Mark Bell's Power Project - Power Project EP. 168 - Rich Gaspari

Episode Date: January 17, 2019

Rich Gaspari is an IFBB Hall of Fame Bodybuilder and Arnold Lifetime Winner. He is also an International Best Selling Author of “51 Days of No Excuse”. Rich has been involved in the bodybuilding and fitness field for over 30 years, excelling as a top professional bodybuilder from the mid 80’s through the 90’s, winning the very first Arnold Classic in 1989, Mr. America (now known as the NPC Nationals), Mr. Universe, Professional Mr. World, and is a three-time runner-up for the most coveted title in professional bodybuilding--Mr. Olympia. Upon retiring from bodybuilding, he developed Gaspari Nutrition in 1998 with the goal to supply the highest quality, science based sports nutrition supplement in the world. Link to sign up for the ST Classic: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/super-training-classic-2019-tickets-53251741392 ➢SHOP NOW: https://markbellslingshot.com/ Enter Discount code, "POWERPROJECT" at checkout and receive 15% off all Sling Shots Find the Podcast on all platforms: ➢Subscribe Rate & Review on iTunes: https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/mark-bells-power-project/id1341346059?mt=2 ➢Listen on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/4YQE02jPOboQrltVoAD8bp ➢Listen on Stitcher: https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/mark-bells-power-project?refid=stpr ➢Listen on Google Play: https://play.google.com/music/m/Izf6a3gudzyn66kf364qx34cctq?t=Mark_Bells_Power_Project ➢Listen on SoundCloud: 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

so i i did a i was telling steve i did a podcast with was it mind pump oh yeah he did a podcast with those guys i think they're coming in next week i think yeah yeah so we did one date they invited me over great yeah how'd it work out that went really well really well and uh did you you came out here to california for that too the same thing i flew out san jose or something like that san jose i came out for the day yeah they're doing really good with their podcast yeah it's uh i'm really excited to have them in here because we're going to podcast with them and they're going to podcast yeah so that's what steve was telling me yeah because you guys work together to increase yeah i guess two different i guess fan bases that can right combine yeah a lot of people have podcasts nowadays a lot of people are pumping

out information how are you uh getting your information out there? How are you trying to get your message out there? Cause, uh, I know you've, uh, regained, uh, ownership of Gaspari Nutrition. So what are some things you're doing? Well, we're doing, you know, target marketing, social media, you know, we still do experiential and go into shows. Um, we don't do any magazines we use um generation iron we're doing like you know stuff on gaspari we have commercials on there right now we're running something that's going to come out in march called hunt for hardcore so i came up with this concept was go to the most hardcore gyms in the country so we picked like the west coast the the northeast we're going to do the the midwest and the south so we've already been in this the west like gold's gym venice and zoo um new culture

culture we've been to ct fletcher's gym oh that's really hardcore so this will be kind of like um it's like a show basically finding the most hardcore gym in the country. So that's another way we're marketing, you know, marketing me to market the brand. Right, right. So, um, today we're joined by Rich Gasparri, really excited to have him here. We've been training all day. We had some lunch together. Uh, we also did another interview with him, uh, in the gym and it's, it's just so awesome learning more about you.

I've been a huge fan for a long time, and this is a legendary bodybuilder and it's great to have somebody, uh, in the building with so much experience, uh, both in fitness and also, you know, competing at such a high level like that, and then also driving your business to such a high level. So it's awesome having you here today. Um, one thing I didn't know that just popped up on this sheet of paper, cause my staff gives me some information, get, they give me the low down and, uh, it says here that you're the best, you're a bestselling author of a book called 51 days of no excuses.

I'd had an Amazon bestselling book, 51 days, no excuses. What's that about? Well, it was basically a book. Sounds hard. 51 days. Andrew, try that buddy. 51 days, no excuses. What's that about? Well, it was basically a book. Sounds hard. 51 days. Andrew, try that buddy. 51 days without any excuses. What happened was, is I was inducted into the muscle beach hall of fame. So I was asked, um, by Ironman, you know, I'd love to see on the cover. Now I haven't got myself in diet condition and bodybuilding, you know, that was, I was 48 years old and I was

asked to get back in shape after I retired. I was in my early thirties. So basically I got myself in shape in 51 days and I got myself on the cover of Ironman and I was in muscle and fitness and I, you know, flex magazine. So I was able to get myself back into the magazine in contest shape in 51 days. The book was also about my life experiences. So when you read the book, it was, it tells me how it tells the reader how I got myself in shape, but it also has stories about my life, you know, starting from how I started my company and, you know, the adversities I went through, like, you know, when I started Gaspard Nutrition, my house burnt, my parents' house burned down, um, different things that

happened to me, you know, as I competed, you know, living with Lee Haney. So it was just, it was a bunch of stories, uh, motivational stories. And I, you know, I always believed that, you know, you can have all the knowledge in the world to do something, but if you're not motivated to do it, you're not going to really, you know, put yourself in passionate to do it. You have to have a passion. You know, people say, you know, I want to be a millionaire, but you have to have passion in doing something, you know, to become a millionaire, you know, so. Well, and when I hear someone say something like that, I'm, I'm kind of thinking in the back of my head, are you sure? Yeah.

Because, you know, you start to learn the things that, that, uh, that come along with that. And same thing with, you know, if I was to say, Hey man, I want to be a professional. If I was a 20 year old kid coming up to you saying, I want to be a professional bodybuilder. Not that you would shoot me down, but you'd be like, Oh, okay. But that, that's, it's a tough task, man. I hope, I hope, you know, what's in store for you. And I wish you well, I hope you hope you do well. But at the same time, you're kind of thinking in the back of your head, like, man, that's

a huge undertaking. I I've heard that if I can make a dollar for every time someone said, I'm going to be a pro bodybuilder, I would be a multimillionaire from it. But there's so many people that don't understand the difficulties and you know, what you have to do. And you know, what you have to do. And, you know, it's very, very difficult. And unless somebody is really passionate to do it and they're, you know, there are the very small percentage of people to be able to become top pros, both having the genetics and having the motivation, you know, and having the passion and the drive i mean there's guys that i've seen that had great genetics but never made it as a pro you know because they just didn't have the drive and the mindset you know i i believe a lot of what i was able to accomplish was more about my mindset

you know i've always been told in a lot of things in my life that i wasn't able to do it and my mindset was like i'm going to do this and if i push myself and i believe what i'm going to be able to do it i'm going to do it but i mean of course it's going to take like, I'm going to do this. And if I push myself and I believe what I'm going to be able to do it, I'm going to do it. But I mean, of course it's going to take the work. It's going to take, you know, organization, you know, you can't just like say, I'm going to do something without all the other steps that are involved in, in, you know, making yourself successful. What's it like being involved in a sport? Bodybuilding is, is, is, is unique in a sense that there's a lot of people that drive cars on the freeway. Millions and millions of people have cars and they drive, right?

But they don't consider themselves a, uh, uh, they don't consider themselves a race car driver, right? Yes. There's millions and millions of people that work out, but for some reason, a lot of people, uh, they, uh, describe themselves as being a bodybuilder. Like even if they, if they are not powerlifting, they've never competed in powerlifting and they never tried CrossFit. Then they just kind of say, I bodybuild and you look at them and you're like, I don't know what you're trying to build, but it's not, it's not, yeah, it's not working very well. I mean, you

know, what do you think is the hardest part for people to understand about bodybuilding? Like, why is the, there's something crazy about it where the discipline of it is just on another level. That's hard for people to really wrap their brain around. Well, when I decided I wanted to be a, you know, professional bodybuilder, I was that, you know, aspiring know aspiring you know 18 year old kid and i told my parents you know i'm going to be a bodybuilder um it was giving up a lot you know when people are 18 19 years old they're partying you know drinking having fun i was in the gym i was dieting i i missed out on a lot of stuff i didn't even go to my high school prom because I was training for a competition. So it takes a lot to be able to take those steps and say, I'm not going to do this. I'm not going

to do that. You know, a lot of people just want to say they're going to, you know, they're going to be a bodybuilder, but don't take those steps. And, you know, learning about nutrition, you know, having the discipline and training, you know, training is just one small part of it. It's, you know, sleeping well, you know, like I said one small part of it. It's, you know, sleeping well, you know, like I said, not going out and partying on Saturday nights when your friends are, you know, asking, Hey, let's go out. That's the stuff that I did like summers. I would, I was always getting ready for show, you know, as a teenager at the end of the summer. So the whole summer was in the gym training and I, you know, summers were like having fun, going to barbecues, gym training and I, you know, summers were like having fun, going to barbecues, drinking, all these kids that were doing it. I just never did that. I was, I had my mindset that I was going

to be the best no matter what. And people don't take that, um, that discipline and say like, I'm going to give up all these other things to do this one thing and be driven to do this one thing. And that's very hard for a lot of people. Was it ever hard to stay motivated with your lifting? Like, was there ever times where you wavered on that in your, in your actual bodybuilding career? There were times, you know, because I would, you know, I would compete and then not do as well as I wanted to do in a show.

And then I would say like, am I wasting my time? You know, the first couple of shows that I did am i wasting my time you know the first couple shows that i did it i was you know i didn't place in the second show i placed like sixth and the third play third show i went in i got in like third and it was a slow evolution of me consistently improving um and i just kept myself motivated saying i'm gonna do this. I'm going to get better. I'm going to assess my, you know, my physique. Um, I read a lot. I asked a lot of questions. Um, a lot of people just make assumptions. You know, you got to get educated. I mean, today you have the internet that can just teach you everything, but they also can teach you a lot of things wrong. Yeah. It's really hard to find the right information today.

Well, and everybody's an online coach too. Everyone's an online coach. You have so many people after training a little while going online and just saying they're an expert. And a lot of times it's bad advice. Right. You know, you see a lot of these, you know, I'm against like people finding these shortcuts.

There is no shortcuts. You know this as well as I do. It's going to take consistency to continually working your body, assessing your physique, and also seeing if you have the genetics. There's some people that just, no matter how hard they're going to work, they just will never be a top pro because they just don't have the genetics. People might look at performance enhancing drugs as a shortcut, but it's prevalent in bodybuilding, right? Yes, very much.

