Mark Bell's Power Project - Power Project EP. 3 - Andee Bell

Episode Date: February 5, 2018

Andee Bell goes down memory lane and describes everything from the first time meeting Mark, moving around the country supporting Mark's Wrestling career, the inception of The Power Magazine, to building the Sling Shot empire.

Used hip circle. Cameras rolling, audio's rolling, we're good to go. Alright, we're good to go. Welcome to Mark Bell's Power Project, and we're going to start in. We got Andy Bell here on the show. We've never had her on the show before, even though we had a podcast for many years. We just never had the opportunity. Today we were here at the gym, and we were just kind of hanging out.

We have a normal Thursday meeting. Meeting got over. Andy and I got some training in. Got in a little monkey. Cover your ears. Yeah. Oh, we didn't get it. We didn't do that, did we? Well, he was there. Oh, now you're going to get me in trouble. He was there? He wasn't filming, was he? Might have been. Just audio. Anyway, excited to have her here today and we're going to basically talk about the growth of Slingshot, the growth of the business, how it all got started.

And along those same lines, the company has grown, Super Training has grown, Slingshot has grown, along with the growth of our children. Because Jake is going to be 14, Quinn is going to be 11. Good job. Jake is going to be 14. Quinn is going to be 11. And the Jim is 11 years old. And Slingshot is going to be eight years old. So let's just back things up a bunch. And before we get into like business stuff, let's have the audience understand your background. Some people may know and some people may not know that you were a swimmer. You were a Division I swimmer at the University of Kansas,

where you were the captain, right, of the swim team. And so give us some of that background. How did that start? When did you start swimming? Let's start there. Okay. Well, hello, everybody. I'm excited to be here. Andy Bell. swimming. Let's start there. Okay, well, hello everybody. I'm excited to be here.

I started swimming when I was our daughter's age and progressed pretty rapidly. I was a national level swimmer in my teens. Always had a goal to get a full ride scholarship to college. Got that goal, went to University of Kansas, had a fabulous time, had a great experience. Swam all four years. My last two years, junior and senior year, I was team captain. Graduated with a degree in business and swimming all four years, which once I got there, I didn't realize that swimming or being a Division I athlete and staying all four years is actually a rare thing. A lot of people get there and it's a very difficult thing to balance, you know, athletics and academics and social. And I did all three of them to the limit.

I don't know how I did it, but so I, yeah, I had a lot of. You smell really good even after you worked out. How's that work out? Am I allowed to hit on the guests? No, please don't. What did you, what did you swim? Well, my best event in college was the 400 individual medley. For those of you that don't know what that is,

it's four laps of each stroke butterfly backstroke breaststroke freestyle all in a row without stopping i heard you say breaststroke yeah i know yeah calm down um that 200 im which is half that and the 200 breaststroke so those are my main so i was a breaststroker imr and middle distance freestyler um pretty much swam those three events all four years of school. 200 free here and there and maybe a 500, but middle distance all the way. And it was hard. 4.9 was probably the hardest event you can do. It just sucks. The training for it sucks. Everything sucks. But yeah, but I had a really great experience at Kansas. Love it. Love watching the Jayhawks play basketball now.

I still get excited. I actually just went to their basketball game there here at Golden One playing Stanford. That was a lot of fun. But yeah, I just had a really great experience. After I graduated, I moved to Los Angeles because I thought, well, that's where you have to go if you have a business degree and you want to be a businesswoman. Was swimming something you're real passionate about? Yeah, for sure.

Did you really love it or was it that you were good at it or a combination? No, I grew up in Arizona when I was, I guess, elementary school age. And you pretty much have to be in the pool all the time there because it's so hot. And I just love swimming. I was in the pool all the time just messing around. So my mom's like, I got to get her on the team. You know, she loves swimming so much. I swam every single day from the time I was 12 until the time I was like, you know, 21 when I graduated. I mean, I loved it. I never had to be forced to go to practice. I, you know, I saw meets every weekend. I just really loved it. That's why when, when, you know, fast forward to when Mark and I have our children, neither one of them like swimming. But we knew, I know because

my background is in swimming, that is such a difficult sport that if you, if your child does not love it, it will be a fight every day it's not worth it because it's too hard it's too it takes too much it's like two to three hours every day with maybe one day off a week meets all the time and it's too much for a parent to force your child to do that sport it doesn't really have a season either year round so there's no breaks so unless your child is loving it it's too hard on everybody to force someone to be a swimmer. I loved it. And I also happened to be good at it. So it was a great thing for me because I was successful. I reached a lot of, you know, goals that I had set out for myself.

And I had a really looking back on it. I feel like I had a really good career. I never went to the Olympics. I never went to NCAAs. But I got really close. And for me, I think that I am proud of my career with what I've done. Obviously, there's people that have been much more successful. But I think I had a good balance because I got my degree. I got my school paid for. And I think that was something I'm really proud of.

We have a lot of great athletes come in here. But not a lot of them have had my school paid for. And I think that, that was, that was something I'm really proud of. We have a lot of like great athletes come in here, but not a lot of them have had their schooling paid for. Was there like a, I know you're, you know, your dad passed away when you were 10, you started swimming at like eight, right? Well, I learned how to swim when I was eight. Right. Right. Yeah. But like your dad passing, was that like something, you know, was that an event that like

made you maybe think that you had to figure out a way to like take care of yourself or um or was it or is it separate young when that happened so i think it was later it you know when i was probably like 15 16 as i as after my dad passed away and observing, my mom had four small children, 12, 10, 8 and 6 were the ages of all of us when my dad died. And she really took on this amazing role of like taking over. He was a chiropractor. She took over his business. She ran it until she decided it was too much. She sold it. We all moved back to California, which is where my mom's from. That's where she met my stepdad. And then we started our life here. At that point, I think when I was probably, you know, a mid teenager,

I kind of started looking back and like, Oh, my God, like what my mom did was so amazing. And it really affected me like, she was strong enough to be able to be a lot of women would be like, Oh, shit, what do I do? You know, and they just kind of give up. I have four small children. I have a business. We were building a house at the time. You know, it was like all these things and she just took everything and just kept going. A lot of people would just be like, I don't know what to do. And your whole life could fall apart. And she didn't, I never felt like I was worried about my future or worried about where I was, you know, what was happening. We, we were, um, always taken care of, always moving forward. And that's totally 100% due to her.

So I think that I had that as a role model. So for me, when I was a teenager, when I was in high school, college, all that, I really, I think, developed a sense of I need to be strong like my mom. So if anything ever happened to anyone in my life, I can take care of my family. You know, I don't want to ever count on somebody to be taking care of me. Like I know women who have no idea, you know, about their banking situation or about insurance or about taxes or about this. You know, men are that way too. Right. Yeah. So, but I decided early on that I was going to take control of my life.

Not that I was not going to let anyone in, but I was not going to be dependent on anyone. And that's how I felt my mom was. She was, obviously they had a great marriage and partnership, but once he was gone, she took on the role of like, okay, I have a family. I have to take care of them. So that's how I kind of was raised is with a very strong female presence in my life. And I, all four of us, my brothers and sisters, all of us turned out awesome. Like my brother and sisters are all very successful, have families living, you know, great. No one's really fell into anything negative. And we had our, you know, little things here and there, but everyone's doing really great. So I totally attribute that to my mom and how strong she was and stuff when that happened with

my with my dad passing my brothers I think were a little more affected because you know when your dad passes it's a little different than when you're a when you're a female or if you're a male so I think they've had a little more emotional issues that they probably had to deal with and stuff. Tell people how we met. Well, so after graduation, I moved to LA and I got a job with a company. Well, that was AMFM Radio Networks, which was a network radio company. My boss lived in Hermosa Beach and I lived in Venice. Paul Gregory. Paul Gregory. Shout out to Paul Gregory. He's fucking crazy. He's still in Hermosa being crazy. Fiery New Yorker. Yes. Yes. So he lived in Hermosa Beach and he was like, you got to come to the beach, Andy. You got to come to the beach. Stop messing around in Hollywood and Santa Monica. He's like, the beach is where it's at. So I was like, fine. So after work one time, it was a taco

Tuesday, dollar margaritas. Oh, I got a taco. So we, he took me to Sharky's in Hermosa Beach. It was his favorite place to go. And Mark and his brother happened to be bouncers there. So we go on a Tuesday night. We're in a very flattering Hawaiian shirt. Very sexy Hawaiian shirt. Was that the uniform? That was the uniform.

Oh, okay. So, yeah, lay. At least you were forced to wear it. Yes, it was no butchers, I don't think. It was bad. Yeah. Well, some nights he puts it back on, you know. Really?

