Mark Bell's Power Project - Power Project EP. 80 - William Shewfelt
Episode Date: June 29, 2018William Matthew Shewfelt is an actor known for Power Rangers Ninja Steel (2017). At 5 years old, he started to take karate lessons and competed in multiple karate tournaments. He later competed in tra...ck and field, armwrestling tournaments, and powerlifting. He began his acting career while studying economics at University of California, San Diego. Rewatch the live stream here: https://youtu.be/9dOIMowO7_M ➢SHOP NOW: https://markbellslingshot.com/ Enter Discount code, "POWERPROJECT" at checkout and receive 15% off all Sling Shots ➢Subscribe Rate & Review on iTunes at: https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/mark-bells-power-project/id1341346059?mt=2 ➢Listen on Stitcher Here: https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/mark-bells-power-project?refid=stpr ➢Listen on Google Play here: https://play.google.com/music/m/Izf6a3gudzyn66kf364qx34cctq?t=Mark_Bells_Power_Project ➢Listen on SoundCloud Here: https://soundcloud.com/markbellspowerproject FOLLOW Mark Bell ➢ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/marksmellybell ➢ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MarkBellSuperTraining ➢ Twitter: https://twitter.com/marksmellybell ➢ Snapchat: marksmellybell Follow The Power Project Podcast ➢ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/MarkBellsPowerProject Podcast Produced by Andrew Zaragoza ➢ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/iamandrewz
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opportunity to see what their work ethic is like.
I mean, there's some people that are bums outside the gym.
That's true.
And they put in the work inside the gym and then you kind of see like they can't figure
out how to scrape two nickels together outside the gym.
But for the most part, if you see somebody, you know, showing up on time and they're real
eager to train, they want to learn, they want to find out more about how they can get better
and they figure out ways of getting better by learning from me and learning from the other people in the group it's like that's
probably somebody that would be pretty good to work here yeah yeah i i never understood
you know confining that gym mentality to the gym you know the idea of progression incremental growth
of challenging yourself and then they leave the gym and it's all gone.
You know, it's just like do whatever.
Progressive overload.
Progressive overload.
Progressively learning, progressively adding.
It's from one week to the next, you're like, I'm just going to add more things in.
I'm going to do more.
I'm going to do an extra rep.
Yeah.
I'm going to do an extra set.
I'm going to add more. I'm going to do an extra rep. Yeah. I'm going to do an extra set. I'm going to add extra weight, extra resistance, resistance. It's like resistance could be anything.
The resistance to get out of, out of bed on time, you know, you can add resistance, uh, to any,
any part of your life, whether it's your diet, whether it's studying for school.
Um, I think, you know, something like ADHD, you know, it gets to be like a hard thing to like
comprehend, um, unless somebody's had it. Like I I've actually never been even diagnosed,
uh, with anything like that. I did have like learning disabilities, but like where I grew up
and when I grew up, uh, they just said, you're retarded, you know?
And so you're going in these classes
with these other kids that are lighting the desk on fire
and drooling and shitting themselves
and whatever else was going on.
And so that's, you know, that was my, you know,
like school experience.
But for nowadays, you know, there's kids they'll label
and they'll say they have ADHD.
And one of the things that happens to a lot of kids,
I mean, some people are more severe than others and any
sort of issue mentally is a weird thing to get into. It gets to be
controversial because it's hard for me to comprehend
if you come in every day like I got a headache I don't want to train I'd be like what a pussy
but maybe your head actually fucking hurts but I can't
empathize with it.
But when it comes to ADHD, some people I've talked to that have had it, they, they can
concentrate and focus on a lot of the things that they like to do, but they can't concentrate
or focus on a lot of the things they don't like to do.
Yeah.
And I'm like, well, that actually just seems like you're a normal person.
Yeah.
Of course.
Of course.
I feel that way.
Like I feel, I don't want to concentrate or do anything that I don't want to do. The stuff that I want to do, I'm normal person. Yeah, of course, of course. I feel that way. I don't want to concentrate
or do anything that I don't want to do.
The stuff that I want to do,
I'm into it.
I'm about it.
I'll do whatever I want.
They're just optimal human beings.
Maybe they have it all figured out.
I don't know.
Yeah, because you just discard stuff
that you don't feel like
fucking looking at or doing, right?
Life's short.
Yeah, I agree with that.
Do you read a lot?
I don't read as much as I used to, but reading was a big part of a growth and development phase for me.
So, I mean, everything I was reading was kind of your typical personal development type literature.
But I love reading.
See, my philosophy with reading has always been if somebody can pack their life's experience into a book,
if you're getting 50 years of trial's experience into a book, if you're
getting 50 years of trial and error in a book and you keep reading these books, you're shaving off
so much, you know, so many iterations of failure that you would have had to go through otherwise.
So I think that it's a smart position to start from when you're doing something. But then I also
think you can get too into it and you start to overthink things and you read, it's like information
overload and you read too many things
and then you just get paralyzed by indecision
so I try to chill on that
a little bit now. Or actually
that's my advanced excuse
for not reading.
What about audiobooks though?
Because you guys travel a shit ton
so I would imagine there's plenty of car time
and stuff. I do like audiobooks.
I especially like audiobooks I especially
like when you're trying to get through a bunch of books and you just put that thing up to like 1.5x
and you just start burning through books I'm not smart enough to do one and a half I can only do
1.25 one yeah I can't do one and a half yeah they start sounding like chipmunks after a while right
yeah that's true by the time I process what they said they're already like on the next chapter
you're like what am I even listening to at this point yeah you know i i found that to be true though
as well you know uh analysis paralysis right like you you start to that's happened to me in my own
lifting career what should i do next hmm that's not really right because that doesn't match up
well with what i did on the previous set it doesn't match up with what I did on the previous set. It doesn't match up with what I did yesterday.
You know, it turns you into a big pussy, basically.
Yeah, well, yeah.
You're like, man, I'm being like,
I'm applying, you know,
too much intellectual thought
into something that just needs to be savage
in the first place,
and I might as well just chalk up and go
and not worry about it too much.
I mean, you know, within some parameters
of, like, being safe and being smart,
you don't want to overdo it.
But at the same time, the only way to get some of the results sometimes
is to have it be overdone.
There's a balance to that, I think.
There's definitely a balance you have to have.
There's some people that I think work hard,
and if they had applied a bit more intelligence and planning
to what they're doing, a bit more game plan,
they would save themselves so much hard work.
But then you have those guys that plan meticulously
and don't want to do anything.
And that's an issue too.
Efficiency is important in everything that you do
and trying to figure out how do I get more out of this.
Converting over to some of the bodybuilding training
I've been doing lately, I'm like,
oh my God, that workout just took like 40 minutes.
That's weird.
My powerlifting workouts, they always take
like three hours, and they shouldn't have.
I mean, it's the
nature of training in a group sometimes, and
investing your time in others, and investing
your time in
what I thought it took to be a powerlifter,
which was having these larger rest
intervals and stuff, but
through what I'm doing now, it's like just keep moving don't get stuck and i try to do that in as many spots as i
can but at the same time uh i like to relax and i like to just chat you know you saw today like
you know you came in we got some lifting done and it was like, there was stuff that I was doing.
I didn't have to do any of that.
We could have cut right in here and podcasted, but I ended up getting like in a meeting and
ended up, you know, meeting some new people that came into the store and like all these
things hard to balance all that stuff out.
Yeah, it is.
And I mean that, that sort of breakneck pace works when you're moving towards a goal single
mindedly, but as a general lifestyle for the rest of your life, like that,
that doesn't work.
Yeah. I guess that's what I'm always looking at too. I'm like,
what about tomorrow? Yeah. You know, like, uh,
so somebody asked me yesterday, they're like, should I become,
should I get, wake up a lot earlier and do fasted cardio?
Like, cause they're talking about like some of the stuff I'm doing.
Yeah.
And I said,
no,
because,
uh,
you're not doing what I'm doing. Like I'm only doing what I'm doing for several weeks.
And,
uh,
this is about the long haul.
And should you implement some cardiovascular training?
Sure.
That'll probably help.
Could help you lose some weight,
especially if you never utilized it before.
Uh, it could help your overall health. It could be something beneficial to try for a
little while. And if it doesn't work, you kick it out. But, uh, there's no reason to,
there's no reason to start out with it being so difficult when you're just kind of starting a
journey. You know, people tend to, they want to add too much to their plate and it's like,
let's just take this one thing at a time like for me you know
my achilles heel is stretching like i hate stretching and so if someone said hey don't
stretch before your workouts well then now i'm just not going to stretch at all yeah you know
and it might not be the most ideal place but again i think you don't want to hamper the enthusiasm
that someone might have you just kind of let it you let it ride you're like go ahead you know do
do it that way so that you can do it again tomorrow how do we how do we get through these workouts and through some of
these things so we can continuously do it yeah what's sustainable right yeah that's with your
food with your training and and for you um being an actor and trying to work your way up the ladder
that's got to be extremely stressful along with trying to keep the diet intact
and trying to keep the training going.
How are you able to do all these different things at one time?
It's a breeze.
Piece of cake.
No, it's definitely a challenge.
And I mean, what works for me is, for one,
having my priorities set out beforehand.
So I definitely don't like to
priority number one, your girlfriend. Okay, go ahead. Priority number one points. Um, so I mean,
yeah, it's having those priorities set out beforehand and knowing exactly what I'm working
towards, but these things are in limbo and they're shifting around. Sometimes fitness is more of a
priority. Sometimes I step away from it. Work is more of a priority. You know, I have my times when I need to connect with my family more.
So I think without having a long-term picture of where you're going and of, you know, sort of what
matters to you, what your goals are, and then thinking about just your life in general, like
what sort of human being do you want to be? You know, because there are people that are,
they devote everything to work. Right. And they, I think they completely lack in other aspects of
their life. And then you see down the road. Just like we talked about with a gym rat, right?
So yeah, sometimes the guy's like putting in all this effort. He looks great. Everything's,
you know, he's strong and he's got all these different things and then you just has no life
outside of it. And you're like, yeah, what's that about? Yeah. Why, why would you do that?
Cause you're, you're basically cutting yourself short of so much of what life has to offer.
But for me, I also like the whole like Arnold mentality of adding things onto your life.
And, you know, through those progressive overload principles and and concepts of like hypertrophy and growth, you do become acclimated to pressure.
You can suddenly take on more.
You know, you are able to focus in more zone, get more things done. You figure out what works
for you. I like starting with doing too much.
I think it's better to do too much in the beginning. Then you figure out what your
spots are, what your areas are, what you want to focus on. That's when you can really
narrow in. You can trim the fat later on. Exactly.
Cut back. It's a bulk yeah that makes
that makes a lot of sense um so one thing that sometimes i leave absent from this podcast because
we just sit here and just start rapping with people um is like how how do you how do you make
how do you personally make money right and then in addition to that how are you make, how do you personally make money? Right. And then in addition to that, how are you having something sustainable while going towards your goal before you were able to
make some money? Interesting. Um, no one really ever talks about like making money. And sometimes
I'll have someone on the show and I'll forget to ask him, like they, the guy's got some great
lifts and does some cool things. And it's like, well, wait a second, you know, how's this person like affording to even have this lifestyle of not having a
nine to five or not having a typical job or whatever it might be.
Yeah. That's, that's an interesting question.
I think that's,
that's one of like the biggest hindrances for a lot of people towards going
towards this stuff. You know, it's like, am I going to be broke?
Am I going to be living in my car? Stuff I was thinking about for sure.
So I'll take it back to
when I wasn't acting,
when I was doing economics in college.
How old are you now?
23.
Okay.
So I was doing economics in college,
studying that,
and it was basically providing me
a pretty clear path forward.
Every summer I would internship
in a potential field that I thought
I could see myself working in
in the future. So accounting, consulting, areas like that. I would internship in a potential field that I thought I could see myself working in in the future.
So accounting, consulting, areas like that.
I would do that, save the money.
That would usually take me through a good chunk of the school year, and then I would work on-campus jobs.
So when I decided to go for acting, it wasn't the most intelligent plan, but it worked for me at the time.
And it's not something
I would recommend to anyone else but it was
completely cutting off anything else
and going towards this thing single
mindedly and it was pretty much
one year of obsessive work
so
this was about junior year of college
which isn't really that long I mean it is
a long time like when you're doing it
but a year
to get a we'll talk about it in it, but a year to get a, we'll talk about it in a minute, but a year
to get a pretty good, solid gig isn't
that long a time. No, yeah, and that was pretty much the goal was
so I had no acting experience, I had no connections,
didn't really know what I was doing in the industry, so I set a goal for myself, and I
strongly believe in the power of big goals, chunking goals, you know, daily consistent
action towards those. So I set a goal that by the end of the year, you know, before I graduate,
I want to book a leading role in a major TV show. So that was pretty much the goal right there.
And what I did towards that was I then set,
from that yearly goal, I set monthly goals.
I set weekly goals, daily goals,
chunk the thing all the way down
to where I was working every single day on this,
getting up 4 a.m.
There were no weekends.
There were no parties.
There was pretty much no social life, to be honest.
So this is why I don't recommend that to people
because it's not sustainable,
and it wasn't sustainable for me then. On top of that, I was vegan. So I was whole foods,
plant-based. You're off the team. I'll see you guys. Yeah, that was a decent show, but let's
bring it in. So yeah, I'm a recovering vegan. And so I did that for that year.
