Professional Fighter Vance Elrod on The Power of The Mastermind

Mr Vance Elrod, my brother.

Thank you, brother. It's good to see you. It's been too long.

It's been too long, dude. So Vance is a avid researcher of human performance. He's the founder of Maraki medicinal, a holistic performance supplement company. Vance has been competing in combat sports and MMA for over a decade and has secured both Bantam weight and lightweight world titles. It's been a lot of fun getting to know you, bro, and it's been incredible to see both the business growth and the social media growth Since then, dude, it's been. It's been exciting to watch from far, and I think one thing that I was very curious about is you were in Mexico with some other creators and In that time period it looked like you had massive growth both business-wise and social media-wise. How did the effect of being with those guys Play into the success of both the social media side of things and the business?

Massive, massively. So we we kind of had a mastermind on accident, like we basically Organically came together like yo, like we're gonna go to Mexico it was new bro and no Ryan and they eventually asked me and Eric if we want to go, because they were kind of working on a project and they knew me and Eric were working on a similar project. They're like why don't we just come together and like, hang out, we can all work together? Shooting from the hip, it was like all cool four guys in Mexico all working on projects. When I talk about like the best fitting puzzle pieces for a team, it was like wherever somebody was really good at something and they lacked something, the other person filled. So I mean Eric, the owner of base shiligie, base supplements. That guy is a wizard when it comes to Ecom business, the whole nine. I mean he was like drop shipping right out of high school. On top of that dude, amazing human being too.

So my biggest gripe with business guys are the grifters and we see it so bad right now, especially on like health Twitter and esoteric Twitter. So many grifters, so many people trying to sell just like obnoxious things, so many people drop shipping, you know, and they're just taking advantage of this niche market and a lot of people in the health space. The reason they got in the health space, in the esoteric space, because they were like working on fixing a problem. So you have these people who are kind of like trying to fix like serious issues and become healthy and just feel normal again, and then it's an easy audience to take advantage of because they're willing to try things to feel better again because they're gonna. They're in a place of place of pain actually. So Eric is a great Ecom, great business guy, but on top of that he's like a good person. So his products are like Amazing products. The way he runs his business is amazing and it's like it's what I can align with, because I struggle massively with business, like selling.

I feel like a grifter. I feel like you know, anytime I even post Marocchi stuff. Like it took a while for me to be like hey, yo, you're offering something cool, you're, you're helping people. I need a lot of proof of concept to do what I was doing. Okay, like this year I posted my journal. It was the first year I ever had monetary goals written out of my journal and I cringe. When I wrote it down I was like y'all want to grow the business to this much a month and I cringe that I hated it. I want to rip the page out, like because it feels so just tainted to me, you know.

But with that being said, like I'm learning to get over that, and then watching the way Eric runs his business, it's been what gives me my like advantages now, or like my motivation, because he runs it like genuine, he runs authentic. He's not great, like it's not a grifter and the way he can grow this business is amazing, it's smart. And then you know you get to the point where you just look around. You're like okay, like this is the way the world works. You know how are you gonna go about it. And like you know you're gonna have to play the game one way or another.

Like we all want Financial freedom, we all want to go in, we all want to start business, we all want to get back. But are you gonna be sleazy and steal from people and rip people off? Or are you gonna do something that could positively affect the world and make the world a better place? And yeah, so that's basically what I was doing. So Eric dude, amazing econ guy, I know I just went on a whole Eric spill and ad. He paid me to say all that.

No.

I'll get in there with all the guys. I'm gonna docks everyone right now from Mexico. You guys are all screwed so. But Now Eric, where he is with business and everything like that, you have new bro, scientist dude, scientists, wizard when it comes to like knowing compounds, biochemistry you know the pharmacological effects of Arginine. Okay, you write down the molecular formula for you, tell you how it interacts with 17 different mechanisms in the body. What it's good with, you know he's just a wizard dude. But where he's gonna lack is a little bit of getting the message across and easy to digest way in the communication part of things. And he's also you know he's like his business side things, not a business guy. So Eric comes across, helps them with the business and then you have no, a riot, who is the best speaker you have probably ever heard in your life? Rip a podcast. It's absurd.

Yeah, I'm dead serious.

I think he is the best communicator I've ever talked with. Even just being around him, I've learned how to articulate my words better, like you kind of pick up the slack and so he can take like and also know as a wizard, like he's smart as hell as well, he's so competent in so many areas and but he can take what new pros doing and then he can put in the easy to digest format and then they can go ahead and then start shooting it off to the masses. And I was like man and so I'm sitting here looking at everyone like yo, like they're good at every single thing that somebody else is bad. It's crazy. And then I'm sitting there and in Mexico and I'm looking around and I'm like Whoa, this is the price I'm paying for spending 10 years doing combat. I'm not competent like these guys. I need to work on everything. But the craziest thing was, I think and I think they would all agree being around all them.