And that's where I was saying about shortcuts. You know, there's a lot of kids out there that will basically say, here's my drug cycle. This is what I do. And they post it online and it's really bad information to give that. I mean, and not to say that you don't take,

you know, you know, steroids to be able to get to a certain level at that elite level. But it's really the genetics, the hard work, the diet, that, that last bit of taking, you know, performance enhancing, uh, drugs are still the icing on the cake. You still have to do all that work. People just think I'll take more drugs and it'll make me be better. And that's not the case.

And, and how many people we've seen over the years that look horrible and aren't strong that take stuff. And you're like, listen, this is a longevity, you know, this is a marathon. It's not, you know, a sprint. And that's where, you know, I want to show, listen, I'm in my fifties. I still train hard. I still, you know, stay lean, you know, and if I was just using a ton of drugs, I'd probably be dead.

Not that I've never used them. I have. But there's a certain amount that you can take that are not as bad for you or not bad for you, where if you take more, then it becomes counterproductive. Right. Sorry. What about the designer stuff that's coming out now as far as like as far as pro hormones and SARMs and that sort of thing. What's the deal with SARMs? I keep hearing so much about SARMs.

Yeah, I mean, they were big and now they became illegal. What is it? Selective androgenic receptor modules. And they do work. They do have certain side effects. They can help, you know, someone enhance and become better. Right. You know, if they're doing all the right things on, if they're taking in, you know, in the right doses, but people just think, you know, I want to get better. I'll

double the dose. I'll triple the dose. And that's not what you're going to do. Pro hormones. Listen, I, I started Get Spiral Nutrition on, you know, pro hormones and that was the first products i really sold um they're basically you know at that time now they're illegal um they were basically steroids that have never been sold yeah so you know they were considered basically um they were called pro hormones but they're basically different steroids they just didn't have they were never sold by pharmaceutical companies. Yeah. So, um,

do they work? Yes, they do. But when you take them, you have to take cycles. You can't take them indefinitely. And this is what people do. They just never want to get off something. And that's where you have all the side effects.

Right. You have to have some sort of knowledge. You can't just haphazardly do these things. Well, you should get your blood tested. You know, there's a lot of things you should look at, you know, when you're about to do anything like that, if that's the next step you're going to take.

Well, even if you're going to take like magnesium, I mean, you should probably find out if you're magnesium deficient, like maybe there's not a reason for you to dump a bunch of magnesium in the system. And that's what people do. They end up taking overdoses of certain supplements because they say it helps them. And really you need to see, you know, what your body really needs. Right. Yeah. Somebody, uh, you know, vitamin D is a big thing nowadays. People talk about it all the time, but some, you know, why dump in a bunch of stuff

in your body if you don't need it? Well, if you, well, vitamin D is a good example of an oil-based, you know, vitamin that if you, you can overdose on it. Right. But there are people that are deficient. I'm one of the person that's deficient in vitamin D, so I always have to take consistently vitamin D in my diet. How did you get into fitness in general? How did you kind of discover lifting weights? That's funny. I was this 10-year-old kid where it was funny.

I had a friend of mine. I would go out and play baseball and play with this kid one day we're going in his basement when i went into his basement i found stacks and stacks of these muscle builder magazines so i'm looking through and i'm seeing pictures of arnold schwarzenegger franco colombo you know lou frigno robbie robinson and i was looking at these pictures i'm like oh God, these guys are like superheroes. They're gods. So I would go to my friend's house

to basically read these muscle magazines to look at these guys. Like, who are these guys that can look like that, that look like superheroes? I was a big comic book nerd. So I love reading the Hulk, Superman. And so when you're looking at these bodybuilders, I was like, these are like real life superheroes, you know, they look like to me. So that's where I got that

interest, you know, in wanting to become a bodybuilder. And I just, it was funny. It's just from that point on, I just wanted to learn more and more about bodybuilding. By the time I was 13, I was already in the, you know, training. I took my brother's weight set. He had this old York weight set. And I just started training in the basement and taking magazine articles and reading them. The first book I read was this guy named, I think his name was Tony Randall. He was an old time Mr. Universe, but he had this thick book on how to be a bodybuilder. And it was this guy that was like an overweight book on how to be a bodybuilder. And it was this guy that was

like an overweight power lifter turned into a bodybuilder. So that was like my first book that I, that I read. And I learned about Joe Weider. And to me, Joe Weider was like, God, because if I can get to see Joe Weider, you know, I made it in bodybuilding. So that was my, that was my goal is one day to move to California to get to meet Joe Weider. Did you get to meet Joe Weider? I got to meet Joe Weider. I moved to California. Basically, when I was 19 years old, turning 20, I moved to California because I got offered a job.

I went into the Nationals. I got fifth place in my showing as a heavyweight. A guy named Ed Connors basically saw you know, saw me and he said, man, kid, you got good potential, but I think you shouldn't go into the heavyweights. You should go into the light heavyweights because I was shorter and I was going against really good guys back then. And these are old timers, but they're, they're really, they were really good bodybuilders. Rory Littemeyer, Matt Mendenhall. These were like great bodybuilders.ory Littemeyer Matt Mendenhall uh these were like great bodybuilders Mike Christians these were all the guys Bob Paris these are the guys that were really great bodybuilders

and you know as heavyweights but they're much taller and I was going into this class and I was like 210 but I was just a squatty short Italian bodybuilder going against these guys but I still got top five so he basically said why don't you come out to california manage this gym in the san fernando valley in recita um go down to a light heavyweight and you know see what you can do so at the time i was going to rutgers university i was a pre-med student i was i didn't know where i wanted to go but i you know i love you know, I love, you know, anatomy. I love, I love science and stuff. So I was looking at it and I said, like, you know, maybe I'm going to be a chiropractor. I was going to, I don't know if I was going to be a doctor, but I, you know, I went to college to do something with, you know, the body, you know?

So I had an opportunity to move to California, but what I had to do is I had to quit school. So, you know, I had to tell my parents, I said, listen, I'm gonna move to California and I wanna be a pro bodybuilder. So my parents are like old school, they're immigrants from Italy, and they just, for them going to school, my dad, you know, had a third grade education.

He came from Italy. He was a bricklayer. To go to college was like a really big deal, you know, a third grade education he came from italy he was a bricklayer um to go to college was like a really big deal you know for his kids my other brother went to college he's a civil engineer and you know he wanted me to go to college so when i said to him i'm going to take a break i'm going to go to california i'm going to be a pro bodybuilder my parents were totally so upset with me they wanted to disown me and i said i'm gonna go to california i got one year your dad's like i told you he's gay i knew those pictures that he

was hanging up in his room we're gonna lead to this well that was another thing you're you're laughing about that i have all these pictures on my wall and you know i had pictures of my guys little underwear yeah and my my mom would just like rip them all down. I'm like, mom, why do you keep taking down my pictures? You go, why are you looking at guys in their underwear? So, you know, I moved out to California with them really not approving of me doing it, but it was something that I wanted to do. And I was driven and I was going to say, I'm not going to waste my time. I'm moving out to California and I'm going to turn pro.

It was a great experience because when I went out there, you know, a lot of people saw, you know, how hard I was training. And I was just this crazy young kid. A lot of people think that was over the top because you, like I trained with you today and you trained, you know, fast and furious, but I'm sure even when you were younger, it was probably even more intense and heavier weights and stuff. Some people say, Hey man, you got to slow down to slow down what are you doing well that's the kind of stuff i i'm into really intense training short you know rests um so when i went out to california i was really driven to train hard so lee haney who you know is an eight-time mr olympianist before he became

mr olympian he noticed he noticed me and he says like, Hey kid, would you train with me? To me, it was a great honor to get to train with this top professional bodybuilder. And we just had, we had a great connection and I was just saying, this is my opportunity. I mean, and this guy taught me everything on how to become more a bodybuilder. Like I was a guy who trained really heavy. I was more, I was in a gym that was more into powerlifting. So I had to change my mindset to become more of a bodybuilder, feel the movement, you know, squeezing the muscle where before it was about how much weight I can lift.

So it was a much different approach so that I can develop my body more, you know, pleasing, you know, I had to learn that, you know, my legs were too big. So I had to stop training my legs to train my shoulders more and my back more and my arms more so that I, my body can be more proportional. Uh, did you also learn nutrition from Lee Haney as well? Or is that something you kind of picked up? Cause you were reading a lot. I read a lot, but I also see what he was doing on his diet. I did learn that I had to diet much differently than he did. You know, everyone's body's metabolisms are different. And I found that, you know, my body worked best more on, you know, my carbs and proteins basically almost the same, you know, with fat.

So I was following, we were talking about before, Barry Sears diet. Right. His own diet. His own diet. for a Barry Sears diet. Right, zone diet. Zone diet, and I was doing like basically a 40, 45, and 40% protein, 45% carbs, and about 15 grams of 50% fat. I have 250 or so, or 300 grams of protein

and carbohydrates every day. Usually about, yes, every day. And I got what, 100 grams of fat or something like that? Yes, and that's what I was basically following. It was the best way for me to diet. And I would basically fluctuate my carbs sometimes a little lower, but I would be, I would just basically go up and down. I'm always trying to trick my body into getting leaner and leaner. Was there anything, uh, you know, that you kind of wish you knew back then, like as,

as you started to age and as you started to get towards the end of your bodybuilding careers, a couple of things you wish you knew in the beginning, nutritionally or? Well, training-wise, I was very crazy and going super heavy, sometimes too heavy, and I wish I would've just controlled myself on how I lifted, like with chest. I had a pec tear, it was another thing that happened that affected how I looked on stage. And that was because I was trying to bench so heavy.

Um, it's hard, you know, you get excited, you know, and I always, uh, thought, you know, Jay Cutler did a great job of, of being reserved in the gym and he's gotten hurt a couple of times too, but it's, it's tough. You know, you, you get in the, in the heat of the moment, you get into a workout and you want to just like overload the weight, you know? When you talk about guys like Jay Cutler, I mean, they came after, uh, guys like myself. So we were almost like the guinea pigs of training, you know, a certain way. And then the mistakes that we made, those guys learned from, from us, you know, we dieted much harder. Um, not that we dieted much harder.