And basically by the end of the year,
I had booked that Power Rangers gig.
But the steps that it took to get there,
it was auditioning, going for everything I could,
doing small theater gigs,
and then going into pitching to agencies.
And then from pitching to agencies,
then I was doing commercials,
and then I was doing short films, and then I did a feature feature film. And finally I was able to work my way into that.
So for money in that time, I would have done whatever I had to do, but I had my savings from
internships. And beyond just that, I had, you know, on-campus jobs that I was working. So I was doing
classes, working, going to to la doing the audition process so
a lot of things going on at that time you know you mentioned uh you know waking up early and uh
last time you were here you and i kind of talked about some of that you know um
just trying to make sure you're not burning the candle you know from both ends and from the middle
you know yeah and uh that gets to be kind
of a tricky thing because you want your goals and you're like, okay, well, you know, this is the map.
This is the way that I'm going to get these goals. And I have this, uh, this kind of checklist of
things that I want to get done every day. And in order to get them done, it, it's going to be a
long day every day. And every day is going to be like a gonna be like a a grind right um and it gets to
be hard to balance it out because then you run into situations where you're not really taking
care of yourself it's not sleeping enough um things can start to slip your relationship could
start to slip your uh your your work could even slip because you're just you're just fucking tired
you're just fatigued and you're trying to train and you're trying to diet and maybe maybe you're like, even in like a caloric deficit, uh, cause you're trying to be
like leaner or whatever it might be. That gets really hard to try to juggle and to try to figure
out. I think it's important to be, to be set in the goal that you're trying to move towards,
but be flexible in your approach. So if you're burning out and you're about to send yourself to
the hospital and you have adrenal fatigue and it's not working for you, I think step away from it and reconsider.
What approach do I need moving forwards?
You know, making micro adjustments.
Maybe just recognizing that sleep is part of the pie chart to success, too.
Yes, absolutely.
Sleep and your food are going to be important.
Having time to yourself.
Yeah.
and your food are going to be important.
Um,
having timed yourself.
Yeah.
You know, it's like,
it's kind of sucks to block everybody else out for a while,
but sometimes you just need an hour or two.
But if you,
again,
if we go back to what we talked about in the very beginning was,
uh,
figuring out like longevity,
like we're here to play the long game,
not,
you know,
you weren't put on this earth to be the fucking red Ranger,
right?
Yeah. You're put on this earth to be the fucking red ranger right yeah you're
put on this earth for much more uh you'll have bigger and better acting gigs than that you'll
have bigger and better life successes than just that one thing um but if you're you know so you
hold everything so tight that that's your uh goal then maybe you are stretching yourself too thin
and maybe you don't end up getting
anywhere else.
Yeah.
That's, that's having a bigger perspective on things and having like life goals set out.
So if, if I had only set that one goal for myself to get that role and then it happened,
well, where do I go from there?
You know?
And that's, that's where a lot of people fall off and then you get, where are they now?
And that kind of stuff, which i hate that stuff man it's like well and sometimes sometimes sometimes it's ridiculous
though when somebody says where are they now because it's like somebody did something so big
you're just like what the fuck else are they gonna do yeah you know like yeah where's sylvester
stallone nowadays like who the fuck cares like he did so much or um you know somebody that starred in like
a harry potter film or like just that those are those are epic films that will stand the test of
time will be around long enough and uh anybody who's able to land something like that it's it's
really uh like a magical thing but um so how have you been able to uh you know something like the
red ranger gig you mentioned you didn't have any acting experience.
You didn't have any connections.
So how did something like that come to be?
So that was basically at UC San Diego.
The first step I thought I could take was going for theater because we had a theater program there.
So I started applying to plays, did plays.
And then I did about three plays.
And from there, I started applying to short films at the, and then I did about three plays, and from there I started applying to short
films at the college and at local colleges.
Then I started applying for non-union commercials.
I started doing those.
From there, I put together a package with modeling shoots, hit up an agency, and then
from the agency, then they started sending me out for bigger gigs.
So these are a lot of things that you had to do by yourself.
Yes. Yes.
Yeah.
And like in terms of, you know, like those things need to look professional, right?
So like how did you figure out some of that?
Just like look stuff up on YouTube or.
You mean in terms of acting or what steps to take?
In terms of like your portfolio and your profile and your headshots and stuff like, how are
you able to kind of put some of your resume, how are you able to put these things together
to make them look professional?
Or did you just go to somebody that did that?
You just paid them kind of thing.
I networked a lot.
I got a lot of people's feedback and advice on that sort of thing.
I looked a lot of things's feedback and advice on that sort of thing. I looked a lot of things
up, lots of research. Yeah, I just spread myself out in different areas and figured out what I
needed to know. Like I got familiar with my terrain and then I just kept moving forward from there.
Yeah. Well, that's simple enough, right? Yeah. You know, and then what's something from theater that carries over to television?
Because, you know, my understanding, which is not much, but my understanding of theater is that it's like a little like overboard, a little overdone.
It's a little like extra animated, perhaps, than TV.
I don't even know if that's right.
Did some of that freeness of really just going for it
prepare you for television, or was it something else?
In terms of Power Rangers, all of it carried over.
We're not doing method acting here.
The show is for kids,
so kids like to see stuff that's, that's big,
right. That's overdone. It's, it's an action adventure show geared towards like five to 12
year olds. So we definitely went big with it. Um, but what carries over for that? I think one thing
is being, being adaptable with different circumstances. So I learned this from theater,
but also just from public speaking and just being in different situations where, you know, that first time I was on set, you know, literally the first
day being on set with that big production cameras everywhere, you got the grips and
people walking around and, you know, everybody's asking you something, they're miking you up
and everything.
I hadn't been in that situation before, but it was sort of going in there with a certain
like, this is going to be good.
It's going to be fun.
And whatever happens, we're just going to go with it.
So that flexibility that I got from theater, that I got from public speaking of just you
take a deep breath and you go for it.
I think that definitely paid off a lot because I could see how people would be in that situation
and just freeze.
Right.
And then they're like, OK, we're going to come in for your close up now.
Do you remember the two pages of dialogue that you're supposed to do then they're like, okay, we're going to come in for your close-up now. Do you remember the two pages of dialogue
that you're supposed to do?
You're like, huh?
Yeah, suddenly
you don't remember anything.
Yeah.
How do you get yourself
into a frame of mind
to remember that kind of stuff?
How do you rehearse
or prepare for that?
Are you just drinking coffee
and reading it every day?
Or is there some sort of ritual
that you have
to get your mind right for it? Because I'd imagine it's got to be, it's got to
be tough. I think the most important thing for me is for one, knowing the lines to the point where
they're almost subconscious, you know, so you're actually able to forget about the lines and then
look at someone and just talk to them. And you, you know, you kind of know what you're going to
talk about and you just start talking.
That's one thing.
The second thing is just relaxing.
If you just got too much energy going into it and you're too nervous, that doesn't serve you well in any respect.
So I think relaxing and just taking a deep breath and saying, okay, let's just talk about
something.
So that's sort of my frame of mind going into it.
I usually just chill
out, know my lines and go for it. Yeah. We're watching some of it here. I remember that day.
I was exhausted. What's, uh, what's your training been like over the last several years that has
helped, uh, kind of prepare you for this show? I imagine, imagine this show has some, uh,
physical aspects to it, correct? Yeah, so
we do a good amount of action.
We do have stunt doubles,
but a lot of the stuff without the helmet is
us. So I had a martial arts
background going into this. I did
seven years of martial arts when I was a kid.
So that was mainly karate, and then
from that, I moved into...
It was mostly arm wrestling,
to be honest. I trained almost specifically for arm wrestling.
Powerlifting was a supplement to that.
Then I got more into track and field.
From there, I've gotten more into bodybuilding, weight training, stuff like that.
It's just a mix of a lot of different things.
Physical activity has been a constant for me since I was about five.
How did we get you on Cobra Kai?
Have you seen Cobra Kai?
So Cobra Kai, man.
That would be sick.
Yeah, that was something I was looking at.
Yeah, they got another season going.
Yeah, yeah.
That was something I had gone in for that,
and it was going really well and just didn't make that final round.
Oh, man.
I shudder every time I hear it.
It's okay.
Will, can you pull your microphone a little bit closer to you?
Like just kink it around.
Push it towards Mark.
Okay.
Yeah, there you go.
There you go.
You're in there.
Yeah, there you go.
How old were you during this last
this arm wrestling
tournament
or whatever this is
oh man
I must have been
about
18
probably about
18 there
yeah
yeah those
those were good times
you can see my body
hasn't changed at all
still got them shoulders
yeah no
that was fun
arm wrestling's
a really fun sport
like it's
it's so underground
and most people don't know about it
but
they have
you know
you know about John Berzink
and Devin Laird
absolutely yeah
Travis Bajent
and all those guys
so they're like the heroes of the sport
yeah
savages
yeah
it's crazy
documentary on John Berzink
pulling John yeah
that's a really cool documentary.
For anybody that hasn't seen any sort of arm wrestling,
you should watch that.
I mean, it's intense.
And then he kicks the crap out of everybody.
He's not that heavy.
No, he pretty much weighed in about 200 pounds
his whole career.
So he was always a middleweight guy.
And I think it was from about 1984 to the early 2000s,
he was nearly undefeated.
Lost maybe a couple matches, you know, if he was fatigued.
And he basically traveled the globe looking for, you know,
all these Russian monsters and whoever he could find in any country.
Beat everybody as a middleweight.
And, you know, now he's known as the greatest of all time
as far as arm wrestling goes.
He just crushes everybody.
Yeah, the guy's pretty crazy.
What's up with your diet?
You stay lean, you stay in shape, and you do a ketogenic style diet?
Yeah.
So, you know, coming off of a vegan diet, I pretty much went 180 with keto.
Why'd you come off the vegan diet?
Oh, man.
That was four years of hell.
So the vegan diet I was basically, that was four years of hell. Um, so the vegan diet I was basically doing like by the book, it was whole foods, plant-based high fiber beans, legumes,
tons of vegetables, starchy carbs, uh, oatmeal fruits. And the issue with that was flagging
energy levels, you know, had really bad energy. I'm sure my vitamin B levels were pretty low. I was supplementing the heck out of the thing. So I was supplementing as much as I
could, but I had no energy. I was losing muscle mass. I didn't like my body composition. Fat was
a bit too high and muscle mass was a bit too low. Um, so I wasn't digging that at all. And mental
clarity, which is another really important thing. You got into a lot of this early on.
I mean, the arm wrestling thing, you're 18.
What age were you at when you started dieting and stuff?
I started arm wrestling at 13, and I think I started dieting probably about 15.
I started playing around with different diets.
Did you have any body image issues?
Did you think you were skinny fat or think you were too skinny,
you wanted to be bigger? Was there anything there? Or you just wanted to like, you just wanted to
perform better or lift better or look better. It's, it's funny. Cause I don't think about the
stuff much, but looking at it now, probably, um, I was an extremely skinny kid. So very,
very skinny kid. Um, I mean, I'm still skinny, but more of a fit physique now.
So I could have had issues with that.
The main thing that got me into diet was actually skin.
So I had terrible skin, probably the worst acne of anybody I ever met.
And that was what got me on a vegan diet.
So I started doing that and did that all throughout college.
And it got better, but there eventually came a point where I don't think I was getting enough out of it i see people sometimes like i love going to coffee shops i'll see people with just crazy amounts of acne and they're just chomping down on some like
croissant or donut yeah i'm like like you know like whether the donut actually causes that
uh is highly debatable but it's certainly not helping. No, of course not. You know what I mean?
Of course not, yeah.
Just because it has an inflammatory response in your body.
And I've seen Dr. Baker talk about the carnivore diet,
and he's got before and after pictures of a lot of different people that are like,
here's my acne before, here's my acne after.
And it's like, not all the time is it gone, but it's a huge improvement.
Yeah.
You were able to improve it somewhat through the vegan diet and then somewhat through what you're doing now?
It pretty much improved completely through a vegan diet.
And then when I switched to keto, keto worked really well as well.
So, I mean, I haven't really had to deal with that since I was maybe 17.
So it's not really been a problem.
But when I switched to keto, it was like night and day.
So I pretty much for four
years on that vegan diet, I had no satiety.
It was like any meal I ate, no matter
how much I ate, stomach bloating,
I wasn't full at all.
Two hours later, I was
ravenously hungry, hangry,
angsty, needed
food immediately.
That wasn't working for me, especially on set.
So after the first season of Power Rangers, I was still vegan then.
And I finally decided, okay, like this isn't working.
We had a three-week hiatus in between seasons.
So I went home, went back to the computer, started researching a bunch
all over YouTube, reading articles.
And then I decided to try a protocol where it was fasting throughout the day.
I was still doing like my general, you know, compound lifts, some cardio. And then at night,
I would just have a bunch of vegetables and meat and, you know, added fats, dropped a bunch of
weight. It was mostly water weight, I'm pretty sure at the beginning, you know, so dropped a
bunch of water weight and then really started leaning out. And my satiety was better. My energy
was better and I felt better overall. So that's when i realized i was onto something there and i've been kind of
playing with it ever since and it made it made you feel better pretty much immediately so much
better yeah it was night and day did you have like a older sibling or maybe like uncle parent
somebody that would kind of motivate you or that you've seen them and that's kind of pushed you
towards like okay maybe i do want to mess with my diet or mess with fitness or anything like that?