I leveled up the most, but I think it's because I had the most room to grow like. I had the most newbie gains. So I learned a lot about business. I learned a lot about social media, how to grow on Twitter, how to talk to people. You know what I mean. I learned more about like just even being around new bros, like learning about Different compounds, what they do.

You know that guy is like just watching the way he navigates was insane too. Like he is a dude is insane how smart he is. I've never heard Noah Ryan be like yo. That's the smartest guy now and that's basically new bro right there. So we had such a cool crew. We had Spencer come in. He's a little bit younger towards the end and then we had trend poppy come in and you know trend poppy, so you can't dox him, but he's from the Vegas crew. But yeah, he came in as well and, bro, they fit right in and dude, it went from like Like this, okay, we're gonna get there, and it's like we're all grinding to work and it eventually turned into the funnest month I think I've ever had in my life, on top of Accomplishing the most I've ever gotten accomplished in my life, and it was amazing, best time, best time ever.

Let's go bro. That's so awesome to hear and I think the biggest takeaway from hearing that is just like, although you didn't have the, maybe like the business acumen or the pharmacological acumen, just by like, taking action and by putting yourself in the situation of Starting a business, putting yourself out there on social media, you become competent in all those fields just as a result of playing the game ready fire.

Aim. Action is so important and so many people like they lose that they over optimize, they, they, they try optimizing some baseline product, like they try to clean up the edges, but they don't even have edges to clean up yet. It's insane, you know. So I've had this talk with everyone. Maraki was like definitely a product of action. There's so many times I shot the gun on things and then how to optimize later, or figured out later, or 86 it later, because there were problems with it.

And I love that though, because that's truly like how you can get stuff done in this world, and it is. It's a lot like, it's simple, but it's not easy. You know what I mean. Everything like the secrets are hidden in plain sight. You know what to do, and I speak about this all time, every podcast ever listened to about business. They tell you all these things and you're like, oh, okay, cool, like it just sounds like the basics, over and over and over again. You know, I mean find a niche market, do you know? And then you do it, though, and you're like, oh, it's because it is that basic.

So Maraki whitepilpy, because when it comes to someone who's like not business savvy, has like imposter syndrome when it comes to do in business. Like I had everything wrong not to grow a business, but I showed up and I acted every day and it grew so quick, so fast. It blew up like and it's a it's an authentic product that can, like, help people and that, like that alone. Right there, white pilled me because I was like, oh, you couldn't grow a product that was good unless you knew business, and it's not that case at all. Like you don't have to be a scammer, you don't be a grifter, you don't have to hire salesmen. You know what I mean. If you truly can find something that, like, people would want or could help people, you're gonna grow.

It's like the people who try to find the algorithms on Instagram they I'll go hack and they do catches and this and that it's like yo, if Donald Trump posts a video of him saying some outlandish, or you see a car, do a triple backflip on the freeway and blow up, like those videos take off. Why? Because they are, by themselves, good enough to Cultivate attention, to grab attention. It's the same exact thing if you're selling something. Your product is good enough and it works and you know, and people are raving about it, it's gonna work. You don't need to be a business guy, you just need to get it out there. So, yeah, that was like one of the biggest white pill thing ever.

Dude, there's there's a lot there that I want to break down, but one of the things I was going to say before you, before you brought this up, was I was gonna highlight authenticity being the superpower for you, because in Hanging out with you and then spending time together, the the, how much you cared about the product and how much, how much love it was, was what had created the success, like the actual genuine Caring about methylene blue, loving the effects of methylene blue, being together and and getting a phone call of someone having a Concussion that you don't even know and sending them free methylene blue.

People emailing you with XYZ health conditions and you sending them free product without any Hope of a return, just because of the pure authenticity and wanting to help people. I mean, it's one of those things that, from a business standpoint like you you're you said it to me it was like the law of reciprocity that you just like trying to be a good person and you think it's gonna come back at you and, although it from a business standpoint that might not be the most clear way to success, in In hindsight it seems like that was one of the the biggest keys. Yeah.

I think in like, if you look at my day-to-day operations of what I do with Maraki, you could 100% call it bad for business. Definitely it's about how much you zoom out. So like in the beginning I did so much stupid shit. So much like business-wise, like like the I mean I wouldn't even call the Talos situation stupid. But just so many times I give out free stuff, so many times like I try to help somebody out, like I like literally just bend over backwards for everyone and Maybe, like it didn't work in the beginning, it was dumb in the beginning I ate losses and profits like cool much.

I never cared about, you know, but towards them when you zoom out, it's like people will be reading messages and they might come across that one person was like yo, you, you helped out, thank you so much. You know what I mean. Like you, you helped me in a time of need and that's just like the way I would ever want to do. A sales pitch is like I would rather just have people talking about my Brand behind my back, saying it's a good thing because I helped them and that's cool. Like you know what I mean.