Yeah, why not? Yeah, like a little fantasy. That was pretty small. I don't think we still have that one. The Hawaiian shirt. The one he... Yeah, yeah, yeah. Let's clarify.

It grows with age. I think so. So anyway, so I went to Sharky's with my coworkers, and that's where I spotted Mark. He was the bouncer that worked the back door of the bar, so he was kind of hanging out in the back. And I was kind of looking, you know. Real prestigious job. She was probably like, oh, there's my knight. That's all good. He was basically guarding the bathroom. We were probably like, oh, there's my knight. He was basically guarding the bathrooms.

Explain to everybody, give them a little bit of a setup of what that area was like where I worked. Okay, you mean the back of the Sharkey's? Yeah, the back of the Sharkey's. It's pretty disgusting. For those of you that go to Sharkey's now, it's nothing like it used to be because it burned down a few years ago and they rebuilt it. So back when we were there so there's a dance floor that's very small and then there's a little hallway and where the bathrooms are and there's a fan that is above the hallway shooting so the lines would form along the hallway there for the bathrooms and there was literally two bathrooms with like one stall in each

or two and this bar was packed so their line would form along the side of the wall and that's where he worked every day yeah so that's where he worked was um at the end of the hallway there's a back door back there so make sure people didn't sneak in i think that was your one job and uh so there was this fan that was just blowing on you while you're waiting in line, and it smelled like puke. So we called it the puke fan. People throwing up and doing whatever else in the bathroom, and the fan was just picking up whatever that smell was and just wafting it through the whole place. Those were the most disgusting bathrooms you could ever imagine. And this fan would pick up.

I don't know if the exhaust was there or what, but it would pick it up, and it would blow it back in your face. Just circulate the smell. So that's where he he worked right in front of the puke van hours on end it's a great place to crop dust people that's what i remember because it was so noisy and it already stunk so bad no one knew it was no issue it's just grossness everywhere but anyway so he was working back there and I saw him and as the night went on and the drunker I got better looking, he got. And then, yeah. And then I I kind of I actually went up to him and I had a really good pickup line. And I I kind of bumped into him and I said, are you following me? He was like, oh, you're like, I'm sitting down. So you haven't moved this spot all night. But no, we just kind of started flirting.

And then I think you gave me your number or. I'm pretty easy, I'm sure. Yeah. Probably gave you my underwear too, probably. Something like that, yeah. And then the rest is history. So that was the meeting. And then fast forward.

How far do you want to fast forward to? Yeah, our first date was on the Santa Monica Promenade. Yes. We saw Snake Eyes, which is an awful movie. Nicholas Cage. I love that movie. Of course you do. That was great.

It's pretty bad. Top ten. Top ten? Wow. Maybe top ten Nicholas Cage movies. Yeah, maybe. From there, I mean, I think, you know, once we... From that point on, we started to hang out every day, as a lot of people do when they find out, when they're falling

in love. And we started hanging out every day, started seeing that we had more and more in common. You have a funny story about Vinnie Gumbatz. Oh, yeah. Well, so for me, I had... Mark's really like my first serious boyfriend. So all through college and that's her story. She's been sticking to that for a long time. No, it's true. I would I went on a lot of first dates and very little second dates. So once I started like it was like our fourth or fifth date, I was like, oh, man, like this guy isn't annoying me yet because that would happen. Like you just start to get impressed with the bench annoying. Um, but, uh, pretty good. Okay. Yeah.

I don't remember. 405. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. So we'll go with that. All right. So, uh, so we had been dating for a few weeks and I thought, well, you know, um, I'm just going to, he was living in Santa Monica and I was in Venice, so it's not that far away. So it was like a Saturday afternoon. I'm like, oh, I'm going to go pop over there and see if he wants to go to the beach. And I, I, you know, we had been dating a few weeks or maybe a month or so, but I, uh, I didn't know his brother that well. And I didn't know that they had, I thought they had this third roommate, Vinny. So I go over there and no one's home except Vinny. And he was like sleeping on the couch or something. And I was like, Oh, he's like, Oh, Mark's not home. And I was like, oh, well, I was going to go to the beach.

Well, do you want to go? And so I'm thinking to myself, oh, well, I'll get in good with a friend. And then he'll say good things about me. He's fucking totally nuts. And so he's like, sure, I'll go to the beach. So I take him to the beach. And he's like probably 5'6". Like what?

He's this tiny little. First off, five, six sounds awesome. So we're off to a good start. He's this jackal Italian guy. And so we get to the beach. Chain smoker. Which I didn't know any of this. So we get to the beach and we walk out there and we kind of were laying out and just chatting.

And he's like talking. He's just every other word is fuck this and fuck that. And there's kids all around us. And everyone's looking at us. And I'm like talking. He's just every other word is fuck this and fuck that. And there's kids all around us. And everyone's looking at us. And I'm so embarrassed. And then he lights up a cigarette and starts smoking on the beach. I'm like, is this legal? I don't know what's happening.

So I was like, okay. So I'm just dying, like laying there. And I'm like, this better be worth it. He better talk some mad shit about me to Mark. So we get home. And then I call him or something talk to mark later that night and i was like yeah so i took you know vinnie and i hang out at the beach and he's like why the fuck are you hanging out with that guy i was like i hate that son of

a bitch he's like i thought he was your friend i was like well he's like a friend of a friend he just showed up at my doorstep he happens to live with us because he's kind of like a bum yeah he has no other choice yeah so we call them vinnie goombats because he was just such like a guido italian fiery guy and he was um he was like i'm gonna do a bodybuilding show he's like you guys he's like you guys are gonna be surprised like i'm gonna get fucking shredded we're like we're like you're not gonna get like you don't look like anything you're like 25 body fat and sure enough i swear to god this guy got like five percent body fat it was insane he fucking looked awesome for his for his show but he was just he was just crazy and he was always smoking and swearing and he was real uh

fiery right so i'm up one night and i'm talking to him and uh at the time you know i'm dating a couple girls here and there what and i'm working at to me and i'm working you know I'm dating a couple girls here and there and I'm working at me and I'm working at a sharky a way to break the news and yeah just to throw it in there on the podcast years later and I don't know it maybe like something fell through or something I don't know something happened and I was just complaining and whatever and he's's like, you know, he's like, he's like, Andy seems really cool. He's like, you should, you should hang out with her more. And I was like, yeah, I should hang out with her more. Like she is fucking cool. She's really pretty. I like her a lot, you know? And he goes,

you know what? He stands up and like starts giving me a speech because that's what he would do. He need to be all fired up. He goes, I got a saying. He goes, and it goes like this. Either you're in or you're in the fucking way. And I was like, you're right. She's in. He's like, and he's in. I just popped his hat off.

Sorry, John Cena. We'll get to our John Cena story in a minute. But yeah, he was all fired up and excited. And he was like, either you're in or you're in the way. And I was like, you're right. She's in. It's easy to hang out with her. And then there you go.

So, thanks to me, here we are. He sealed the deal. Yeah, see? You did the work. It was worth it. Her putting her time in worked out. Very embarrassing beach trip really worked out for me. So how does Cena come into the mix?

Uh-oh. Well, he was also about Dirties yeah at the time so you had two so you had two guys to choose from to hit on and this is what you end up with like cena mark cena mark let's go with mark no he wasn't actually working at that moment it was it was a few years later. Thank goodness for Mark. Yeah. He would have been out. Yeah. No, that was a few years later. But yeah, he too donned the lei and Hawaiian shirt and the board shorts. And yeah, I was throwing people out of sharkies. So I think, let's see, where does the wrestling story fit into the picture? Well, after we were dating a while, because we were already living together when you started

with UPW. Right. And that's when that started. What's pro wrestling and um god what was that guy's name rick bastman no before that oh john holiday john holiday oh god that guy was amazing so he was the original guy who got you in in that and then you were working also at Mass Movement, which is a company that moves fitness equipment around. And that's where you met John. Well, each thing that I did, you know, nothing was ever like, you know, I'd go to her and say, hey, like I was thinking about doing this. And nothing was ever, she was not like, why are you doing that? You know, it was never like a thing,

you know, it was always like, oh, that's cool. Was it always supportive or was it kind of like you might have some hesitation, but you were just like. No, you know, it's funny. When we met, like, so he was the bouncer and then he kind of, you know, he would just kind of transition into a new project or something. Is that what jobs are called? Yeah, projects. I was in between jobs for 20 years.

Yeah, so it was like the bouncing and then he started doing uh he did some personal training hated that and was doing wrestling and then the mass movement job and um all the while i have my corporate you know nine to five jobs so i never bacon right so i sugar mama i was never too worried we moved in together pretty early and then um you know i don't. I never thought about it. I knew he was ambitious and not lazy. Like, it's not like he was home, you know, doing nothing. So I never worried too much about whether or not, because I was very confident in myself.