I think the training was a lot more intense. I was into training six days lot more intense. I was into training six days a week, double sessions. I mean, I hear a lot of pros train, you know, four to five days a week, they train once a day and they were able to keep more muscle mass on their body. You know, I think we were basically on a slightly over-trained state, over-trained, over-dieting. So I, I learned a little bit after that, but it was kind of toward the end of my career. Cause I started getting after that, but it was kind of toward the end of my career. Cause I started getting myself bigger, but it was, I was almost, you know,

I was almost done because I had so many injuries, but, um, like I said, I was a Guinea pig for the future of guys like Jay Cutler and all these other guys. To get bigger. Did you need more rest or you're able to still get up? Because you said you were, I think what, 250 pounds. That's pretty big. I stopped training like these double sessions and started training once a day. Less sets, more squeezing. And I just learned to train less to develop my body instead of going on overload with these like two hours a day,

you know, twice a day. I just think it was so much. But I was following the old Arnold Schwarzenegger training principles right so i followed that i never believed in like training like mike menser you know with the heavy duty which yeah one set one set which i don't i don't believe it was one set it was always like three warm-up sets so it's still like four sets but he called three warm-up sets and then a final set and I think that's how I started training you know later on to gain more muscle mass but before I think another thing is like different is guys as they got bigger their obliques got thicker their waist got thicker in my era was always about having

a really small waist so as soon as my I started gaining mass, it seemed like my obliques and my waist got thicker. Even if I was chiseled and hard, I started getting that blocky look. So I was always trying to have that look of just very lean, you know, with a very small waist. Why is it that some people, even high-level bodybuilders, why is it that some people you think just can't get the diet part dialed in? Like how is it that one person can do it and another person can, is it, is it purely just like willpower? How bad do you want it?

Are some people just better at being hungry than others? Like, these are things I'm trying to figure out because I really like to help a lot of people. A lot of people listen to the show. There's many, many examples. People listen to the show or follow my Instagram. I've lost over a hundred pounds from my power lifting days. And it's something I like to share with a lot of people is that, you know, I'm a lot more similar to them than they recognize. I'm not that different. I did

make some choices. And like you mentioned with your bodybuilding career, you decided like, I'm not going out, I'm not doing some of those other things. But my message is that I think a lot of people can do this. A lot of people can lose weight. A lot of people can get in better shape, but it's just going to be, it's going to be a long-term process. It's going to take them a while. And it's just trying to create some of these new habits. As you just said, you know, to be able to diet, it takes, it takes a habit.

It's like habit of like, you know, discipline yourself to make sure you, you stay away from refined carbohydrates and just learning to stop eating certain types of foods and looking at food more as just fuel to build your body, not, not to eat food as an enjoyment. See, that's really hard because people eat because they enjoy to eat certain foods. I think once you do that, I think it really changes everything. Food is fuel, not as enjoyment and entertainment. Exactly.

And it still can be for entertainment here and there, especially like if you're not an onstage bodybuilder, why not? Why not have a drink here and there with your, with your wife or significant other? Why not enjoy yourself? Why not have a mom's homemade pie or whatever on special occasions? It all, it all makes some, uh, it all makes some sense, but it's really hard for people to try to, uh, kind of abstain from stuff, you know, on that, on that daily basis. But when you change your mindset of viewing it as fuel, that changes everything because

now, now we're not talking about having pancakes for breakfast. We're talking about eating whatever it takes to be fueled properly for the day. So you might have, uh, you might have chicken and egg whites and oatmeal in the morning. You know, it doesn't have to be, uh, that you have frosted flakes. It doesn't have to be that there's this particular breakfast or a particular dinner. You're going to eat whatever's right for you to fuel you for the day. Well, that's the mindset that I had when I wanted to be, you know, the best bodybuilder. I knew that I did have the ability to really get lean. I was fortunate that, you know, I had that really thin skin and I just wanted to continually

progress in learning how to diet better and better. So as we, you know, we said that food did become a pleasure, food became a fuel and food was a way for me to be able to get to the end result in being the best bodybuilder. So I changed my mindset. Food was just something that you use as part of your regimen of diet. And what I did to, like you said about people making mistakes, what I did is that a lot of bodybuilders didn't do because like back, back in the day before me, people would just follow, you know, Arnold would follow like a low carb diet, you know, before a show and, you know, shed fat. They weren't that ripped. They were, they got lean, but they didn't get super ripped. I want it to be super ripped. I want it to be striated. You know, how can I have that look? What I did differently is I also kept a log. So I had a nutrition journal of everything

that I ate. So, so that's something that I did differently. I actually like, I, you know, put that out there. You did that for years? I did that for years. So I would write down everything I ate, the amount of calories I was eating, how I felt. So when I kept that, that log, that made such a big difference. So like I said, food was a fuel. Okay. What, what can I eat? So I would look down, you know, my breakfast, my snack, my lunch, my dinner, and you know, my other snacks. So I, you know, I eat six meals a day and then I would assess my training. How did I feel? Did I have energy? Did I not have energy? I would play around with carbs and then I would assess my training. How did I feel? Did I have energy? Did I not have energy? I would play around with carbs

and then see what would happen, you know, and how I felt in the gym. Was I stronger? Was I weaker? It was like a constant study. So that's what I would do. So I would look at that and assess it by macronutrients. What was my macronutrients?

What was, you know, what was making me perform better in the gym, making me train better, making me look like I was getting lean making me train better, making me look like I was getting leaner. And that's something I did differently. No one really did logs back then, training logs. And that's something that I, I, I did. I studied nutrition. I, you know, I was talking earlier to you about, you know, I was reading about gluten-free diets and this was back in the eighties and like people have, you know, gluten intolerances and I forgot the name

of the disease that people have. Uh, they're autoimmune disorders. But, but. The celiacs. Celiac, celiac, celiac. So I was reading about it and they were saying how people, you know, would have all these effects, bloatiness, water retention. So I'm like, you know, I, you know, I come from Italian descent.

I love pasta. I love homemade bread. And I did notice, you know, I tried dieting on like bread and pasta and it wasn't, it wasn't happening. That garlic bread is too hard to give up. I'm just going to move this,

just this way a little bit right there. Boom. So when I was trying to, you know, say, let me experiment, I'm going to use bread and you know, like,

but it was all, it was all a science. It wasn't about me enjoying the food. It was me. I was saying instead of rice, I'm going to eat this much bread and this much carb. And I was eating the same amount of carbs in bread as I was with my rice or oatmeal or sweet potato. And I was noticing like, I'm not getting as lean.

So to me, it was like an aha moment saying maybe it was the gluten. Another thing I did is there was like gluten-free pastas that were available back then. The bowls had a gluten-free pasta. So I started eating gluten-free pasta because I love pasta. So I was able to eat gluten-free pasta with my sweet potato and my oatmeal. So like I said, by using that journal, that log, I was able to basically assess my body on a day-to-day basis and be able to hone in and be able to get a different look than was ever seen in bodybuilding. When I competed, it was funny because the champion at the time was Lee Haney, he's like eight-time Mr. Olympia,

but more bodybuilders wanted to know what I did because I was that second place guy. But I was the guy who's the first bodybuilder with striated glutes. I was the guy who was getting cross striations in my shoulder and my, in my, in my legs. And I was, I was, I had a totally different look than other bodybuilders have had ever. So I set a new standard in the sport and people wanted to know how is Rich Gasparri doing that? So when I, you know, used to write in the magazines about keeping a log and a journal and all these things, you know, I read once like Dorian Yates goes, you know, Rich Gasparri taught me about writing, you know, everything in a book and a journal and a log. And he used that to become, you know, one of the best bodybuilders

in the world. That's awesome. You know, it's, um, the striated glute thing is kind of a, it's kind of a funny, uh, marker, but that's really how, you know, you're dialed in for a show. I mean, you had striated everything else. You had striated, uh, serratus muscles, striated pecs, you had striated triceps, the shoulders. And, um, but the last thing for a lot of people is, is to get your butt to be striated. Obviously you got the Christmas tree going and you got everything else going, which looks phenomenal. But when I was prepping for my bodybuilding show, um, you know, I was starting to get

in striated shoulders and starting to look pretty impressive for me. And, uh, I would send pictures over to my coach and he's like, you know, uh, don't, don't call me back until you have striated glutes. And I was like, damn it. And so you're the guy who messed everything up for the rest of us. You raised the bar too high, right? That's what, that's what I said. I set the standard.

And then after my standard, it was not only about, you know, being striated. Then the guys were like Dorian, they were striated and they were bigger. So it's like, I set that standard. Then it went to another standard, but yeah, it was pretty cool for me to be able to set something differently and, you know, add something to the sport that everyone had to follow suit after me. The amount of discipline that this takes is just, it's unreal. And, you know, I only did a little glimpse of it in doing one show, but you were doing it for a decade, which is, which is, uh, which is pretty brutal. But what are some things that you carried over? Because the discipline of bodybuilding, uh, I always tell everybody, you know, there's a lot of hard sports out there. There's a lot

of sports that are very, very difficult and whether you're doing MMA or whether you're a professional football player, it doesn't really matter what you're doing. You can kind of look at the job in a bunch of different ways and you can kind of say, yeah, they're, they're kind of a 24 hour a day job, but bodybuilding, it's like, you know, everyone knows if he didn't eat properly. Yeah. Everyone knows if you had a cheat meal, you know, you had too many cheat meals, uh, too close to the show. I mean, you come in two pounds, holding two pounds of water and you're done. You know, you're, you're, you went from being second to being eighth, right? So what are some things that you carried over from bodybuilding into business? Well, as you said, you know,

bodybuilding was not just training in the gym. It was a lifestyle in disciplining yourself in all aspects, you know, resting, eating properly, supplementation, you know, everything was part of this lifestyle and this Spartan lifestyle to become this, you know, to try to become this, you know, a great bodybuilder. Being a businessman is very similar where you have to discipline yourself. Like, you know, when you first start a business, it's disciplining and being careful to not spend money and take the money and reinvest some people start businesses and right away they start taking out money from the company and they can't grow that company because they're spending money because they want us to have a certain lifestyle so a lot of times

you may have to suffer for sometimes many years before you're able to then take the fruits of the reward of the profits of the company and start giving it to yourself. A company itself is like, it's its own animal. The company has to be fueled, you know, and the person running that company has to be second. That business is the business that you're disciplining to, you know, make sure you have the fuel. The fuel is money. The fuel is being disciplined to beining to, you know, make sure you have the fuel. The fuel is money. The fuel is being disciplined to be able to, you know, get up early in the morning, work on what you have to do in marketing, what you have to do in product development. Everything is for that business. It's discipline for that business because it's a second person that you have to have much less, you know, live sometimes

on nothing because you have to get that business to then get to the next step and just make higher and higher profits so that you can eventually live off that business. That makes, that makes a lot of sense. What, what motivated you, what inspired you to start Gasparri? Well, if you knew anything about when I, you know, when I competed, I was very much into supplements. Back then supplements were very basic. You know, they had proteins, they had, you know, desiccated liver, you know, creatine was just coming about, branch chain amino acids.

