 If you want to pump your body and expand your mind, there's only one place to go. Mind pump, mind pump with your hosts. Sal DeStefano, Adam Schaefer, and Justin Andrews. It's always a good time when we sit down and have a conversation with the Pac-Man. Yeah. Ooh, Pac-Man. Ben Pac. I like that nickname you just came up with. Isn't that the nickname? I think that's Manny. I think that's Pac-Yau, right? Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. A little different. But I'm giving it to... A little bit of a different episode, though, with someone like Ben. So we went pretty deep. We got into a lot of deep conversations that had nothing to do with building muscle, I think. No, we talked about business. We talked about personal growth. I mean, he's a very intelligent human being. It's a lot of fun talking to him. And you want to talk about somebody who completely shatters the stereotype of a bodybuilder. It's him, you know, and you sit down with him. He's one of the smartest people you'll have a conversation with. Great conversation. We got really deep. In fact, we recorded something like two and a half hours, maybe almost, podcast. And we, you know, the first half or so is the one you're gonna hear right here with us. And it's us asking him a lot of questions. And the second half is he digs in pretty deep with us. I think he'd probably dug in deeper than a lot of people who've interviewed us. And that'll be on his podcast. Right, right. But yeah, great interview, man. I had a great time with Ben Pacolski. Always shows us great hospitality when we come down to visit him in Tampa. We got a chance to work out in his gym. 100% when you think about all the people that we interview. I mean, Ben's probably one of the guys that I probably stay in the most contact with for sure. Just cause he's just a good dude, you know, all around. He's not just a smart fitness guy. Great place to go for knowledge like that. I mean, that's how I found him when I was competing because I was searching for somebody at the pro level that was putting out really solid information. So he's been putting out solid information for quite some time and then to now see him transition out of bodybuilding into what he is now. And, you know, you kind of hear him really trying to figure that out right now. You know, he's not sure if he wants to do some obstacle course race or some marathon or something. It's great to see, you know, bodybuilders like him come through and kind of break the mold and the stereotype that kind of comes with the, you know, the way you normally expect a big bodybuilder like that to talk about. So this was totally different. Oh, he's, he's part of, he's part responsible for the movement that we have predicted a long time ago and said that, you know, there's going to come a day real soon here when bodybuilders are doing all the meditation, the float tanks and that's going to become like a norm. I mean, when you talk about those are the most elite athletes when it comes to competing for your physique, right, you're going to see these guys start, you know, biohacking more and using these tools, I think to calm stress down. Oh, I had the, when we were talking about the autonomic nervous system and how he believes it plays a major role or at least managing it plays a major role in your ability to build muscle, burn body fat and assimilate food, which I hadn't even thought of, you know, when you eat food, how being able to put yourself in a sympathetic state is quite important for assimilation. And he talked about how bodybuilders are or at least successful ones in part are successful because they're able to get big on less food because maybe because they assimilate more of it or they're able to absorb more of it and this may be part of it. So this is some really good, interesting conversation. There's some nugget bombs in there for sure. I'll tell you what, there's a, there's a part two towards, I think it's around the middle, middle, middle of the end when, you know, we start digging in on some pretty personal stuff. And you know, you hear me kind of call him out because I can tell we're asking some really tough questions for him to process right now. And you guys got deep. I mean, I was, I was sitting back and kind of really listening to the conversation. It was just kind of funny because he kind of pulled me back in, you know, to the conversation, but I was really into where we were going. I think that was him trying to bail himself out. Yeah. I think he was like, these motherfuckers are going in on my personal shit. And I didn't know how much he wanted to divulge that to our audience. So, you know, we'll see. I know our form always loves to pick up on all those little subtleties about the interview. You'll hear that later on. Yeah. So we, again, we had a great time with him. So you're going to hear us talking to Ben Pekolsky in this episode. And also I'd like to say something about some of our programs. Now, if you're new to Mind Pump, you may not be familiar that we've created several fitness programs under the acronym MAPS, which stands for Muscular Adaptation Programming System. They're extremely effective at whatever goal they're designed for. So if your goal is maximum strength and muscle, well then MAPS etnobolic is your program. If you're more into the aesthetic and you want to sculpt and shape your body, maybe you're a physique competitor or a bikini competitor, or you just want to look like one, we have MAPS aesthetic. Or if you're a functional base trainer or an athlete, we have MAPS performance. And then for those of you that are really serious, we have bundles where we put them together, several of these programs together because there are more in a way where you have, for example, our MAPS Super Bundle gives you one year of exercise programming. In other words, you enroll and you have weekend, week out, new workouts, sets, reps, tempos and goals set up for you with demo videos for an entire year. So if you want more information on that, just go to mindpumpmedia.com. And without any further ado, here's Mind Pump talking to the good, awesome, smart Ben Pakulski. I want to get into something that we were talking with Ben outside that I think is a really cool topic. And that's just like when you're, when you made that decision that you're going to go build your own business, just cause I know Sal, Justin and I, we have a lot of experience with training trainers and developing other fitness leaders. And then it was inevitable they, most of the time they're going to be with you for three to five years at most and then they go off to do their own thing. And some of them do great things. Many of them though. Most of them don't. Right. Most of them fail. That's the reality. And they don't, you know, when you're being 100% and we, we talk very real about this on our show, we just had a question somebody was asking about starting their own gym. And it just seems like every trainer aspires to do that at one time once they learn their craft, but have no, yeah, they don't, they don't succeed. So what, what, what have you experienced with yourself personally? Cause you built your name up through bodybuilding. You had a huge name and you did it and you talk about some of the challenges you had. So my gym was built a very, with a very different model in mind. I never built it to, to be a financial model. I built it to have a playground for myself and to have some people come in for camps. So I was basically just leveraging my platform and the intention wasn't going to bring, bring in a couple of trainers to assist me and grow it from there. And I, man, I'm a strange human being, or at least I see it, I feel that way now that I do everything from an altruistic perspective. Now I do everything and I think everybody's like me, right? I think everybody's trying to help everyone else. And then as you get into the world, you realize that people don't give a shit about anyone except for themselves, not everybody, but obviously this seems to be a very common theme. So yeah, man, you're just, you're just, I'm running into this in business and as you grow it, it's very hard to keep great people. Because not everyone's like you. And I think this is the greatest learning experience for me. Not placing higher expectations on employees than simply being an employee. What are you learning about yourself in that process? Because that's a, I'm sure it's a growth. You made a, you said, you said you do things from an altruistic perspective, like what is that doing for you? Or what, you know, where did that come from? Good question, man. I love you digging in there, Sal. So, man, I talk about this often. So when I get interviewed, you know, I've been interviewed a few times lately and it's digging into my childhood, right? I felt very unloved as a child, man. I felt like I didn't have anyone around me. So I literally stuck two middle fingers up to the world and I said, I can do it myself. And I internalized everything. So, you know, my mom is often a thing, my dad was often his thing. I lived at home with my grandparents who were much older and non-related. So I just became a very independent person. And because I didn't feel loved, I feel like I have to turn around and love everybody 10X. Yeah, because I know what it's like to be alone. I know what it's like to be unloved. So my give back to the world now is like, hey, man, I just, I want to give everybody, I want to help everybody overcome their fear. I want to help everybody overcome their internal demons because my childhood was shit. Like I struggled, man. I had some demons deep. So now that I've been able to at least start to unravel the layers of the onion, I feel like there's lessons there that can be transcended to many people. And I don't claim to be able to help everybody. But if, and I don't ever try even to frame it from a perspective of help. I frame it from a perspective of, here's a perspective, here's a question that may help you ponder the path, pondering overcoming these demons that you're living. So this reminds me of something that I had dealt with myself growing up. I had a great family, lots of love, but I also felt very inadequate. I was a very skinny, painfully skinny kid. So I lifted weights and I created this persona of being this muscular person because I thought if I had that, that I would be more valuable to other people. So in other words, I was doing something, feeling like it would make me more valuable for their love. Do you find yourself in a similar situation where if you give out as much as possible, maybe I'll be worthy of this love that I didn't get as a kid? That may be it, man. And speaking to you, to your childhood, like very similar path to me, right? So I didn't feel loved. I felt I was a very fearful kid. So I built up this big armor. Like I literally, that's looking back on it. Literally, figuratively, literally. I built up this 310 pound armor that I could be on the Olympia stage because I thought it was gonna make me more confident. I thought it was gonna give me better self-esteem. I thought it was gonna make me maybe more lovable, maybe from the opposite sex or whatever it is. But you get there and you're standing on top of the mountain and it's a very lonely place, right? And you go, oh, it didn't do any of that stuff for me. So that's the lesson to be learned is the true beauty of the process is in the process. It's in the climbing of the mountain, not standing at the top because the top, when you get there or what you believe to have been the pinnacle, when you set out to set that goal, you get there and you're like, oh, there's nothing here. Like I'm all by myself. One of the worst things sometimes for people to accomplish, believe it or not, is their goals, no joke. Yeah, it's absolutely true. Sometimes you