Like, but I didn't do it to plant seeds and water them and watch them grow later. So I could, you know, roll around and be being the riches like we joke around about it. But I, honestly, I started this company because it's something to help, and there's like a million things that I do every day that business guys and like e-com guys would roll their eyes on and like Just want to hit me over and I don't care and I'm glad, though I'm glad you guys see it firsthand. So like I don't just sound like a altruistic asshole, like, oh, I'm doing the nice thing, like no, you, you were there in the process, you saw, you know you, you called me stupid, I think once like you're too nice.

You know, and I was like brother, you are running a business Just because you were doing so much good with it and you were just. You just had such like love for the product and Wanting people to enjoy and and share in the effects of it acts. But that was something that I took away from you. And I look at Dude. It's awesome, and I think about the compounding effect of that. Like you were saying, you don't do it for those reasons of Trying to plant those seeds and letting them grow, but if you're playing this game for 10 plus years, that word of mouth is going to be one of the strongest things that continues to compound. And if you just keep being that good person and having a good product, that's just gonna be cool and I think I learned that from my pops.

Actually, like in our contracting business that we were all doing, he didn't pay for advertising and doing anything. He didn't want to end anyone. He just told me he's like, if we show up and do a good job, like a really really, really good job at a fair price, we're gonna get work and dude. His business has been going for over 30 years with that principal alone. He's never paid for advertising. He just showed up, worked his ass off and like, took care of people and then, hey, oh, I have a great guy. How many times do you hear that? Oh, I have this guy who does this.

Now that I'm in the e-com space, I get this all the time like yo, I have this great SaaS guy, I have this great email guy. Everyone's trying to sell me. Luckily, my little team I got in the beginning like everyone's a hammer, so I'm doing the same exact thing. But you'll hear it so many times. And then you'll hear the other side of it. Now that I'm kind of in and I see what's going on, you'll hear who's the grifter. You'll hear who's selling the BS and it's kind of funny to watch. And then when you see it too and you're like it's easy to spot.

Now, you know, the inauthenticity is so easy to spot and it's also the number I think it's the number one killer in business today. Like we could talk about the Bud Light thing. You know, when they went to the woke side, like I told everyone I was like man if they just stayed, stick to their guns, like they authentically wanted to be for everyone. You know, not like hit a niche market of like right wing repugn, whatever it may be, I would have respected that more, but it's a flip flop. They're just doing whatever they can to sell you because they just want, you know they want money and that's always going to leave. Everyone's got a bad taste in their mouth with that and I did too.

I always do when I see that. So I have to surround myself with like people who are like minded when it comes to business, but also like it's so cool to see the guys who are doing good and like their businesses are taking off. And it's also cool to see, dude, twitter is hammering the grifters right now and, dude, look at the change of hands and like the positions of who was the top dog at what, and then you see the new guys come in and you're like, oh, that's why, like they were more authentic, and like, hell, yeah, they just came in. They were ripping everyone off in the beginning. So it always weeds itself out to you. I have to understand that. Just do everything right. It's going to weed itself out Like if there's someone doing better than you but they're doing it wrong, like they will pay the price.

Oh yeah, twitter is ruthless with that. And it's the beauty of Twitter. Because you have a good product, people are going to promote it and you're going to see the positive effects of it. And if you have a product that is maybe a grift or people are interested in, you're going to hear the other side of it.

I actually, funny enough, I got a text two days or yesterday, I kind of I think I'm going to read it to you From a friend who is so not into the health world at all.

I didn't even know he was on Twitter, he's not, he doesn't post or anything and he said yo, what's this deal with the methylene blue? I've read all this stuff from this guy, vance, and just checked out the website and just like that it was just that is a normal kid I hadn't talked to in like a year. But it just goes to show like if you're in this world and you're doing a good product and you are trying the social media thing and we could talk about some of the stuff that helps with that social media world in a minute. But if you're in that world and you're doing a good product, like the success might not come on day one. Like Eric is a great example of this. Like early on with base supplements, he it wasn't the, it wasn't that immediate growth, but he had a good product, he stuck with it and he learned and then you see that exponential growth.

It's a yeah, and it's the same thing you do with your business to grow it. You could do with Twitter. Twitter and it's like Instagram was my main home for fighting and I thought fighters did better on Instagram. And then, when I came over to Twitter, though, it was like it was better for me and that's because Instagram is a bunch of billboards. It's. It's you're driving down this road and you see, oh okay, their life, their life, their life, their life. Twitter is like a bunch of coffee shops or pubs and you're driving down the road and you stop and you engage in conversation each one. You can see what's going on, so you stop, you're talking with people. So Twitter is it's a lot easier to get complex concepts down and explain them and have like genuine conversation with people and show a little bit more of your personality. So I do it all the time on Instagram.