I knew that I was progressing in my job, in my career. And if I wanted to stay on that path in network radio, there was a lot of money to be made. What about your mom or your sister? Well, my sister, you you know she's very supportive but my mom i know my when after we were pretty seriously dating my mom kind of pulled me aside and was like hey you know you're a very ambitious young lady and and are you sure like you're with the right guy like i don't know how pulling this guy around i don't really know where you know where where is he going like I know he's doing this wrestling thing but is that really going to go anywhere and and I was like well you know I actually got pretty upset and I was like you know well it's as if you think he's not good enough for me or something I was like

you know mom I don't really care about all that like I I really love him and that's all like that's all I'm thinking about I'm not thinking about 10 years down the road like i'm just thinking about what we are having a good time and we yeah smoky loves a good a good love story i'm holding them back but uh but yeah so she um she was hesitant she loved him she adored him but she was just like you know i just she's a mom so she's like i just want you to make i just want to make sure that you're going to be taken care of and you're in there and i'm like i'm not worried about that like i can take care of myself i can take care of both of us like that's fine if that's my role that's i'm cool with that so trying to say

i was broke yeah yeah i think we've established that do you do you remind uh andy's mom every time you get together that hey it all worked i don't have to yeah i don't have to no yeah it speaks for itself yeah well she's i think she's yeah she's already like picking out her room at the beach house so i think that says it all well you're gonna charge her rent or something yeah yeah no she's already like that that's that was it she's done she's like all right it all worked out i got got the beach house but um but no she uh and it wasn't like a a thing like she brought it up once we had a talk you know and then it was over but um but yeah I think that my whole family loved my sister loved him because she just thought he's so funny they have the same kind of sense of humor kind of like you and me. So she really thought he was great.

And I mean, she's actually the real OG. I mean, she has been part of our... Well, us three have been hanging out for a long time. Yeah, we have. We have photos from, gosh, the early 90s. And April was always kind of around. So yeah, she's definitely been part of it. But yeah, so...

Well, then April gets linked into the story. Like, everything ends up this way. Everything in my life. was always kind of around so yeah she's definitely been part of it but yeah so well then april gets linked into the story like everything ends up this way everything in my life everything in our life ends up this way with you coming into our life you coming into the gym and then you working for us these kinds of things have been happening for the last 20 something years 20 years or so um so april me april and andy all hung out together often. And April was single for years and she was kind of frustrated about like, you know, not meeting the right guy and all this kind of stuff. She was a strong personality. Yeah. And anyway, I started, when we first moved to Davis, I worked at Soga's, again, as a bouncer. Project.

A project. Another project. Yeah. I worked as a bouncer at a bar called Soga's, which is now Devere's, which is the burger place I take you guys to. The pretzel. Yeah, there we go. And I walked into there one day and applied for a job because we just moved to the area and i was uh i'd for a project yeah that's right uh trying to make some money because we just moved

to a new area and and we had just had jake so we had bounced around a bit you kind of glossed over some of the jake's like 1.5 years old or whatever it was for about 10 years. Yeah, yeah. We'll get to some of that. About five years. We'll get to some of that. Anyway, I walk into this bar. I apply for a job. And the bartender says, OK, I'm going to go talk to the manager. So he goes and talks to the manager. And Andy, the person that he talked to, later told me that the guy was adamant about him meeting me. So he goes in and says, hey, this guy filled out the application. He wants to be a bouncer.

And he was like, yeah, yeah, whatever. Okay, just put it on my desk. He was like, no, no, no, this guy's like, he's pretty jacked. Like I haven't seen anybody in town that looks like this guy. So you should come meet him. So Andy comes and talks to me and we start discussing things and he's like confused. And he's almost like mad that he doesn't know who I am

because he and I are similar age he knows everybody in the area he's very talkative he's got a great personality so he knows almost everybody in the Sacramento Davis area he knows a lot of people and so he's trying to piece it together and he's like looking at the application and it says you know like New York and LA and he's like it's like you live here in davis though it's like why do you live in he's like why do you live in davis you're from new york and then this other thing says la and hermosa beach and this kind of stuff and i said well i i've moved here because my wife's from here and he's like like what's your wife's name i said uh aunt her maiden name is grieves

he's like what he's like andy grieves he's like oh what? He's like, Andy Greaves? He's like, oh, my God. He's like, the Greaves sisters are hot. He's like, I've always had a thing for April. He's just like blurting all this stuff out. Like, you know, first day I met him and I was like, oh, shit, okay, cool. And I thought he was cool. And I was like, this guy's pretty good. So I leave, don't think a ton about it.

But then I talked to her and then I was like, yeah, this guy was asking your sister well no he comes home and he goes I found your sister's husband he's like this guy's perfect he's like it's so it's so perfect and he knows her and everything and he knows you and I didn't know he was he ended up he was in Davis but he ended up going to private school for high school so I'd and he's a few years uh I think a year younger than me so I didn't know but yeah he knew right the from the first day he's like i found your sister's husband and long story short they're married and have three kids yeah that was that was pretty funny that a lot of things have happened like that uh with us it seems like things just kind of happen naturally you know in some weird roundabout way with almost everything, I guess.

Yeah. And then even with this, even with like meeting Sina and stuff like that. So I, you know, I got into wrestling. And then as soon as I got into wrestling, my brothers and I met John at Mass Movement. Mass Movement was a place that I worked at where we moved fitness equipment. It was a job that my brother and I, me and Chris picked up because we kind of started hating the grind of working these night jobs and balancing and stuff. And so we were looking for something else. And we're like, well, we're strong and we can,

you know, use our body and make some money moving around, hauling around some equipment. And so we started doing that. that the um our our boss was like really fucking cool we'd go in for like four hours but he'd give us like a full day's worth of work because we'd go in and work our asses off on on loading up a gold gym or a powerhouse or whatever it was for the day and uh the uh warehouse manager there she kept talking about her friend john she's like john John, I can't, I can't wait for John to meet you guys. He's, he's really into like lifting, loves bodybuilding and powerlifting and all this stuff. And she showed us a picture of him and we're like, we're like,

what the hell? She's like, yeah, that's him at like 17. He's just like doing like a double bicep on the beach and he's jacked as fuck. And I'm like, who the hell is this guy? He's like, that's my buddy. I keep telling you about him. He's coming coming out here and he he wants to work here for a while like during the summer because he wants to come out and he wants to bodybuild and he wants to uh wants to do all this stuff and he wants to make money while he's here so that's how we ended up meeting uh meeting Mr. John Cena and my brother and I pulled him into wrestling Mad Dog ended up training him and coaching him um and my brother and I ended up encouraging him to get into wrestling. He wanted to bodybuild a lot. He was like, I'm going to bodybuild. And we're like, there's no fucking

money in bodybuilding. He got offered a contract with Battle Dome, I think it was at the time, for like six figures. And my oldest brother, Mike, was like, fucking Battle Dome. He's like, that'll be, that'll come and go he's like but pro wrestling will be forever it's it's been around for a long time and he's like i think you should you know get into wrestling so we we pulled him in on some of that and then her and her sister ended up going to a lot of the shows that i did and uh me and john would wrestle each other and stuff like that and so he became he became a friend, and still is a longtime friend. Yeah, so the Bell Clan kind of pushed John in the direction he kind of is. Yeah, absolutely.

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, he did all the work. He's the one that you got to credit for going on the everyday grind and fucking pushing the envelope. But he had a lot of support. Becoming who he is and everything. But, yeah, we literally forced him into it. Like, no, you literally forced them into it.

Like, no, you're a fucking pro wrestler. That's what your calling is. Yeah. He escalated very quickly once he got into the W. He was on fire. He was on track and then got to all those training schools and stuff. And yeah, he was pretty. But some of those things were good lessons for me, too. I think meeting somebody like that, meeting somebody that immediately has the it factor right away, I was like, oh, shit.

I might have to figure out how to grow into that one day, but that's not me for now. I can't do whatever he's doing. But I think it's a good message for people in general. I think a lot of people, they want to skip a lot of the steps to be great. in general, I think a lot of people, they want to skip a lot of the steps to be great. And what I always share with people is to be good for a long time is really the process that you need to go through. Well, and I think for you too, with the wrestling thing, you gave it a good go, but everyone always like, oh, don't give up on your dreams and all this, but you also have to be realistic.

And I think when... You sometimes do have to give up on your dreams. Well, and for him, for Mark, I don't think that being a wrestling star was ever his ultimate dream. That was Mad Dog's dream. But he was excited about it and wanted to give it a go. But we had a big talk after our son was born. And we were like, okay, is it ever going to really happen for you? Because you've been working your butt off.