get your goal and you get there and you're like, oh, shit, I'm just as sad as I was before, but now I don't have something to chase on top of it. How many of your peers do you think are still struggling with that? When you think about the Olympia stage, how many of those guys are running from something else? Well, we're all running from something, right? At the end of the day, like anyone who wants to put on that a degree of muscle is there's something there, but I'm not gonna speak for anyone else. I mean, everyone always has different insecurities and everyone associates with or relates to like getting picked on or being a skinny kid or whatever it was. I wasn't really picked on, man. Like that wasn't my thing, but I was definitely didn't feel like I had any love from anywhere. You know, like I just was. Did that cause a lot of anger? Fear. More fear. Yeah, I was the lone wolf, man. From the time I was seven years old, I was the kid who was doing whatever I wanted, whenever I wanted, no real restrictions. It wasn't a really particularly bad kid, but yeah, I just kind of did what I wanted when I wanted, wasn't good in school, but only because I didn't do it, you know? Like I just never tried, so. How long did it take you to start identifying this and then being able to talk about it? Because there's two levels that I found. It's like, first you have to be able to identify it because you're so unconscious to it and then being able to talk about it. Boy, that's a whole another level. I'll tell you what, going deep on it for me has happened since leaving bodybuilding because when you're in it, it's still very hard to look at it objectively, I guess. And like, what am I doing? But the first realization started to come, you know, as far back as 2012 and 13, where I was standing, you know, 295 pounds, five days out from the Olympia, shredded glutes in and wouldn't take my shirt off in public. Like most insecure I'd ever been in my life. I'm like, what the fuck is wrong with me? What is this? Whereas most people would be like, oh man, you must have been on top of the world. You must have been the most secure. You must have this UG go. It was none of that for me. It was absolute opposite. And I felt the most alone and the most insecure I ever was. And that's when I realized that, oh, okay, great. I've accomplished what I set out to accomplish, but it didn't do what I hoped it would do for me. So now where do I go? And then you start looking, okay, well, now you start realizing, well, what has developed in my life? What have I got better at? Well, I get better when I face my struggles, when I face my fears, when I go introspective and I realize like, hey man, if the thing I say to myself all the time, if you can't, therefore you must. And if there's something that I suck at, if there's something that I avoid, then well, then I must. And since I've started approaching my life from that perspective and obviously transparently taking complete ownership for everything, changes perspective, man. That's hard, man. That's really hard, especially when the old you, because when the new you emerges, it's not that different from a snake coming out of its skin. Like you're literally killing your old self, which can be very, very painful. And that's a figurative thing to say, but in a literal sense, I think you were blessed in a way. And if you can just kind of bear with me for a second, here you are this massive dude, 300 plus pound bodybuilder, and you're gonna do this figurative change and shedding your old skin, but you also have the opportunity, although some people might find it exponentially more difficult. There's also, I think, exponentially more potential growth or speed of growth and the fact that you actually got to shed your old body. You got to lose a shit ton of weight along with this change. They happened at the same time, am I? Yeah, I was still in the process, man. And so I think one of the biggest things that happened during training or during competing that really had allowed me or forced me to look introspectively is why I hated training. Why I put all the ownership outside of myself for so long, you know, like blamed things outside of myself, you blaming other people, you're blaming, you know, as a professional bodybuilder, you attach to day to day has to be a world-class workout, right? Today has to be the best workout of my life or I fail. So imagine how much that standard is just ripping you down because it's impossible to sustain. So being able to look at that and go, God, how did I get here where I started to hate training? It was a really important thing for me to start looking introspectively and realize like, oh, it's just your perspective, you know, perspective is everything. And then, you know, having left bodybuilding, looking back and now I love training. So it's a balance between- You love it the same or differently? Well, differently for sure. So obviously when I was climbing the ladder, it was a single-minded, selfish focus. Or now I just, it's definitely different. I like to challenge myself. I like to seek, so the way I teach this to people, man, is I like to use training as a daily battleground for life. So where am I trying to cheat? Where am I trying to skirt out? Where am I trying to be lazy and look at it? And it's just right there in front of you, every day in the gym. And if you're not wanting to go, if you're not following your workout or your meal plan or whatever it is, well, there's your opportunity for progress, right? It's sitting right there in front of you and it's not, I don't have to become a whole new person overnight. I just have to take that one step closer to the person I want to become. Wow, yeah, so- I want to go back to you talking about being a lone wolf. There you go, yeah. Because you've, I'm sure you've had a ton of success that way where you have, I mean, independently training, building your empire. It's my greatest blessing and my biggest curse during the other life. So you being a lone wolf, I want to dig into a little bit about how well do you work with others? And has that been- That was good. That's the same thing. Yeah, fuck you both. You love us both. The team dynamic versus, you know, you overcoming it. Sure, so I chose bodybuilding because it was me and I had no one else to blame and I chose sports growing up that, well, I played team sports and I was great at team sports but I always literally was the captain of the team not because I was a great leader but because I was the best player and I would say, guys sit down, I got this. And that was terrible. And I think, you know, how am I dealing with others now? Much better during my career, terrible. Not that I was ever mean to anybody. Not that I was ever mean to anybody. I want to hear, I want to hear. I know you're such a growth-minded person that I know you've got times in the back of your head that you're like, fuck, I was that guy. I did that or I said that or I launched this guy. Tell me some things that you did. You know, I'll throw my way phone at the bus when I first met her the very first day that we met. I mean the first day, but the first time we dated. I said, listen, here's my life. I'm a professional bodybuilder. I'm going to continue to be a professional bodybuilder. I go to the gym twice a day. I eat, I sleep and I train. And if you can make that better, you can stay. If not, there's the door. And I literally said that looking back on that while she stayed, I'm lucky. But looking back on that, that's a fucking asshole thing to say. Maybe it's good because it laid out very clear expectations. Well, at least you're honest too. That's the problem with a lot of guys that they try to play their best game at first. And I was like, I'm not playing my best game. I'm giving you the truth. And I think that was appealing for a lot of women. It's like, oh, at least I know exactly what I'm getting. We didn't have a date for eight months. You know, like I was training for shows. I was like, sorry, like this is what I do. You want to come to the gym? You want to come home? That's it. That's all we got. So you're looking back on it. Maybe I would have dealt with that a little differently. And I just like day to day interactions of how much training partners that I blew through who, you know, patiently kept coming back and I was never nice. I was like, you're getting in. I was, I don't know if it was angry, but I was very focused. If you get in my way, I'm going to fucking crush you. And that was my focus. And it's like, if you so much as fucked up a set, you knew about it and you weren't coming back to the gym. That sounds angry, dude. Yeah. I'm just saying, I'm just keeping it real. You know what I'm saying? That sounds like, I mean, I'm sure it manifested as focus for you because you had a goal and it's probably why you were. But that's exactly it. If they fuck with your focus, then you're angry. Right. I'm like, yeah. So, and I get how I would have been a very hard person to be around because everyone needed to walk on eggshells. And what can I do, right? Like I can apologize for it, that does nothing. But I can go back and look, could I have done it differently? And I asked Dorian, it's the same question. Cause we have a very, you know, parallel existence with that. I was like, I don't know. That's all I knew at the time. Like all I mean, cause as an athlete, you put so much pressure on yourself to perform. You put so much pressure on yourself to succeed that I could already screw up on my own. Like I'm putting so much pressure on myself. I don't want somebody else screwing up for me because then what? Right. And then like I'm going to blame somebody else. That doesn't work. So that's why, I mean, that's why I chose independent sports is I liked taking it all on myself. I liked taking the pressure of the world on myself and saying it all stands on my shoulders. I can do everything. Now, transiting into business life, learning how to be a leader and inspire people and you know, have people get behind a mission. You know, we all have the same mission. You know, whether, you know, looking back at Michael, we all have this mission to get the Mr. Olympia contest. Now we're a team doing it rather than a solo person doing it. So now the team, the team mission, obviously in the business is different, but we're all working to this very, very clear, focused vision and now inspiring all members of the team, all, you know, parts of the, parts of the team, all parts of the wheel to contribute equally and just as much, just as much focus is a very new thing for me. So my primary focus these days is learning leadership and learning how to like, what does it look like? That's a man, that's a serious transition when you're somebody who's had so much success by yourself. And I remember when I made that switch because from like 20 to 25, I had found that I could run fast enough, I could work hard enough to hit this total revenue goal that our gym needed to hit. I could handle that all by myself and I was very successful that way. And I had the mentality that, okay, either run with me or get ran over. And it got me and I was successful. I was the best. So how- But then you're standing by yourself. Right, you know, who's gonna tell me that this isn't the way to do it, I've been successful so that vision is a lot smaller. When that light bulb goes off and you realize that, right, that fuck. And what it is, it's not even a matter of can you keep doing is it, do you really wanna keep doing it this way, right? It's very lonely, man. And you know, it's the learning, the lesson to be learned for life for everybody is it's not about the indestination, right? Like we're so focused on, I wanna make a million bucks. We're so focused on when I wanna, you know, put 30 pounds of muscle on, so lonely when