Like I post, like very what I consider valuable stuff and, dude, maybe it was like I already had an audience of people who watched me fight. You know, I don't even like saying the word audience, like I'm on stage, like I'd it's, it's see, I still get with the gripe with a bunch of stuff, like a lot of things probably hold me back from success in that realm because I have those things, but it's the way I just view it. Like. I just view Instagram as like, like, not as authentic as Twitter. Like Twitter, I go in and I can help educate and I can have these conversations with people and like, hopefully help people. You know what I mean. And like I can be myself on Twitter like bro, I'm a fool, like I joke around a ton. You know we, you hung out with us in the weekend. Like the same thing in Mexico. It's nonstop laughs, you know. But when it's business time and we're talking about something serious, you know I want to be educated on it, I want to be challenged, I want to talk to people with different opinions and not have like this dumb online you're dumb, you're dumb, you're dumb thing going on, unless it's just for pure fun trolling. You know, basically.

But on Instagram, when I try to do, that never works. You know, on Instagram I literally test out in Mexico. I post like these crazy, like fight workouts from a guy who's been doing it for 10 years, who has bought like thousands of dollars in courses from Dan Garner, andy Galfin, phil DeRue, like all these things, and I put them all together, I have Henry Sohootos whole fight like training camp, basically on paper, and I replicate it and I give it out and it's like 80 likes, you know. And then there's me with a drink on a beach in Mexico, like at a club, and it's like 300 likes. I was like you fools, you fools. So Instagram is like Instagram. I'm still trying to figure out how to grow and I don't want to grow it inauthentically, so it's probably not going to grow.

But Twitter Twitter was easy provide value, provide value, stop copying what everyone else is doing. I see it now like there's like 15 million accounts that are like you know, they're like trying to tell you like the same old thing that you've heard a million times. Like you don't want to be the 15th guy. Like telling you put butter on your dates, you know what I mean. Or like you know, go raw. Or like the sun's good for you, like yeah, bro. And then you get guys, though, who are doing it and they're like okay, I want to tell you the sun's good for you.

Now Look at, look at Zaid. He goes in deep, deep, deep, deep, and he takes it to another level. It's like okay, so you're either gonna one. You need to like, differentiate your message from the people with the same message by becoming a massive expert on it, or you need to find something new that people don't know about.

So people knew about methylene blue, so I had to become a little bit more of an expert. So I just did the deep dives, deep dive, deep dives. And the cool thing is like do a deep dive, level yourself up. Whatever you learn, just go and spit it out on Twitter. It's that easy. Go look at crazy studies. Methylene blue is a wild one, cause you can literally at this point you could Google almost anything and be like does methylene blue help with? And that's the one I'm dropping this week. I shouldn't say, but like I was like someone asked about arthritis and I was like, nah, and I Google it. I was like, of course, methylene blue and arthritis. It helped with arthritis patients. So I'm typing up a thread on that, just what I found. But it's that simple Just help people up.

Is that anti-oxidism?

It has something to do with the signaling. I forget it was like GMP, I have to go relearn it again but there's a inflammation signaler that methylene blue interacts with, that like calms down. And then it's the antioxidant properties as well. And then, of course, when your mitochondria is like functioning better than you're gonna have so many direct benefits that aren't direct, kind of the indirect like you might get a boost in testosterone. It's not directly affecting testosterone per se, like Tonkata olewood, but it's gonna go ahead and indirectly affect it because your gamma-atp, your mitochondria, is gonna work better, you're gonna lower your oxidative stress, and then that might have been what was holding your T down a little bit, and so your thyroid function. So that's why it's indirectly affecting everything, because everything it's like a pyramid. You know what I mean. Like, oh, the top's wobbly. Well, if you fix the bottom, the top's gonna obviously perform better. So that's one of those things. So you know what the funny thing is when I kind of sound like say it out loud and I talk about Twitter, don't even listen to how I grew it either, like I don't know what I'm doing, I'm just having fun and I'm being myself. So I guess if you're gonna learn anything from me is like do whatever you're passionate about, speak openly about it, be authentic and, like you know, that's pretty much it. That's how I grew on Twitter. And then I guess the other part of it I will say is, if you need a like real growth strategy when it comes to business or Twitter, any of that is it sucks, to say it in a way, but it's not as bad as it sounds but you gotta pay to play, and what do I mean by that? Like I grew 6,000 followers in the past month and I did that by paying to play because I surrounded myself with the right people. So I didn't pay Noah, I didn't pay Nuke, bro, I didn't pay Eric or anybody like that. But we went out and like I put myself in circles like like, let's just say Soul Club.

Soul Club is one of the first things I did to grow my business because I saw a network of people who were like minded, I loved it and I went in and I was like, okay, cool, this is what like 40 bucks a month. One, I got massive value from all these smart people and it helped level me up. Two, I got to see SoulBrawl bunch talk to him and then tell them about me growing my business. The next thing I know, like I'm not saying that's why I did it, but like bigger accounts in Soul Club were retweeting Methylene Blue and that was like the first start. So technically you could say, oh, I paid for it, I paid to play, but that wasn't it in like an inauthentic way, it was more of an authentic.