You've been going. We were living in Ohio at the time, and he's driving to Louisville every weekend and doing all this stuff and away from me and our son. And I'm like, okay, so this is what it's like if you don't make it and you're not being paid. If you do make it, you're going to be on even more. Is that the life we want? It's so hard. I mean, I give so much credit to professional wrestlers and all

those people that work for WWE and the diva girls, everything. It is not easy. And they are gone all the time. I mean, John is never home, you know, so that's tough. And we, we kind of had this like, you know, heart to heart moment of like, is this really what we want our future to be? Because I definitely didn't want that. And, but I would have done it if that was his real passion but he kind of realized like yeah you're right you know what I kind of this isn't really what I think my future is so I think that happens to people when they they want to try to deny it and maybe uh they won't accept it and uh maybe they hang on for a little too long but for me I kind of wanted to do it for five years. I put five years, we put five years in together. And, um, I was like, ah, it just doesn't seem like it's really working out well. And then when I, you know, told, uh, some of the people that I was working for in

the wrestling business, I said, I'm going to move on. They were like, oh man, you know, we think you're good for that. I was like, you know what? Even if I, I got closer to my dream and now I realized that that's not really truly what I want. It's not truly what I was passionate, you know what, even if I got closer to my dream and now I realize that that's not really truly what I want. It's not truly what I was passionate about. I guess I didn't maybe even realize or fully understand all the things that were involved. And I can't imagine being away for 300, I can't imagine being on the road 300 days out of the year. So I was like, I don't really know why that was a thing in the first place, it was and now it's not and i need to like try to move on and figure out something else did that change of goals is that what brought you guys up to davis right well it was both it was

um him deciding that he didn't want to continue with it because the school was in in louisville we even moved to louisville for about four months so it was a combination of being in Louisville and no offense to Louisville, but holy crap, did that suck. So we lived there for a few months and I was dying. And then we had a six-month-old baby. She's not used to the storms they get on the East Coast. Well, I'm a California girl.

She was hiding under our table. It was awful. And the bugs are like ridiculous storms are fucking real it rains all the time there well we were there in the spring and it was just i i didn't i don't know what's happening but we got out of there and moved back to davis and i was like oh my whole family's here so it was having a baby really makes you realize you can't do that really on your own you need people around you so we didn't know anyone anyone in Louisville. His parents weren't close. My parents weren't close. So moving there really helped.

Moving back to Davis really helped just mentally for me with a baby. And that's really what started kind of the new shift in like the new chapter in our life. I was working from home at the time for a magazine that I worked with, that I worked for called Fitness Management Magazine. So I left the radio industry and went into print. And I was lucky enough to be able to do my job on the road. So I didn't have to, I just worked from home. And I had been working from home for the whole time we were in Ohio, the whole time we were in Louisville. while I was in Davis up until our daughter was born. So 2008 around then was when the economy crashed. And that's when my magazine, yeah,

my magazine went out of business. I got fired. Everyone got fired. And again, he was still in his project phase. So once I got, my job was done. We were like, holy crap, what are we going to do? We cashed in my retirement. I applied for unemployment. We lived that way for about six months when we finally was like, okay, no one was hiring advertising people, which is what my job was. So we decided, okay, you know what? We got to figure our shit out on our own. So that's when we started just kind of, well, what do we, what could we do? What are we good at? And I said, well, I know magazines, you know, powerlifting, there's only one magazine that

does powerlifting, powerlifting USA. They've been around forever. So, you know, there's probably room for another one. So made some phone calls. I was just thumbing through power magazine or power, powerlifting USA at the time. And she saw me do this every month that it came out, and I would complain about it every month, even though I was thankful that there was a magazine, and thank God for that magazine, because it did inspire me,

and it was something that motivated me and my brothers to get into Power through the first place, but I was always like, why are they focusing on this 50-year-old guy who benched 315? I'm like, why are they focusing on like this, you know, 50 year old guy who like benched 315? I'm like, who cares about that? Why aren't they focused on like the best of the best? Why aren't, why isn't the power thing magazine kind of parallel to the bodybuilding magazines? They only cover the best.

You only see the best bodybuilders, the professional bodybuilders. I was like, there's so many more lifters that are great and they're not getting the recognition that they need. And I'm sitting over there bitching about it. She's like, well, let's just make our own. I'm like, do we know how to do that? She's like, I sort of know how to do that. She's like, I do sales for the magazine.

She's like, my friend knows how to do all the other stuff. And she's like, we can figure it out, I think. Yeah, so we did. My magazine was a business to business magazine. So it was on the newsstand. So this would be a whole different, a consumer magazine is different. So I called all my mentors that I had worked for over the years and just got names of people that did certain things. I got a graphic designer. I found a printer. I found a shipping company. I found

all that stuff, found a newsstand distributor, just did all that research and figured everything out and then called some advertisers that I thought would be good like Inzer. I can't even remember some of the real first ones. Inzer's been there since the beginning. Forza. Nebula. These people have gone out of business. So I called a few. I got maybe four or five people to be like, yeah, we would support that. And I was like, alright, let's do it. So in 2008, or actually it was, I think it was 2009, late 2009, we launched our first

issue with Ed Cohn on the cover. And ever since that first issue the magazine has never lost money it's never made a ton of money but it's never lost money which is kind of amazing because a lot of magazines you know the print industry is i did start out and down we did start out i i was already working for elitefts.com i was already working under dave tate and i already had the background of going to west side barbell while While I was in Kentucky, before we moved to Louisville, we lived in Columbus, Ohio. I trained at Westside Barbell for a year, which was extremely important to the whole piece of the puzzle of how everything kind of fits together. And then when we lived,

we bounced around to Louisville and back here. But I did have that time with Dave Tate. And I did have that time in front of the early powerlifting community on the internet, basically. And so when we launched the magazine, we had some pre-sales to it. And when she started gathering some advertising, there was already at least a little bit. It wasn't like a total cold call, like, hey, I'm with Mark Bell. And it was like, oh, so I have an idea like, Oh yeah. So yeah, they kind of knew. And also he had established connections. So the, the basis behind power magazine is a, is a magazine for lifters by lifters. So all of the articles in those early issues, and even to this day, they're written by power lifters. They're not hired journalists or anything. They're people that actually, you know, the Matt Wennings and people that have done the lifting and have actually really

articulate ways of talking about their stuff. So that was always the goal of the magazine was to just go to the best people in the world and either interview them or have them write for us. And that's how it's always been since the beginning. And that's how it still is. So it's definitely a labor of love. I think the magazine has a great little following. It's not a huge magazine. It's a niche magazine.

But, you know, it's still trucking along. It's six times a year. And, you know, I mean, a lot of people really love it. We have a huge prison following. So they do. Yeah, we do have pretty good prisoners that love our magazine. I mean, a lot of people really love it. We have a huge prison following. Yeah, we do have a pretty good number of prisoners that love our magazine. So, you know, what are you going to do? When we first moved to the area, we lived in Davis, and we were renting a house.

And then when we moved from Davis to Woodland, we didn't have enough money to buy a house on our own, so we moved in with her brother, and they actually bought the house together because I'm too much of a bum to have my name on it. Well, his credit was very bad. He had some student loans that he had been escaping from, so he couldn't be on that. So my brother and I were on the mortgage together. Are those paid now? Yes, they are. Well, when we got got married it was so funny we got married um i took my credit very seriously so i had very good credit and then once we got married i was ignoring it eventually disappeared so i started getting these phone calls i just closed my eyes

hard enough it'll just not be there that's literally what happened i got i started answering this phone and i'm like i go do you have loans? I didn't even know that you went to college. I was like, how far into the relationship is this? I was like, I tried. It didn't work out very well. I go, why is someone calling about student loans? You go, oh, yeah. I just don't answer my phone ever.

And I'm like, well, you can't do that. You have to pay these off. And so I worked with your mother, and we got them. We didn't have any money, so his mom didn't know either. So she helped me, and we got it all paid off. So that's all taken care of. But he has very good credit now, thanks to me. I think it's a good point, though, is like I'm really not that way.

I wish I could still be that way. It's too hard. But when we first met, I literally cared about nothing. Right? I mean, I was pretty like, I mean, I cared about you and literally cared about nothing. Right? I mean, I was pretty like, I mean, I cared about you and I cared about our relationship and stuff. But like I. You just didn't worry about anything. I didn't. Yeah, I didn't worry.

I didn't worry about much. He's like, oh, it'll work out. And her attitude. She was still very much like that. Yeah, I wish I could be more. I wish I could go back, though, because I was more that way. Oh, God. It was so good.