you do it by yourself. You have to learn to do it and enjoy the steps along the way and bring people with you and create great people that come with you and lead them so we can all get to the end and have this amazing celebration together rather than standing on top of the mountain bike. Well, there's a statistic of lottery winners. You know, they won the lottery and two years later, they're just as miserable as they were before because they weren't able to follow the journey. You know, you're talking about how you were so, just laser focused before, how you were so different before and how different you are now, how much you've grown. And I've experienced this as well as, as I grow, the people that were loyal with me and were there with me in the beginning, maybe don't grow at the same pace or you know, everybody grows at a different pace. So I'm not saying I'm better or whatever, but it's different, right? I may change and they may not, but I still feel, I would feel this responsibility for these people who were there for me when I was a different person, but they were supporting me. And now, what the fuck do I do? Like, what do you do with that? Are there people that you've had to kind of let go because they were with you when you were fucking super focused, Ben Picolsky, you know, pro bodybuilder and now you're different focused and working on teams and they were great for the old you, but not for the new you, are you, what do you do with that? It's extremely challenging situation, man. And you know, I have this thing in my life and I've been doing this for a long time is when it sucks, most smile. And so, you know, That's a good quote. At the deepest depths of the hardest parts of my life, I smile and that's where I am now with a lot of people. And I'm saying, there's an opportunity here for me to learn it. And a lot of people are not coming along this journey with me, right? Staff, family, friends. And because I've always had the badge of honor of I'm the lone wolf, it's hard not to revert back to that and go with the two fingers up type of attitude. And I'm confident that I'm aware of it enough that I'm not going to let it become me because I literally look around and I see every opportunity as a learning opportunity or every challenge as a learning opportunity. So everyone who's in front of me who may not be doing the same thing I am, I don't tell them to come with me. Like you said, I'm like, hey, if you want to follow, I'm going to lead or we can do this together. But there's definitely a lot of people who are just, they're living their own path, they're fighting their own demons, right? We're all fighting our own demons. And I think because I had this great opportunity to have a challenging childhood, because I had this great opportunity to have an extremely challenging journey as a professional bodybuilder, I now know what it's like to seek challenge. I know what it's like to feel pain and feel fear and do it anyways. And that's become my gift to be able to accelerate past the suck faster. Cause ultimately that's all it is, right? It's like, you see it in front of you, most people go, I don't want to do it. Like, you know, we all just are so good at muting out our minds. We're also good at numbing out our life. I'm still a little better at paying attention. I recently read a quote that helped me with that because I had a friend who I was really close with in junior high and high school. And he's a great guy, like wonderful dude, came over my house all the time, family loved him. And we just drifted apart, mainly my fault, but I say my fault as if it was a bad thing. And mainly because I felt like it was a bad thing, but I just grew and changed and he didn't or he did at his own pace and I just couldn't connect with him. And I felt like it was detriment to me to try to force this relationship that I've always had, but I always felt kind of guilty of it. In fact, he contacted me recently and I haven't called him back yet. And it's because of that. And it's exactly, when I met with him, we hung out, but then I haven't like done anything since. And I read a quote recently and, you know, for all intents and purposes, this applies, although the quote was for being, as for being a parent. It said, never do for your kids what they can do for themselves. And it was a brilliant quote. And it makes total fucking sense because when you do that, you're doing you and your child a disservice. And then I applied it to, well, these people that I would hang around with and the way I was, I was always a leader. People always followed me. And a lot of the times the way I led was very similar. I'd fucking run. And many times I do for you what you could do for yourself. It's like the bullet train, right? Like grab on tight or you're not gonna hold on. Right, but the problem then becomes when I reach a point where it's like, okay, I'm not gonna do this for you. Like we all got to do our own thing. That's how we all grow. Then all of a sudden they're like, two things would happen. Either one, they become resentful towards me because now I'm not doing what I used to for them. Or B, they had the false belief that, oh well, fuck, I go do this on my own now and I'm gonna make this happen. Not realizing how much of their success was due to other people providing them with these opportunities. Very, very difficult. Are there any, is there any particular relationships you have that were the most difficult for you to kind of let look? Speaking to the childhood analogy though with my kids, as a dad who lived a very fearful life as a child, I very much attached. I'm sure a lot of parents can relate to this is protecting their children. So I don't wanna protect the kids. I believe my kids are my greatest teachers. I don't think I'm teaching them anything. I think they're teaching me everything. To be honest, but you know, well, they're like, well, what is your job as a parent? Well, my job is to learn. Well, I used to say my job is to protect them. And then what do you protect them from? And even telling them that, hey, my job is to protect you. Well, now they feel like they can't do it themselves. And you're taking so much away from them. And there's so much deep psychology there that is well beyond the scope of what I can speak to. But so much to be learned from kids. And man, relationships in my life, there's a lot of hard ones, man. Like, the hardest one that comes to my mind is my dad. Yeah, deep layers there, man. Like my dad and I have had zero effective relationship father, son for 20 years between the time I was seven and 27, almost to the day. And he never called me by my first name. He never called me by my name. He would always call me something derogatory. And then one day I was starting to become a better person and I was like, my life is becoming more successful. And I wanted to start shedding the skin of this childhood anger. And I wanted to start shedding the people in my life that were holding me back to use my term at the time. So I said, fuck him, I'm gonna knock every talk to this guy. And I went to my friend who's also doubles as life coach. And I said, Alvin, I'm gonna, you guys know Alvin, you're serious too. So I said, Alvin, I'm gonna talk to, I'm gonna never talk to my dad again. I'm gonna tell him, I'm gonna go up to him and tell him, man, I'm gonna say, dad, I don't ever want you in my life again. He says, whoa, whoa, whoa, hold on. Let's talk about this. He goes, why? Oh, because he did this. Well, why did he do that? So we went back and did some NLP like regression stuff where I got to like look at the situation in my life. And long story short, I went to my dad and I said, dad, you know, this is what's happening in my life and I don't want you to do that anymore. And since then our relationship has become exceptional. There's so many opportunities in life that I'm seeking. You know, you're speaking to try and answer your question here. I'm just looking at relationships, everyone in my life as an opportunity to improve my ability to communicate and not place, not have any attachment to the outcome in either way. I'm just gonna try to, not if it's rectified the term but I'm gonna try to make things as smooth and seamless as possible with everyone who is now potentially exiting my life. No attachment and really just taking a perspective of a student. Here's the second part to that quote and it was you don't wanna make your kids safe, you wanna make your kids strong. And this is because life is what it is. It's difficult and it's challenging for everybody. And now in terms of making people strong, they need to meet challenges. The challenges need to be challenging enough to where the person grows. Is that what you believe? You need to make your challenge strong. I do now. Here's the deal. I'm an old school Sicilian family. Mom did everything for me. It's one of the reasons why, one of the reasons there was many reasons but one of the reasons why my 15-year marriage ended in divorce is because I didn't do things for myself that I could. I was a typical mama's boy so I didn't do shit around the house, I didn't do any of that stuff. A lot of resentment built there and I had my own reasons and it was a little two-sided. So he's always expecting us to clean up after him too when he's here. So, but I firmly believe that now and when someone gets strong, the way they get strong is there's challenges that challenge them but they're able to meet them and succeed out of those challenges. If you're challenged too strongly and you fail too often, then you have a terrible result. Now you seem to be the kind of individual who's exceptional in the sense that probably more than the average person, you'll meet a challenge and it won't break you as much as it will the average person. And so your challenges, however much more difficult they may be have formed you into this obviously very successful growth-minded and oriented individual. How big of a role did your father play in how strong of an individual you are now? And what the time, I thought he was a terrible human and same with my mom. I resent both of them massively as a kid. Now looking back at it, they're my greatest gift. The challenges I faced and the obstacles that I had to overcome, man, I was a very sad kid. I was so introspective. Like I wasn't outwardly sad, but I took all that weight in myself and I faced a lot of shit, man. Like I still face a lot of stuff. I still take on way more burden than maybe I should. But that's what, I mean, I just became good at it. So to answer your question, it was so important. It was massive. Like it allowed me to become the man that I am and saying, you know what, despite I said Adam was, you know, being a lone wolf was both a blessing and a curse. It's very hard for me to not be that guy. It's very hard, you know, that allowed me to be that guy. It allowed me to be the most successful bodybuilder I could be. It allowed me to be successful businessman. But at the same time, you know, the analogy I sometimes use is if the, you know, I was so focused that if the gym was on the left and on the right, there was, you know, the world was ending or there was, I'd still be like, okay, I got a leg workout to do. I got to finish that first then I can go over here and do this. And looking back at it, man, like that's a terrible, terrible place to be, but it allowed me to be focused because I was so independent, right? Like nothing else mattered. I was going to take care of me first and then I can worry about everybody. So where are you evolving as a leader now then? So I mean, I think that's such a great discussion and topic to have with a guy like you who's had a lot of success and thinks that he's growing right now in his leadership skills. I love to read that's one of my favorite reads is leadership. And