a diet, especially somebody who's lost so much weight. It's dangerous territory in some sense. especially somebody who's lost so much weight. It's dangerous territory in some sense. Um, but I'll give you two options. Option number one is to just pick a different diet. You know, option number one is like jump on the vertical diet, try something different. Um, allow yourself, allow yourself to eat more on whatever diet it is that you select. So if you pick the vertical diet and you start eating rice and you start eating sweet potatoes and stuff, just allow yourself for a week or two to kind of recharge your batteries and to start over. Um, if you start getting worried about it, you start gaining weight back super fast. You can always audible and, and switch back over to whatever you're doing.

I would ditch the cardio and I'd start to try to send your body a different signal. You want to try to send your body a signal of muscle growth, especially while you're switching over to a vertical diet, which is from Stan Efferding. Go to stanefferding.com. You could pick up a copy of his book there, which actually you can't physically pick up a copy because it's just an e-book. It is like a hundred bucks. If you don't want to pay a hundred bucks and you can YouTube it and you'll find a ton of information, but the book has tremendous value and there's a lot of great information there. So I would change the signal that you're sending your body. You're sending your body a signal of lose weight, lose weight, lose weight, and you've already lost some

and you're kind of stagnant and losing weight doesn't really happen through exercise. It's unfortunate that it has very little impact, especially when you've already been exercising for a long time. If exercise is new to you, then it has a pretty good stimulus. But send your body a message of trying to gain muscle mass, and then also if you still want to do cardio, try some HIIT cardio rather than, um, this like long duration stuff. Um, some people, when they do their hit training, they like to like go like a hundred percent

and go all in on their sprints. I don't think that's necessary. I think if you go at like 80%, 70%, I think that still, uh, represents enough of a change from the, uh, like 50 or 40 percent that you'll put in while you're quote unquote resting so i would look into some of those things and really just making a change is going to be your best option um do you think because he's lost so much weight in such a short amount of time that his body might just kind of have been in shock and it's like whoa

slow down like what's going on here yeah it might be but he also you know it also sounds like he has you know a good amount to still lose you know from what he's saying um you could also so option number two is you know get the war on carbs jump in on a jump in on a keto diet and, um, and get rid of, get, I would also just get rid of that cardio, um, and, uh, lift and walk, just lift and walk, lift and walk, lift and walk. The cardio is great, but cardio is like, uh, cardio works for like periods of time. And, uh, you, you ha it, it's, it takes a lot like cardio just it takes it takes a lot of effort takes a lot out of you and so i would just give it a rest for a little while maybe you don't get so far away from it that it's hard to get restarted with it again but i would just ditch it for a

little while yeah that's all i got as far as fan questions right now. Awesome. I think we can wrap this bitch up. Yeah, buddy. Wrap this bitch up. How are your chesties after yesterday? My chest and my arms are pretty sore. My biceps. Your bicep. I feel it in my biceps.

Yeah, my pipes are sore because we did the fat bar, and then we curled the squat bar. We went back and forth between those two. And then that little circuit that we did at the end there was brutal. Yeah, it was all tough. It felt really good, though. I was a little nervous getting back under the bar for the bench after not having any carbs whatsoever. And then not really stepping inside super training for

almost a week. My titties are sore. That was rude. Smokey just made a comment. But no, yeah, I felt pretty strong. I felt great. My boobs are sore. Breasticles. I think it was the flies. I haven't done any flies

in a while. Those hurt my shoulder. They kill. I can't done any flies in a while. Those hurt my shoulder. They kill. I can never do them very good. Anyway, we're out of here. Strength is never weakness. Weakness is never strength. Catch you guys later.