It was such a good place to be. No, that's such a, for an outsider.'s comfortable it was so comfortable but so for her though she was the absolute uh opposite of that and i think over a period of time we kind of leveled each other out a little bit so we i rubbed off on him he rubbed off on me so i don't stress as much when she when you quit your job when you were with i got fired i know but i mean i gotta let go but you quit one of your jobs you quit your job with uh westwood one oh to go to fitness management yeah so she quit her job with uh with westwood one the job was just getting a little too corporate and she was just getting really stressed out my boss left paul and he was like my mentor and I was like,

I don't want to be here without him. Things were just turned upside down. Yeah. But she came home one day and she was extremely frustrated. I was like, just go on,

just quit. She's like, you can't just, she's like, how do I? Then I won't get a paycheck. I was like, no,

but you're really smart. You'll figure out other ways to make money. She was like, what the fuck are you talking about? I was like, how are you totally capable

of making money anywhere else? You made money at this place. Why can't you make money somewhere else? She's like, you can't go in and just quit anywhere else? You made money at this place. Why can't you make money somewhere else? So you can't go in and just quit. And then you eventually did. I did. Well, and that was a, I forgot about that little, that was like a six month period.

Just say fuck it. Yeah. That was like a six month period of trying to find a job while living in Los Angeles. And I probably went to four different pyramid scheme meetings without knowing that they were pyramid scheme. And I came home and I'm like, God damn it, I have one more fucking pyramid scheme meeting that's pretending that they want marketers. So that sucked.

But then that's when I found fitness management. I forgot about that. Yeah, and then I started working for fitness management, which that was a great company. I worked for them for many years until they went out of business. But yeah, looking back, it was when I lost my job at fitness management,

we had just bought that house in Woodland that he was talking about. We had just had our second child and it was like a real dark period. I was like, oh my God, what are we going to do? Like, you don't have a job that... Well, Super Training Gym opened. Well, that was not like a functioning gym really.

It wasn't a profitable place, but it was just another add-on of something going like at the time really it wasn't a it wasn't a profitable place but it was just another add-on of something it was another time yeah but um that's yeah so that we started like okay now we have to really start and get members for that and let's figure this out and but that was when we we so we launched power magazine and that's when um during that whole time 2008 2009 i think ryan spencer was the only he's the only paying member the only member no one else would ever pay on time they had to chase everybody else around right so um but that's when the slingshot idea started coming around um it had been in his mind for for many years but that's when it really started to fast track into something and

um that's when that all came about so track into something. And, um, that's when that all came about. So power magazine happened. And then just a few months into that was when we, you know, finally started getting the prototypes. So what's the slingshot for people that don't know what exactly is the slingshot and why, why does it exist, I guess, and how. So this, the slingshot was, was, uh, born off of me tearing my pec several times in training. shot was, was, uh, born off of me tearing my pec several times in training. And, uh, I wanted to provide something that allowed people to continue to train. As I been through many gyms over the years, I ran into a lot of people who were like, Oh man, I used to do that, but I tore my rotator cuff. Or I used to do that. I hurt my shoulder. I hurt my elbow. I hurt this or that. And I was

always like, man, I wonder, like, it's confusing to me why they say they used to be able to like lift. They used to be able to bench these weights and now they can't even bench at all. I'm like, that's, that kind of sucks. But at the time I was a geared power lifter and I was thinking, well, for me, I always just go to the gym and I warm up and I slide my bench shirt on and then I can lift. Yeah. And for people that don't know a gear a shirt is just this huge like relatively big what it's very unflattering I don't know you basically slide your arms so you take like five people to get through yeah yeah he would come home after bench shirt days and he would just be completely red and bruised red here red all over it's a lot of work. A bench shirt is a lot of compression and it's very very tight and it keeps your arms very straight ahead, very out in

front of you and almost together. And because of that, because of the stiffness of the product, when you go to bring your elbows back, it's very limiting on how you can bring your elbows back. You need a lot of weight in order to get the bar all the way down to go full range of motion. So because of, yeah, because of that, it gives you a lot of support and it helps you push the weight back up in some sense. But the shirts were always really stiff. They hurt really bad. As she said, I was marked up all the time. This is kind of gross, but at one point the shirt, the shirt was like so tight and, uh, on me so hard that it would make me bleed. Like I had like the, like the thread of the shirt was like in my

fucking skin. That's how nasty this thing, how tight this thing was, but it would, it would rip your skin apart. And I got thinking to myself, I was in the gym by myself. I was in super training, uh, the original super training that we had in Natomas. And I was just sitting at the end of a bench. And I used to name my bench shirts back then. Longer story for another day. But I was very obsessed with powerlifting for a long time. And I was wearing Scoopy. That was my bench shirt at the time. And it was a very large bench shirt. It was an open back bench shirt. They make bench shirts that kind of looked like a regular shirt that are

really really tight and they make shirts that don't have a back to them that look like a straight jacket that you just slide your arms into. And so this one was an open back shirt and I just slid my arms into it. It was really big. For some reason the company I was with at the time, they sent me this giant shirt. I think they made a mistake and they sent me a shirt that was made for somebody else, but it was made for someone like a Brian Shaw's size. So this was the only shirt that I had in my arsenal that allowed me to actually lift full range of motion with lighter weights. But when I lifted with those lighter weights, it didn't hurt. Even when my elbow

would hurt or my shoulder would hurt or my pec was strained. I was training for a competition at one point and I trained in this bench shirt quite a bit preparing for the contest. I was able to heal my pec up. I was able to get into the contest and I was able to perform really well. So I was like, I got in the gym at one day after the meet and I'm just sitting on the other bench and I'm just wearing this bench shirt. And I'm like, how do I, how do I figure out something that feels like, how do I give the general population this sensation? I was like, this feels really fucking good. Like my shoulder hurts, my pec hurts, but I put this on and even with 405 pounds on the bar, I have zero pain. The only pain I have is from the product kind of stretching across my chest and it's causing

some compression, right? But otherwise it feels fucking awesome. And so I just sat there that day and I was like, I need to figure, there's something here. I was like, I know I have a great idea. I'm like, I'm going to, I'm going to talk to. I'm like, I'm going to talk to some of the companies. I'm going to talk to some of the people I know, and we're going to blow this thing out. And so I call Elite FTS. I call Titan. And I'm calling and emailing and sending suggestions, and I'm not hearing anything back. I finally do get through to some people.

And I'm not getting anywhere. You know, I'm getting a lot of resistance. They're like, I don't understand. There's bench shirts. You just throw on a bench shirt. I'm like, no, no, no, this wouldn't be a bench shirt. This would be something that's stretchy that you put on your arms. I don't know exactly what it looks like.

I thought there was a market for it. I'm like, I don't know. I don't know exactly what it looks like. No one thought there was a market for it. I'm like, I don't know. I don't know exactly what it looks like or how it would work, but I have an idea that it would just be something you just slide up over your arms and then you like lay down and you go to bench and it helps you. But I didn't have a fully realized concept either. So I understand where they're coming from because I have people that come to me that will say stuff. And if I can't like see it or really feel what they're saying, then I'm out. I don't understand what they're talking about. Right. So I was really trying

to make them understand. They just, they weren't getting it. And I went to enough people that I got the idea that the idea was bad over and over again to where I just stopped and I put my hands up and I was like, well, that sucks. I thought that would be a cool concept, but maybe not. And so the idea stopped. The idea slowed down. And then there was the death of my brother and just kind of the realization like, hey, man, you know, my brother always wanted to do something great. He couldn't figure it out.

He couldn't get out of his own way. And she was there for a lot of that. She got to witness a lot of that. It was a really crazy thing to watch happen in front of you. He was very passionate about the things that he did, but he just was not able to function well enough to make anything happen that he wanted to have happen. I really took that to heart when he passed. I was like, you know what? I got to figure something out for myself that makes sense. I got to figure out something. I am a fully capable person. I don't have problems

with drugs. I'm not bipolar. And yeah, maybe I have some problems learning some different things, or at least I didn't when I was in school. But that's just some bullshit excuse that was only going to hold me back. I can learn stuff. I can be smart. I can figure things out. Let me figure out exactly what it is I'm talking about. So I went to her and I was like, I have this idea. Everybody else thinks it fucking sucks.

I was like, I need your help. I even went to Ed Koo, who was training in our gym at the time. Ed Koo is now 51% owner of Iron Rebel, and he'll share this story with you guys as well. He even told me it was a bad idea, and now he's in the same business as we are with his company. So I went to her, and I started to discuss the idea a little bit, and I was like, you know, here's the concept. Here's the idea. I was like, I need to make it happen, and I started to discuss the idea a little bit. And I was like, you know, here's the concept. Here's the idea. I was like, I need to make it happen, but I don't know what to do.