I think it's something and I can totally identify with having a lot of success on my own and then the transition of working through others. What are you learning right now? Is there any practices that you've put in place? Yeah, massive, man. So obviously as a bodybuilder, I had a very specific mission. I had a very specific desired outcome and it was relatively small. It was relatively like, hey, I want significance. You know, I want to build this tribe of people who think I'm special. And you know, that's pretty shallow. You get there and like, oh, this sucks. It's kind of like bodybuilding. And then not the bodybuilding sucks. I'm saying like it just didn't fulfill me. And now I've got this new objective. And as far as leading a team, I think it's just clarity of purpose, right? You have to have that end result that allows everybody to work very, very clearly. Like, you know, the mission, what's the mission? The mission is this is the end result we need to achieve and then breaking it down into incremental steps for them to achieve. That's hoping that they care about that goal as much as you do. Well, no, I think that's impossible. So what I've been doing is, you know, I've been applying a book that I think I shared with you is the Four Disciplines of Execution, which is Sean Covey and another guy's name I forget. He did the Seven Habits too, right? Yeah, for sure. But yeah, yeah. So, but the Four Disciplines of Execution, Stephen Covey did the Seven Habits of how successful people Sean's a son. It's a business framework. And I think it's beautiful. It's basically I've got my wildly important goal, right? Which is our team's mission. And, you know, in the end of it, I want to accomplish X, which, you know, I wanna change the fitness industry. And then for teams, I'm just gonna give you the teams a, you know, a lead measure or a lag measure. So something that allows them to have a very specific outcome that they need to achieve every month and go ahead and do it. So empowering them with like, hey, you got to be creative on this process. So I don't need to, you know, be in the weeds over the process. It's just like giving them that KPI, give them at the end of the month, hey, this is what you go to achieve, go. And then every week we can meet on obstacles. So every Monday we'll meet with the team on, you know, what are your bottlenecks right now and how can I help you move the needle on that? But my only, the only thing I do now is I say, hey, here's your weekly, your monthly goal, go. And I think that's a great, I found it to be a great empowering tool for people because it allows them to control complete creativity of the process, right? And I think that's huge is when you start micromanaging people and you take away their ability to be creative, you disempower them. Well, what do we do when they don't hit goal? Cause we know that's going to happen eventually. Well, yeah. Beidros is a, Beidros Colleen is a guy who I go to for mentoring for business. And he says, many of you are hiring fire jets or you're hiring crop dusters. And if you're here to hire fire jets, hopefully they achieve goals and you give them two months and if they don't, you're gone and everybody comes on as a. Trainers are difficult though. Don't you think? Trainers are a whole different. Because trainers are a different breed because you tend to get, right, right. Exactly. Most of us. I just want to train. I don't want to sell. I don't want to, you know. Or that, right? Like we don't care about sales or I'm just passionate about helping the people. I'm not even talking about trainers. But yes, speaking of that, like the fitness industry is one of the different most difficult because everyone's got a massive ego. Right. That's why I just changed it. That's why I love talking about leadership within it because I think it takes, I mean, fuck it's taking a lot of growth for me. And I'm not saying I'm a master by any means. Especially when, you know, you can, you can take over and do it so well. And to be able to now translate that to somebody else. I'm not even referring to the trainers, right? I'm referring to my online business, but specifically the trainers, it's difficult, man, because as we spoke about prayer to the podcast, when you empower people with a skill set, with a skill set comes an ego. And that's very, very challenging too, right? So, yeah, man, I haven't learned how to help people transition. There you go. I'll tell you what I do. I'll sell you the book. I'll tell you one of the, I'll give you a gift that I got from probably one of the easiest reads that I have ever read was One Minute Manager. I've got it on my desk. The reason why it was so powerful for me was because it was during, it was timing, I believe, where I was at and it was making that transition from, you know, being about me hitting goal versus getting this team. And one of the things that I kind of took from that, that I started to apply, and I've shared my audiences heard this before, but I think it changed the game for me, was recognizing that, you know, we can never give enough affirmation to any of these people that are working for us. And that not, even when you think you do, they'll always expect and want more. And so- I wanna speak to that actually, but go ahead. Okay, so something that I started to do and to lead from a point of pointing out the things that you see them doing well versus leading from a point of pointing out the things that they can get better at or that they're doing wrong. And I completely agree. But I'll tell you what you finished. No, no, go ahead, go ahead, go ahead. But what the limitation becomes is when you empower your employees, they start to think they're able to do it better than you. And then their egos become even bigger. And this is something I've dealt with now. It's like you empower them with the skill set, you empower with the ability to make decisions, you empower them with the ability to act on their decisions. I spent 10 years of my career leading trainers that all believed they were smarter than me. Yeah, yeah. That's okay. It's a lot of humility that comes with that, you know? Sure. If I know the desired outcome and where the goal is and where we're heading, if by you feeling you're the smart one or you're the more successful one, or you can do it. So what do you do when they start to question your vision? Well, your ability to... The first mistake would be me trying to get them to see my vision because I think that's the hard part is getting them to see what you see is probably will never happen. Right. So it's more about... But if they're on your team, they need to bind to your mission, otherwise they're going, you know, it's like an enemy bind. Somewhat, or if the approach that I look at it is, I look at it like as this team, just like I would look at like a football team. And when I put these players in place, I put them in place for a specific thing that I need within my facility. And so I want them... I almost want them myopically focused on that because I'm taking control of the big ship and the vision. And so I'm putting pieces in place. And I'm not doing a lot of discussing what I'm doing or what I need. What I need from this person is to do their job and do it effectively. And hopefully I've done a good job of hiring them and putting them in that place. And then finding out what their goals, their ultimate visions are, and then playing some sort of a role in guiding and helping them. And then getting back to one of the things that I started to put in place, because I remember after I read Woman of Manager, I read this book that did all these studies on the Fortune 500 companies and they averaged out the employees that said, how much my boss recognizes what I do for this company and they all scored extremely low in comparison to what they scored themselves. And so the real message to me was, no matter how fucking much I do it, because I thought I was already that guy. I come over and I'm very positive all the time. I'm not a negative dude, but yet my employees would probably do the same thing, say I don't do it enough. So what I did was I had set an alarm in my phone that every day I had a name in there. So I was always leading 25 to 30 something employees at a time. And so I had alarm would go off and say today I'd go off at 10 a.m. And I would say, Ben, and then I would find you wherever the fuck you were at, stop what I'm doing, I'd walk over, I'd put my hand on your shoulder and I would point out something that I'd recognized since the last time we had talked that I thought you were doing really well. At what point does that become white noise to the employees? Kind of like your kids, right? When you're on your kids and you're either saying good stuff or bad stuff, are you programming their unconscious? Maybe, but it's it would only be at what point does it start? Do they start, you know, analyzing the fact that you're just giving them lip service? Well, it's not lip service because I would come over and point out something. You have to find something. That was my job. My job would have to be to find something that I do believe they're doing well. And if I don't think they're ever doing anything well, then they probably don't need to be on my team. So what it did do, and it blew me away. And this is why it was such a powerful tool for me was maybe about, and it took about 30 to 60 days to train them to get used to me leading like this, where I was pointing out all the things I saw well. And I remember I started to get lazy about it. You know, I'm like, you know why? Cause I felt like it was white noise to me. I don't see huge numbers all of a sudden turning out, but what I did happen and then what made me totally changed my attitude about it was one of my guys. And he was like middle of the row guy. He wasn't a super top performer. Wasn't like my right hand or anything like that. But a good trainer, but always trying to do better. And he comes walking into my office and you could just see the look on his face. And it was because he was one of the last people that I had forgot to make my rounds to and tell. And he just started telling me all the things that he wasn't doing well enough that he's working on. And he was so motivated to tell me that, listen, I hadn't done this, I haven't done that. I'm gonna work on this. And I thought, holy shit, I didn't even have to point it out. He pointed it all out to me before I even had to go digging. And so that, and that opened up the doors for me now to teach and lead. There's so many lessons there, man. Fuck. There's billions there because even in relationships, right? You take shit for granted. You're like, oh, I forgot to say that. And like, eh, she knows I appreciate it. No, she doesn't know you appreciate it. And there's so much to be learned there, man. You know, I'm very, you know, so I'm sure you get this too. Like very conscious of doing that with kids. But in relationships, sometimes you truthfully forget, right? And you end up picking on the stuff that people don't want to hear. Or like, it's very easy to get caught in the trap of saying the thing, hey, why isn't this done? Or can you go do this rather than and the, and the white noise was me to me. That's not to them. Because it felt fucking amazing to them. It felt amazing to be reminded that I appreciate these, all these little things. And I see it. And then it gave me this opportunity, man. That's absolutely. And then when they come to you about these, then the things that are on my mind, my vision, where we're going, what we're doing. Now I have this opportunity to direct. And when it's coming from that place, whoo, way more power for you, man. I had two, I had two growth periods of that. The first one was when I would have people who were working for me, who started