So in terms of fitness influences, nobody really in my family,
but a lot of it was so growing up watching pro wrestling,
idolized a lot of their physiques.
And then when I got into the whole pumping iron and stuff like that,
so I was 13 when I watched pumping iron, um, got my first gold gym membership.
And the craziest thing was,
um,
Ed Corny was training there.
So he was training at the gold gym in Modesto.
And I was watching pumping iron probably like every day at that point.
I think Ed Corny is still in this area.
I think.
I,
yeah,
he's up North.
I'm pretty sure.
Um,
so yeah,
I,
I was watching that thing like every day.
Ed Corny hits that weird pose where he like throws his arm up and like flexes his serratus.
And I was like, that's what I call posing.
He's all excited about it.
But yeah.
Remember that line?
Yeah.
In South Africa.
That was an amazing movie.
Yeah.
I mean, I love that movie so much.
There's so many great lines in there.
And then like that scene where they're having dinner together
and Arnold's just totally
ripping Louie apart. I don't know if you remember that scene.
Was this that breakfast before the
competition? Yeah, breakfast.
And so
Arnold, yeah,
he looks amazing.
There's Ed Corny.
Arnold is talking to Lou
Frigno. He's talking to Lou Frigno's dad, which is great because Lou is sitting right there too.
And he doesn't even acknowledge him.
He doesn't acknowledge him.
That's so good.
And he's like, yeah, a couple weeks from now it would be perfect for him.
Yeah, he'd have everything dialed in.
Yeah, just killing him.
And here he is working so hard.
And he just knows, Arnold knows, that even just putting that out there in the universe is damaging.
You know, he knows that that's going to impact his dad and him.
He knows it's going to be positive for him.
And it's just like, man, that's just so savage.
So he goes, yeah, in a couple of weeks it'd be perfect for him.
But what the heck?
But in a couple of weeks I'd just be better.
Yeah, what the hell, I get bigger too, he says. So what the couple of weeks I'd just be better. Yeah.
What the hell
I get bigger too he says.
So what the hell
let's get over with it.
No he was a master
of mental warfare.
That guy definitely
knew about that.
So you're a big
wrestling fan.
Huge wrestling fan.
You ever think about
getting into wrestling?
Jumping off the top rope?
Who would I be?
Like Rey Mysterio's
competition or
a cruiserweight belt?
Yeah.
You would have to well it wouldn't be too much different than what you do now.
You'd wear a mask.
Yeah.
And you'd fly around, right?
How tall is Shawn Michaels?
Shawn Michaels is probably like 6'1".
Oh, okay.
He's actually, he's bigger than he seems.
Yeah.
Yeah.
A lot of the wrestlers are actually really tall.
Yeah.
You know, even somebody like John Cena, who seems like normal height is like 6'2".
You know, Stone Cold is like 6'2 or 6'3".
Even Vince McMahon is like 6'3".
Yeah.
You know, a lot of these.
And that's on the short side.
You know, then there's everybody else that's like taller than that.
The Rock's 6'5".
Yeah.
Triple H is 6'4".
Yeah.
Shawn Michaels, 6'1".
Kurt Angle, 6'5".
6'5"?
Yeah, but probably because his neck's getting all jacked up.
He's getting shorter.
Yeah, he's lost a few inches.
Yeah, getting shorter and shorter over the years.
But, yeah, obviously I grew up loving pro wrestling.
Who are some of your favorites?
So, for me, it was a lot of the attitude era growing up.
So, it was the typical guys.
Like D-Generation X coming in.
Oh, DX was huge.
I love DX.
And I was watching DX when it was,
Shawn Michaels was out for that few years
where he was trying to find his smile again.
Yeah, and he was going through his back issues.
So I was watching it when it was like
Road Dogg, Billy Gunn, X-Pac, China.
So I was watching that a lot.
You know, Undertaker, obviously.
Road Dogg hooks us up
with tickets
when WWE comes into town
when they come into Sacramento
I get a text from him
and he'll say
hey man
any of you guys
need some tickets
for the show
because he's like
an agent for them
now he helps
kind of more
behind the scenes
these guys
you know
sometimes they have
a very rough
lifestyle
you know
the amount of travel that they have and they end up kind of living like a rock star lifestyle. It's tough. The amount of travel they have,
and they end up kind of living like a rock star lifestyle.
A lot of it's their own doing,
but it's a very painful sport,
and they end up with painkillers
and all kinds of different things.
And Road Dogg was one of them,
but he does a lot better now.
Yeah, one of my guys was Hulk Hogan,
and when he came back, I think in the early 2000s,
he came back and did the whole Mr. America thing, and then he went into...
The NWO.
Yeah, NWO.
So I watched a bit of WCW when I was a kid.
Loved the NWO, Scott Hall, Kevin Nash, all those guys.
Yeah, the NWO stuff was a big deal, and's when like that's when wrestling really took off because
the WCW was growing and
so was the WWE at the same time.
The Monday Night Wars. Yeah, the Monday
Night Wars and it was like
they were vying for position on who's gonna watch
what and then also
there was another TV show on at the same time
called Monday Night Football and it was
like Monday Night Football would lose
to either the WWE or the WCW like almost
every week.
Which is crazy.
The competitor to that was the XFL.
Oh, yeah.
Was that it?
Yeah.
When he brought out Vince McMahon started the XFL was a pretty big deal.
Ravishing Rick Rude.
Who has been somebody in the acting world who's been someone who's been influential?
Two guys.
So there was one guy, Theo James,
who he's kind of like the star of Divergent,
Insurgent, Detergent.
I think he's got some more movies coming out.
But I was watching his career trajectory
and it was over five years
he booked that lead role in Divergent.
And I was looking at that. He was
coming up from short films and then he was doing some supporting roles and suddenly he got that.
And I thought, you know, a lot of people at the time were telling me, oh, you kind of look like
Theo James. And I looked this guy up and I thought he got a philosophy degree and then he decided to
go into this. And I kind of connected with that. I thought, OK, I kind of look like this guy.
I haven't done anything related to acting,
but he started after college.
So I took him as inspiration to go for it.
But in terms of acting styles,
I still haven't done the kind of style that I want to do,
but the guy I always like is Marlon Brando.
I thought that guy just had a lot of swagger for his time.
It was completely just like a...
He really took a different spin on things back then.
You came in with a lot of the Clark Gables
and the very cookie-cutter, good-looking, leading men.
And then you had this guy that just was kind of a slacker
and didn't seem to care.
And it worked out pretty well for him.
But I liked his moves.
I'm watching Goliath right now.
And I'm just always so surprised.
I mean, not surprised.
I guess it shouldn't be a surprise, but Billy Bob Thornton is amazing.
And it's just so casual.
I guess that's the art of acting in some way.
If you said, hey, Mark, come in here pissed off and ask me to leave or something,
that's really not that hard to do, you know?
But if you said, hey, come in here and you're going to ask me a couple of questions about, you know, what I did the last few days.
And it's very specific lines of what, you know, what you're going to read.
But there's not a lot of like emotion behind it.
Yeah.
That would be a lot harder.
And you're're gonna say something
that maybe disappoints me and then i gotta kind of like walk off it'd be like that would be hard
like i've never done that before i'd be like oh what the fuck do what the fuck do i do yeah but
it's really cool that these guys can take these words that are written out you know by somebody
else almost all the time right and uh and interpret them their their own put their own spin on it,
put their own exclamation points,
commas, and things like that
into the dialogue
and really kind of breathe life into it.
It's really amazing.
It's a really incredible thing.
You watch someone like Morgan Freeman,
like somebody who's intentionally never the star.
It's like, well, he has to do certain things
so that he's not the star.
He has to still do really well.
He still has to do what he's called upon to do.
But also he has to, like, be less than spectacular
because he's not the lead role.
And there's, like, there's certain kind of contexts
that go within that.
And you watch it and you're just like,
I do not understand how the fuck they were able to do it.
It's really amazing.
It's really cool to watch.
Yeah, the hardest thing is to sit there and, like, just to think, they were able to do it. It's really amazing. It's really cool to watch. Yeah. The hardest thing is to sit there and like,
just to think,
you know,
to do nothing.
Cause a lot of the time,
if you're reading a scene and you could tell that this is going to lead to
anger,
it's easy to play angry,
you know,
and to,
to,
it's like putting a mask on and to put the facial expressions on and to
really put an act on.
But that's not how anybody is in real life. You know,
if you're pissed at somebody, you're probably not going to show them that, you know, right.
It's probably inside. But but there's something subtle. There's an undercurrent to it that people
can feel. And to get that on screen when it's it's fictional, you're reading dialogue. You know,
you have things that you're supposed to say. You're manipulating your own emotions. It's, it's a really tricky thing.
And I think some people can even be damaged by it, you know, when they, when they go a
bit too hard with that.
Yeah.
Um, Daniel Day-Lewis retired.
So, you know, um, some people definitely go really, really far with it, but.
What about like Jim Carrey?
Like Jim Carrey, like, you know, I, I'm a huge Jim Carrey fan and I, I'm still a fan
of like, even just, uh, some huge Jim Carrey fan and I, I'm still a fan of like,
even just, uh, some of the motivational stuff and stuff that he shares. Like, I think it's cool when somebody, you know, has a, uh, uh, I don't know when they're
just seeking other things other than just, um, the regular things that we're all searching
for as humans, which is like, just like money and fame and like, I don't know, love and
affection and these other things.
Right.
He's just like, he's, uh, on a different level, kind of seeking other things.
Cause maybe he cracked at some point or whatever the case may be.
But, uh, you know, he, he ended up kind of going through that through acting because
he's been through so many different roles.
And I think it was the, uh, the role where he played the wrestler, or played the, not the wrestler, the comedian.
Was it Andy Kaufman?
The Andy Kaufman movie where he literally cracked
because he would go around acting as him
even when they were off screen.
Yeah.
And they were like, we're not shooting.
And he would do weird stuff and people were like,
well, I guess this is the way he is.
I still haven't seen that.
I gotta watch it.
Yeah.
It's cool.
There's a behind the scenes documentary on, too, which is even crazier.
But I would imagine that maybe that's how deep you've got to go sometimes.
You've got to dive in.
Otherwise, it's not going to maybe look as authentic as it should be.
I think it depends on what you're going for, too.
I couldn't imagine Arnold or Stallone ever doing that.
Right.
Because they're trying to play something completely different.
So it does depend on the genre, I think.
Yeah.
Well, they're also, yeah, they're playing themselves, I guess.
And even if they're playing a character, it's just not the same as, I guess, being another human being.
I think what happened with Jim Carrey, though, I think there was just too many weird connections
to Andy Kaufman.
I don't remember the name of the documentary,
but you guys should check it out
because it's cool.
He goes so deep that he can't get back.
And it kind of ruins his life in some weird ways.
Yeah.
So I think Jim Carrey was,
or I think it was Jim Carrey,
talking about when he just walks up to somebody and says, hey how you doing people just start laughing it's like well
i'm not trying to be funny like yeah just because i'm ace of ventura like you know i'm not you know
take me serious so i think that's part of what kind of fucked him up but what i was going to
ask you like what gets the nerves going more uh public speaking or like acting like in front of
the camera in front of the set and all that acting is actually a lot more relaxed because you know everybody on set you know
so you know what's going to happen you know what you're going to say there's some uncertainty
around the moment you know if you're going to bring it or not but um you get to know everybody
really well like i mean you're you're drinking with the guys on the cast and crew every friday
and you're hanging out so it's it's pretty comfortable and it's like a closed set public speaking, man.
That's exciting.
That's, that's really fun to do.
Cause you get, you get a crowd out there.
It's the same thing as theater, you know, where you get the adrenaline pumping and if
you can convey your message to them and if they can feel it, um, that's a really cool
live connection.
I'm sure that's what wrestlers feel when they're out there doing a match,
but it's live and you can feel that connection.
And when it's going well, there's nothing better than that.
Yeah, everything that you do in life is like a sale.
You're trying to convince people of something specific.
Sometimes you're actually trying to sell something,
but there's other times where it's more indirect than that. And you're just trying to
sell people on your idea or concept. Yeah. And, uh, for you, you might say, you know,
I started in this business young. I made a decision to be an actor. I never looked back.
I got to some of my goals. There's a lot more goals ahead of me. And I'm going to attack those
goals with everything and everything, you know, everything and everything I have.
And, you know, you're trying to portray a certain message and you're trying to get people behind it because you want people to kind of understand.
OK, shit. You know, he he didn't really have special circumstances that made him better off than the next guy to get started.
He just started and he just went after it.
next guy to get started, he just started and he just went after it.
That's the important thing for people to understand that I, that I try to convey, especially when I go back to Modesto and I've like spoken at the schools there.
Modesto.
Good old Modesto.
The 209, the home of the Diaz brothers.
Oh yeah.
No, they're Stockton.
Oh yeah, Stockton.
Yeah, they're close.
So Modesto doesn't even have that.
No, we don't even have, we have George Lucas.
And you.
We have George Lucas. We have me, we have Jeremy Renner.
Jeremy Renner is great.