I don't know how to make it happen. And it was something I was thinking about every day. I was obsessed with it. And I asked my parents to help. I asked my brother to help. I was asking anybody that was in my circle to help, and no one seemed to have any sort of answer. So I started communicating with her about it. And she's like well I don't really know like what exactly what you're talking about but she's like my friend you know she sews together like swimsuits and stuff for us for the

swim team and I was like oh I was like well maybe she can help maybe I can like give her some she's like yeah she's like I think so probably she makes really nice suits for us and I think she would do a good job so she started to set that up I'll let you tell a little bit of that oh yeah well shout out to marilyn mccart um so yeah i was swimming uh with woodland masters and marilyn swims with us and she does make swimsuits and she's just really just an amazing woman and very talented just you know bakes cookies and just just. So I said, well, because that was a thing. He said, I said, well, you need a prototype. You know, we don't know what you're talking about.

And he's like, well, I don't sew. I said, well, I don't sew. So I said, well, Marilyn sews. So I said, you know, she's so nice. She's a stay-at-home mom. You know, she's real sweet. She's got time. Let me see if she can meet you and you can tell her your idea.

Maybe she could at least get something together so you could have a product that you can then figure out. So, yeah, I talked to Marilyn, and she's like, no problem. She met him at, like, a local Starbucks down the street. And they sat there for a couple hours. What's that? Where is that? It's in Woodland? Well, it used to be World Fitness 19.

What's that road? Gibson? Pioneer. It's Pioneer and Main, I it used to be World Fitness 19. What's that road? Gibson? Pioneer. It's Pioneer and Main, I think. There we go. Yeah. But there was a Starbucks in the corner there. So they met there for a few hours and just talked through everything.

And what was critical about having Marilyn on board was that she knows materials. materials. So she's, so they were able to brainstorm what type of material you would need and how to sew it so that it wouldn't like break or it could, it could withstand the pressure that would take when you're benching. So yeah, I'll back this up just a tiny bit because we, in the gym, we did so much experimenting with the bench shirts. The bench shirts ended up becoming a key element to the meets and it's actually how I won a lot of meets. I get my ass kicked in the squat. I just totally fuck shit up on the bench and kill everybody. And then I had enough in the tank to hit a decent deadlift to win some contests.

And so tweaking the bench shirts here in the gym was done by Juan Laja. He's a longtime member of Super Training Gym. One of the nicest people you ever met. One of the biggest dirtbags you'll ever, you know, Juan was nice enough to help us a lot with a lot of that. And he, he's the one who figured out like the upholstery thread,

uh, that was important later on. When I went to Maryland, she was making swimsuits. And so it didn't matter. Like they didn't have to be crazy strong. I was like, here's the,

here's the thread that we need for this because we're already doing this in the gym and so she took a little bit of that knowledge but she also she also helped in the in the design of the product because when i showed her original the original idea and i don't know why this was there but in midtown strength conditioning at the end of the turf uh there was a an infinity sign that just sat there all the time. It was like somebody made it out of metal. It was just sitting there. And I always looked at it. I was like, I think that's like what I'm thinking about. I think that's what it should look like. It should look like that thing. It should just be like two circles and you just dump your arms into it and

it should work like that. And I went to her with that idea and she was like, oh, you know, she's like, I don't have a machine that can really sew like that. So she's like, that would, and she's like, and it would just really ball up the material. And, you know, I don't think it would look great. She's like, what about, you know, what about this? And I was like, well, the other idea I had was just to like, I don't know, sew two knee wraps together, you know, something like that. And she was like, oh, okay. And then she was kind of like, oh, like this.

And she, I was like, yeah, then she was kind of like oh like this and she uh i was like yeah i think so i think that's right and then when she brought it back i was like ah i was like that's it so we we kind of came up with some of that together as we were working through it yeah no that's that was my point was i think that your descriptions and then her knowledge of how material works was the was the key um so yeah so she so they got the prototype together and you know fast forward to once you had the prototype that's just the beginning because then you have to find the manufacturer and that was the time between prototype and actually getting your first batch of slingshots i would say a year about between the time we had a prototype and

between the time we had the first batch of slingshots, it was probably about five or six months. But until we got a working prototype, it was more like a year because we had a bad batch. We had a manufacturer that didn't work out. We found a different manufacturer. But it took a long time. I mean, it's funny when people talk about inventing products or coming up with ideas. Coming up with the idea is like 10% of the whole thing.

Like that is the kind of the easy part. Colored chalk. Taking that idea. Colored chalk. And then getting a prototype and then testing it and then finding a manufacturer and then getting it for sale. You know, like there's so many steps from that to that. So I think that I always get very defensive and frustrated when people try to belittle what we've done. Because I think, you know, him coming up with the concept of the idea, people are like, oh, I had that idea, you know, back in the 70s.

Yeah, I had the idea. I smoked, right. I was like 10. Right, exactly. So I get frustrated when people say that stuff because it's like, yeah, okay, great. Well, where's your fucking slingshot? Where's your website? Where's your, you know.

How about you go fuck yourself? Right. How about that? You know, I'm sure that people have had ideas about something that's similar to this or put stuff out there, but they didn't take it to the next level, which that's the difference. You know, you have to put yourself out there. You have to risk. There has to be action.

Yeah, and it takes a lot. You have to have money. You have to do this. We got a patent on it. That took a lot of time. That took a lot of effort. That took a lot of research, you know. time that took a lot of effort that took a lot of research you know um so there's there's so many different steps between the beginning of the of the prototype to where we're to where we actually

got it to be sold and then from that point to where we're at now you know i mean it's just it's crazy so i think that uh i don't like to discount you know a key a key factor in there is like the people that are listening this podcast podcast right now, something that can really help them is to just think about the resources that you have available to you. Like maybe you don't know. Maybe you don't know John Cena, right? Like maybe you're maybe you're listening to some of this and you don't know some of the people that we know. Maybe you don't have a friend that can sew shit up or whatever. But you do have resources if you sit down and actually think about it and you sit down like they used to

say there's like what seven degrees of separation right like some shit like that right six six degrees of separation well now there's like kevin bacon's involved somehow well now there's like one because there's the internet so you have access to a lot of things and uh maybe if you dm me or send me a message maybe i'm not going to answer it. But continue to ask other people questions and continue to figure out how you're going to get whatever the concept or idea is. How are you going to roll this out? How are you going to turn it into something? What's the difference between you and me? and someone like Jason Kalipa who has this idea of getting these coaches and having corporate fitness and stuff. Why can't you, the person that's listening to this now, why can't you figure out a way to get some of that done? I think that you can. I think that you can figure out a way to get something done.

You've got to sit down and really think about it. Right, and I think you kind of nailed it right there. I think for us, all the connections we've made over the years have been just networking. You know, I know that that's a term that's used a lot in the corporate world and in anything. But, you know, people will, when Mark was working with Reebok, people would call and be like, hey, how'd you get that Reebok sponsorship? You know, who are you working with over there? And I'm like, fuck, no, you're not going to tell anyone who you're working with over there.

Like, you work so hard to figure out who to talk to over there to get to that point. Same with Rogue or BodyMillion.com. It's like, we're not just going to fucking tell you who we work with over there. Like you got to figure that shit out. We figured that out. And that's part of it. That's part of earning. Like he said, you have to earn your way to get to this certain level. And people now in this new age of instant gratification, they just want to, you know, hey, I'm a power lifter. I'm pretty strong. I want a sponsorship. How about you get me a sponsor? I want to be a rogue athlete. I could be a rogue athlete. It's like, no, you can't. You have, there's so many steps you have to do before you get to that level. People think like, oh, he just, you know, overnight success. He's just all of a sudden popped up, you know, whatever. like, oh, he just, you know, overnight success. He's just all of a sudden popped up, you know, whatever. But he's been doing this for so long, you know, and I think that's the message that I think people need to realize is it takes time and you have to kind of earn your spot when you progress that way. You can't just, you know, even John, you know, he had to put in a lot of time.

He had sucked it up and went to Louisville and trained at that shitty school for a long time. And he made his mark. But he had to do all the grunt work to take everybody out. That guy is smiling all day long on TV, but he's a fucking savage. He's an absolute beast. When I first met him, when I started to kind of see what he was eating and stuff, getting ready for this bodybuilding show, I'm like, this guy can do whatever the fuck he wants. He's only having one scoop of protein powder

like three times a day, and he's eating chicken breast with nothing on it. And I was like, this guy's a fucking machine. That's why we call him a prototype. I mean, that was his gimmick in wrestling. He was a fucking robot. Because we were like, this guy's just going to do whatever is necessary.

That isn't what people... They see what they want to see. I think people think like, oh this guy's just going to do whatever is necessary. And I think that that isn't what people, they see what they want to see. I think people think like, oh, John's just, you know, he's John Cena. He just showed up at WWE one day

and they're like, here's a contract. You know, it doesn't, that's not how it is. And that's not how it is. He's just born, like he's just built that way.