But I used all those because I felt that, you know, supplements were going to give you that extra edge. I believe that if someone trains so hard, they cannot get nutrients from foods alone. When I hear people saying, yeah, I'm able to train, but I'm able to eat, you know, a proper diet. So I don't need any supplements. I said, you're full of crap. Cause if you're going to diet really hard and your body is basically losing body fat and you're trying to maintain really hard and your body is basically losing body fat and you're trying to maintain muscle, you have to fuel the body and it can't be just on foods. Makes sense to me.

I don't think our body was really designed to do any of that stuff. No, it's not designed to get down to 2% body fat, hold on to muscle, and, you know, being able to train as hard as you do, do cardiovascular weight training, and then think you're going to be able to stay, you know, keep recuperation, you know, being able to train as hard as you do, do cardiovascular weight train, and then think you're going to be able to stay, you know, keep recuperation, you know, keep that muscle and your body's protection is to lose muscle so that it holds onto fat. So you're trying to do the opposite. So I believe supplements like glutamine, branch chains, proteins, you know, vitamins, you're not going to get all those nutrients from foods alone. It's impossible to get all the, you know, vitamin A, vitamin B, vitamin C. You can't get it from just foods alone.

You're not going to eat enough oranges, you know, to get vitamin C. You're not going to get enough protein. Well, you may get protein from chicken and fish, but a lot of times it's easier if you can just like have a protein shake. You know, you're not going to get creatine. You get creatine from meats, but if you can add that creatine, you know, from a supplement, it makes it much easier. So I believe supplements were a way that I became, you know, a great bodybuilder.

I used supplements before any of those bodybuilders I competed with really used supplements. So for me, it was a, it was a great transition period. You know, I owned a gym. I was doing nutritional counseling at this gym that I had, and I was getting great results where I was selling more supplements than I was selling diets. So I started looking at that and said, shoot, it's much easier to sell this supplement than spend one hour with a client. So I just felt it was just a transition for me to go into. And I just started investigating. What happened to me is I got injured.

At the end of my career, I herniated a disc in my neck. My right side basically became paralyzed. And while I sat in bed, I said, what am I going to do now? I'm not a bodybuilder anymore. My income was coming from bodybuilding. And I had this gym that was OK. But I was doing this nutritionalbuilding and I had this gym that was, that was okay, but I was doing this nutritional counseling, you know, and selling supplements. And I said, well, I just got to do

something. So I just got into that. Yeah. Got into the supplement business. Well, and then now you're the, uh, right behind Arnold Schwarzenegger. Well, they had, when I was at my peak, it was right behind, you know, as the second most wealthiest bodybuilder, but I mean, he's either there or here and there, there, you know, I've gained money. I've lost money. You know, to me, money doesn't really make who I am. It's still having that, that inner drive and passion to be the best. And I think that's what makes you more rich than just money.

I live comfortably. I'm not saying I'm not doing, you know, I'm doing well, um, but I could do much better. But how did that come to be? How, how were you able to take the company, you know, from this idea of, I think everybody should take supplements to turning into a formidable company? Well, you know, I, you know, I was talking to you earlier about what are my strong points. And, you know, a lot of it has to do with just having that ability to be able to, you know, to talk to people and, you know, building, you know, relationship building with people and getting out there. One thing I did that a lot of people, which is very hard, is I did a lot of traveling. You see now these current pros that are out there and they learned from me to go out there,

travel to Dubai, travel to Australia, travel to Europe. So I was traveling the world, visiting places, doing these tours and pushing my brand to grow the supplement company. And that's what I did is just the relationships I build and then me traveling and busting my ass to go from place to place, to place, to place, slowly built that brand, you know, more and more and more. So a lot of it was just hard work is getting out there.

You know, I would do a California tour, visiting all the stores in California, then doing a seminar. And that's how I was pushing a brand. If I go to England, I set up a whole tour going throughout all of England in, you know, two weeks, visiting all these places, visiting all these stores. And that's how I basically pushed a brand. If you look today, a lot of guys are following suit and doing that. You see people traveling as much as they could. And that's how I think I grew the brand to become this global brand. You know, it's just a lot of work and just getting out there and constantly, you know, promoting it.

It's like running for president. You know, when you do that, you got to go place to place, kiss babies, you know, shake hands. And that's what I did. It's just, you know, my dad was almost always told me, you know, my dad was a blue collar bricklayer. And he said, if you want to get anything in life, you got to work hard. Now, my dad worked really hard physically, and I did not want to do that. And I didn't want to be a bricklayer. I didn't want to work physical, but I, you know, you still can have the mentality of working hard in other ways, you know, traveling,

seeing people. And I think a lot of people go like, wow, you have a great life. You, you, you see the world. It's hard to live out of a hotel. You know, I have a, you know, I had my daughter when she was a baby missing out and seeing her because I was out traveling, you know, two weeks at a time, sometimes a month out on tour. Like, and I was in Australia, New Zealand, you know, it was great to see people people meet people, but sometimes you just want to be home. Right. You know, so it's, that's the part that I did. And that again, takes discipline, like in bodybuilding, you basically are saying, I'm going to give up, you know, being at home and doing things there to do this other thing that in the end result will build, you know, a company and give you an income. Um, you mentioned some like mentioned some like bodybuilders that you looked up to.

You mentioned guys like Robbie Robinson and stuff. But when you kind of think back and you really look at things, do you think maybe your dad was more of your idol than maybe some of these bodybuilders? Well, my dad, my dad was my idol for the fact that, you know, he always instilled in me that you're not going to get anything without hard work. I'm Italian descent, so a lot of people would be like, oh, you're Italian. You're like in the mafia.

My dad was so anti-mafia because he believed mafia basically were scum because they were leeches that took away from hardworking people. And he was like this mentality that there's no shortcuts in life, you know, stealing money or, you know, short cutting or taking things from people in the end, you're not going to be able to, you know, it's not going to work. It's going to be short. It's going to be short lived. So everything has to be through hard work and time. Just that when I saw what he did, I was like, God, my, my dad would come home after, you know, eight, 10 hours in the sun, blazing sun, you know, as a mason covered in cement, you know, just so tired. I mean, in the end he had all these back problems, knee problems. And I was like, I'll never want to do that kind of work.

So I ended up becoming this bodybuilder. And I told you at the beginning, he was really against it, but then he saw the passion and the drive I had. He was one of my biggest fan he was at every one of my shows and he was so proud to see oh that's great i followed my dream and you know something i always remember is like right before he passed on and you know he's dying of cancer he just went to me he said yo son i'm really proud of you because you followed your dream i told you to do something else and you you said you said, I'm going to do this. And you went against what I said as your parent, who was looking out for you and you were right, which you did.

So, you know, after he passed on, you know, I always want to, I feel that he's looking at me, you know, he's looking down at me and I always want to continue that to be a better person, you know, and, and become better in business, become a better person and helping people. I mean, what I was able to do with my company is I helped so many athletes. I mean, you know, Flex Lewis was my athlete. He's one of the best two 12 athletes. I brought him from England. He's well, he's Welsh. So he's not going to say he's English, but he came from Wales and I saw the potential in this guy, in this kid. I saw, like, wow, this guy can be a great bodybuilder.

I signed him up before he even turned pro. I saw the potential in that guy, and I worked with that guy and used him in my marketing. And as you can see, he became, right now, he's one of the greatest bodybuilders. I work with Branch Warren, also a know bodybuilders uh i work with branch warren you know also a great bodybuilder hard-working guy he really reminds me of myself because he's one of those guys that said he didn't have great genetics but the hard work that he instilled he became a great bodybuilder and you know i became really great friends with him he still talked you know he's doing some businesses and I'm always like proud of him.

Um, and Flex Lewis too. Flex Lewis is doing amazing. He's, he's doing really well with businesses as well. And, um, when you were talking about how much you traveled and how much you were kind of on that grind, he was the first person that popped in my head because anytime I traveled anywhere, I've, I always seen him you know he traveled with me and we went to a lot of places and he learned a discipline that i said you know if you're gonna have a contract with me you're gonna bust your ass you're gonna work you're

gonna work for him and he and he knew that working for me meant he was gonna travel he was gonna be a spokesman but i i feel you know he always, I learned a lot from you. You know, branch says the same thing. You know, he learned a lot from you, you know, and I'm proud of branch now. Cause he's gone on to, you know, retire from bodybuilding and, you know, have his own business and he's doing really well. He, the Yamagishi was another great, you know, bodybuilder, but great person. There was a guy that, you know, I saw and said, wow, this guy, great Asian bodybuilders, not many Asian bodybuilders, um, work with him. The guy still loyal, still an athlete to me, but now he's doing great. He's running, you know, shows in Japan. Uh, he has his own, you know, his own store, his own website. So I, I taught them to transition from being that bodybuilder to transition to being an entrepreneur

and businessman. And all three of them have done that. And I'm proud that I was able to help those guys. You know, I get constant emails and fan mail from people saying, you know, you motivated me because of the things that you've done. You know, you were that underdog that said that you couldn't do it. And you're the guy that proved that you can do it. And for me, that's a great feeling that I was able to help so many people, you know, through my passion, you know, and my drive to help other people to get through their adversities. That's great. Andrew, you got something over there, buddy? Yeah. Sorry about that.