You can kind of claim Kaepernick, isn't he from like somewhere out there?
Colin Kaepernick, oh yeah, he went to Pittman High School or something like that.
He's in the area.
George Lucas, I think you can just stop right there, right?
Yeah.
That's enough.
Star Wars.
You can't get a whole lot bigger than that.
Yeah.
Yeah, so, but going back to that point of,
there's something that everyone can do,
so I think most people, you know, they're limited by their,
man, I feel like I'm starting to quote things now,
but they're limited by their perceptions of themselves, you know,
and they tell themselves these stories that they can't do things.
And it's really about breaking that mental barrier and doing things, you know, and they tell themselves these stories that they can't do things. And it's really about breaking that mental barrier and doing things, you know.
I think the belief precedes action a lot of the time. If you believe
you could do something, you're more likely to do it. So that's something that I
try to work on my mind with that kind of stuff. Yeah, I agree 100%. And it can
sound cliche. Like, why do the same people keep talking about it? Well,
the reason why people are talking about it, especially now, uh, the reason why people are talking about it so much
is because you now have the power. You're not like under the thumb of corporate America. You
don't have to work for IBM. You don't have to work for Apple. Yeah. And if you choose to do those
things and you want to be an engineer or something, I mean, those things are totally fine. And maybe
those, uh, businesses will allow you to do a lot of the things that you want to do and express yourself the way you want to
express yourself but for people that are like man i don't i'm not sure like i don't know what i want
to do like all i know how to do is draw and like i can play some music but i kind of suck at it and
like i don't know yeah that's who we're talking to a lot of times. We're talking to those people or somebody who's found a discipline with, uh, you know,
they, they like to run every day, but they can't figure out other stuff in their life
and they're depressed and they can't just figure out how do I make money?
How do I get a job?
How do I, uh, how do I feel more fulfilled?
Those are the kinds of people that we're chatting with.
And there's a lot of people that are like that.
A lot of people that are, um, you you know graduated high school or maybe even graduated college and they're
in an age range between like 18 to 32 or so and they're just in limbo they're like i don't know
i don't understand what i'm gonna do i don't know how to be mark bell or i don't know how to be this
guy or that guy and what we're trying to explain and what i'm always trying to explain here on the podcast is it doesn't matter it's okay yeah it's
okay you don't know where you're going i never did either i you know i i didn't show up on the
fucking map i didn't the united states government didn't know i existed i didn't show up in any sort
of uh on any sort of uh irs taxes thing or there's nothing. There's not really much of a trace of me
before the age of like 30 or 31 or so.
So if you don't know where you're going
and you're not sure what you're doing,
just fucking relax.
Take a deep breath.
Start to think about some of the things that you can do.
And they don't have to be great.
You only have to be good.
You can turn things into greatness.
If other actors saw you act right now, I'm sure a lot of people would have been in agreement.
Yeah, he's really good.
But what about five years from now?
Yeah.
Five years from now, they're going to go, holy shit.
This is the guy that we want.
Right.
The longer you're doing it and the more practice you have, the more experience you have.
Now, all of a sudden
the same person who they just thought was good is now exceptional and nothing nothing's changed
yeah just some time went by you worked a little harder maybe even you lost a job or two or you
you know you missed out on cobra kai you miss out on this you miss out on that and you're it's what
you do with that you know what do you do in those situations tuck tail and run and say okay man i gotta go back to collecting stamps and watching pro wrestling
whatever the hell it is not a bad choice either yeah whatever the hell it is that you like to do
or do i uh buckle down you know do i double down triple down do i work on this craft harder and maybe your style of acting in some cases
somebody's so different that it takes a long time for that to even shine through yeah i always like
to use the example of uh the lead singer from like acdc does he have a classically great singing
voice oh yeah no probably not right he sounds like, a cat that's like getting strangled or something.
Right.
But it's fucking ACDC.
It's like one of the greatest bands of all time.
Right.
And it's,
uh,
again,
it's not,
not about coming from anything special or anything in particular.
Uh,
it's about making a decision and then just going and,
and not,
uh,
not having too many reservations about, you know, uh, what, what it is you're doing and looking at things as they're not, um,
don't look at things as, as obstacles, look at them as hurdles. And over time you can learn how
to jump over those hurdles. You could build up more stamina, jump over more hurdles in less time
and you can progressively
yeah keep moving faster and you keep moving past stuff and yeah you're gonna trip over some hurdles
you're gonna have some that you can't get over you're gonna run right into a wall every once in
a while and you're gonna fall back down and you gotta figure out how to get back up and you look
up and like maybe you can't climb it and so you fucking run around it like you just figure you
just continue to figure out,
how do I just keep moving forward?
Yeah.
It doesn't have to be any more complicated than that.
There was a philosopher that said,
it's not about how many times you get hit.
Or no, what is it?
I'm trying to quote that Stallone line now.
Oh, yeah, yeah.
But how many times you can get hit and keep moving forward.
It's not how many times you get knocked down,
it's how many times you get back up. Yeah, yeah. It's that how many times you get knocked down. It's how many times you get back up.
Yeah, yeah.
It's that same thing that you got to keep moving forward.
And that's the main thing.
But also to know that the person that seems to have it all figured out probably didn't have it all figured out, you know, 10 years ago, 20 years ago.
Right.
And they probably don't now.
Yeah, yeah.
You know, probably just a disappearance, you know, like know, like, uh, uh, like you don't think
the rock has bad days.
Exactly.
Somebody like that.
The rock's got bad days.
I'm sure he comes home from certain things and probably just sits there and fucking cries
just like anybody else.
Like you put in a lot of hard work or something really shitty happens.
Your grandma dies or something happens.
Sometimes it's even just working so fucking hard.
Sometimes it'll break you down
you're like fuck man that was emotional yeah i've done i've lifted weights in here before where i
just walk outside and just fucking cry it's not because it's like a huge accomplishment it's like
because i got so uh like mentally prepped and mentally ready for it that it was like
overwhelming i didn't even know what to fucking do with it so i'm like i all right well i'm not
crying in front of everybody i better i better get out of here, you know?
Yeah. And, uh, we saw, I saw Marcus do it a couple of weeks ago. He didn't,
it wasn't like he's out there balling, you know what I mean? It wasn't out there,
not out there crying a ton, but he squatted 705 for a double and a pair of knee sleeves. And
there's, there's a big story that goes on with, with everybody in here. Um, there's a big story
that goes on in everybody's life that's ever reached anything. And as you keep moving forward
and as you keep getting to different spots, it can sometimes be overwhelming. You feel like you
can't breathe. You're like, Oh my God, like what's going on now? What is this? And it can, uh, it can
kind of scare you. But again, you know, back to that point again, it's like, there's, uh, I get a lot of people
that ask me, you know, how do you get started?
And it's like a dangerous question because, uh, you know, getting started is the easy
part.
You know, you know, like you're in the middle of stuff now, now, now, okay, great.
Now you're just thrown in a fucking giant pool of thousands of actors that are hungry.
And then how many of those actors are around your age, give or take three years?
How many of those actors have a similar look?
How many of those actors have a similar skill set?
And now it's like, okay, well, there's still probably a good amount, right?
However, well, now there's other traits that start to show up uh what about being on time what about being professional what about your personality now like those are now it's like okay well at least
those things are like in my control yeah you know you can't control that you might look just like
another guy or whatever or you might have a similar style to somebody else.
There's really not a ton you can do about it other than maybe rely on experience and switch things up.
But the one thing you can control is you get to the set on time or even earlier than on time.
And you're the last one leaving and you're making eye contact with everybody.
You're communicating with people.
Josh over here, who we recently just picked up,
every time the kid walks in the building,
he comes over to me and shakes my hand,
looks me in the eye and says,
good morning, Mr. Bell, how you doing?
Yeah.
Every time he leaves, does the same thing.
Doesn't matter if I'm in the warehouse over here.
It doesn't matter if I'm in the gym. Doesn't matter if I'm in you know in the warehouse over here doesn't matter if i'm
in the gym doesn't matter if i'm in the podcast room he waits for an appropriate moment and then
he and then he you know just it's those little things that you don't forget you know we had a
guy that was working here a while back every morning when he came in he hugged everybody
yeah every every time that he left he hugged everybody everybody. And yeah, it's like, that's a little different, right?
Not everyone's used to bro on bro hug every morning and every night or whatever.
But it's those little tiny details that are the big difference.
And it's not how you read your lines.
Yeah.
There's a lot of people that are doing similar things.
But it is about what's in my control.
And then what can I like maximizing what's in your control?
And you really can't think about what's outside of your control.
It doesn't really matter.
You know,
if it's outside of your control,
just let it go.
Um,
that's,
that's something about like the audition process,
you know,
that a lot of actors,
I mean,
that's,
that's what they say.
Cattle call.
Well,
you're all lined up.
It can be tough. Cause you see, you you see 50 other guys that look like you,
the whole pretty boy Latino category, and I'm like, damn it.
I thought I had this wrapped up.
In Modesto, it was easy.
But, I mean, I never worry about it because it's like I know all the things
I have going on. I know what I'm moving towards, and I never worry about it because it's like, I know all the things I have going on.
I know what I'm moving towards and I'm not competing with anybody else.
I have my own goals.
I have things that I have to do every single day.
As soon as that audition's done, I'm not dwelling on it.
I've got more things to do throughout the day.
So like some actors are so associated with the identity of being an actor and they're so invested into this.
And it's like, there's an ego around it that they can't let go of it. So whenever they have anything
that hits their ego about that, like they, they miss an audition, they lose out on an opportunity
you'll see, but their, their whole confidence, their, their outlook on life changes, you know,
they're completely down, but it's like like you got to get outside of just that.
Like you're a human being.
You're not an actor.
You're a human being.
You know, you got all these different things going on.
What impact are you trying to leave on this earth?
And don't get so uptight about one audition, you know.
And if you go in there with all that pressure, too, you're going to screw it up.
That's the other thing.
Well, also, too, what if you're acting leads to something else that's not acting?
Exactly.
It's highly possible.
It's highly probable, actually, because you want to be as open to as many different concepts as possible in order to really get ahead, right?
Because let's just say, for example, my friend Mike Catherwood, I've been on his podcast before.
He does one with Dr. Drew.
He's on Entertainment Tonight.
Yeah. He's on there every night now.
He's one of the main guys.
Opportunities like that, I'm sure that Mike,
I think Mike was a comedian for a while.
I'd imagine he's got headshots and stuff.
He probably had dreams of being an actor.
And he probably has a laundry list of some acting gigs
that he's done over the years,
just like a lot of other people in Los Angeles, right?
But he was open to the fact that
maybe his idea of being on television
could possibly look a little different.
Yeah.
And also too, if it's a dream,
it doesn't mean that the dream's over.
It just means that the dream
may have gotten
sidetracked a little bit but it's actually still picking up more momentum yeah because if you do
if you do anything that's uh anything that's relatable to your goal which i'd say that that's
100 relatable you're all being on tv almost every day um it's still going to lead you to a lot of
the things that you want to do. It just might take you longer.
People might be like, yeah, remember that guy used to be on Entertainment Tonight?
Like Mario Lopez, his thing was the opposite.
He was an actor first, and then he ended up on Entertainment Tonight, right?
Yeah, yeah.
So I think people need to understand that maybe as you start going towards your goal,
you may start to realize that that goal is going to be shaped and might look a little different than you originally thought.
Yeah. And and you jump around a lot, but you're still moving forward is the main thing, you know, and it doesn't have to be a linear path.
You can take a nonlinear path to get somewhere.
But that that leads me to something that I'm kind of interested in is kind of your approach to goals.
Like what areas do you have goals in and how do you tackle those every day?
What's the actual practical day-to-day?
What does that actually look like for you?
My goals are, you know, a lot of times they're a little bit more like checklists.
Because I think that checklists are a lot easier to do.
bit more like checklists because i think that checklists are a lot easier to do um you know a goal to like turn slingshot into a hundred million dollar a year company it's a goal but
it's a big one and it's going to take a long time and you have that written down somewhere and i'm
fine with that yeah yeah i got i got a book of a bunch of weird stuff as a bunch of weird goals
and different things uh that i've
that i wanted to accomplish i didn't use to write stuff down and it's because the goals used to be
a lot more uh simple and um and i just didn't have as many and so they change you know what
goals become a millionaire and okay well we we handled a lot of a lot handled a lot of the, a lot of, a lot of the goals I had before I, we handled those, you know? Um, and I say we is because like, I've used this as a team,
you know, this is not about me. Um, it used to be, and that's like the way it was specifically
run that way for, for multiple reasons. Um, cause I thought that that would be the,
what would carry us forward the fastest. Uh, and it did. And now we're kind of shifting and kind of moving into some different directions.
But my goals are checklists.
It's because it helps build momentum.
So what I mean by a checklist is it's as simple as this.
And it's as simple as like executing all the way through.
Okay.
Tomorrow morning,
actually,
hopefully not tomorrow morning,
but,
uh,
let's just say for example,
tomorrow morning I'm waking up at three 15.
I like mentally kind of prep myself for that.
And I prep my,
I prep my morning before I even go to bed so that I can get it done.
And that might not seem like a goal. Cause it's like a physical thing that has to get done and it's the next day.
But I found that when the goal is a checklist, it's so much more powerful and it builds a lot of momentum for me.