I joined a thing that I aligned with and I got a good network. It's the same exact thing as Mexico. Like I've been talking with Noah when I was pod and then when he invited me out, like I could have just said, no, you know what good is it gonna be? No, I like went out there and hung out with them. You know, essentially I paid, not paid them, but I paid the price to go and be around them. And, dude, like when you get that network, it levels up. Now obviously I'm not saying buy your friends, I'm not saying you know, pay for things or anything like that, but you got to pay to play a little bit in this game. Like same thing, when you start a business, you're gonna go in a loss way before you hit a profit. I promise you that.

And the paying doesn't have to be purely in terms of dollars, like it could just be in the work you're putting in and the skills you're acquiring in your abilities, like by becoming like. One of the things on Twitter that's fascinating is if you are a killer, like if you are somebody who's doing really cool things, your content is just going to do better. It's like I think it's Alex from Mozzie who said something like if Elon Musk tweets steak is amazing, LOL, it'll do like a thousand likes. People will think it's hilarious.

But then, if, like so, joe Shmo, with zero follower or with no context behind it, tweets that you're like, oh, this is nonsense. I think this guy just said that.

I just heard him say I think his name was advanced. I just said that like in the beginning of this pod, but yeah, yeah. I was like if Trump tweets like it's cause he's like yeah, yeah, you did say that, but no, I think I heard it from Alex too. I'm just, I'm just Josh, with you. But it's the same principle, exactly the same. Yeah, quit, I'll go hacking and like, level yourself up.

Yeah, level yourself up and building those relationships and just being goes back to authenticity in a way. It's like it's funny, cause you know it's how you and me got connected, cause Noah told me I should have you on the pod for the first time and then I had you on the pod and then we got connected and we did all these Twitter spaces and shit, and then we hung out in person and then you introduced me to other people vice versa, and that principle play to play, play to play is I think it's everything dude.

I think that that is really at the core of what it takes to have success, whether you're in Ecom or social media. It's like you have to learn from people who are doing it at a higher level than you are, and the only way to do that is to be able to provide them with value or to go ahead.

No, sorry, I was just gonna say it's providing that value. It's providing like, even like man. I don't know how to explain exact examples, but like, like SoulBraw. Like SoulBraw is posted in Marocchi, but that came from me like one.

That guy helped me out massively in the beginning. He was one of the first guys that got me on Twitter and like, took care of me and changed the way I think about the world and I was like dude, this is amazing. So I want to provide value back. So I just kept providing as much value as I could back. You know what I mean. Like the other day he posted on Tori it was a Dan Gardner study. I sent him the mean. I was like, bro, check this out, it was great advertising for you. Just little things, little things. Just think of people, take care of them and nine times out of 10, they take care of you back if they don't know who cares. You know what I mean. You're not doing it for that. So that's just. The other thing is like, try to like, if you just want a surefire way to level up, like, provide value to as many people as you can. You know what I mean. Don't spam, just provide value.

It's like the Danco thing. Yes, yeah, it's like the Danco thing with you and me. Like you and me were hanging out together and then I went out to do a podcast with Danco and he was like telling me that he's been taking Methylene Blue, and then I told you that and you sent him a bunch of free Methylene Blue and then he put it on his Instagram to his two million followers Like, hey, I'm getting this Methylene Blue from Maraki, check it out. Blah, blah, blah. That's like it's that same principle it's. And it goes back to just like being that good person, like we were saying throughout this episode, and that's not even like a good person thing.

Honestly, that was the business move. Like I'm going to give Danco free Methylene Blue because there's a chance that him shot it out and getting me sales. Like I'm not going to lie about that, it's, you know, it's different. Like when I gave my friend Bree Methylene Blue while she was on Kima. That's a bit different, you know. Or like the, like a man, I probably should keep count of how many bottles I give out for free.

To like people who hit me with stories of like what they're going through. Like the girl in Sweden, you know, and I post about a few. I don't post about them all. Some are too personal. Like you guys don't need to know and it has to do with also other people's health. Like they don't want that blasted out there, so there's no need. But like when it's a certain ones, like yeah, like I'm going to send it to Danco, you know, and I know he's.

It's a business transaction, so I wouldn't even consider that as like being a good person. Like that is just more me knowing that I could spread the message on it. But in return, what are we spreading? I'm not spreading a pre-workout Like this is going to be the best thing ever for your lift You're going to have, you know, skin busting veins. No, it's like, oh, hey, if you know anyone that's struggling and think like they might have, you know lime, they could have early onset things that I can't claim about. But you know, it's like, hey, there's compounds out there that could help them, and that's it. So I feel 100% cool with that.