You've had some, uh, some ups and downs off the stage. You had a handful of second place victories. Three. There you go. Did coming in second place teach you quite a bit? Did you learn some important lessons by coming in second so many times? Well, I tell you, I think coming in second place made me work harder to become successful as I am today because I worked so hard to beat a genetic freak, to try to

beat a genetic freak. And I always went into the Olympia to beat Lee Haney. I never went to the Olympia to say I'm going to come in second. I went in to beat him and I felt the way I was going to beat him is I was going to work harder. I felt that he was going to maybe screw up and I was able to, they'd come in and, you know, there was a, there was one year or two that people said that, you know, you should have, you know, you should have beat Lee Haney because he was a

little off. But, you know, besides that, like, I do believe what that second place drive just made me work so hard, you know, and discipline myself and go in laser focused in anything I did. I took that passion and put it onto business. You know, business, unlike bodybuilding has nothing to do with genetics. It has to do with, you know, laser focus, passion, you know, discipline, planning, planning is very important. Like you can't just say, I'm going to be, I'm going to have a great business is how are you planning to do that business? And, and that's just like what you do in bodybuilding. You plan when you're getting ready for a show, you're prepping, what do you do? Here's your diet, what, you know, how you're going to diet, how you're going to train and everything is journalized, the same thing in business. So that's what second

place did for me. It just made me someone that worked harder to get the results that I did. So it puts you right where you need it to be to succeed in the rest of life. I believe that. I just, I just said, if I would have won a Mr. Olympia, I'm not sure if I was just that easy. Cause I don't know if you know, if you guys don't know my career, like my first try into Mr. Olympia, I came in third place. How many guys can do that? So then I was like, wow, I came third. Then I said, then the second year I went, I came second.

I said, I guess I'm going to win because I went third. And then I didn't win. I just kept, you know, trying and trying and trying. But, you know, I thought it was going to be that easy because, you know, my amateur career was actually a little bit harder than my pro career because at the beginning I was winning everything. At one point in bodybuilding, I was, the only guy I ever lost to was Lee Haney. So I was winning all these pro shows, Grand Prix's until I lost to one bodybuilder. It was the first

time when I lost to Lee Labrada, I never lost to a bodybuilder. And that was really hard because at the time I was, you know, a guy that only, I was only, I was always looking at that one guy. That's the guy I'd beat. And then I got beaten by somebody else. I was like, oh, crap. Someone else can beat me. So it just became, you know, it became harder. Was it hard to compete against Lee Haney?

Because you guys were close. I had the deepest respect for Lee Haney. And it would really piss me off. There was a lot of guys at the time that competed against him. And they'd shit talk about him. I always had the greatest respect for him. I felt that he was the best at that time. And I was just driven. And I always tell him, I'm going to bust my ass to try to beat you, but I respect the hell out of you to be, you would be like a great feat, but I respected, you know, I respected the hell out of him. Jesus, he was big. Yeah, just a big guy. You mentioned he really took you under his wing, right?

Yes. He taught me more about how to be a bodybuilder, training, you know, the muscle. He always say, what did he say? Train a muscle, he would say, you know, um, stimulate, don't annihilate. Right. Because I would annihilate a muscle. Him was about stimulating that muscle, training, pinpointing that muscle, training that muscle properly, like in hitting, you know, when you're, you're doing like, say back that you're

doing the movement properly so that you're really squeezing. Later on, I got my own form of training, but he was very much like a surgeon in the gym. Everything was very like strict and how he trained so that, you know, he was working every part of his muscles. And that's what I learned from him. He, uh, you mentioned me earlier that he even invited you to live with him for a little while, right? Well, what happened to me, I was, I was living out in California and then I got to a point where i got i got thrown out of my apartment because i was i had difficulties financially i was trying to you know have this you know i said it to my parents i'm gonna stay here a year so it's like seven months into it and uh i was gonna

go back home and i was training with him and he's like well you can't go home you're getting ready for the national is like well i'll do this at home. He goes, no, you got to stay here. We're going to train together because you're going to live with me. So the last three months I live with Lee Haney and his, you know, his wife, you know, living in this other room. And it was hard because, you know, we're in this apartment, two guys dieting, grumpy. There were points sometimes I was like, I'm going to say irritable with his wife. And he was like, you apologize to my wife

or I'm going to kick your ass. So it was at the center. You know, it was just, it was really hard, you know, at the point that I was like dieting. So it was, you know, it was a great thing because he did that. And that's why I said this guy, he's a great guy. He's a spiritual guy.

If you ever met him, he's just like this really great person besides being a great bodybuilder. You had a neck injury that ended your career. And when that happened, uh, I mean, that must've been a really hard time. You talk about, you know, you transitioned into the supplement company, but I'm sure it didn't happen overnight. And it, uh, it must've been a heartbreaking feeling to not be able to use your body, and you were making money using your body. I was under contract with Weider. I was still doing seminars and exhibitions.

I had this gym, but it was just barely making me money. So when I had this injury, I lost my contract. I had this beautiful house on the water, and I was driving a Porsche. I was living a lifestyle, you know, in my, in my twenties, this successful bodybuilder and overnight, you know, with this injury and not making money, I couldn't afford to live in my house anymore. I went personally bankrupt. I lost everything. And when I did that, I, you know, it was really hard in my thirties. I had to move back to my parents' house from being a successful bodybuilder to saying, okay, I'm going to take

two steps back, start Gasparri Nutrition. I sold my Porsche. This is what I'm talking about, discipline. I sold my Porsche to get a minivan that I then lettered it up with the Gasparri, you know, Gasparri lettering up this van to go from place to place to sell products. So I did that and took the rest of the money to invest in the company to buy products. So the things I did, you know, it was like, okay, I'm going to drive this van at the beginning. I was like taking girls on dates on this like minivan, you know, what was I going to do? That's the only car I had by means of transportation. But that's what I'm talking about, about discipline and, you know, taking steps, two steps back to go forward. What are some things you do in your daily routine nowadays to, uh, to be creative with the products?

And I know that you, you love to stay ahead and you love to innovate and love to have good products. And so what are some things you do, uh, that kind of set up your day? Well, I go online. I look at a lot of the products that are out there, the top performing products, the top brands that are out there. What are they doing differently? You know, how are they marketing? What are the products they're selling?

So I kind of look at what they're doing to have an idea of saying, where are their holes in the market? What can I do to make something better? Um, so that's something I constantly do and assess uh go out you know to the brick and mortar store see what's selling you know where i do visits in stores and you know talk to people and it's just constantly you know keeping a pulse on the market you know a lot of people forget about you know keeping that pulse or or knowing what's going on in the marketplace and they kind of lose that and then and when they start losing that that's

when they start losing you know the company and and that has happened to me as well because you know you get distracted there's a lot of other people that are hungry like me that are going to come and eat my lunch right and that's what constantly happens you, this is a dog-eat-dog world. Life is hard, you know, and you know that. Like, if you don't work hard and you don't constantly push forward, you're going to get eaten alive. And that's what people don't understand. You know, when people say, I have bad luck, you make your own luck. You work hard, and some people go through hard times, which I have,

but you have to constantly strive to move forward and you know i i really believe in just keeping a positive mindset even in negative times i've been through times where it just was dark times that i just said like why is why is this happening to me and why did this happen but then you got to think of you know the cup to half full and just appreciate things that you do have still the roof over my head you know i have a beautiful daughter so things that i appreciate you know in life or what make me move forward to say okay i can strive to be better but if you're negative about things that you're going through in those hard times and saying why is this happening this

is happening to me i think mindset is what made me successful in bodybuilding and mindset is what made me successful you know in my company you know they had the 30th anniversary of the arnold classic uh last year and they had every winner on stage you had ronnie coleman jay cutler kai green dexter jackson you know all the top champions and myself and they asked arnold schwarzenegger who is the most memorable champion on this stage and he goes rich gaspari so i didn't pass out i was teared up it just like what so he goes Gasparri. You know why Rich Gasparri? He says, because he's an animal. Not an animal in a sense that he's like this crazy guy. He's an animal because that's a driven man.

That's a guy that will never give up in anything he does. And he will be successful no matter if he has adversities. And it was just like, it was funny because I didn't realize he knew anything about what i was doing but i guess he does pay attention in the industry yeah and it just really made me sit there and said wow you have all these great bodybuilders on stage and he goes i'm the most memorable guy on this stage that was just to me it was unbelievable that he said that and at that time i was a minority owner of my company. And I was really at this point that I hated being in the position I was in.

So from that point, I said, if this man is saying this about me, I got to get myself out of this. And that, from that point, when I got back home, I went there and said, I'm buying back my company. And by August, I was able to do that from March. You know, it's amazing. We all need a little boost, you know, and sometimes, uh, somebody just reaching their hand out and picking you up when you, when you need it most, it makes a huge difference. Definitely. And that's why I said, it's, you know, you just sometimes have to have somebody just be there to like, say you're, you are great. You can do these things, you know, and sometimes you just second there to like say you're you are great you can do these

things you know and sometimes you just second guess yourself and you know people go like wow rich gisberry done this you've done that and you know a human being i've been through a lot of adversities i've been through great things that have happened as well but you know i always look at myself that i just have to you know if i if I fall down, I got to pick myself up, brush myself off and just keep moving forward. If I don't move forward, that's when you die. You know, they, uh, they say that you have like the amount of thoughts that you have in a given day. It's, it's a rabbit hole to go down and try to research. But, uh, for lack of, or for just to, for, uh, argument sake, uh, let's just say there's 60,000 thoughts that you have in a day. They've, some people estimate you have like seven, uh, 700,000 thoughts in a

day. Um, but what they say is regardless of how many you have, let's just say you have 60,000, they say the majority of those are negative and you are second guessing yourself and you are, you do need reassurance and you do need to communicate with somebody else to, to have them kind of help that idea along or somebody, something has to happen, uh, for you to get, for you to have like inspiration towards kind of moving forward on something sometimes. And a thing like that from somebody that you hold in such high praise is so powerful. And then now it caused a cascade of a bunch of other things.

Talk a little bit, if you don't mind, a little bit about how you became a minority owner of your company that you spent all this time building. Well, about eight years ago, I went through a personal travesty. I went through a divorce with that happening. I lost, you know, when I, you know, you're sitting there with, did you own the company with your ex? Well, I own the company, but because of her being married to me, she ended up becoming my partner, you know, in the business that I started, you know, before we were married. And, you know, it ended up that now in a divorce settlement, she owned half my company. So I never knew that I had a partner, like a business partner. I thought I just had a wife, but.