So I'll say, all right, wake up at 3.15 a.m.
Before I go to bed, I'm like setting apart my uh because i'm on this bodybuilding
diet right now and it's not as nutrient dense as some of the keto stuff i was doing and so
a lot of supplements there's a lot of like pre-workout drinks and post-workout drinks and
there's all this different stuff there's meal prep um there's a lot of vitamins and minerals
and then there's all the steroids that go along with it. Right. Everybody.
And so those aside.
Yeah.
So I got everything all,
I got everything all set up. So it's all like ready to go.
Yeah.
And then my,
my shorts,
my socks,
my shoes,
I'm trying to make sure,
and I've never done,
I didn't,
I didn't use to do stuff like this,
but,
uh,
even before the bodybuilding stuff kind of came along,
I,
I would still,
uh,
prepare for the next day, but it would probably be more, it wouldn't be as physical.
It'd be more like mental.
Like so-and-so's coming in tomorrow.
I'll be fucking prepared.
That guy's coming in.
And oh shit, you know, we got A, B, and C going on also.
Let's make sure we get that done.
But by having these checklists, it builds a ton of momentum.
we get that done. But by having these checklists, it builds a ton of momentum. And before, you know,
before noon, you know, I, I've already gone to the gym and done cardio. I already came back and I ate the way I was supposed to eat, which is another check. Like there's these, uh, I call it points on
the scoreboard. There's these points that you can add to the scoreboard at every little turn, every
little thing that you do in the course of a day can be looked at as a goal yeah and and did you meet that goal and you know on a scale of one to ten did you follow through
with it all the way did the alarm go off at 3 15 you woke up at 3 45 or did it go off at 3 15 and
you actually got your ass up and got the shit done that you needed to get done get the morning
cardio done and it's you know 40 minutes on the treadmill or 40 minutes on the Stairmaster.
You know, kicking the shit out of myself there.
Get home from that.
Recover from that.
The next goal is to eat well.
I get that accomplished and then head to the gym and train again.
And, you know, get a good training session in.
And that's actually like a goal and that's actually takes mental preparation when i'm eating when i'm at my house and i'm taking my supplements and i'm eating my
egg whites and i'm eating my oats i'm thinking about the workout i'm thinking about how i'm
going to get the best effect from it i'm thinking about who's going to be there there's a whole kind
of mental game plan going into all that yeah when i drive here i might listen to music or listen to
a motivational
speech of some sort and get hyped up get excited might even walk around the building twice before
i even walk inside just to kind of get my my body mind and spirit ready for the training session so
i'm prepared to take on what i need to do once that's all done and again it's uh you know hitting
up another good meal and kind of relaxing
a little bit and then, and then getting into the podcast. But you know, it's, it's before,
like, I don't even know what time it is now, but it's basically probably before like one o'clock
in the afternoon or something like that. And already got an overwhelmingly, uh, good amount
of stuff done today to where at like one or two every day i can just be like all right cool i i i hit
everything i needed to hit now it's about family now it's about you know is is there any anything
that needs to get done in here like today we're we're talking about uh ct fletcher i ordered a
bunch of ct fletcher shirts so we're going to shoot something for him because he's my boy
and he had a heart transplant and uh he's just an awesome guy I really admire him a lot
so we're doing something for him and we have just other things to do but uh I really think that it's
important that people the goal the goal thing is is great um but uh a lot of people have goals and
a lot of people have things that they talk about that they'll never really get around to.
And what I've learned,
what I've learned is to,
is to try it unless you're going to do something or unless it's like just an
idea,
don't really say it.
Don't really talk about it.
Don't get it going.
You're,
you're putting too much pressure on yourself.
Yeah.
Um,
it's those bigger
goals are okay to have but you can also say to yourself you know what that's that's like that
might happen in about 10 years yeah or five years and that's okay it might that one might take some
time and even if it's uh that you want to be on you know in guardians of the galaxy 7 or whatever whatever uh the goal
might be uh for you coming up even if it did happen in 10 years it doesn't matter that it
took 10 years it still happened yeah 10 years is actually really not that long in 10 years from now
you'll be 33 so what yeah right you still won't be old 20 years from now you won't even be old like you know you'll
be as old as me basically and uh i don't feel old i feel fucking awesome i feel like i can take on
anything so that's how i like to do it i like to i have to turn everything into uh more of a
checklist and have it be more like stuff that you can actually do actionable yeah yeah rather than
have it be um stuff that's uh more like far out i mean even for
this bodybuilding show i'll probably weigh like 215 pounds or something that i'm not far away
from that like 10 pounds away from that so yeah 10 15 pounds away from that so it's you know it's
all stuff that's like very very close i think if the goals are too far i've used this analogy a
bunch of times this is you know uh back in the day when
you're playing mario brothers and you go to jump for that flag at the end it's like you've got to
be very careful on how you jump to that flag you need to get yourself in a certain position so you
can jump at the flag at the last moment to pick up the most amount of points to land on the flag
as high as possible right give yourself a good chance if yeah give yourself the best opportunity
you can to succeed if you jump too late then you don't get as many points right yeah and if you
jump too early you don't get as many points so don't make that jump towards your goal don't make
that leap towards your goal until the time is right and you'll know the time is right because
it'll be right in front of you it'll be it'll be very very close like i want to bench
if you're talking about you want to bench 3 If you're talking about, you want to bench 315, well, that's cool, but you didn't bench
275 yet, you know, and there's a huge difference between 275 and three, right?
So it's, uh, have those goals be things that are like, just, just kind of sitting in front
of you a little bit easier, a little bit, uh, more attainable.
Yeah.
So not, not too far off where it's unreachable. One other thing I wanted to
ask you about. So you're going into this bodybuilding show, the diet's changed a bit.
You're getting, you're getting higher carbs, right? Fats probably cut down quite a bit.
Protein's still high. What, what exactly is that looking like for you? Cause I know you just came
out of like the weight loss was a lot of fasting, a lot of ketogenic dieting. Um, and now you're transitioning
back into adding carbs. How do you feel on that? Like, what have you been noticing? What's your
overall experience with that? Um, I feel really good, but I've been also, I've been feeling really
good for, uh, you know, quite some time and, and even, you know, I'll back that up and even go
back to when I was fatter. I, I never really felt bad, like, especially during some time. And, and even, you know, I'll back that up and even go back to when
I was fatter. I, I never really felt bad, like, especially during training sessions, I,
I felt amazing, but the biggest difference has been more like in, in day-to-day life.
Yeah. In day-to-day life, I feel a lot better just walking around and being able to breathe
a lot better. But I think one thing that I didn't really recognize was how much the poor diet was affecting just health, right?
Yeah.
So I think health, people just immediately think like, oh, like diabetes or cancer or heart disease.
Well, heart disease, diabetes, and cancer all get chipped away a lot earlier than you might think.
And they get chipped away by the simplest thing that the body needs, which is sleep.
And so I think that by, by not eating healthy foods and being bigger and probably being on
way too many anabolics, uh, I, I, I caused some damage and I, I wasn't able to, wasn't able to
sleep for a long time. And so as soon as I started to bring my caused some damage and I, I wasn't able to, wasn't able to sleep for a long time.
And so as soon as I started to bring my body weight down and I want to make that very clear
because I don't think it's the diet so much. I think it's about managing your body weight. Um,
yeah, I think I was like, you know, I was 330 pounds at one point. Right. So even just
figuring out a way, how do I get down to like 260?
Right. How do I, how do I lose a significant amount of weight? I'm too fat. This is not working.
Um, it's compromising my health. Like my blood pressure was high and like things weren't like
out of control. I did even get blood work done then. And it surprisingly, it wasn't as bad as
you may think, but, um, it was really impacting my sleep and your
sleep is a real critical thing uh towards just about everything so losing losing weight is a
is a key aspect of i shouldn't even say losing weight maintaining a healthy body weight for you
is a key element in your health and making sure that never gets too far
out of hand. You know, somebody gains 10 pounds, five pounds, it's not a huge deal, but if you gain
five pounds, uh, every Thanksgiving for the next couple of years, then you're going to run into
some, uh, issues. And so I didn't really recognize that that was, uh, slowly chipping away at, uh,
compromising my health and my performance, um, in the gym.
And then the change has been, you know, the ketogenic diet, uh, especially the way I was
doing it more towards the end was a very strict ketogenic diet. Uh, the book that I wrote,
the war on carbs is a, uh, a very general ketogenic diet where it's like,
hey, look, man, dump the sugar, increase your fats,
keep the carbs very, very low.
And if I was to give you a number, you know,
keep it under 20 a day or so.
Throw in some vegetables and off you go kind of thing.
Not a ton of recommendations on protein.
I just didn't want to bog people down with too much information.
The ketogenic diet that I switched to more recently was like 80, 90% fat.
It was like through the roof.
And I started to lose weight that way.
And I do think that it's a way to kind of hack your system almost in some way.
I know a lot of people say that and some people don't like it or whatever, but I do think that, uh, it literally
is kind of a hack when you do it. Um, it is a really weird way to eat, to eat that much fat.
Uh, but it did help me to lose weight, helped me to lose body fat. And that was that with Eve,
that was without doing any sort of, uh, uh, cardio conditioning or anything like that.
And, uh, and then I had, you know, honey rum rum bod
came on the podcast and he kind of called me out on the podcast. He's like, you're in great shape.
You should do a bodybuilding show. And so here we are and the diet has changed, uh, drastically.
I was, uh, eating like probably almost 250 to 300 grams of fat a day. Yeah. Wow. So that's a lot of calories
of fat and, uh, protein was probably at like a hundred, 150 grams, something like that, which is,
you know, pretty low, but pretty standard in, in accordance to a strict ketogenic diet.
And then the carbs were non-existent and that diet was feeling really good to me in a bunch
of different ways. Um, but you know, when Hanny came in and said that, I was like, well, shit, if you're going
to help me, I'm not going to turn down world-class advice.
Yeah.
Yeah.
This guy's helped, uh, coach Phil Heath and, uh, Jay Cutler to, to, to some, uh, Mr. Olympia
title.
So I was like, man, I'm, I'm going to take that advice for sure.
And so the switch has been okay.
You know, pump the brakes here and chop out all your fat.
Fat was brought down to about 65 grams.
The protein is jacked up to 350 grams.
And the carbohydrates are about 150.
Yeah.
And I've still been toggling that.
I've still been learning that.
I haven't even gotten it right quite yet, but it's had a huge impact on me. I, I feel like I'm getting
in better shape like almost every single day. I feel like I'm getting leaner. And last time,
when was the last time you saw me? About one or two months ago, probably. Yeah. Maybe about,
I'd say about eight weeks ago. Sounds about accurate. Yeah. You know? And, uh, yeah,
I'm in way better shape than last time you came, so.
You've filled out more, I think.
Yeah.
So with that very, very high-fat diet, how was gym performance?
Was that still going well, or?
So, I mean, there's some things that I probably haven't shared with people that much.
I've shared it with people in here in the gym.
When you're trying, when you're
trying, when your primary goal, we, we talked about this earlier, we talked about, you know,
um, you know, fixating on a specific goal so you can knock it out. Right. Cause if you're
focused on too many things, you can't figure out how to get it done. Right. Yeah. My goal was to
lose weight. Yeah. Period. And then everyone keeps asking about the gym performance and the strength in the gym.
And that wasn't my goal.
You know, my primary goal wasn't there.
Now, having said all that, because I was losing a lot of weight quickly, I was losing a lot of strength.
And there was weird, there's weird shit that goes along with that that people should understand. First of all, with a ketogenic diet, you need to always know that it's really important to pay attention to your salt.
And I knew about the salt, but I didn't really know about how important it was to try to balance it out with your potassium and to try to balance that with your calcium.
balance that with your calcium. And so in talking to Stan Efferding and into researching it more and talking to Thomas Delore and, uh, you know, looking at it more, I was like, man, I don't eat
any vegetables. And I know, you know, there's the carnivore diet and things like that. And I've,
if you're not full carnivore and you're not really paying attention exactly to, uh, adhering to that
strictly, um, if you're even just a little bit off of it slightly, then
your results will be different. I guess I should say that like Dr. Baker will say, well, yeah,
you don't need the potassium levels. You don't need the vitamin C because you're not eating a
lot of other crap that might require you to need higher levels and so on. But anyway, in my case,
That might require you to need higher levels and so on.
But anyway, in my case, I wasn't a strict carnivore.
And I had to kind of look and search for other things to get potassium in.
And I started getting them in through spinach, kale, avocado.
I think avocado has quite a bit more potassium than even a banana.
You know, everybody always looks at banana.
Magnesium. And I started just to learn like about these nutrient dense foods. bit more potassium than even a banana you know everybody always looks at banana magnesium and
i started just to learn like about these nutrient dense foods and i just didn't know a lot about
that before but um so then even with the ketogenic diet occasionally i'd mix in like a potato or
something like that because a potato uh is high in many different types of vitamins and minerals
and sweet potatoes and things like that yeah rice doesn't really have much of anything in it except for carbohydrates.
It doesn't make it bad.
It just doesn't have much in it.
So, you know, switching over to that and really dropping all that weight,
my performance in the gym suffered a lot.