to believe, they started, egos started to get big. The way that I would check them, if you will, for lack of a better term. Cause I wasn't really checking them. But in a sense I was, is I'd go out there and show them how much better I was than they were. So what I, and this is my early day. So I got a sales guy who's like, I'm the man. I'm the best sales guy. I'm selling all whatever. And I'd say, cool today, it's going to be you versus me. Let's go out and see who can bring in the most business. And then I'd blow them out of the water. And then after that they were like, okay, you're God. I'm going to follow you again. And that was early on, and I used to do that all the time. In the early days. So I'll put this penis on the table. Yeah, exactly what it was, literally, right? But that can only get you, that only gets you so far, right? And it's exhausting and it's not really leadership. It's more of a like, let's see who's egos bigger in this room. Then there was a second half to my career where I became so much more effective. And that's when I realized I had this debate with someone where we were going back and forth about what gets people motivated and what gets people out of bed in the morning for work. And she tells me, she goes, Sal, people wake up and they go to work for their paycheck. And it didn't feel right to me when I heard that. I was like, that's not right. Like, and then it dawned on me. I'm like, holy shit, like the hardest working people I've ever met in my life, ever, were volunteers. I've never met people who will work harder than somebody who volunteers for a higher purpose. They will grind themselves to the bone for free. And so then it dawned on me. It's not about, yeah, we're all here. We're working in this gym. We're all trying to hit goal and become successful. But there's a higher purpose that I need to build here. And if I can sell that higher purpose to everybody, from a true place, by the way, this isn't some bullshit, like, I'm not manipulating anybody. There was a real higher purpose. If I can convey that and sell that to everybody and everybody buys into that, because it's real, we're gonna fucking crush. And we did and we destroyed it. And people would show up to work on their days off. People would stay after and not one o'clock in. Notice that I wanna be here because they saw this higher thing. And you had mentioned something earlier. You had said something about changing the fitness industry. What is that higher purpose and how are you selling that to your team now? That's exactly it, man, is so many people have excuses around why they can't, right? My genetics, my time, my lack of knowledge, my nutrition, and when you realize it's not any of that. That's just them placing the ownership outside of themselves, right? So what we're trying to do as a business is empower people with a skill set and with the knowledge to empower them to really understand how to change their body. And it's not hard, no, it's a- It's not complicated. It's not complicated. It's hard, though. But it's hard, yeah, it's, well- Simple, simple. No, no, I shouldn't even say, like, it's hard. It's complicated for most people, but when you finally get it, you can boil it down to such a small number of factors. Yes. Well, climbing Mount Anvarys is simple. You just take one step after another, but it's way fucking hard, right? The hard part for most people is forgetting what you think you know about fitness or forgetting what you think you know about exercise or forgetting what you think you know about nutrition and just fucking thinking, which nobody wants to do. Like, if we can teach you how to work for you, it's so simple. So we teach you this very simple set of principles that you can now take, and all of a sudden, wow, my body looks completely different, such a small amount of time, and that's what we're really trying to do is change. We're trying to empower, like my vision is, as I wanna write a book, I think I told you guys this for teenagers, man, as I wanna empower the next generation, imagine at 14 years old, somebody hands you the handbook and goes, here's how to build muscle for your body. Here's how to eat for your body. And that's easier to do than it sounds. Like, you can teach people very simple concepts that allows them to apply it to them so they can learn to make decisions for themselves rather than following mindlessly with these protocols. So you're not trying to tell them what to think, you're trying to teach them how to think. Yeah, it's teaching them how to fish, right? Rather than teach them to fish. And so what you're trying to do by changing the, because the fitness industry's driven by the opposite, the fitness industry's all about what to think, follow these macros, do this, do that. But that takes away, right? So if I just go, oh, so the solution, apparently, for all fat laws is to go keto, and I go keto and I get fat. What the fuck did I do wrong? Well, I must just have bad genetics. I can't do it, puts the only ownership outside of myself. So, well, no, stop that, because eventually everyone's gonna transcend all of these bullshit nutritional protocol, all these bullshit programs out there. I mean, all these made-up names aren't real. Right, right, right. So then they're gonna go, oh, well, maybe I just don't have genetics. And I want people out there, everyone out there who's like, well, I don't have the genetics to build this, if I have a weak body part, you don't have a weak body part, it doesn't exist. It's just you haven't figured out how to put tension through that body part yet. So that's, but we gotta stop there because that's actually so fucking true because I have yet to meet somebody who has a non-responding body part who can really fucking connect to it. It's possible. You know what I'm saying? If you can build one muscle, you can build them all. And that's a hugely empowering feeling for most people. And even the idea of genetic inability to build muscle, I think it's bullshit because I start relating it back to getting deeper into the biochemistry of it. And of course there's some snips that can single nucleotide polymorphisms that can slow down progress. But I really just believe it comes down to your ability to deal with stress internally, not even, and mentally, but some people who have just great genetic bodies, very lean, very muscular at the time are just better with dealing with the shit that is put into life, right? They're better with getting rid of cortisol, better getting rid of inflammation. All these things that we're just so subjected to, maybe they have a better ability to recycle catecholamines. So we get stressed out mentally and some people stay stressed and they stay in this place of sympathetic dominance of the nervous system and they can't come down and recover. So maybe the genetic advantage of building muscle is just the ability to deal with the stress of day to day life. So if someone's sitting at home and going, I don't build muscle really well, well, if you learn to change your stress response, or maybe you learn to supplement to support your stress response, now all of a sudden your body composition starts to change and you don't have to do anything differently. So you're empowering yourself with the belief and this minor skill set of, hey, if I could just manipulate my breathing and stimulate my parasympathetic nervous system a little bit, right? Maybe I can do five minutes of mindfulness in a day and calm down my sympathetic nervous system and stimulate the parasympathetic a little bit so I'm in a more relaxed state. All of a sudden, damn, I didn't need to eat less. I didn't need to exercise more. I just needed to first change my response to stress because what most people are doing, and they don't think about, exercise is a stress. So they're adding one stress on top of the next. They've already got 10 different stresses in their life and they're adding this stress of exercise on top, which for most people, the only response is I need to work harder. Harder means more stress. So we're trying to create the smallest amount of incremental stress when you're exercising to get the greatest amount of response, right? So that is a whole different conversation but I think that's the first step for people to realize is stop making excuses around genetics and nutrition and time. It doesn't take that much. It's much simpler than you think when you understand a few basic concepts. Do you ever get tired of talking about that stuff? No, man, because I'm always finding new pieces to the puzzle, right? So I mastered, you know, I sound like an arrogant prick, but I mastered the muscle building component. Like I can pretty much take- You can say that. I can pretty much take a monkey, I can pretty much take a monkey and put muscle on any part of the- They have good genetic stuff. Yeah, they're strong as fuck. They're all roided up. But yeah, no, like I can pretty much take a monkey and put muscle on them. And then I realized, you know, so here's how this all came to be. It was, you know, if I take on 1,000 clients, I get 5% that gets world-class results. That's 95% of people who get either no results or okay results. I'm like, what the fuck's happened to my brain? It goes, what's happened to 95% of these people? Like why are they failing? Or, you know, in my eyes failing. So, you know, 20% of them are getting amazing results and 80% are getting substantial results but they're not getting the type of results I'm expecting. So what's missing? We're given the best, best work-up programs and the best nutrition program plan that could possibly exist for their body. What's missing? So you start adding other pieces to it, right? So you start adding the unconscious beliefs. You start adding the manipulation of the autonomic nervous system. You start adding, fixing the gut. You start adding the neurocancer. You start finding out all these things are bigger than all of what you did. Way bigger than those, man. Way bigger. Because you can, like I said, you can give someone the best work-up plan in the world. And if they're psychologically not in the right place or internally not in the right place. This is the path we all went on as trainers for as long as we were on. And this is why we have so much controversy sometimes is because at some point in our career we started sounding or at least connecting with the fricking wellness people that I thought had nothing in common. Like you just over there meditating. Yeah, yeah, smoke a medium, nothing to do with. And now all of a sudden it's like, oh wait. I wanna interrupt you for a second. How are you doing, Justin? How's it going? Hey, I'm just listening to this conversation. Well, you can't hi-check our podcast. How's your day going? It's going great. How's your kids, man? Yeah, good. What'd you train today? I trained, actually, I did a bodybuilder style training. So I did some bodybuilding. She's something still like that. I had to, man. It's the environment you have there. It's awesome. You're not training like a bodybuilder? No, I don't typically. I just do, I do more of like functional strength and like- Today you decide to bring back your man card? I do. I actually enjoyed it though. That's the part. I do enjoy a good- There's something about walking into my gym for a lot of guys where their balls just have to come out of their purse, man. Can I say? Come on, man. I think we would all agree. I think we're, well, you know, I think each one of us like different gyms, but your gym is up for sure for me, probably my favorite gym. If I were to build a gym that was going to be my playground and nobody, you know, like this- That's exactly what it was. Yeah. And you can see that. I've, at least I feel that when I walk in, I'm like, yeah, this is how I would have built this for