Yeah, there is, that's a saying in business. They say the worst thing a businessman can do is get married because it cuts your assets in half. And you're seeing, you're seeing that with Jeff Bezos. So when that happened to me it was a very you know bitter divorce um that affected my mindset you know that affected my passion um at the same time i had a lot of other things going on i was going through employee lawsuits i was going through another outside lawsuit against the company. Man, it was just porn, huh?

Yeah. So I was going through a lot with that. People stealing from me. And I was just like, there were so many things happening at once. I just put my hands up and just watched. Not that I wanted to watch it, but it just slowly, this large business started cascading down and down and down until the point that I went to business bankruptcy reorganization. When that happened, we had to find somebody that was going to buy the debt.

we had to find somebody that was going to buy the debt. That happened where one of my distributors from England bought the company. The name of the company is Allegro. They bought a piece of the company. And I had to buy, putting down millions of dollars to get a small percentage of that company. So I ended up going from owning the company to being a 30% owner of Gasparri Nutrition.

The partnership was horrible. They knew nothing about the industry within a year and a half two years i was saying this is not working you need to get the hell out and they're like we own the company you don't you know you're small i said well this is my name's on this door and this company will go down further you know we don't do something about it so they ended up selling it to somebody else which you know we sold it to another company I became then a 49 owner and another one 51 so I still was a minority owner but I was much larger we had differences it didn't work and then I was like I need to get my company back and that's when this August I got my company back with investors, but I'm still the owner. So I'm able to now follow my destiny. It's still a tough road, but I was able to now make the decisions of what's going to grow guest-spired nutrition before i had to follow because i was minority of what they would say and that's when i really lost that drive and passion because as an entrepreneur one of the things you take away from an entrepreneur is take the

ability for them to be able to do anything like with ideas and it totally just deflates you yeah so even though i had somebody that was backing up the company, giving me a steady paycheck and I was making still great money, it still wasn't me driving that company. And I rather be in debt and have the ability to grow that company, but, you know, steer the ship. And that's what I'm able to do today. And I feel very fortunate that I'm able to take this and now get to the next level, you know, and build this company. I feel like, I feel like almost like Steve Jobs when he had Apple and it was Macintosh and, and he got thrown out of his own company. And then he came back and he came up with, you know, the iPad and the iPhone. And, and that's what I want to do with Gasparri is reinvent and, you know, innovate the brand to the next level.

It's amazing that you shared that with us. Thank you so much for that. I know it's not easy to share. No, you know, I want to share things like this because, you know, I'm not going to sit there and sugarcoat. And everyone, like I said, they look at my life and they say, wow, this guy's great. He's making money. He's like, but no, it's not that easy. And, you you know you got

to work hard we were talking earlier about you know really successful people like the rock you know the guy gets up four o'clock in the morning trains works you know he's a guy that works so hard and he's very successful but he's very successful because he works for it just like my dad said you know the harder work, the more lucky you get. And that's what happens. Yeah. And, and someone might look at, at the rock and say, well, he doesn't need to wake up at four o'clock and he doesn't need to,

he doesn't have to be there training that hard. He doesn't need to do a double session. He doesn't have to work out twice before most people wake up. And for him, he just thinks he does. He, you know, because he's not going to get all the things that he's getting. He wouldn't have gotten to where he does. He, you know, because he's not going to get all the things that he's getting. He wouldn't have gotten to where he's gotten to, you know, he, this mindset of his has taken a long time to develop, I'm sure. And, you know, he played professional, he tried to play professional football that didn't work out great. Then he played in the CFL.

He didn't have a lot of money. I mean, this story kind of goes on and on. Then he became a WWE star, but he developed these habits over a long period of time and much like yourself he took the habits from other places and and took them and then took them further just kind of keep taking them to a whole new level but like we said it's you know he was he was disciplined and he worked hard and like that's where that's not luck it's just you know I would say that that man deserves what he has because he worked for it, you know, and anyone who doesn't work that hard and think they're going to just get things handed to him is it's not going to happen. You know, like I said, life's very hard. everybody here at Slingshot. You know, I'm really fortunate to have this team and I'm glad that you got an opportunity to meet everybody from Casey, who runs our warehouse, to Smokey and to Andrew and everybody here. It's been cool for you to meet them and interact with them. What you said about, you know, take the ability away from an entrepreneur to kind of be able to

think and have some creativity. That's what these guys are, are here for. And they, they understand that. Like I I'm not, I'm not organized. Like, uh, the other day, Smokey handed me a bag and it had some stakes in it. And like, I walked out the door and like, I picked up a bunch of other stuff and, and I left and I'm like, holy shit, I forgot those stakes. He's like, I handed them to you when you're on the door. You know, there's, there's countless situations like that that happen. And I'm like, holy shit, I forgot those steaks. He's like, I handed them to you when you're on your way out the door. You know, there's countless situations like that that happen. And I'm not necessarily above, like, taking out the garbage or, you know, I should do those things. We should keep the gym clean. And why shouldn't I be part of it just like everybody else?

However, if it pulls away from me having time to think about the things I need to think about, then maybe it's not a great idea because maybe it puts everything else in jeopardy. Definitely. You know, you have to have time for that stuff. But I see, you know, your operation and, you know, like I said, you're living the dream. And I always tell people, you know, I'm living the dream. I'm able to do what I want to do and live my own destiny. I don't have somebody over me telling me, you know, what to do. And you're able to do that here, you know, have great people to help you to be successful and people that can help you with the weaknesses you have. You talked about earlier, it's like, you know, you need to use your strengths and have

other people help you with your weaknesses. And that's another thing that you learn as a businessman is like, you need to be able to know,'m not good at this i'm not good at this i'm not good so you want to know how to do it you want to learn about it but you need to have somebody else do that for you because you're good at this other thing that actually drives the company and i'm able to now slowly be able to do what i'm really good at and that's innovate be creative come up with you know different products and marketing and that's what i really want to do what I'm really good at. And that's innovate, be creative, come up with, you know, different products and marketing. And that's what I really want to do with the brand more than sitting there and doing accounting or doing inventory. I mean, there's no stuff that are

necessary, but I want other people to do that for me. What, what is a, like one product that, that really changed everything for you kind of in the beginning, you mentioned the pro hormones, was it the pro hormones? Pro hormones were just kind of like the spark, you know, they were something that, you know, we talked about discipline again, those products were able to bring in revenue. You know, it, it, you know, I didn't have a, you know, an angel investor put money in. I had to take products, save millions of dollars from those products, and then take that money to invest in other products. So the product that really became my top product that was at the time very innovative was I was one of the top companies or one of the first companies to have a pre-workout. Super Pump 250 was my pre-workout. At the time,

there was two pre-workouts in the industry. There was Eno Explode and there was Super Pump 250. Basically, they were the red bottles. I was the blue bottles. So it was funny because when we started getting really competitive, Scott James was the guy who ran BSN, and he basically, I was his mortal enemy. He would tell his employees, you can't talk to him. If you talk to him, you get fired because he also had this like mindset, like we were at war. So, you know, we started marketing the brand and it was like, I would do things like he would have

what was called the BSN wall of red. So I'd come and say, okay, we're going to have the wave of blue, the wave of blue. I said, waves break down walls. So we need to like take down, take down his, I want a real battle. So it's like, take down the red walls, put up the blue walls. So I'd have like a C wherever he was, had big customers. I go there and take over the shelf space, you know, with my product. And it was, it was, it was like being in competition, you know, he was my Lee Haney and it was like, It was like being in competition. He was my Lee Haney. And it was like we were battling back and forth.

So that became a great product. At the time, proteins were not my forte. I was selling pro-hormones. I was selling pre-workouts. So they were going like, you can never sell a protein because that's a difficult market. So I came up with this product called Myofusion. Myofusion ended up becoming one of the biggest proteins of the time um i was able to what i did differently with that product is i look what was missing in the market back in i guess the early 2000s like if you drank a protein

it tasted like dirty water you know it had the, but it just didn't have a great taste to it. It just, you know, it was like sweet chocolate water, you know, or sweet vanilla water. It tasted like a protein shake. You always kind of knew it. The aftertaste was there. Or there was Metrex that tastes like glue, you know, it was down your throat. So I was looking at it and I said like, what do I need to do to make a protein taste much better? And it's not about the flavoring, the sweetness, it's the mouthfeel. So one of the things I discovered is like, you know, Cremora, this stuff you're using, Coffee Mate, you know, the Coffee Mate, that stuff, it has like this like creamy feeling, you know, and that gives you this better mouthfeel.

So I was able to take the components of that and add it to a protein as soon as i did that i changed the mouthfeel of proteins it became more like a milky tasty not thick thick with gums but more of like that's just like nice mouthfeel with flavoring i changed and in my effusion like boom became really big because i was able to do something different. And that's like we said about always trying to find things to reinvent, you know, what you're doing in the industry. You may have a protein, but what can you do to make that protein better? So that was something I added. And now everybody follows suit and does that. They add that, you know, that component to the protein to give that mouthfeel. So that's something, you know, that I did differently that no one else did at the time.

What, uh, what, what kind of protein is that? Is that a. It's, it's basically, um, you know, it contains whey protein isolate, uh, whey protein concentrate, casein. It was basically a mixed blend protein. So it, you know, we called it a time release protein because it had everything from casein to whey isolate or hydrolyzed whey isolate. So having those combination,

you had slow, medium, fast. So it was, we called it, like I said, a protein that, you know,

that. Yeah. Steady. Steady. Yeah. When you're drinking. Um, what do you think of bodybuilding today?

I think bodybuilding has gone through, you know, I'm an old school bodybuilder. I was saying to you earlier to become pro back when I turned pro, there was only five pros. You basically had to win your class in the mystery universe to turn pro. You went from the nationals, you went into the world championships. Everyone from around the world competed in the world championships. And that's how you turn pro. There was one pro, one heavyweight pro. And that was from anyone in the world.