It was hard to lift heavy, but not only that every once in a while,
I feel like I was going to pass out. Wow. And, uh, so that has changed. I don't feel that anymore,
but I think, I think what I was really dealing with is I think I was really having a hard time
with my balance of water. And I think that my, because of that, I think my blood pressure would
be a little messed up. I think my blood pressure would actually be a little bit low.
I would lift and then, you know, put the weight down and just feel like I was going to fucking hit the ground. Yeah. But I do think that these are all things that happen when you lift really
heavy. When you're bench pressing over 500 pounds, you start to accept certain things. You're like,
yeah, my shoulder should fucking hurt right now. Yeah. A lot of weight. My knee should hurt. Right.
So when I started to lose weight, I'm like, you you know what some of this is just part of the game and i would say you know it it can be part of the game like yeah you are gonna feel
weird if you're in a calorie deficit if you're doing a lot of intermittent fasting you are gonna
feel weird in the gym but uh don't ever give up on researching it and learning more because I think that that's where
some people can fail and that's where some people can end up spinning out of the diet because then
they're like they have a bad experience you know what if I did pass out in the gym and hit my head
on another bar or something you know and yeah it would really sidetrack you for a while and really
make you really rethink what you're doing right yeah yeah Yeah. Yeah. And they call it quits. And then so now it's like that.
Yeah.
And so now implementing the carbohydrates, um, I definitely, I definitely feel a lot
better, uh, and I'm able to get more out of training, but, uh, 150 carbs is still a drop
in the bucket.
You know, it's still not, it's not really that.
That's not a high carb diet.
No, it's not.
It's not an insane amount.
So, you know, for now I feel good. Um, and even like some previous keto diets I've done before,
I've had my carbs almost at the same range as they are now. Um, just, uh, after doing a ketogenic
diet for so long and, uh, building up more muscle mass, you can, you learn that you can have more
carbs here and there, and it doesn't really, uh, affect you all that negatively. 150 would be on the high end, but, uh, I would be anywhere
between 50 and a hundred probably, you know, back, back in the day. So you're probably more
insulin sensitive at a lower body weight too. Yeah. And that's actually what they found. I did,
uh, there's a guy here in Sacramentoramento um he does our dexa scans and
he does uh some other work for us and stuff and he hooked me up to a treadmill and he tested uh
not my vo2 max but he's testing the energy output and stuff like that yeah and uh he found like the
longer duration and the higher intensity of the workout the more sugar i was burning
and uh he was like, this is really crazy.
Cause you burn, he says, first of all, he's like, you burn a crazy amount of calories
doing this kind of exercise, which was just basically, I was on a treadmill on a pretty
good grade and he kept cranking up the speed, but I never even got into like a run, but,
uh, it was still very difficult.
Cause the grade got to be like 20 something or whatever.
It was fucking hard.
Um, but what he, yeah, what he found is like, it just, I was burning more and more sugar.
And he's like, and I was like, well, what do you think?
I mean, what do you think that's from?
He said, well, I think it's from two things.
One is, he's like, it could be just the way you are.
He's like, your body might like to burn sugar.
I was like, how weird.
I never even knew about that.
Never thought about it.
He goes, but I really think is going on is that you're more insulin sensitive, you know, from doing a ketogenic diet.
And your body's more accepting of carbohydrates.
Because I'm leaner.
It makes more sense.
I have less fat in my body.
I've got more muscle in my body.
And because of that, the muscles want to run off of glycogen.
Muscles aren't really going to be all that excited about ketones probably.
Yeah, of course, with anaerobic stuff.
It's probably because all the years of being fat,
your body's been fighting sugar for so long.
It's like, we still got to keep fighting.
It's going to go back.
What's your training looking like right now, Will?
Right now what I've been doing,
I'm just coming off of, like, doing more chest and back, real bodybuilding-type splits.
But with all the traveling lately, I leveled off of that, and I've been doing a lot of distance running.
So just this morning, like, hit five miles, and then I'm going to start getting into calisthenics.
So getting back into that, and I want to work up to a couple goals in that.
One is a one-arm pull-up, which
I've been so close to that multiple times.
And then I
drink too much water and it's gone.
I don't take a dump and it's gone.
So that would be really, really
fun to get that solid. Yeah, your
body weight would be a huge factor in that, right?
Yeah, completely. Like one or two pounds and you're
thrown off. So calisthenics
Like literally a one-arm pull-up or is it
like one-handed with the other hand
assisting? No, no, no. Like an actual
like strict hang. Wow.
Yeah. I would say.
I don't think I know anybody that can do that.
No. There we go.
Smoky, yeah.
Are you still following a carnivore diet today?
So I'm following probably a largely carnivorous carnivore diet.
I mean, today I'm completely fasted.
But the one thing that I've included lately is some low sugar fruit.
So some avocados, grapefruit every now and then, citrus, stuff like that.
The main reason being there are some studies that are starting to come back that are showing with people that are doing the you know like the muscle meat carnivore diet where they're not doing
organ meats they're not doing bone broth stuff like that um they're seeing like folate deficiencies
in some of them and some things are kind of getting thrown off they're not feeling that great
so to me it just makes sense um i know that we're omnivorous. We can definitely handle carbohydrates. I'm very insulin
sensitive, so I can handle them. So for me, it's mostly, I'll be doing like beef, eggs, fish,
some dairy, cottage cheese, stuff like that. Bone broth, sometimes cod liver oil, and then I'll also
include avocados, maybe some berries, stuff like that, doing about one or two meals a day.
I like to train fasted.
For me, that's ideal, but it doesn't always happen.
Have you seen anything from Stan Efferding?
Have you seen the vertical diet?
I've heard of it, but I haven't seen too much about that.
I think you'd be interested.
He's got some really good information.
All he's really doing is he's sharing a lot of information
that he finds uh from from a lot of other leading experts in the world it's also stuff that he's
developed uh it's it's the interesting thing about it is it's not sexy you know there's not
he's not trying to sell you on like this is going to do this for your brain or this is going to do
this for this or that um, and much like a lot of
other bodybuilding style diets, uh, Stan is selling you on the worst thing ever to sell anybody on,
which is consistency. Yeah. You know, I heard a quote recently where, uh, somebody said,
you don't have to be a spectacular to be loved. Right. That's from, it's from Mr. Rogers.
And it was just his point to kids
like, Hey, you know what? Like, you know, you can draw a painting of a tree and it can, it can look
like a frog and it's fine. Like you're still going to get a hug. Like you're still a cute,
adorable kid. Right. But when you think about that, just in general terms, I think that's
actually very true. And we don't always realize that you don't need to do anything spectacular.
However, you need to be consistent.
Yeah.
And when it comes to bodybuilding, when it comes to, not even bodybuilding, when it comes to nutrition, when it comes to having a good physique and when it comes to being strong, there doesn't have to be a lot of spectacular things going on.
Yeah.
There just needs to be a lot of consistency.
Yeah, absolutely.
There just needs to be a lot of consistency.
Yeah, absolutely.
So if you start using intermittent fasting, you start using keto,
as long as you're not doing keto for three days and then going off the wagon and then doing keto for three days and then going,
it's not going to work the way that you want it to.
It's not going to be optimal.
Yeah, yeah.
I agree with that.
Consistency for sure.
It's the hard part.
That's spectacular to me, consistency.
How many people can say that they actually follow through? I know. It ends up hard part. That's spectacular to me, consistency. How many people can say that they actually follow through?
I know.
It ends up being miraculous in some ways.
It's like having Jay Cutler here and having him say, I ate seven meals a day.
I did cardio every day.
And I trained chest, back, you know you had to split and
whatever and i did it for 12 years yeah and it's like oh man that's the worst story ever
like there's no pills and there's no like like yeah what anything else anything else happened
in that time no nothing just lifting just lifting and cardio and food over and over again. Four times a day, 16 weeks.
It was actually funny when he was talking about eating seven times a day.
I actually looked it up and I found some research.
There's different studies and there's all kinds of different things,
but it shows the average American eats how many times a day you think i feel like probably five five or six with snacks and all that
15 15 so we so we thought jake cutler was doing good and then i heard about that and i was like
well that explains why everybody's so fucking fat yeah well they're also jacked but if you think
about like and this is just yeah
right this is uh you know obviously a lot different than the way jay cutler's eating
right like jay cutler's having you know chicken and rice and things like that and other people
are you know it's soda and just they're talking about consuming any calories throughout the day
yeah and i think people don't really realize they're doing that. I think that's where something like fasting can really come in because it can teach you about real hunger.
It can teach you, well, maybe that's overstated.
It can teach you about whether you're actually really hungry or not.
Real hunger is like a wholly different thing where you don't have food and there's no food in sight and you're not sure how you're getting it.
That's like real hunger.
But to utilize some intermittent fasting, I think, would do everybody
some good. I agree with that. Have you used intermittent fasting
in conjunction with other diets or mainly just keto?
I did intermittent fasting when I was vegan. So that's hard because as soon
as your liver glycogen goes down, you're not well adapted to burning fat.
So it's just like pain. It's pure pain and
you just want food and then you end up going too hard and binging after that. So it's rough outside
of a ketogenic diet on a keto diet. It's honestly pretty easy for me to do one meal a day or two
meals a day. Um, I don't really have trouble with that. What, uh, what happened, you know, when you,
at some point, you know, you, you were excited about being an actor. What did that you know, when you, at some point, you know, you were excited about being an actor.
What did that look like, you know, in your household as a kid?
Or what did that look like with your friends or other family members when you're like, you know, you're in Modesto.
You're like, I'm going to be an actor.
Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Yeah, sure.
Sure you are.
Sure you are, Will.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
I bet you're going to be an actor. No, no, no. I'm going to be an actor. Like, that's yeah. Yeah, sure. Sure you are. Sure you are, Will. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I bet you're going to be an actor.
No, no, no.
I'm going to be an actor.
That's what I want to do.
Well, you should probably pick something.
Maybe you should work at the local bank or grocery store.
Yeah.
No, no, no.
I'm going to be a fucking actor.
What did some of that look like?
So I actually kind of did it the way you were talking about earlier where I didn't tell anybody.
I just started working towards it,
and I figured people would find out eventually.
It's like Smokey.
He trains his biceps behind our back every day.
That's why they're so big.
Look at those things.
Goodness.
Yeah.
They grow two inches when he flexes them.
Holy crap.
Years and years of concentration curls.
Exactly. No, I agreed with that a lot where it's just don't talk about it too much just do it you know i i think you spin your wheels too
much when you talk about it so i didn't really tell anybody and by the time i told my family um
they were actually very supportive you know that was the crazy thing because
they they know that i wasn't going to go towards it with a lazy mentality.
They know I wasn't going to be, you know, just, you know, wasting time with it.
So they knew I was going to apply work ethic to it.
So they supported me wholeheartedly.
And I'm definitely grateful to them for that.
Yeah.
You have brothers and sisters?
Yeah.
I got a little brother who is 15, a little sister who's 13, and then older sister who is 25.
Your parents ever come to you and they're just like, you're a lot different than our other kids.
I mean, I have children, and you're very young.
It seems like you're very focused at such a young age.
Even just to know some of your goals and some of your desires as an adult at a young age is rare.
Yeah.
Are they kind of like looking at your brother maybe being like, what the fuck is he going to do?
Step game up, man.
No, it's a crazy thing, but my mom did an amazing job with her family.
So she came from Guyana, which is like a country in South America, you know, described as a third world country.
And she instilled in us just a strong mentality.
That lady's a tiger.
So she she always had us, you know, working hard from a young age.
And you're saying that she used to beat you guys.
Exactly.
As only a Caribbean woman could do. Everything, the remote, the shoe.
So no, she definitely had us working hard from a young age.
But one great thing she did for us was she talked us up a lot.
So she always told us anything we wanted to do, she would say, oh, you could do better
than that.
Like, you're going to kill that.
I used to, I thought Donald Trump, I thought Donald Trump was the greatest when I was a
kid.
Loved him. And I was, I remember reading this book and I was like, man, I love Donald Trump.
And then I remember her telling me like, yeah, you'll be greater than him. You could do that.
And I was like, for a mother to tell a kid that, you know, it instills a great deal of confidence.
And she had us, she would train us for spelling bees and then we'd go win a spelling bee. And then we, we thought we were smart, you know? So she did a lot to boost our confidence. Um, and I think that's really crucial.
I'm definitely planning to do that for my future kids. Cause it's just, it's had a world of impact
on me. It's what gave me the confidence to go into different fields where I pretty much don't
even belong and then just go in and attack them and go for it and things work out, you know?
Um, that can help you
a lot with your communication just with other people yes you know when somebody tells you hey
man i was thinking about and this doesn't really do you any good to say hey well why don't you
think about something else it's just so much easier to say hey man you know what i think you
should attack that with everything you got i think you're gonna do great doing that yeah and then
that person walks away like really really? Fuck, okay.
Yeah.
That felt awesome.
I am going to do that.
And if they believe it,
there's a good chance they'll do it,
you know,
if they apply themselves to it.
Yeah.
What about resistance other places?
What about from friends?
Are you going to be an actor?
Are you going to be in theater?
I didn't really care what they said,
you know,
because it's like,
they're not going to stop me from getting up at like four in the morning. They're not going to stop
me from doing what I need to do throughout the day.
Puck those guys.
I ran through my mind a few times, but
no, I use that as motivation.