And you got, you got a new little supplement. Supplement line out that I'm quite excited about How's that.

I have two things on the works. The one was going to be ready to go before the other and then the other. I was like no, we're going to try to get it out before the end of the year, Christmas time, like right now. Shipping is just terrible. Customs are terrible, so getting supplies is like horrendous right now. But yeah, like we have the hoodies right now, I have the new one on. It's got marocchi on the front. It says mitochondrial supremacy. On the back That'll be dropping soon. But like we have in supply chain issues in China, they're having orders with like it is the sickest hoodie of all time.

I'm not going to lie guys, so I'm going to be purchasing that. For sure, you got to. Let me know I'm sending you one.

I already have your size down and everything. Don't even worry about it. Don't even worry about it, Bubba, You're good, you're good. But yeah, we're having like a little bit of supply chain. We have like one ingredient on our new products missing from every single product, and then the hoodies of course. So I'm trying to get that worked out. I honestly want a better source. Like I, I, everyone buys from China, but as much USA made as I can, it's like the goal, but, dude, I literally spend a. If I even said it on like I said like business people would would punch me in the face. I talked to my buddy in Arizona. He sold his wireless charging pad on Shark Tank, Like had a crazy, like eight figure exit and like he still owns a business and like implementing new things. And I told him like kind of the way I was running shit and it was hilarious. I wish I had the phone call.

He was basically like you're an idiot Like you know this right, and I was like, yeah, sorry, but it's, you know it's what we're doing. But I have, like the USA sourcing for Methylene blue instead of the India sourcing like 90% of everyone else, and yeah, we paid an arm and a leg for that one. So now it's pretty cool though, but with that, you know it's. You know, I'm not trying to be the the cheapest product, I'm trying to be the cleanest product, so I don't mind. So I wouldn't mind, I'll do the same thing with the hoodies if I could find them. Anyways, what I'm asking you is if you know anyone in USA does fabric, let me know please.

But the hoodies are sick. So the product that the one product that I know about, will that be the one that's coming out soon.

I tweeted about it and it took off.

Yeah, our skimmer pitching.

I can't remember which one I told you about? But yeah, the one that's coming out is yeah, fuck it. Is this toothpaste? Fuck it, I don't care, I don't care, it's coming out.

The one we'll say. We'll say are they both? The collab with Eric.

The oh, bro, I didn't think about that. Eric, me and Eric, we have that project where we're so that's not related to this? No, that's completely different.

Oh shit, so that's the one you and me talked about. Listen, let me tell you something.

No, ryan told me a lesson that I love. That he said and I talked about some of the other things I learned from that guy but he said you can have everything you want, or you can do everything you wanna do, but you can't do it all. You can't have it all. It's the same exact thing. So we could do a million things with Methylene Blue. People are like why don't you do this, this, this, this? I'm like yo, that's not the point. Like one, you can add the drops to whatever you wanna add. Like we provide you the cleanest drops, go, do whatever you want with them. And then two, we're gonna start adding new products, new products, new products. But no, me and Eric are we're taking a whole venture away from Methylene Blue. We're just kind of going off a trend that we like we're taking a problem with kind of his product in a way not really a problem, but just like any convenience and we're streamlining it, making it easier to. I would say, ingest she-la-jee. That's about all I can tell you. But it's like the idea is like amazing, because it's just something I whipped up in my kitchen one day. I was like, bro, we should make these. And he was like, yeah, let's make them. And now we're, you know, we bought an LLC, we have, you know, everything working. We have a Shopify store up, so that'll be a January launch. I'm just waiting for the samples from my manufacturer, probably tomorrow, actually, I'll try them and then, if they're good, but yeah, that's gonna be killer.

But I have two new Meraki lines coming out, two new products. One is an upgraded formula from something that we've done, and then the other one is the mouth paste, which I don't care. You know what I mean, like it's gonna be different. So we have Bowtide Gator in the Twitter space and I remember like being like I'm not doing this, I'm not doing anything, and I was talking with Noah and everyone about it and they're like, hey, like one, talk to him if you want, cause, dude, he's a big Meraki supporter and I'm a big supporter of NoBS and I do not want to compete with him, you know. And I was like I'm not making like a toothpaste or anything like that, like, well, one, like he's got a different product completely. And two, like you know, like there's space, and like we went in this whole thing where I was like no, like I'm not competing with him. I like the guy, I don't want to do anything like that. So we just, basically, we reformulated it and we're making just like a gum paste, and the only reason we're doing this cause methylene blue is so efficacious for gum health. It's ridiculous and I can tell you right now it's the same way. I've started every product.

I had anecdotal experience with it and then it married up with clinical data and that was I brushed my teeth because I didn't bring toothpaste to Mexico and they had nothing clean. And so, instead of brushing my teeth with fluoride, noah was like hey, let's whip up methylene blue and coconut oil, a little bit hydroxy appetite. And we did it in like three days and my gums felt the best they've ever felt Like amazing, just tight, firm gums. And then my teeth were a little bit wider from the methylene blue and I was like all right, hold on now.