sure. Yeah, yeah. That's kind of a joke, right? As you build a place and, you know, we'll get a lot of my friends in this place. Nobody else is allowed to come in. Yeah, but- No, it's a good gym. It's right up there with the culture, the zoo culture. I said those are two probably closest gyms, I'd say, for, for, yeah, my kind of workouts. But I think I might, I don't know, they're both really good. He's got a great gym, too. I like your vibe. The vibe in your gym is a little bit more, I don't know, serious almost, you know, it gets kind of got that feel to it. Oh yeah, I think that Bradley attracts the 17 to 25 year old young boy who's- Sure. Yeah, likes the half-naked girls and the lifting crazy way and doing silly things where you definitely have a way more serious vibe. Yeah, me and Sauer are actually talking after we're done. We would have lived there if we were like, you know, back 20. Yeah, 20 years old or so and just coming in every day for sure. It's totally motivating to get big. But you, you built it the same way that, like how we built ours, which was never with the intention to try and monetize it. It was like, and we tell people all the time this, like, oh, don't, just because we have a gym, you shouldn't aspire to bust your ass so hard to, and who am I to say who's dream? So if it is yours and that's what you want to do, so be it. But I think there's a major misconception with how much money the average trainer makes who opens up a gym like that. And when they find out that, I mean, the most successful gym owners, typically if you're just a private gym are making 75 to 150 a year off of a gym, which is okay money for somebody, depending on where you live. But that's also the most, that's like the upper, like most of them don't make shit. Right, right. And then the scalability of it is, you know, I just had someone in my gym last week. He goes, man, you know, I just bought a gym and I want to hire two more trainers, like, you know, who can do it like me. And I was like, oh, you're in for a hard road, man. Like I've got this huge pool of people to pull on. And you know, I was able to replicate guys who did it better than me. And then what happens, right? Then everyone's ego grows bigger than their skill set in the element. You know, anyway, and not everybody. Some people get some people who are great. But yeah, man, I think for anyone out there who wants to scale a training business, it's a tough thing to do, man, because it's so people centric. You know, the only way to scale, I believe is system centric, right? Yeah. Like it's got to be system. So that's why anytime fitness is crushing it, man. That's why, you know, curves crush it, because it's not about people. It's the same shit over and over again. Yeah, it's just like here. Here's the 10 exercises you got to do, go, right? I guess, you know, that's the simplicity of it. You're such a self, you're such an introspective individual, you know, you examine yourself quite a bit. And I appreciate that. And you know, you're talking about now having people that you're maybe not able to work with anymore because they have this belief, this false belief they can do it on their own. Do you ever look at yourself and think, what did I do to promote this? Oh, hell yeah, hell yeah. So I don't even know that I can't work with them. Man, I think they're on amazing people. Like they're great, but just that you have entitlement and expectation, man, I just don't like that around me. You know, like I want to love coming to work. I want to love what I do. I want to love the people around. And if there's anybody who isn't feeling that way, then it just, man, like, it's kind of like my toy. I want it back, you know. But absolutely, it's completely a reflection of the person that I was, right? Like speaking earlier about my bodybuilding days, the person I was was like, leave me alone. Like I literally closed my gym between 10 and noon every day for me to train. So I can't even fucking let anybody in the door. It's like, go away, you know, turn the lights off. So cool. Right, but that is a reflection of the people that I've brought into my life. It's like people who kind of stood there and did as they were told, didn't ask questions. And then now that I've removed myself from that, I'm like, yeah, I want these people to be good people. Like, oh, you know, like, so completely I brought that on myself. But that being said, now I'm evolving, you know, if I should sounds kind of ridiculous, but I'm trying to evolve it to become a different person, to become a greater version of myself. And I inspire or ask each of them or offer to, like, hey, man, come along with me. I can do anything I can do to help if I can introduce you to somebody, if I can do anything to allow you to kind of transcend this aspect of your life. And when they're ready, they'll do it, right? But some of them aren't. You know, I really enjoy talking to you too about the business side because your muscle mind is great, but your business mind is just as great, I think. And I liked it without, I don't want you to share it. I wouldn't expect you to share personal numbers and stuff like that. But I would be interested in, you know, you have multiple things going underneath the umbrella of you as far as businesses, everything from, from the gym to affiliations that you have to projects you're working on to online coaching and what are your biggest rocks? So which ones produce the most revenue for you business-wise that are most profitable? What are your biggest headaches and which ones do you enjoy the most? The gym's the biggest headache because it's managing people. All the other aspects of the business are much more system-centric. So that's, you know, if I, and that being said, that's what I need to learn the most. So I brought it into my life for a reason. And I'm not walking away from it. I'm grateful for it and I'm trying to make it better. And I'm working on my ability to communicate and my ability to lead and my ability to, like the thing that I don't want to do is manage. And what we need right now is a manager. So anybody out there listening, let's move to Tampa. Like, yeah, so that's it, man. It's like, you know, we've got, we got systems, we've got great people, but there's no management. So, you know, without management of the menial, trivial, day-to-day tasks, things get left undone and then the business suffers. So you're short of me stopping everything else I'm doing and coming into the gym right now to manage, it's a big stress. So that's my, definitely my biggest stress. Biggest passion for me right now, man, is getting this stuff in the hands of more people. So scaling up my member site, you know, with the objective of 2018 to hit 10,000 members. And because everyone comes into my member site, we're given a four month, you know, what I call a foundational program, which is like, hey, if you learn this, you will forever be empowered to build every muscle in your body. So four months, you know, body parts specific. So the first two months is chest and then we do I think legs and then arms and then shoulders and calves or something. And then just what going through like some very basic principles and how to do it for your body, not everybody else. And I think that in itself, if we can build the tribe of very loyal members, 10,000 members, that's a very good potential for it to be a catalyst to change the fitness insurance. Very small, obviously. It's a small thing. Small, loud minorities are what always do shit. Get shit done. Yeah, but that's the thing with my followers, man, is they're so loyal because I don't, I'm not a preacher, man. Like you hear me, I'm not a, like, I'm not gonna get you, I'm not a cheerleader. I'm not gonna get behind you and give you the raw, raw speech to get you off the couch, right? I always say motivation is a joke. Like, you know. Motivation is bullshit, self-belief is everything. Yeah, you wanna get motivated to go watch Ray Lewis on YouTube, right? That's not me. Like, I'm gonna empower you with knowledge and a skill set. And that's why people, when they come, like, I'm just teaching logic, man. I'm not reinventing the wheel. I'm just teaching you physics and I'm just doing it in a way that meatheads can understand. So that's kind of my thing, man, is empowering these people because that feels good to me to take this knowledge of all the stupid stuff that I've done all the years, all the mistakes that I've made throughout the years and empower these people. And from there, my supplement company grows, obviously, exponentially and that's doing, it's in the process and it's, you know, working, it's growing. And I do that because I try to do it from a place of, like I say, altruism from a perspective of like what can we do even though it's not the cheapest that actually helps people and giving a practitioner quality product that literally we find the best quality ingredients and we have every different accreditation that exists. Like, that's what I wanna do so that, you know, when you put a supplement into your mouth, that's exactly what you're getting. And then obviously we're investing a lot of money into research and bringing on great people who can help us with formulations. And we have a relative, we have a clear vision just to really be the lighthouse, right? And be like, you know, amongst all the bullshit amongst all the people trying to make a dollar. And dude, I know that's a hard path. Dude, that's a monster. The supplement industry was for a long time the race to the bottom where you could buy a 10 pound bag of protein for $30. But it still is at some level, man. Like the highest quality protein, even now if you walk into a supplement store right now you're not buying the most expensive one in most cases for most people, right? They're gonna buy somewhere that's kind of middle of the line. But we need to do is find that way to differentiate ourselves and make like people- I was just gonna say, how do you do that? Just quality, quality, quality. Yeah, awareness, man. And when people use it like, oh, this feels different. Like I don't get the GI distress. There's no, there's no artificial flavors and artificial sweeteners. There's like no additives, no buying, all that stuff. So we just try to simplify it so people actually get what they're paying for. And that being said, like it's more expensive. And here's the thing, people don't realize when you buy BCAs, BCAs is not BCAs. Like there's a definitive difference between this quality and that quality. And like when you're in a manufacturer, you know that. Like, oh, this monkey is using 60% or 40% BCAs in their product and we're using 90. And like how the hell do we compete with them in a market, right? So people don't know that. So they're looking at like, oh, there's like seven pounds of fillers. There's like a bunch of sweeteners and all these things. Then all of a sudden the formulation's 40% BCAs and they're charging half the price. And you go, oh, well, as a manufacturer, I see that as a consumer, I don't get that. So that's, you know, we're trying to be the lighthouse in the storm, man. It's a lot of people realize like, hey, if you guys actually want a good ingredient, this is where you're going to get it. Well, the canary in the fricking, in the mine is dead already. Cause I, you know, you talked about gut issues. I, of all the populations I've worked with, the worst gut issues in the most consistent gut issues come from the muscle building crowd. I think it's from all the fucking shit that we've taken. Well, it's just over consumption, man. And I live that life forever, right? And then people ask me, you know, what are the guts for my body? And I lived it. It's maybe at some level it's drug abuse, but it's just meticulous over consumption. It's ridiculous. Like supplement on