Yeah, and that's not how it is. Connecting that to Slingshot, eight years later, 21,000 square foot facility, 11 full-time employees, free 8,000 square foot gym. I mean, that took time.

That took eight years. Free outdoor. Is it free at this location? The last location was free. Not through the winter. No, not through the winter. So where did it start? It started at your house. It started, did you guys rent a place?

How did it start? From eight years ago until now, what were the steps or what were the locations? Well the company started um in our garage first location was the Woodland House that was when Slingshot started super training um started I think it was Steve Zaretsky you guys were training together at his garage yeah and it was just you and him I think Cartwright and then you branched out and started that was the norwood place first or woodland because you i think they were uh body construction zone so there was a gym in woodland so the gyms in the company were never they were two different locations they were they were never together yeah so body construction zone was a gym

in woodland and mark had a had a gym within that gym that was super training, and he had a few people come in. And then from there, things turned sour there. He took off and started his own spot, like 800-square-foot spot in Natomas, and then he was there for about a year, and then he went to a gym within a gym again at Midtown. So part of what happened, I think, when Andy and I moved to this area, Jake was like one, right? Yeah, he was about one.

Yeah. And I'm just thinking back, and it's given me some good feels because Miles started walking. It's made me think of Jake used to do this crazy perimeter walk. Right, around the duplex. Yeah, he would hold on to the wall, and then he'd get brave enough to every once in a while do a little walk. But anyway, yeah, he was really young when we moved to the area. And I was just like every day that I would drive, like I would take him out all the time because she was the breadwinner. She was the one making money.

So I was out being, you know, just dad of the year you know like just cruising around with him and doing whatever um i would take him to davis a lot and just uh go for go for walks with him and stuff like that and do all kinds of stuff with him but while i was doing that i would like drive by these like warehouses and stuff and i was like i one day i'm gonna have a fucking gym around here i don't know how because i don't make any money i don't have a fucking gym around here. I don't know how, because I don't make any money. I don't have a fucking job. I'm like, but I'm going to figure this out. And I would look at, I would drive by storage areas. I would look at all kinds of different stuff. And I've talked to my dad about it all the time. I think my dad probably thought it was crazy because my dad's probably like, like the hell are you thinking? You don't have money to do any of that. It doesn't

make any sense. But I always felt that there's something cool about powerlifting. And I always felt that the knowledge that I had, I felt that it would eventually pay off in some way. And I felt that I could also make people feel that this sport is fucking cool. If I just show them, if I just put it on display and I just show people, everything else will fall in line. Everything else will work. So I used to drive around all the time with Jake and I would look at all these different spots and I was like, I'm going to figure out one day how to have a gym. And then an opportunity came up where I met, his name is Wes or Les Morris. And when I met Les, we started talking about, he had a gym and I said, you know, it'd be really cool

if you had power lifting in there. And then fast forward a little bit. And he and I started to discuss equipment. I worked for Elite already at the time. We ordered a bunch of Elite equipment. He was like, is that all you need? You only need like $3,000 worth of stuff. And I was like, only need like $3,000 at that time. It's like a a fucking fortune to me so I'm like I I don't know I was like you want to get more stuff he's like yeah get whatever you want and so we ordered like twenty thousand dollars worth of shit and uh loaded up the back of that gym with a lot of powerlifting equipment and um from that point on I was working with uh the college or the high school kids as people have seen in bigger stronger faster and at that point I was like I would love to start a powerlifting team no now I have this

facility that has powerlifting and equipment in it all I need to do is just start telling people what I'm doing and people start coming in so we the interesting thing is the entire time that the gym has been going it has had like a similar amount of members i don't know why that is i mean the beginning it was a little bit less but for some reason it's been a similar amount uh whether we charged or didn't charge or whether we had a tiny space or a giant space it's been uh a little bit similar along the way and um that that first location was really a big part of it and that's when we had Juan, Jim McD, Bill who's still still around and it was the other few other people but they're they're not not training with us anymore but that was that was where we got to

start and that's where that's where things got going from there. So you're sitting about 250 right now? About 250, yep. You guys have been together for about how long? Well, what year is it? 2018, so almost 20 years now, yeah. So you've seen Mark in a variety of shapes and sizes.

Right, yeah. I've heard you say you don't notice it, but I have a real hard time to believe that you've known him as, what, 190-ish? Well, no, I don't notice it, but I have a real hard time to believe that you've known him as like what, you probably met him when he was what, 190-ish? Well, no, I don't think he was ever that small. I think when we met, he was doing, he was obviously smaller, but I think you were doing a powerlifting meet where you were trying to,

what weight class, 220? I don't think you ever tried to do 198, but I think it was around 200-something. And you've gone up to 330? Was it that much? Well, when I look back, I just want the truth. Andy, I just want the truth. You don't notice the extra pressure? Yeah.

I was going to say. So it doesn't register. It's like when you look back at old photos and you're like, man, I was so hot when I was 18. But you don't think you're hot when you're 18. It's like you look back and I'm like, yeah he was so fat back then but i don't remember thinking that 130 pounds that's rude this conversation's going on but when it's happening i don't think i don't look and be like wow what a fatty i just you know i just i just go on with it and yeah every now and then if he like lays on top of me and he's trying to squish me, I'm

like, oh my God, I really can't breathe. But in other days, it's not as bad. Yeah. Other days, that's your barometer. You fluctuate daily. Well, it's funny because all the comments on Instagram, whenever I lose weight or something, people are like, oh, I bet the old lady likes that. I'm like, I don't even know.

I don't know. I don't know if she notices. You hurt her less, apparently. She likes it either way. I can just breathe a little more sometimes. Hey, I'm trying to hurt her. What do you call it? Pound town? Oh! I call it nothing. Oh, things just went south?

But anyway, yeah. I don't have much time left because i always pick up my daughter so you gotta pick up miss quinn yeah but uh yeah i mean i think looking back um on where we started from and where we're at now it's i think because everything happened not like super quickly, everything kind of has slowly progressed at a rate where we're able to handle each step. That makes it it it makes it so it's not like you wake up one day and you're like, holy crap, like this is also crazy. It's more like, you know, we've worked really hard to get where we're at. So every day that we get bigger and more things happen, it's more just a testament to how hard we've been working together as a team. We're so proud of our staff that we have now, you guys, everybody where we're at now.

But all of that, we don't take it for granted, but we also know that we've worked really hard to get to this point. So I think that that's kind of a good message, I think, for anybody that wants to start their own business or wants to try and strike it on their own or do something different or not work for somebody else. I mean, we haven't worked for someone else since 2008, and that's been awesome. But it's also a lot of pressure because you have no one to blame but yourself if you're not successful. You're not allowed to sleep. Right. Yeah. We should sleep though. That's very important. But I think that every decision we've made and everything we've

done, we've always talked about it. We've always taken it slow. Early on in the business, we decided not to take on any outside investors because we never wanted to have to answer to anyone else. We always wanted every decision to be just him and I. And I think that's probably the best decision we ever made because I don't know that people, if there was a third party or someone else involved, they would have such trust in him as I do. Because a lot of his ideas, you're like, what? How's that? How's that going to work? A free gym? But they've worked out. But that's why I think it works is because we both have our own set of expertise that we bring to the table. He has a vision.

He has the creativity. I have the business sense. I have the get down to it and let's just get it done. But I stay in my lane of what I do, and he stays in his. And we communicate about every single decision. But I've had to trust that where he's going, I support that fully. And every now and then I'll step in and say, hey, wait a minute.

Maybe we should talk about this or think about this. But for the most part, I try to give him a lot of freedom to do what he wants to do and make the decisions he wants to make. And I try not to step in too much. It wasn't always this way. You know, when I had an idea, it wasn't like she grabbed a pen and paper and was like. I think at first it was more like, what's this weird idea he's got? But it's taken a little while. I mean, did you think like when I first started down the path, I mean, what...

With what? With Slingshot or with other stuff? Yeah, with Slingshot. Yeah, well, with... Do you think we were buying, like, a beach house and buying a house for my parents and... No, no, I see... A car for my brother and a car for my dad and... No.

All that kind of stuff? No, when the idea, you know, when the idea for Slingshot came out, I thought this will be cool to see if anyone actually buys it. Because we didn't even know if anyone would buy it. Well, that wasn't my thought process. But I was still thinking, I still have to get a real job. And I still have to figure something else out. This will be a great little project. to figure something else out. Like we, this will be great little project, but I'm not sure if this is going to be something that this is the end all of our, you know, of our, of our careers.