You know,
like it's okay to play angry, you know, so
I would, if people would say
things like that to me, I would probably be more focused that day.
I would attack things a little bit harder.
Then I would log it and they're off the team.
They're marked.
They're marked, exactly.
What are some of the goals now that are kind of lofty that are out there that you might be almost embarrassed to share with us. There's some really high ones, like you want to be like somebody else
or you have a desire to
land on this crazy TV show
or you want to direct
your own thing or anything like that.
Yeah.
A couple crazy ones.
A lot of crazy ones.
He's like, oh shit, here we go.
He whips out a big list.
There is a list.
You've got to put it out there in the universe.
I'll just say I definitely agree with the philosophy of going for it and doing it.
So that's my main thing going forward.
But the areas that I really want to execute in are involved in fitness and nutrition for the majority of Americans,
not for people that are attempting to excel,
be number one in the sport.
So I'm not really aiming for elite performance,
but it's...
Help people be less fat.
Exactly.
Get the country as healthy as possible
in the biggest way possible.
Make a huge impact in action-adventure films.
So there are certain ways I've quantified that
or what I
want that to look like, but that's the general gist of it. And then some form of philanthropy
and giving back, um, whether that's public service or whether that's as a private citizen
working in philanthropy, but devoting a good portion of, um, the remainder of my life.
Once I've kind of, you know, done a lot of things that I wanted to do,
um, towards inspiring people, giving back, um, sharing what knowledge I've acquired. So that's, they, uh, say that, like, I think, uh, I wasn't in all the States, but it was just an estimate,
like in 2030, there's, uh, in some of the States, there'll'll be over 70 if we continue on the rate that we're going
there'll be over 70 percentile of children that are obese
fucking crazy right so i think that you're attacking something that that's that's a good
cause and i think that more people uh need to be focused on that it's it's one of the most
pressing issues of our time. And I know
there's a lot of other things going on. There's a lot of other things to focus on and there's,
there's all kinds of things to focus on, right. That are really important for us to get around to,
but the health thing just, it always gets swept under the rug. And, uh, people are always talking
about like healthcare and all these different things. It's like, man, if we just weren't so fat,
we wouldn't have to worry about it as much.
Like if we just could eat.
And I think, you know, to have everybody be skinny,
like obviously like that ain't going to happen, right?
To have everyone look the same or be the same,
that's not going to happen.
But to have people make some small changes
and to feel better,
to have people lose some weight and keep some of the weight off a lot of americans have lost weight many many times over
again uh only to gain it back and then some oftentimes and it's it's a really sad it's a
sad place it's a sad thing that we have people that are uh losing body parts because they can't stop eating you know
they're they end up with diabetes and lose their their foot or their leg um it's just it's it's a
really it's a really crazy thing and it's easy just to look at those people and man oh they're
fat and lazy it's like no no it's it's maybe they have become that, but it's a lot more complicated of a story. Do you have any ideas or any plans in terms of how we can get some momentum to try to fix...
You went to the keto conference and stuff.
How do we get some momentum?
How do we gain America to be fit?
So the science is there and the strategies are there. So what's missing is
public education. What's missing is nobody's taught about this stuff in schools, you know,
and while we're having biology class, it might be more beneficial for, you know, a lot of young
people to learn about their actual health, you know, to learn about how to actually lose weight.
So all of the science
is there, but the problem is marketing. Um, so what I think personally, what that's going to take
beyond just books, it's, it's podcasts, it's TV shows, it's getting it really out into the culture.
That's a huge part. And then speaking to kids, speaking to young people, because I think it's
really going to come from young people, what you learn in school, you take with you throughout your whole life.
You know, you don't forget that stuff.
So I think that that's going to be crucial.
And that's an area that I really want to execute on.
Coming from Power Rangers, it gives me a nice platform where kids will want to listen to
what I have to say about that.
So it's just a matter of putting the information in a digestible format and then getting that out there.
But it's going to be a lot of volume. It's going to take a lot of time.
And it's going to be just like Arnold did with the fitness crusade.
You know, it's going to be a year long, decade long, you know, kind of thing that has to happen.
So but it's doable. It's doable. Look at how many gyms there are out there.
Look at how many people have gotten into weight training and bodybuilding and all those kind of things.
gyms there are out there. Look at how many people have gotten into weight training and bodybuilding and all those kinds of things. Mainly because I think of his crusade and mainly because of him
going around and like spreading the word on this kind of stuff. So that tells us that it's possible.
Now there are more forms of communication, media, ways to reach out to people than ever before.
Why not take advantage of it? All it takes is, you know, time and effort and, you know,
putting that in. So. Right. And, and there's some things that people can do that, that don't always have to be so hard.
No, no, not at all. You've already mentioned it earlier on the podcast. It's like you,
you make things out to be a little bit more than they really are. And then you don't end up doing
them because you're like scared or nervous. I mean, someone who's really heavy, uh, Hey man,
get, you gotta get to the gym. You gotta eat less. less. It's like, first of all, they don't want to go to the gym.
They're too apprehensive.
They're too shy.
They feel too weird.
They don't know where to start, right?
But getting somebody to walk, hey, you know what?
And also not even just telling someone to go on a walk.
Ask them to go on a walk with you.
Yeah.
Or if it's a
you know if somebody's asking about if i get this a lot like people ask me about family members you
know i'm like well just ask the family member like if they want to go on a walk they probably
probably say yes yeah maybe they can only walk for five minutes but it's five minutes more than
they were doing before there's uh i mean all sorts of strategies you can implement to be an addition to people's lives rather than a subtraction.
If you start with subtraction, you'll end up with a lot of resistance right away.
So it's like we can't just say, hey, we got to pull out all your carbs.
Yeah, yeah.
That can be effective.
That is good information to give people that they are eating too many carbohydrates, but at the same time, uh, the story probably has to be told over a longer period of time so that they can develop,
uh, or it's, they can have the education, use the education as a weapon to create the habits
that they need. In my daughter's school, they learned a little bit about nutrition, but, uh,
you know, most of the stuff she'd learned learned she's learned from me and from my wife uh
at home and uh you know it was like maybe about three years ago she's like sitting on our stool
and she's you know eating something and she's like she's like dad she's like you know she's
like i'm gonna be she's like i'm gonna be nine and you know i think i have too many chub rolls
it's like you know i got like three when i'm sitting here it's like look too many chub rolls. So it's like, you know, I got like three when I'm sitting here.
It's like, look at these chub rolls.
She's grabbing her stomach, you know?
Yeah.
And I said, well, you know, you're, I said, I've talked to you a little bit before about, you know, food and stuff.
And I said, I'll help you in any way that you want.
You know, if there's something, you know, do you want to learn more?
You know, like I said, I don't want to ever, uh,
you know, make you feel a certain way about your body or whatever. So, you know, I think you're
cute. I think you're adorable. Um, but I said, you know, there's a lot of really easy things
that we can do. And you're, you're, the good news is, uh, you're growing and you're getting
taller all the time. And I said, so it's not like you have to like, uh, reduce or, or get rid of, you know, all the foods that you like. I said,
you just might need to, uh, cut back on a few of them, you know? And, and so, uh, I told her,
I said, Hey, let's, let's look online for a book that has nutrition, you know? Cause I didn't want
it to come in just for me. Yeah. Yeah. You know? And I said, there's, there's probably books on
nutrition for kids, you know? And I always liked the book. It's just called eat this, not that. I don't know if you
ever saw it before, but it's really simple. Like they, like you go to Applebee's right. And in the
book, Applebee's is in this book and you can, it shows you, I'm sure it's now it's an app, right?
But probably, uh, in the book it will say, you know, this meal from Applebee's has XXX calories, XXX carbs, and all these things, right?
Yeah.
It will say, try this instead of that.
It'll have another recommendation.
Try the iced tea with a twist of lemon and the chicken sandwich and no fries.
It's just stuff like that.
It gives you an option. Here's 1300 calories versus 700 calories. And it's still the meal
that probably tastes pretty good. Right. And so we stumble upon that book and they make that book
for kids. And so we ordered it and it just gave us an opportunity to discuss that more. And I think
what would have to happen in schools would be, um, you know,
going and talking to kids would be great because you can get kids excited about fitness and about
exercise and about movement. And maybe some kids will also be disappointed because maybe they can't
do certain, maybe they have trouble doing pushups because they're heavier, uh, they're heavier kids.
And then maybe they go home and talk to mom and dad about
it but it would be really cool would be to try to get those parents and get some of those people
get the teachers get everybody involved yeah and communicate with everybody on how we're all
going to attack this because you know if it's just the kids and maybe uh the message is lost just
because it's you know they're they're maybe too young. Man, what a daunting task, right?
What a fun challenge.
It's going to be good.
It is a huge challenge ahead of us, especially with that statistic you mentioned.
Yeah.
70%.
And that does look like where it's headed.
But it's doable.
Yeah, it's really crazy.
And, you know, there's so many snacks.
Yeah.
Yeah. It's all the snacks and the marketing know, there's so many snacks. Yeah. Yeah.
It's all the snacks and the marketing.
God damn, they taste good.
Double stuffed Oreos or 1.6 stuffed Oreos.
You got any poop stories for us?
You know that's part of this podcast, right?
Yeah, you've been traveling a lot, probably going on and off the diet, not necessarily finding.
What about getting in your costume and everything?
Oh, I got a story for you right now.
Let's do it.
I've never had to pee as bad as I do right now.
Oh, go for it.
Go for it.
We'll talk.
Go ahead.
And it's not a poop story, I promise.
Watch how fast it's going to be.
Okay.
You're on the clock.
I got them clocked in.
Okay.
Is this our first actor, Andrew?
We've had some wannabes, I think, before.
I don't think we ever had. I can't think of anybody else. I mean, we've had some wannabes, I think, before. I don't think we ever had...
I can't think of anybody else.
I mean, we've had artists here and there,
but none... I think this is
going to lead to Tom Cruise next.
What do you think? Are you down for
Scientology? No.
Okay, well, that's going to stop it right there.
That's going to throw things off
a little bit. Yeah, we'll just skip straight to The Rock.
Have you ever tried any acting?
You ever tried, like, what about, like, in school or anything?
You ever try, like, play or anything like that?
No.
And the funny thing is, like, I kind of always wanted to.
But, like, I just hated school.
Like, I didn't want to do anything.
Like, you know, like, I would see, like, the, like, drama nerds or whatever.
And I'm like, dude, that looks like fun.
Like, because they're always having fun.
And, but no, I never, like, I don't know. I wasn't outgoing or anything, especially during school. I would always just look at that stuff and be like, that, that looks like fun. Like, because they're always having fun. And, but no, I never, like, I don't know,
I wasn't outgoing or anything, especially during school.
I would always just look at that stuff and be like, that's stupid.
It's because, you know, because I wanted to do it too.
And I wanted to try it, but I was too scared.
Yeah.
So I was like, those guys are dumb.
Yeah.
Those guys are lame.
Look at those nerds having fun.
Yeah.
Look at those guys.
Yeah.
It's hard, you know, like doing pro wrestling and getting in front of a camera and talking.
You've seen with me, like, you know, we do the promos and stuff for the products and stuff.
And, you know, I have no trouble saying, hey, this is the X sleeve.
And, you know, it has denim on the front and it's made this way.
And this is why it's the strongest and best knee sleeve in the world.
But if you give me a script, it it more difficult yeah you hit all those points
it's not like i can't do it it's just unfamiliar territory to me yeah there's so many different
it builds anxiety and you kind of like okay i don't want to fuck this up and then the first
thing you do is you fuck it up well and because like uh maybe you know maybe you wrote it right and so maybe it's
kind of like a different style of wording than what i would use right and i just can't get that
last sentence to go and i gotta do it five six seven takes and then it just feels like once you
do a bad take it's just snowballs yeah then they're all bad takes yeah i don't know like he was saying
like oh trying to remember two pages worth of dialogue i'm just like i i can't even not even
close like i can't even remember like an instagram post or something you know yeah so to have all
that built up and then try to like portray something on screen i don't know man it seems
really really difficult.
But it does seem like fun. Dude, that was a fast poop.
You must have pooped in our sink.
I just committed a poop story.
I like that squatty.
Squatty potty.
What is that?
Oh, it's to blast it out better.
It puts your legs up.
That's where the speed came from.
It's like putting your feet in the stirrups.
I still can't get into position, though.
It's hard.
Yeah.
You can hurt your back on that thing, I think.
It's dangerous.
You have to do stretches just to be able to use it.
Yeah, it rounds you over.
Hey, what happens when you have a lot of bad takes when you're acting?
Does that throw you off?
Yeah.
Oh, yeah.
No, one thing I hate.
Does it get you, like, frustrated?
I mean, it must get you, like, really, like, you start getting, like, right?
So I've gotten this thing before where I like the way I'm doing something.
And I'm like, let's go with that.
And the director won't exactly tell you what he's going for.
But he's like, can we just kind of try this?
And you do it over and over and over again.
And then you start to see the camera guys looking at you.
And the lighting guys are starting to shake their head.
And you're like,
Oh God,
um,
that's frustrating,
man.
That's really,
I've had that happen before actually,
where the guy was like,
he clearly didn't like what I said,
but he wouldn't say that.
And he was like,
well,
maybe you should try this.
Yeah.