top of supplement on top of food. And like, it's just never, especially imagine trying to be 310 pounds with like shredded. That's a lot of food, man. And I completely agree. So, and then your digestion is jacked up. And then, you know, man, there's so many levels to it. How did yours hold up? I feel, I almost feel like we talk about bodybuilders, pro bodybuilders and their genetic ability to build muscle and their genetic ability many time to handle drugs without side effects and all that. But I think the biggest factor is the genetic ability to handle the shit tons of food and not have horrible, you know, gastro issues. If you wanna know what the genetic ability is, you're on the right track. It's not the ability to handle tons of food. It's the ability to eat less. That is what sets bodybuilders. Eat less and still. And still be big. Holy shit. So we get pro bodybuilders, man. Mine. Right now. No, so you get bodybuilders, man, who literally in the off season don't even train. They eat two meals a day and they don't lose a pound. That is what I say is the difference. Yeah, I wish. Right, it's a joke, right? So I said like... I'd like to say fuck you to those guys. Yeah. It's absolutely... I mean, there's guys with their laugh here and then go, ha, that's me. Yeah, like you trying to be small right now and still being three times as big as I ever would be in my, absolutely biggest. Well, but man, this is 20 years of work. Yeah, that's true. So it's not just like it went, like I was 155 pounds when I started, man. I doubled my body weight to the peak of my career. So now it's, and there's so much work. People are like, how the hell are your legs to look like that? I'm like, dude, you don't even see what went into these legs. Like you have no, like people who train with me now, like it was just relentless and ruthless and... It's more than like five normal working out guys won't do in a lifetime. You did it in a span of 10 to 20 years, you know? So that tissue is just there, man. Like it's, you know, to lose it, like I'm going to have to do some substantial fasting. And I am, I do it a lot, but then, you know, I realized funny, we could talk about fasting too, but I noticed with fasting for me because of the percentage of muscle fiber I have, I get fatter. It's interesting. And cause my stress levels are high because I'm constantly moving and constantly doing something. But anyways, what were we talking about? We were talking about the big gut issues and the ability to... Yeah, that's it, man. You deal with that a lot with your clients because you get a lot of, you know, people trying to build muscle. I try to get people off as, I try to get their body using more food and eating less food. That's always the objective. It's like, how can I get you on four meals a day tops and getting your body using 100% of this? And then maybe we augment it with a little bit of, you know, supplementation with a little bit of BCA is a little bit of essential minnows because... How do you do that? Do you utilize fasting with them to get their bodies more, to be able to sit food better? Well, it depends, man. Obviously, so speaking to a bodybuilding demographic, fasting is like the Antichrist, right? Of course. Don't do that, you can lose muscle. So although I do do days without protein with some of them. Oh yeah, we talked about that before. Yep. But no, I'll do four meals a day for most people and then maybe like one post-workout shake. So I'm more of an advocate now of doing a lot of liquid nutrition post-workout because you just see the necessity of it to give your digestive chakra break and then four substantial meals, maybe five in many cases and giving your body a time to not eat. You know, talking about the natural circadian rhythm of your brain, your organs also have a natural circadian rhythm that they need to be able to detox. They need to be able to go through their natural cleansing processes. And if they're all just burdened with food and toxic crap from your life, can't do that. So particularly your digestive tract. So everybody bill out there, there needs to be a period of, yes, I'm hungry. Yes, it's okay. No, I'm not losing muscle. Feel it. We had a gut health expert, Dr. Michael Ruzio, who's, do you know him? Yeah, so brilliant guy, right? So we were having this conversation about post-workout nutrition. And so exercise is stress on the body, causes systemic inflammation, localized, but also systemic. So you can actually measure obviously, you know, inflammatory markers go up. It's supposed to happen. That's one of the things that triggers adaptation. But post-workout in the context of maybe already having gut issues. So now you're already inflamed. You've already probably got gut issues. He said one of the worst things you could do is eat right after or even take a, or even take a shake. And he said, when you have anything, if you're inflamed already, you've already got those tight junctions in your gut wall, which are already a little spaced out. And then you're inflamed on top of it because you just worked out hard. Now you take a shake, protein molecules pass through, and now your body starts identifying those as, so he's as, you know, foreign invaders and develops, you know, immune responses. And so he's like, yeah, if you're in the context of potential gut issues, you're probably better off waiting a couple hours before you do anything. And also you're in such a state of high sympathetic arousal, right? Your body is not even thinking about digesting food at that time. There's no resting digest going on. It's all fight or fight, right? So you need to allow time to adapt, which is why for most people it's like, and even the order that I do it is different than most people. So I usually suggest carbohydrate first and most people go, no, you don't need protein. You need carbohydrate faster. You need to replenish your glycogen source. So if you can have a carbohydrate that's the right osmolarity, so it's similar to water, it's the same osmolarity to water than higher absorption, right? Just adding in the glucose in there. And that should calm down your sympathetic nervous system and then allow you to start digesting. Well insulin is inverse with cortisol many times. Exactly, yeah. So that'll start bringing down your sympathetic, allow you to allow for some sympathetic arousal. One of the easiest things people can do, and I do this with all my coaching clients, is like, part of your program, take five minutes after the workout. Sit on your ass. Don't pick up your phone. Breathe, part of your program. Sit down. Stimulate the parasympathetic nervous system so that you can start calming down. Now this is not to a meat head that sounds silly. I'm not gonna lie. Like if I was a dude that just wants to build muscle and I'm hearing- Well you hear anabolic window, that's what everybody hears. I hear someone say, sit down for five minutes and relax. I'm like, listen, I'm not trying to, you know- Sure, but looking at the mechanics of it, you get it. How important is it? That's what I was about to ask you. How important is managing your autonomic, you know, nervous system for building muscle? It's everything. How crazy is that? Not even knowing that before, right? Have you always practiced that? You know, has that been part of your process even when you were competing? I think only by accident. And I say that because oftentimes I didn't be laying on the floor for an hour. Because you were forced. Yeah, yeah. But yeah, no, it wasn't always something that I did. And, you know, it sounds ridiculous, but early in my career, I struggled to put on muscle, man. Like struggled, I know it sounds stupid when I see that now people go, you're full of shit. But dude, I had the hardest time building muscle and people like, dude, you're crazy. And I'm like, no, man, like it was hard for me. And that's why I'm so grateful that it made me the person I am because I had to struggle that much. But had I looking back on it, you know, because I attached to why I don't build muscle that easily, yes, I do, but muscle actually very easily. But what I didn't do was manage my stress, manage my sympathetic nervous system. And that's everything for every athlete out there. If you want to recover faster, you must get out of sympathetic drive as fast as possible. And that's done. You can do some supplemental assistance to that to calm down your brain, but you can do five minutes of sitting on your butt and breathing, and it's not being reactive. It's not checking your emails, not going on social media and seeing how many likes you got, you got to just connect somehow. So what you're trying to say is meditation will help you build muscle? 1000%. That's why my, you know, my famous hashtag has become the mindful meathead because it didn't needs to be like... You know, if you sell it like that, if you sell that meditation, build more muscle, I swear to God, we're going to have a whole generation of bodybuilders starting to meditate. That would mean, think about what Arnold did. People don't think about this. What did Arnold do? Oh, he lay out in the sun afterwards, most enjoying. Exactly. Oh, you know, they just built so much muscle. I'm like, yeah, they can do whatever hell they want in the gym. If they're immediately going to the beach after, that's why living in California is such a great benefit, man. You walk out onto the beach after and you fucking lay in the sand. You're reconnecting, you're grounding, and you're basically meditating, you know? And guaranteed they're all smoking weed, right? Dude, that is like, if you want to be a great bodybuilder, become a hippie. Yeah, yeah. And you know, here's the irony of that. As I remember, when I learned how to meditate, everything that I ever tackled in my life was head on, I'm going to fucking do this, nothing can stop me. And then when I tried to learn how to meditate or really, really get better at it, so my girlfriend's the one that, because I used to try and do this, and it's like, it's not for me. And so she was walking me through this and I'm like, this is so hard for me. And she's like, why? And I'm like, well, I'm trying really fucking hard. And she starts laughing. She goes, that's the opposite of meditating. Yeah, you must remember. You can't meditate hard. It doesn't work that way. You got to kind of, you know, so. And this is the perfect time to insert my quote. If you can't, therefore you must. You're right. Like everyone, I can't meditate. You need it more than anyone. Oh, Adam talks about that all the time. I say on the show, always. 