And I did what I always do. I was like what is going on here? I Google it, research it, Boom, methylene blue just smashes gingivitis. Amazing for gum health. We were looking at how it interacts with enamel to make sure it's good. And, yeah, we were like cool, this is going to be a cool product, so we might just make an oil, pull out of it instead of, like a toothpaste, cause it. You know like we have amazing toothpaste out there, like both taggaters, so I don't want to compete with the guy. I love it. He's already got it Like you don't need to improve that. I just think methylene blue in the mix would be good.

So yeah, that's exciting dude. So one thing that I think before our last podcast you were in the middle of fight camp and then we had you had some issue in terms of on Friday, which you could explain the story of but since then you've had a lot of the business stuff pop off and it's a hard thing to balance the fighting world which is so intense with the business world and the social media world, which is equally intense in a different way.

How's it been for you now? So I know that you're thinking about taking a fighter. There's some stuff on the table for you. How do you feel right now? Going into this next chapter of doing the business stuff and also still keeping the fight?

Yeah, I get asked every day. So you're done fighting. You're done fighting, nope, nope, nope, nope, I don't need to. You know what? It's kind of free Like I used to bank on. My income was gonna be from fighting and I was just kind of slaving away at everything else until fighting could be my income. And then I had that epiphany where I was watching Sean O'Malley make more than Volk and when Volk was fighting for a title and I was like, yeah, I need to like actually become a business, become a brand, and that's what got me business minded, that's what got me watching podcasts and that's what gave me some of the foundation to grow a Meraki the way I did, because I educated the crap out of myself before I started a business and it paid off.

Fighting is dumb, like you know. It's like last fight camp is exactly what happens, dude. I prepared my hardest. I was in the best shape I've ever been in my life for a fight. I was the most ready I've ever been for a fight. My sparring was on Like it was just. It was gonna be such a great performance, like the highlight reel was gonna be so amazing. I was so excited and 15 minutes before my fight we're in the back room.

The everyone told me to sue the casino after two. There was like legit efficacy if I wanted to sue them in my case because of how dark it was in the back room. So we were warming up with, like literally, flashlights in the back and I like I'm walk, you walk into the back room from the stage where it's all high lit and you're, and then you're in a dark room. So your bright lights, dark room. You can't see Guys are like in their hidden midst and you're like bumping into people. We're all like we're all joking about it in the back. But anyways, I get my hands taped and then I get my gloves unwrapped. We already warmed up, we're ready to go, and we were using a flashlight to wrap our gloves because it was too dark and when the flashlight came off, eyes were dark.

I tripped over a trip strip like a cord strip and my ankle popped. And no big deal, no big deal at all. Like, all right, cool, ankle popped, we'll still fight. I already had adrenaline going because I'm about to fight. So I couldn't feel a thing. I was like, oh, we're good. And I'll tell you what. I've popped an ankle in the back room and I've slammed my shin into someone you know, ruptured every blood vessel in my leg in the middle of a fight and like a little rolled ankle isn't that bad. So Ners was checking and I was like everything's intact, you're good.

But the doctor walked up and he sees my ankle swollen. He was like you can't fight and I was like shut up, like I didn't even take it serious, like shut up, get out of here. And he was like no, like he was like you're done. And I was like no, no, no, no, I'm fighting, like it's okay, hey, go somewhere else, basically. And then that kind of pissed him off. So he was like you don't understand, like you answer to the promotion, the promotion answers to the commission, the commission answers to me this is fat, fucking nerdy doctor. And he just took away my livelihood right there. Boom, you can't fight. I'm sitting there like arguing with him, arguing with everyone, arguing with commission saying I'll sign releases, everything like that. No, I'm an insurance liability. It was a whole thing. So they took away my chance to fight. So I just spent eight weeks.

I broke my foot in the beginning of camp so I had to deal with like a broken foot for four to six weeks in camp. I couldn't kick, couldn't run. My thumb dislocated at least, I want to say, 50 times. It's probably being modest in camp. Every time I'd hit, it, pop out it hurt. I'd have to pop back in it. Swell, for a day it popped out at least once in a sparring session. But I think one day it popped out three times during a sparring session. I posted videos of it on Instagram. Like my thumb is actually like you can see on the back, like this is fat ball now. So, and you know, I lost 20 pounds and got ready for a fight.

I had all these sacrifices on top of money, on top of time, on top of growing the business and working full time while growing the business, and I actually luckily, like towards the end of camp, got to give up the contracting side of things and just focus on the business and that. But you were there, you came in and you saw I ran everything in the business while I was getting ready for that fight. So, as before, I had a manufacturing facility that was doing my fulfillment and whatnot. So I'm just hammering the point that, like I had all these sacrifices and one guy could take it away with one word, with eyesight on, you know, my ankle, like that's all he looked at. He looked at my ankle and told me I couldn't fight. He didn't touch, he didn't feel it, he didn't check, he didn't listen to the nurse, he didn't do anything. He just told me I couldn't fight.