And I,
but it was every time he said to try that it was like a lot
of words and a lot of like way that i would never do it and he but but i was just supposed to be
myself it was for it was for like a reality tv thing you know and i'm like well i don't talk
that way yeah and so i i i'm like i could try it, but I think it's going to look stupid, you know?
And so I did a couple takes that way, and I was like, I think that's worse, you know?
Yeah.
But it was like just not matching up with what he thought versus what I thought.
But it's got to be really frustrating when you have specific lines.
Yeah.
And there's like one word for some reason your body won't allow you to say it or you're supposed to say it a certain way and you forget it.
So just to even take specific lines and to try to make that natural and make it sound like you would say it, that can be tough when you're talking about like, let's open the Ninja Nexus prism and shoot the shooting star into the thing.
And you're like, how would Will say this?
I'm working on it.
And then you go in there and you do it.
And then on top of that,
the worst thing is if you're getting like a line reading.
So this,
this kind of sucks,
but pretty much if a director or a producer or something,
they're just not liking it.
And they finally just come up to you and they're like,
look,
do it like I'm doing it.
And you're like,
Oh God.
So you're pretty much mimicking the guy that sucks.
But,
um,
that's rare, though.
For the most part, there's a lot of respect for the actors and for what they want to bring to it,
and they have to trust their casting decisions as well.
We had multiple rounds of casting, multiple auditions,
so if they didn't know us by then, then damn, you know.
That's who they hired, so you hired me to do the job,
let me do the job, you know?
They're just like, cut, we're just going to move on to another scene,
and just like that whole section is just cut out of the movie completely.
We're just going to put the director in the costume and let him do it.
Go ahead.
Sometimes when I'm looking at a photo or something like a big print
or a magazine cover and I'm looking at it,
like, dude, that's a shitty photo, and it drives me nuts.
Do you ever, like like is it hard for
you to watch tv or something and be like what the like how did they let this get through the editing
table when you see like an actor doing something lame or something uh you're just not a hater like
me i guess i feel like i've i've had a lot of trouble nowadays with suspending disbelief
you know so just watching movies
without having an analytical
eye towards it. Because now
whenever I'm watching these things, like we just watched
Jurassic Park World.
Jurassic World, yeah. The newest one.
And when I'm watching that... Why'd you guys do
that to yourself? It wasn't bad.
I don't think it was a bad movie. I like Chris Pratt.
But when I was watching that... Yeah, he's pretty good.
All I'm watching is all of these lines that they have to say.
I know that everything was on a script in paper.
Now, what did they do to bring it to life?
And they make it pretty seamless a lot of the time.
The little girl was great.
And that's a tough thing to do sometimes with kid actors, to get them to just flow into it perfectly.
So I do see myself doing that a lot now.
Like I'm analyzing everything.
Sometimes some of those kind of movies could be like almost mechanical, right?
And a little bit like almost like music video-ish.
Like it's like this montage and then somebody's got their one liner, right?
And then it's like you're predictable.
It's like a little stiff.
Stick around.
Yeah. This is just
a little too tight.
Did you watch the Power Rangers movie?
I did watch that.
I'm trying to watch it right now.
It's taking me all week.
I'll end up in jail if I tell you my take
on it.
I haven't even
gotten to the part
where they actually morph into anything.
So I'm still early.
It's just time, time, and then I start falling asleep.
So I haven't been able to watch it all the way through.
What are some of your favorites?
Movies of all time?
Oh, that's fun.
Man, so I'm definitely a junkie
with the old action adventure type thing.
So I just started getting into Van Damme stuff lately.
Never watched any of his movies.
Bloodsport.
Bloodsport, yeah.
Just started getting into him.
I love big, epic over-the-top stuff.
I should go back and watch some of those with my son.
My son would like that.
He'd like those things.
Oh, that's a coming-of-age thing.
That's like a rite.
A rite of passage, yeah.
What'd you say beyond that?
What was the other movie said?
I love stuff like
Troy, Kingdom of Heaven,
any of those big epic,
you know,
those kind of movies.
So those are the roles
that I'm aiming for that stuff.
Whatever path takes me
to get there,
but that's the kind of stuff
that I want to do.
What about Braveheart? Oh, Braveheart. Perfect example right there. That's one of Mark's to get there. But that's the kind of stuff that I want to do. What about Braveheart?
Oh, Braveheart.
Perfect example right there.
That's one of Mark's favorites right there.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Freedom, man.
I love that movie.
I can't see myself going method and playing a crackhead,
like going through a midlife crisis type thing.
It's just like I have so much respect for people that approach acting
as that sort of craft,
the transformational art of acting.
But the movies I watch
are to entertain me.
And there are different audiences.
They're making those movies
for a different audience.
I want to make movies
to entertain people.
So it's kind of like
what The Rock's doing now.
It's kind of like what a lot
of those big action stars did
in the 80s, 90s, stuff like that.
And you have an agent, right?
Yes.
And then the agent come to you with suggestions.
Do you suggest stuff to the agent?
How does some of it work?
So there's a bit of both of that.
Most of the time, they'll be forwarding different projects to you.
You check out the script sides, whatever.
If you want to do it, you go out the script sides, whatever, if you want
to do it, you go ahead, audition for that, move forward. And another thing that I'll do is if I
see a project on the horizon, I'll really push for them to market me for that. So, you know,
if we can get in contact with that casting director, do we know anybody there? Can you
pitch me to them and see if I could get a role on that? So it's a bit of both of those things. But my current representation, I'm still pretty new with.
So new managers, new agents, kind of got a new team once I came back from Power Rangers
because the team that got me to Power Rangers wasn't going to get me much further than that,
which isn't to knock them.
It was just how the process works.
So I've had to kind of create a new team around me. And I'm to knock them. It was just how the process works. I've had to create a new team around me
and I'm happy with them.
Are you worried about
accepting the role of the bad guy?
We've been watching
13 Reasons Why. I don't know if you guys
watch it at all, but the
main bad guy, apparently in real life
he's a super nice guy.
But if he plays anything else, all I'm going to be like
dude, you've raped chicks.
Yeah. I don't know, like if
say a money sign came with
a certain role, that'd probably be a
pain in the ass to have to deal with, right?
There are certain roles that I've
just decided from the outset
that I don't want to do.
There are just kind of certain
things that I'm not down to do. Because I always think like, my little siblings are watching want to do. Cool. There are just kind of certain things that I'm not down to do
because I always think like
my little siblings are watching what I do.
My extremely Catholic mother
is watching what I do.
And it's not that I necessarily have
all the same standards as them,
but I want to maintain a certain standard for them.
So it matters a lot to me,
the kind of content I do.
And I've turned down countless roles
from my agents and managers and they get on me about it because there's a lot of me, the kind of content I do. And I've turned down countless roles from my agents and managers.
And they get on me about it because there's a lot of money involved with these things.
But I always remind myself, it's like I was doing this when there was no money involved.
You know, I was doing it for free.
I was doing the short films and stuff.
So why make choices that I'm not happy with for money?
You know, like it doesn't cost that much to eat and to rent a place when
you're a single guy and that kind of thing um and by single guy i mean a not currently married guy
as you're like kind of yeah yeah you see that as you're kind of climb climbing this uh ladder um
it's got to be a little hard like if you wanted to be on say like
Game of Thrones
if you were to say something
that's maybe outside of
your current I'll just say ranking
for lack of a better term
what would your agents say about
that or would they just kind of go
try and attack it anyway
if I were to pitch something to them that's
like super big yeah yeah yeah if you're like hey I want to pitch something to them that's like super big
Yeah.
Yeah.
If you're like
hey I want to
you know
It's The Rock
Kevin Hart
Or would they
just tell you like
I mean would they
flat out tell you
like hey that's
not in our best
interest
it's like kind of
a waste of time
for now
like let's focus
on some of these
other things
because you're
still climbing
that ladder?
For the most part
they would go for it
because a lot of the time with these roles like Cobra Kai for example was going up for the lead part, they would go for it because a lot of the time with these roles, like, um,
Cobra Kai, for example, was going up for the lead part in that. And it's like a lot of these roles,
they're looking for people that haven't been discovered yet. You know, they want to make the
next star. So going for those things, they don't really have an issue with that. If you fit the
part and you know, if, if you're what they're looking for and they can put you in, in addition
to some big names that are going to draw money and things like that, they're cool with that.
So, obviously, if you're about to star in a huge franchise, like look at Star Wars, for example.
A lot of the people that are starring in that, they're relative unknowns.
You know, they weren't doing the biggest things before that.
Same with Game of Thrones.
So there's a lot of room to just skyrocket overnight
with that kind of stuff.
So they're not necessarily,
they wouldn't necessarily count me out of that kind of stuff.
So I pitched that to them.
But it does have to be the right thing
because if they have too many sour experiences
with casting directors,
the casting directors won't listen
to their recommendations anymore.
If every time they send me out for something,
I suck, they're going to stop
sending me out for stuff.
It's definitely a mutual partnership.
I want to do the best,
and they want to do the best for me.
They make money when I make money.
How do you deal with rejection?
That's got to be kind of a hard thing.
You did mention you just kind of move on,
but it's got to be kind of a hard thing i mean you did kind of mention you just kind of move on but uh it's got to kind of it's got to hurt in some way
i i've got to be a lot of rejection in acting yeah right like i know you're not
like i i know that you're probably trying not to take it personal because they're looking for
somebody specific but uh at the same time like i'd imagine it does get a little personal. Are we talking before or after I cry?
Yeah, exactly.
No, I I swear to God with this.
It's just like I I don't get my self-worth anymore from what people tell me.
You know, like, oh, you if somebody if a casting director told me, listen, you suck as an actor, you need to find something else.
I wouldn't really care.
Because to me,
I understand how this,
it's like you get under 135
when you're starting out
and you fail.
Are you gonna tell yourself like,
okay, well,
I guess weight training's not for me.
So I don't worry about that
because I know that who I am today
is not who I am in a year
or in 10 years or in 20 years.
And that sounds like,
it maybe sounds like,
it maybe sounds like cliche motivational quotes and stuff like that,
but it's the honest to God truth.
Like you really can't let people decide
your direction for you or your self-worth.
Have you ever been real disappointed
that you didn't get a particular role?
Like you really thought you were going to land one
and it just didn't work out and you're
kind of heartbroken? The one that I've completely, I stacked all of my chips with this one was the
Power Rangers one. I was never more laser focused on one role in my life than that one. And I
completely believed them. So I actually,
I still have this picture on my phone,
but I took a picture of like the Red Power Ranger,
put my name under it,
starring William Shufelt.
And that was a good four months
before, you know,
the final casting decisions,
all that kind of stuff.
I was completely emotionally invested
in that, mentally invested.
Nobody could tell me anything about it.
Had that not worked out, I would have
been extremely butthurt. I would have been very disappointed. But since then, I kind of take a lot
of these things in stride. And, you know, you fail a workout, you fail a rep, whatever it is,
you just kind of bounce back from that and figure out the game plan going forward and keep going.
But it's not a personal thing, though.
You know, like the casting directors, they're trying to make money.
They're trying to do their job.
The producers are trying to make money and do their job.
So if they tell you you suck for a role or you're not the right person for it, maybe they're right.
You know, who cares?
You know, it's a business.
And a lot of actors come from a very artistic or emotional kind of background.
Maybe that's part of coming from economics
where like I get what they're talking about.
Like it is a business.
Maybe I wasn't right for this.
You know, I'll work harder and I'll come back next time.
So it makes sense.
Yeah.
Where can people find you?
They can find me on Instagram for one.
So that would be at William Schufelt
S-H-E-W-F-E-L-T
they can also find me
on YouTube
at youtube.com
slash
Will Schufelt
and those are my
two main platforms
I also recently
released
it's sort of like
my approach to
training
cardio
fasting
and a more
carnivorous
ketogenic diet
so it's like the carnivore shredding
program. So that's on the carnivore shredding program.com. Um, so they could check that out
as well if they're into that approach. Um, that's, that's pretty much it. Anything else coming up?
Let's see, what am I up to right now? So the thing I'm working on right now is a book project
that would actually, it's completely in line with the kind of thing we were talking about. So I really want to market the heck out of this thing once we have it out
there published in the shelves. But that would basically be the best biohacking tips, nutrition
tips. It's kind of like an overall best practices that the average American can implement. It's very accessible. Um, that
would create the most dramatic, uh, I guess, positive changes to their health. So it'd be
really cool. That's almost like a, like a, uh, uh, like a Tim Ferriss style of book, but it's
specifically for nutrition diet. Yeah, exactly. So if you have like a tools of Titans, that sort
of book, it's essentially like choose which of these you want to do.
And we're going to rank what's the most effective, what's going to create the biggest lifestyle
change. You always want to knock down that lead domino and get the rest of the things out of the
way. But it's going to combine a lot of the practices that people know about, intermittent
fasting, lower carbohydrate diets, whole food diets. And then it's also going to go into cold exposure, circadian rhythms, sleep,
hormonal levels, what you can do to kind of decrease your cortisol.
There's a lot of things to talk about.
There's a lot of things to talk about.
So it's going to try to just simplify.
Simplify what's best value on every single thing,
and then here's how you can do these things without having to go to, you know, a lab or something like that.
Very cool.
Well, that's all the time we got.
Strength is never weakness.
Weakness is never strength.
Catch you guys later.