Now, every country gives out a pro card. If you're from Sweden, you win Mr. Sweden, you're a pro. You win Mr. Italy, you're a pro. And so there's so many pros. They're no longer special. When I turned pro, I was known. You mentioned too, you had, you had to start over, right? So like if you tried to come through and you didn't win, then you had to start all over

again at nationals again. You had to, you had to win the nationals. You have to win your class, go to the Mr. Universe, win the Mr. Universe. If you didn't win the Mr. Universe, you'd have to go back. And there was a lot of pros that had to do, not

a lot of amateurs. If you know who Matt Mendenhall was, he came second to Lee Haney. He had an opportunity. He went into, um, a couple of shows, but he kept coming second. So he never had a chance to turn pro. Seems brutal.

Seems like, uh, dying in a video game, like playing like Mario Brothers or something. You gotta keep starting over. See, there's a lot more pros today. Back then there was such, you could see great bodybuilders that ended up just dying, like you said, because they come back two or three times,

not win that universe, and then just say, I can't do this anymore. And they would just get out of the sport. So you have to be fortunate to be able to win that. So that became much more difficult. I think there just is no, there's no special in being a pro. Someone will go to me, Hey, I'm pro. I'm like, I never heard of you, dude. I don't know who you are, but they're pro, you know? So it's,

it's like I said, when I turned pro, it was kind of cool because I remember I, you know, I got my pro card, this universe you know i got in the magazines and then i was traveling to do an exhibition in new zealand and i was traveling i got to the airport like oh rich gasparri it's like they knew who i was i'm like holy crap people know me all the way in new zealand you know because of the magazines i mean the thing about today is it's instantaneous because of the internet who's winning a show right away you know who the guy is the winner when i did it was like two months later when i wanted to know who won mr olympia i'd actually have to call venice gold's gym oh yeah yeah a lot of people did that yeah so you

call the gym and like who won mr olympia so i mean that's what you would do and it's so it's so different and uh crazy tom file would answer the phone we have a guy here that used to work the front desk there for probably to work the front desk there for probably he probably worked the front desk there for a handful of years named tom file he's a former uh bodybuilder himself so so he was there during that time yeah yeah and he told he told me about that people would call there all the time asking about different shows who won the show so one that who won the universe so i mean today it's instantaneous i mean what's today is very different is that you have these social media champions never want to show they have these huge followings because they know how to build their social media following and now they became

they become this champion right you know at the time i was you know it's really hard on like rich piano because he became so big but he he never won shows. And I didn't agree on how, what he did. I mean, I got to give him credit because he was able to become so big, but he was just off the wall on drugs and this and that, which I thought was a bad message, but he was able to grow into this social media, you know, star. And that's different today because there's, unless you can do both, you can be a great bodybuilder, but your following is not going to be that big unless you're constantly posting. So social media, social media has changed everything, you know, from

both good and bad. Well, in terms of bodybuilding, I mean, you know, if you were, if you were, you know, aiming to be a pro bodybuilder and you're really striving for it for a long time and it just, whatever reason wasn't working out, maybe it just didn't have the extra edge with the diet. If you're posting on social media and you're starting to get a big following, well, now you can have a supplement sponsor and you can start to obtain a lot of things that I think being a pro bodybuilder, maybe for yourself and maybe for some others was the act of being professional as a bodybuilder probably meant more

to you than anything else that came along with that. And you want to just to push that as far as you could, and you want to push your body as far as you could. Maybe for some of these other people, they kind of start pushing, pushing, pushing. They realize how hard it really is. And they say, you know what? I'm kind of happy being like right about here. I'm just going to chill. I got 500,000 followers and I'm going to use that to support my lifting and I'm going to personal train people.

And that, that climb towards being Mr. Olympia is just too damn hard. And maybe that's the thought process of some of the men and women of today. I definitely think, you know, like you said, these guys are able to take, you know, what they're doing with social media and say, shoot, I can make a living doing this. And maybe I don't have to work is, you know, to become that pro. So a lot of guys just kind of, like you say, they just give it up and say, well, I can do online training. I can get, you know, endorsements using, you know, my following. And that's how people are, you know, doing it today. you know, my following and that's how people are, you know, doing it today.

They're just, they're, it's like I said, it's a whole different model. Social media is complicated too. It's hard to figure out, like you might say, oh, well, it's hard to get followers because, uh, you know, we're, we're older, but then there's like CT Fletcher has, you know, 1.5 million followers on YouTube or whatever. And then there's, uh, rich piano wasn't necessarily young. And then also you might think, oh, well maybe it's cause I talk about performance enhancing drugs.

Maybe people don't like the message as much, but then again, there was rich piano who, yeah, who really took it to another level and got like young kids to, you know, that's like I said, social media in itself is, is a game or a sport or a business. You know, it's a hard thing to figure out. And it's easy to kind of think, oh, well they have that following because they collaborated with this guy or this girl, or they have this, but it's the same way that you and I get looked at. Oh, rich got, he got wealthy. Cause you know, they've got some bullshit story they made up in their head. Right. So kind of the same thing, you know, the same thing, throwing stones basically.

Definitely. And, and, you know, I give guys credit for whatever they're doing and you know their successes and how they're building their you know their social media is just like i said it's another business itself you know like bodybuilding you know social media is consistent you know we talked about earlier is like to get you know huge following it to build is, is, is like every day. And that's hard because you're doing a bunch of, I'd see for me, it's like, I'm focusing on my business and then I got to have like someone just doing my social media. Cause it's something that has to be consistent, you know, a lot of stuff. And, you know, I look at what you're doing and it's like, you guys are consistent, you know, throwing out videos, doing, you know, podcasts, all these

things like seeing this now and being on this show is teaching me a lot also. And, and learning how to market, you know, the company differently. Like this is the new. That's a lot more than you got from Mind Pump. I'm sure. Hey, I'm just kidding. I'm just kidding. I had a good, I had a good talk with those guys as well. Um, this was more enjoyable. We got to train, we got the bond, we got to eat. We got to build up our, our back. Our lats are huge on this podcast right now. We don't even fit in frame. That's cool.

What's, uh, what's harder. Uh, and I want you to actually think about this for your answer. What's harder pre-contest or post-contest? In getting ready for show or after the show. What do you mean by post-contest?

What's, what's hard, what's harder mentally and physically pre- you mean by post-contest? What's harder mentally and physically pre-contest or post-contest? Well, that's a good question because, you know, preparing for a show is actually, there was just like this enjoyment of getting ready for that certain date. And that was the climax of that preparation of the diet and the training and all that preparation the posing to get to that climax of that day then you get done whether you win or you lose you win and then you're like it's over and i climax you know it's like okay and then a lot of times you're like you get kind

of into in a depression because then you're like okay what do i do next you know what i gotta do so yeah you're right i think post is harder post is really hard you get you get fucking depressed you get really you do you get depressed especially if you don't do well even if you do well i've won shows and then afterwards been depressed because it's like okay i gotta stay on top what do i gotta do what's the next show how do we you know so i've never in my life had i mean after powerlifting contests we've joked about it a lot of times and you have kind of the post meat blues we call it and and it takes you a while to kind of get back into the into the stride of everything and it might take two weeks or even a month to kind of figure out like yeah what you want to do next what

are your goals and things like that but never in my life have i i felt like my soul was like removed from me after that bodybuilding show. It was really weird. It was only for like two days. Luckily for me, it was only for like two days and I was just like doing nothing anyway. So it didn't, it didn't matter, but God damn, I didn't know that that was going to happen. You're right. Blindsided the shit out of me.

They did tell me like, you know, getting close to the contest that it, you know, there was, you're going to feel weird and weird shit's going to happen, but I didn't really realize that it was going to happen after the show. Yeah, you're right. It's, you get to this climate, you know there was you're gonna feel weird and weird shit's gonna happen but i didn't really realize that it was gonna happen after the show yeah you're right it's you get to this climate you know it was a really incredible experience as i went through a grand prix tour and i did actually i did the olympia then i did seven pro shows oh my god so when i did that it was a show every weekend so can you imagine like going in a show then you know climaxing depressed then going to the next show and then you know climax bipolar yeah it was up and down up and down up until the last show that i did it was like seven shows it was that last show to be like it actually mentally burned me

out because i went in eight shows in a month's time and it was like five week time. And that last show just like totally mentally, physically, I needed like three months off just to go through, you know, mentally what it did to me. At some points, did it make, uh, did bodybuilding, like when you're in that diet prep mode, when you're really locked in, uh, did it make you self-centered and egotistical and some of those things and judgmental? Very much so. I was a very, very driven person. In some ways, not the nicest.

I was a young kid, very successful. I remember I was in my early 20s, and I was a top bodybuilder in the world. So when I trained in a gym gym i was there to do a job and that was to train so you know i didn't want to be disrupted i didn't want to be bothered so people would come up to me and like oh rich gisberry leave me the fuck alone i'm trained for the show i mean i wasn't i i'm a totally different person now i'm i i'm you know you know nice to people but it's good to be retired but it was funny because we

talked about stories like when i was training with lee haney i was his pit bull because you know he was had to be this night he was always this nice guy so we were training and he'd be like rich we gotta use that bench throw that guy off the bench so i'd be there i'd go to the guy i go listen are you doing this well i got two more sets no you don't get off the bench and i just go there and take over the bench you know with him because he couldn't do it because he was the you know the nice guy pro so i had this bad reputation of being this dick you know and it's funny he said you know i didn't know this till years later he goes you know there was a posse that were going to kick your ass because you were such a like a nasty guy like nobody could you know they were so afraid of me so they

got like eight guys they're ready to kick my ass they're gonna jump me kick my ass because they're like no one would take me one-on-one but you know eight guys are gonna jump me and they're going nah he's a nice kid you know and he goes you know i i just basically saved your life because that eight guys are gonna kick your ass because you were so like, you know, kicking people off benches, you know, get off that machine. I was doing all kinds of stuff like that, but he, he's the one who got me to do it. Cause he wanted to be the good guy. And I was the jerk off, you know, I noticed, uh, you know, while dieting for the show that, um, and it did keep in mind, this is just one show. So I can't imagine how much it would impact you if you did it for years on end, but you know know in the middle of the contest prep as i started kind of getting locked into it

it made me really judgmental and i i like just was less tolerant and just oh yeah when i'd see other people eat i was just disgusted by i'm like what's wrong with these fat motherfuckers what are they doing why why are they fucking eating french fries why do you eat ice cream you know and then meanwhile i was doing that you know a couple, a couple months ago, but it's just, it was an interesting place to be. Cause I didn't really, I guess I didn't really know that, that you can get into that weird spot like that. Well, just like you said, when you were bodybuilding, food just became a fuel to reach your goal.