99.9% of the time, what you need most is what you're probably not doing. Exactly, yeah. Or what you can't, I can't do that. Oh, that says a lot. Like if that ever comes out of your mouth and I sit to my wife all the time, oh, okay, stop right now and go do that. If I can't, I must. That's why I've, you know, I'm starting to try to lose all this muscle. I'm like, well, because it's hard. Okay, now I got to do it. Yeah, I recently heard this story that just resonated so strongly with me and it was about comparing yourself to others and how you basically don't know, you don't know anybody like you know yourself. In fact, you don't know anybody, even a fraction as well as you know yourself. And so it's not fair to compare yourself with other people. The only person you should compare yourself is yourself yesterday. And then I heard this part of it, which was every single day, tried to be a incremental fraction, just the smallest degree better than yesterday. And I thought about that for a second and I thought of this picture because many times when I think of things, I think of things in pictures. And I thought of two parallel lines and how if I move one just a quarter of a degree to the right, they're gonna look almost parallel. But if I stretch those out for 15 miles, they're super, super far apart. And it dawned on me like great change doesn't happen from massive changes as much as it does from these small tiny ones that stick every single day. And you've been talking about changing so much. What are the things that you've been doing with your, what are these incremental changes that you're working on every single day? I love that question. But I also wanna point out the exact opposite is true. So if there's 1% divergence in the other direction that you're just not paying attention to. Very true. If you let something slip, including in your business, and this is from again, one of my business mentors, Pedro says, you must not allow for 1% divergence in your business because if it starts and people start to notice, all of a sudden, everybody starts to... Very, very true thing in human psyche. I think who is it? The governor of New York City, New York City used to just be riddled with crime. And they adopted this policy where they're not gonna allow a single window to be broken. They're not gonna allow a piece of garbage. People think, what does it have to do with anything? And it's like, you know. Zero. Yeah. And it changed in the same thing with alcohol prohibition. When alcohol was illegal, because most people didn't follow that law, they all started breaking other laws as well. So lawlessness went through the fucking roof with alcohol prohibition, even though, not just from the alcohol prohibition because everybody started breaking all of the laws. But yeah, so tell me, what are these small changes that you make every day now that have been turning into big changes? Just paying attention, man. Like, fine, it changes every day. I call it the layers of the onion, right? It's peeling with the layers. And every day it's different, but I think it starts with... Any recent ones that you've seen? Sure, many. Specific things that I'm doing to make changes. Don't avoid that big one that just came in your head. Don't fucking avoid the big one that just came in your head right there. We'll get it all, though. We'll get it all, though. I fucking saw that. Did you see that? You fucking dropped that question to it like this, like, poof, oh, fuck. I can't stop that. I can't talk about that right now. I can't talk about that right now. I don't wanna tell anybody about that. Oh, shit. Man, there's a lot. You could imagine, man, my life is this massive transcendence of things. I lived 20 years of trying to be the biggest human being on the planet and I did everything I could to be the biggest human being on the planet. There's so much to unwind from that. Psychologically, things around food are changing. How am I attachment to training? And then I question, why am I attached to training? Why do I need to train? Why do I need to eat? I mean, I question everything now. Things that I'm doing, man, everything is different. My life is different. The way I treat my family is different. The way I answer the phone is different. I think the biggest thing that maybe has changed my life, and I think this would help a lot of people, is the daily struggles are inevitable. Don't try to get away from the struggles, right? Don't try to create happiness because you believe it's gonna not have the struggles. The struggles are where the growth is. But what's perhaps changed me the most in the last couple of years is to find the joy and the struggle and find the, you know, when it sucks, smile, right? And that to me is like, because nothing really matters that much, man. We're all getting out of here alive and none of us are getting out of here alive. And it doesn't really matter that much. And if you learn to have a better perspective, you start bringing better things into your life because people realize you're not a reactive person, you're a responsive person. For me, man, like literally every aspect of my life is different, but I think that in itself is when something sucks, smile, and see it as an opportunity. You sound like a spiritual person. Has that evolved for you? A thousand percent, man. I'm very blessed to have very great people in my life now. And I'm sure you guys on this, like, as you start to evolve, new people start to appear. And they start to, like, I've got such amazing human beings in my life now that are influencing me in such a positive way. And a very small number of people that I led into my life, but incredible human beings. And yeah, so my spiritual life is massively evolving. You know, there's the, Do you have a spiritual practice or? Yeah, there's certainly a meditation practice. You know, there's a walking meditation practice that I do most days. I do, I'm lucky enough to live on an island where I can walk and actually meditate and sometimes put my feet in the water, which allows me to kind of connect with nature. And, you know, I've become very connected with the fact that we are all, we're all one, you know, we're all the part of the same system. We all come, you know, ultimately, the realization is we're all born from the same stuff as the stars. We're all from, you know, the Carl Sagan. Yeah, yeah, star stuff. Yeah. I mean, that's the reality, right? Like we're so insignificant, yet we make ourselves so significant. So trying to lose attachment to everything, attachment to attachment, right? Like, have you started examining the duality of, like how strange the duality of things are? Like one thing for me that was fucking mind blowing was the first realization that we are, for lack of a better term, insignificant. We're such a tiny speck of a massive piece of this huge thing. And then the duality of that, which is at the same time, I'm also the complete center of my own universe because all my perception comes from this one point. And so everything around me is literally always around me. I'm always in the middle of my own universe. And those two things exist at the same time. And then I started examining the duality of everything. The good cannot exist without the bad. And the right doesn't exist without the left. And the up doesn't exist without the down. And fucking crazy to think of things that way and then realize that within yourself. However awesome I am, I also have a tremendous potential to be completely a horrible person. And it's all within all of us. And that is a very, that was a difficult understanding, but it was also a powerful one because it led me to understand that I have a choice. Ah, that's great. Yeah, that's something I've ever explored, man. I truthfully believe that at the core of me is love. And I don't always allow that to exude or like this pure inner joy and bliss. And I don't always allow that to come through because of fear of judgment and fear of all these things. And I'm trying to overcome that, right? I'm trying to overcome my fear of, people judging me for being happy or people judging me for being joyful or sharing love or giving you guys a hug. Like that's a kind of weird shit that like how people are gonna think I'm weird but like cares, right? But everything definitely has a duality and that's the beauty of it, right? And that's why people are trying to find in their life they're trying to get rid of the stress they're trying to get rid of the struggle. And I'm like, oh no, I see you. I literally say that on something like I see you. There's an opportunity for me to learn. And like, let's figure out what the flip side of that is. Yeah, you, when every time I see you give me a big hug and I wonder, were you always that kind of a person, a hugger, touchy-feely person? Or has that changed more recently? I don't think I hugged anyone when I was a professional bodybuilder. Ah, yeah, yeah, no, no. So strange dichotomy for me when I was a kid, like you wouldn't ever have seen me without a smile on my face. Yet I was probably the most sad kid underneath. Tormented inside. Tears of a clown. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, maybe. I was a funny way to put it. Well, no, I mean, that's where it comes from, like putting on a face, but how you feel inside. Yeah, I don't know that I was ever... I get the analogy, I just think it's a funny one. I think it was because I was always trying to avoid having somebody get angry with me. Cause my family was very angry, man. My dad had a temper that was, you know, not even to be mentioned kind of thing. And so my response that maybe I learned was like, oh, if I just smile, maybe everything will be better. So as a kid, I, you know, that's what I did. And I don't know that I was a very affectionate kid, but, you know, in the last couple of years, I've certainly become much more like everyone who I comes into my life. I try to, you know, express that affection, right? Have you found anything with your parents that you can look to that was positive and good that you've taken and now implemented in your life? Like, is there, I love to ask a question. I just asked a few other days. Is there a thing that, you know, you've taken from your father now that is a positive thing? Sure. And then also a thing that you've promised not to be as a man yourself. He taught me everything I know because he was the exact person I didn't ever want to be. And that's, there's beauty in that, right? Like I knew that I don't ever want to be that parent. And that's why I must be a great parent every single day. And he chooses me. Like I choose to be present because he wasn't. There's definitely great things, both of my parents taught me. And one thing, you know, when it comes to mine with my mom, as much as she wasn't there, she was still a caring person. And she just said, you know, the things that comes to mind is you could do anything. Like she said that hundreds of times to another kid, if you can do anything, if you want to do it, you could do it. And telling that to a child is very powerful, right? Rather than taking it away from them. So literally, man, they put no governors on me as a kid, like be home when the street lights are on and other than that, like go do what you want, eat what you want, you want to score it, go. You know, don't score it, don't. And that's amazing. So you can do anything that, you know, I can see her saying that in my head thousands of times when I was a kid. And my dad taught me when you start, you finish. And I think those are two that I still take to my kids. And I think those are great. Like if you start, you chose to start, you fucking finish. And you can suffer, you can hate it, you can decide never to do it again, but you finish. And I think those are things that I teach to my kids. And that goes along women. And obviously, like I said, the opposite side, there's a lot there, but. Fuck yeah, man. Oh, I have a great time every time I talk with you. Thanks, man. Yeah, yeah. I think you're all right, so. Yeah, I appreciate that. Thank you for listening to Mind Pump. If your goal is to build and shape your body, dramatically improve your health and energy, and maximize your overall performance, check out our discounted RGB Superbundle at mindpumpmedia.com. The RGB Superbundle includes maps anabolic, maps performance, and maps aesthetic. Nine months of phased expert exercise programming designed by Sal, Adam, and Justin to systematically transform the way your body looks, feels, and performs. With detailed workout blueprints and over 200 videos, the RGB Superbundle is like having Sal, Adam, and Justin as your own personal trainers, but at a fraction of the price. The RGB Superbundle has a full 30 day money back guaranteed and you can get it now plus other valuable free resources at mindpumpmedia.com. If you enjoy this show, please share the love by leaving us a five star rating and review on iTunes and by introducing Mind Pump to your friends and family. We thank you for your support and until next time, this is Mind Pump.