I think that, you know, I, in the back of my head, I still was, you know, going on job hunts and looking around for stuff. Cause you know, I, I still put that pressure on myself to make sure that we had a future and all this stuff. So once the slingshot started really doing, I'm like, oh, we got five people bought it today. And that was then 10 people. And then we introduced the reactive slingshot. And then it just started getting bigger and bigger. And this was all in the beginning of social media. So social media didn't exist when the slingshot launched. So we were really lucky to be at the very beginning of that. He had been doing the power projects before there was YouTube and before that was a thing. And so he was able to kind of develop this following back when there wasn't really a

following to be had. So that was, I think, a real critical part of everything that really escalated the business to another level once social media started. that really escalated the business to another level once social media started. And he had all this, he had a place for all that to live. Like, you know, when Friendster and MySpace started, you know, he was on there

and then Facebook and Instagram, YouTube. And he just would just start channels and people that had been following him from one thing would follow him to the next thing. And that just is how it grew that way. And so I think that's pretty awesome because we've never really done a lot of outside marketing. It's all been just this kind of our network of people

and fans and friends and people that listen to him for advice. And, you know, we also kind of decided early on, and this goes along with the gym being free, we've never, a lot of people are like, oh, the only way to make money on the internet is you got to charge a subscription. You got to charge this and charge that. And we were always like, no, there's, there's gotta be better ways to make stuff happen. And so we've never charged for content or, you know, all his stuff, he's always given away information for free. And the gym started out as obviously trying to just cover our costs we knew the gym was never going to make money but then that got

to a point where i was like ah it's too hard to just chase people down let's just make it make it free make it part of our whole big picture and um that's been that's been really awesome because it it just kind of frees you up to you know if you have some people that you don't want in the gym, you're like, well, get the fuck out. You don't pay it anyway. Yeah, it makes me like not obligated for as much. Yeah, yeah. He doesn't have to train people. He doesn't have to be here.

It's just like, you know, this is you show up and you can train here or you don't. You know, it's totally up to you and you can do what you want to do. Or you don't, you know, it's totally up to you and you can do what you want to do. Do you think like raising our kids and raising the business and like growing the brand and growing the business are a little bit similar? Because what you said was that not everything like gets all chaotic at once and kind of the same thing happens when you have a kid. They don't just start running around the house out of nowhere. Right, right.

Yeah, I think it is similar. I think there's a reason why you're pregnant for nine months, because it really takes that long to wrap your brain around the fact that you're going to have a kid. And then once you have a kid, you know, you just, every single day, you're figuring something out. And that's a lot like running a business. They learn something new, and they put themselves in harm's way. And then you learn, like, okay like okay you know i need to do this in preparation so they don't hurt themselves and i think some of the similarities pop up with

business right well every day you make decisions and you learn you might make a wrong decision then you change it so the next day you don't make that decision again and that's a lot like with with kids um you just do the best you can. Like us as parents, like Mark said earlier, our kids aren't into athletics at all and that's okay. You know, our son is really into screenwriting and filming and editing and that's super cool. You know, obviously he probably gets that from his uncle. So we just encourage that and we want him to do what he wants to do. If he finds a lot of joy in that then we're totally supportive of that he pulls all these crazy facts out of his ass every day

well yeah jake facts some of them are real and some of them we don't know we just kind of points off he's like the japanese invented guns because i'm like what the hell he has gotten better about his accuracy but yeah yeah he's fact checks before he starts talking but and then our daughter you know she's only 10 and she's still trying to figure stuff out and um we're just kind of letting them figure out their path it's tough as a parent you there's a fine line between like pushing your children a certain way and encouraging your children so we try to to be hands off but also like hey why don't you try this but if you if you get met with enough resistance you kind of have to just abandon

that and that happened to me i mean one summer i was like i don't give a shit you're joining the swim team and i made him join the swim team for a summer and they hated every day of it but i was there i'm like oh my god is that where that infamous picture is where Quinn is that is that is that is that summer um well it's frustrating too because they're both excellent swimmers like they have amazing uh technique and but they just don't give a shit so you know what are you gonna do but you know they're so little and and things can change and if they decide to get into some athletics in high school or something, then that'd be great. But we don't really care. We just want them to be happy and have a good time and be good people. They're really sweet kids. And that's really all we want. We don't want

assholes. And so that's kind of, I think as a parent, that's really should be your goal is to not raise an asshole. And then you're good. right then if they can read and they're not dicks then you're all good you've succeeded yeah i mean part of what we've done with them uh you know a lot of times is just we'll just try to sit them down you know maybe after something has happened like rather than like right in the heat of the moment and like you're yelling at them or i'm yelling at them or whatever, we try to give it a little bit of time, and then we sit them down. Okay, you need something, or are you just picking on your sister because she's your sister?

Something going on. Everything good? Okay, good. This house is not meant for us to be yelling and frustrated and mad. We have a pool, and we've got some cool shit going on. Let's just fucking have some fun, and let's watch some tv and enjoy each other enjoy food and just let's have it be that kind of place rather than like everyone's screaming at each other trying right yeah and we you know we obviously they have to do their homework and they have to do there's

like that's the minimum and that's we tell them like you're a kid your only job is to go to school and do your homework that's it you have nothing else to worry about in life. So just do that. Please just do that. And then we can go to the movies. And then we can go to dinner. We can have fun stuff. But you've got to do this one thing, you know.

So we try to break it down and keep it simple and not put too much pressure on them as kids. Because you want your kids to have fun and stuff too. But, again, you try to find a balance. And that's really, it's a lot like with work, you know. You try to find a balance and that's really it's a lot like with work you know you try to find a balance too you want to make sure that the staff is all always like working hard but you also want it to be a fun environment and so you want it to be um our goal is definitely to have it be we're not a typical workplace it's hard to have fun with people like jessica smith yeah's, she's a real tough one.

But I think that that's really the goal too. When you come into work, we want this to be a place that people get excited to be about. And it's like, you know, we want to kind of have like a family environment and have it be fun and do fun stuff, but also work hard. So it's like, that's what my, again, Paul Gregory, say you work hard, you play hard,

like you, but you have to get your work in. You can't just blow off a day, you know, if you didn't get your shit done. So you get your shit done and then you can have a good time. And that's kind of always been, I think what we've, what we've always strived for. What are you most proud of? For like just the whole. Business wise. Yeah.

But like, I guess the business wise. Yeah. Oh, business wise. Well, um, I mean, you know, it's tough to... Pinpoint? Yeah, I mean, the hiring of Jessica Smith, I'd have to say, is the... Sorry, Smokey. Poor Smokey, he's going to kill her.

I would say probably... That hurt. Well, you know, actually, getting the patent was a pretty amazing moment because we had just worked so hard at it. And she says we, she means her. You want to know anything about patent law, contact me. But that took like four years. It took four years. And it wasn't just waiting for four years.

It was back and forth, back and forth, researching and writing and defending and explaining. So getting that was probably an amazing or that was an amazing feat. I think there's not that many patent holders in the world and that's a pretty big deal. So I think that was probably one of my proudest moments of the company. But every day I'm surprised and inspired and excited about where we're going and what we've accomplished and and what everyone does on a daily basis i think it's um so i'm i'm proud about everything that we've done but yeah and proud of you oh and smoky what's your favorite movie you love movies and tv shows what's your favorite movie oh well like top three i don't know i know for a while top gun has been my favorite movie for a

really long time that's about movies and like she always watches really bad ones when i'm not home i come home on the weekend from the gym i'm a i'm an 80s movies or yeah i love 80s movies what's the one overboard overboard is good she's watching Overboard that would be that would be my top 10 I don't know why it's always on well okay here's the one movie

that I'll watch this is in the DVD player we don't own a DVD player we don't own a DVD player very futuristic the one movie that I'll watch every single time

it's on without fail is The Fugitive yeah we do watch that all the time that's a good one we've seen it a few hundred times

that's a good one but yeah I like I love Thelma and Louise that's one of my favorites too We do watch that all the time. That's a good one. We've seen it a few hundred times. That's a good one. But yeah, I like, I love Thelma and Louise. One of my favorites too. TV show? Well, Game of Thrones. I don't even know some of this information. Walking Dead, we watch that together.

Yeah, we don't watch a lot. That much stuff's a good one. I watch a lot of horrible reality TV and I'm just, I watch the worst stuff. Everyone's like, how do you have so much time to watch TV? And I'm just like, I just have it on all the time. She does. Just always on. Yeah.

We watch Shark Tank together, I guess. Yeah. That's getting a little boring, but yeah, that's pretty good. All right. Well,

I think that brings in any more questions. Y'all good to go? No, I think we covered it. Jessica, you got any questions? Do you? What was the white army?

Alright, that's all the time we got for today. Strength is never a weakness. Weakness is never a strength. Catch you guys later.