It wasn't about taste. So when you see someone eating a French fry, it was, it was a waste of food because of food because it was gonna you know put more fat and salt and crap into your you know bad carbs so that's how you were in being judged all the alarms are going off yeah like this is all bad it's all bad what are you doing why are you eating that well you know that's gonna do this to you but i i get what you're saying it you know it was funny because you know i would have you know i was training for competitions i'd be back home and. And Sundays were this big Italian dinner and pasta. And my mom would prepare my meal. And I'd have fish and rice.

And they were eating. And I was just sitting there at the table. They were eating meatballs and tomato sauce and pasta. It didn't really bother me because I was like, well, if I eat that, I'm not going to win a show. So it didn't bother me as much because that's, you know, I know I was going to be able to eat that, but yeah, you're right. When I see people that were not disciplined and saying they want to be, you know, a bodybuilder and how do I do it?

And I said, stop eating that shit, you fat fuck. What are you doing? Yeah. But in bodybuilding, it's really, uh, you really can't see the results unless you've got, your diet has to be somewhat on point. I mean, you can't, you can go in and train all the time and you'll just be big and fat, right? You gotta, you gotta have a good diet. You have to have a good diet.

You have to know when to use cardiovascular training. You know, like I think I was telling you earlier, like some shows I use cardiovascular training, you know, to burn fat. You know, I always use fasting cardio, like up, you, that's where I had to get up earlier, before I ate, do my cardio when my body was on E to, you know, burn that fat. Some shows when my metabolism was getting faster and faster, I noticed if I did cardio, I would burn too much. So then I have to, like I said, with a log, be able to then up my calories slow down you know my cardiovascular training and like i said the log was very useful to me because a lot of times people just are driven and they feel like i gotta do 45 minutes of cardio i have to take this amount of carb i have to and it ends up being counterproductive because if your body is burning

too many calories and you start shrinking, you don't know then that like to assess it and take away the cardio. So I don't know where I was getting with this point, but I was basically, you know, saying, you know, everything works in a hand when you're, you know, when you're competing, when it comes to like, you know, food, cardio training. I think you were mentioning earlier about starting a camp where you're going to invite people into the gym and. Well, I, I haven't, I have a, I have my office in Lakewood, New Jersey and what we're doing on the 9th and 10th, we're actually inviting people to get information. It's an eight hour basically, um, course I want to call it. So we're going to go

into proper training, all the principles that I was able to use. Um, you know, these people are going to get their ass kicked, aren't they? They're going to get their ass kicked, but part of it is going to be a lecture, you know, on proper dining. So, you know, it's going to be a classroom setting to be lectured on proper training, proper diet, proper supplementation, proper cardio. And then we're all going to hit the gym and everyone's going to get a chance to train with a legend

myself and two other top pros everyone's going to get a chance to feel the intensity of a workout that's great

so we're going to have that the 9th and 10th you can check it out on my website we're giving away $250 in supplements with swag

cool so the course is $9., but it's like I said, when you get done with this, all the, you know, all the questions that, you know, you have in trying to prepare for a show, you know, a lot of times these workshops that people have for businesses, they charge much more. This is someone could go to this and know what to do in getting ready for a show or just getting themselves in great shape so we're doing it nutrition.com gasparinutrition.com go to the front page you'll see the workshop you have to come to new jersey uh we were talking about you know you have this great gym or i have like a

4 000 square foot gym with all this refurbished equipment you get to train with me and you know experience he's got old school nautilus stuff in there. I got everything, but it looks brand new. It's all refurbished, painted, new chains. Everything is perfect condition. So I love that old school stuff to train. It's like when we're doing some exercises, I still do the old school exercises, but I do like machines as well.

Yeah, we did some pullovers today. You got other questions, Andrew? You guys just have to check this video out. When you're talking about food and family and stuff. Oh, this is me. Yeah, they're eating pasta while I'm eating out of my bowl. Yeah. So is this your whole family right here?

Yeah, that's my family there. Yeah, that's so funny. Was this common? Like, was this all the time? This is what I would do on Sunday. And look what I'm eating. I'm eating out of this little container. They did a really good job because they don't even show what you're eating.

Everyone's killing pasta and spaghetti. That's what I'm eating. There it is. I'm eating broccoli, fish while they're eating all that, you know, that other stuff. Yeah. That was a concoction of. Were that many people in your house kind of all

the time? Italian families, you have these big dinners. Sunday was a very important day. My grandmother's house. I mean, I'm Italian as well. My grandmother's house looked like this all, it didn't matter what day it was. It looked like that all the time.

That's the way it was on Sunday. You know, my cousins, my aunts, my brothers. And, you know, it's, that's one thing that- Couldn't help but be fat. Yeah, it did really. That's cool. And then a handful of people keep asking about, what is it called?

Size on pre-contest and why it's not around anymore we are making size on pre-contest what it was was the components of size on which contain creatine leucine and other anabolic aminos uh to help you know to for recuperation repair and muscle. Um, we are making a new size on, it's going to be called size on pro, which is going to be similar to the size on pre contest. So if you guys are looking for it, we're looking to make that later on in the, in the spring. We're coming up with some new products. If you guys want to know, uh, basically in March, we're going to come up with a new super pump called super pump aggression. Super bump aggression is going to be a very powerful stimulant driven pre-workout. It's going to have the components for pump as well.

So that's going to be coming out. We had a product called detonate. We're coming out with DTN eight, which is going to be a new fat burner that we're coming out. So size on pro, if you guys are looking for it, that's going to come out soon, which will be basically a non-carbohydrate anabolic supplement.

Nice. So I know you were saying earlier about, you know, you travel a lot. You actually go to the stores, you talk to people and stuff. But if you're looking like, you know, if you just type in like, you know, whatever nutrition supplements or whatever it is, how are you guys able to stand out, you know,

in such a huge saturated market? It's a very hard thing. That's, that's a question, you know, they constantly, you know, have to answer or try to figure out, you know, what you look at is you have to try to, you can't conquer every market. So you have to conquer channels, you know? So it used to be before that you can be in every channel, be successful. Now you have to try to focus on a certain channel, like, you know, Amazon or, you know, certain websites. And then you just market on that website to grow sales.

Sometimes it's difficult to be, you know, the brand for all channels, you know, to build up, but it's a constant battle, like you said, because what's changed when I did this brand 20 years ago is that everyone thinks that having a supplement company, you talked about, you didn't get into supplements, but it's become such a saturated market. Fortunately, because I have a brand that's like over 20 years old, there's still, you know, there's a demand for it. So I'm able to keep that going. And like you said about how do you build the brand, you know, doing this here and being on this show today, you know,

hopefully we'll have some people that have an interest that maybe you've never heard of me, you know, and want to see what, what I'm doing. You know, I've done other podcasts, um, doing a lot of target marketing. Well, at this point too, you had the brand out for a long time and you'd done a really good job with it, but there's probably a lot of people that are like, oh yeah, I've tried those supplements before. And they're like, I didn't even know, you know, they didn't even know you were behind it.

Yes. Right. Like I, I run to that. I, uh, it's funny because, you know, the young kids that don't know who Rich Gasparri, like, you know, who I am. Um, and I think guys up to their thirties kind of know who I am, like in competing and followed it. But then when you get into the 18 to 20 something, I'm this, this, this old dude that looks good, you know, for his age.

Yeah. And, uh, I think it's just letting them know you know be aware of who i am and trying to right now we're trying to get that that market that 18 to 25 year old demographic which you know is marketing the brand with you know younger hipper you know athletes that push the brand using social media um we're doing something differently. You know, ask me like, how do I conquer all, you know, how do you try to be this brand that can be recognized amongst all these other brands? I mean, we're doing something differently before everything was through distribution. So you made much less margin, but you sold everywhere now because there's such saturated markets, you can try to grow and try to, maybe I don't have to make a hundred million. I can do 40 million, but have a higher, you know, have a higher bottom line profit,

net profit. We're focusing now on our website. You got to talk to these guys here. All they want to do is spend my money all the time. That's all I want to do. Yeah. So we're building the conspiracy website and you know, we're selling on the website, growing that website. And we're seeing success. Like I just started, this is the first time I'm really doing direct-to-consumer sales. And we're seeing results very quickly. And I think, you know, month by month, we're going to see the growth of that. Just like watching yourself grow as a bodybuilder and watching the website grow and just doing different ways to grow.

as a bodybuilder and watching the website grow and just doing different ways to grow it. But I believe that now a direct to consumer model is the way to go because it is such a saturated market. So you can kind of build up channels, you know, certain channels that you're making a higher net, a net profit, but not working as hard to try to sell a hundred million dollars worth of

product. Right. You know, that's the difference. Anything else? You're all good. Well, You know, that's the difference. Anything else? You're all good. Well, early on,

were you testing out your supplements yourself? I'm a guinea pig for all my products. Even today, anything I make, like I'm doing this new super pump aggression. I've been using it, you know, seeing great results with it.

I will be. Well, today was unfair. I didn't know about this. I didn't even get to use. So we didn't get to use it. But I do like what I'm doing now. It's going to be different.

I'm going to be looking for influencers to try the product. Give me their, you know, critique, critique the product and post that out. So we're going to be doing stuff like that with the new product. You're going to get all kinds of DMs from people wanting to be your affiliate and blah blah but well if you have 10 000 or more and you have a good engagement contact me because we're looking for you know guys influencers to be able to test a lot of the gaspari products cool tyrell hit me the first person to hit you up that's right where can people find you uh gasparinutrition.com you can go to my instagram rich gaspari uh facebook rich gaspari uh we have gaspari nutrition.com. You can go to my Instagram, Rich Gaspari, uh, Facebook, Rich Gaspari. Uh, we have Gaspari as well on Instagram. Um, like I said, just, you know, go to the website

or you can see me on Instagram. Thank you so much for sharing all that with us today. Strength is never a weakness. Weakness is never a strength. Catch you guys later.