So fighting is kind of like that. It is a lot of sacrifice for such literal wards, unless you make it to the very, very, very top, and there's so many ways for you to get screwed over on your way to the top, including brain damage, including that. So unfortunately, I am half Irish and half German and the Irish side just needs a knock and there's nothing that is gonna stop me from following my passion. So I don't care if you gave me $10 million tomorrow, I'm gonna fight, no matter what, like it's in my blood. I wanna fight till I'm 34, 36 years old, you know, have another six, eight years maybe fighting and then I'll be done and then at that point it doesn't make sense to compete in it. I'll still train, but right now I'm in my competition fighting phase and that's that. The half German side loves the studying, the research, the compounds and everything like that. You know, the scientist comes out on me, but the half Irish side is very, very strong and so, yeah, we're gonna keep fighting, no matter what.

Now, as far as juggling the fighting and the business, this is actually easier now than what I used to do when a Marocchi started. I was working full-time construction, so manual labor. I was coming home running every aspect of the business. So you're talking emails, email automations, building the website, changing the website, product photos, media marketing, fulfillment, you know, ordering the labels, ordering the jars oh, the jar's gonna come in, right. Okay, we had to order new jars. The shrink wrap's not working now. Oh, the shrink wrap gun burned out. We gotta get a new shrink wrap gun. Oh, we're out of tape again, you know. Oh, we're out of stickers again. So I was doing that and on top of that I was going and fighting.

So the gym days were wild. I would wake up early, go work, go home, start working on Marocchi oh crap, I need to eat. I'd like eat. All right, we're going to the gym. I'd go to the gym and either bring my orders with me to drop off at the post office off sunset, because they were open till nine, or I would rush home after the gym. Finish the boxes, go drop them off and try to do that same day shipping that I was guaranteed in. It was wild.

Now I wake up and I just handle the marketing, the customer service. Like I hold onto the emails I'm not going to hand that off. I like talking to my customers because it means a lot to me and I don't get to slap their labels on anymore. So I have to like at least engage with them. You know, and I want them to know, like they're talking to me. The guy that's like running everything and then I go train and like, honestly, life slowed down a bit and I love it. Like I get the opportunity to go to Mexico for a month and still run my business and like be able to train how more time. So I'm not going to lie to you and say, oh, it's so tough, like it's a little bit easier now, but I paid the price for it.

How do you think that more time has helped the business? Has it been pretty noticeable in terms of the having that time to even just think about things and see things from more of a third person point of view and do more work on the business versus in the business? Has that, have you seen that sizeable effect on that?

Massive, massively. Yeah, it's given me more time to like. I remember you were actually here when I handed everything off to a 3PL, you know, which is my manufacturer's daughter. He was like, yeah, she wants to get in. I was like let's give her an opportunity and help her out.

So I was stressful at first because you know she was newer to the game but like that's the way I like doing business. Like you know, I like doing the friends and family thing. You know I'm gonna help the people who are helping me. So it was stressful in the beginning but then, like once I like saw her proof of concept, how good she was at like her job and everything and like what she was doing, I was immediately stressed, was gone. I could focus on. You got a thing I was doing like six hours a day of fulfilling. You know, just boxes, boxes, boxes, and I could hand that off and I remember just being like, oh gosh, like you get in this thing where you don't want to spend money on something because you consider a luxury. You know it's like wants and needs and like that's kind of a want, not a need, because I could do it.

But the second I handed it off and I could focus my attention on more customer service, better education on Twitter, educating myself better on my product, finding ways to work around it, making better connections. It always 10X is like that. So it's more of like that's where the smart work comes in. You have to do focus work. I could do easy, you know, grown work all day. I love it, like even right now. We just got a crazy pop again. I texted her. I was like do you need help? She was like no. I was like all right, whatever, whatever, all right, but yeah, so focusing on I guess you could call it the marketing, but just being more active on Twitter, educating myself, posting my findings, everything like that, you know the message is gonna get out there a lot more, so of course, the business is gonna grow.

I remember the I think we did a Twitter space. Your fight was on either a Friday or-.

It was a Friday.

And you had it was a Friday fight, it was Wayans on-.

So we did the Thursday live right after I weighed in and I was like doing my little halfway into shock when I was rehydrating, trying to talk.

Yeah, you were-. We're in the middle of doing a Twitter space and you were like 10 minutes after weighing in and then the week before that you were in the deep side of doing the weight cut and you were fulfilling in the middle of the conversation as well. And then I got there the day after the fight on that Saturday and we were going to Utah and you had the swollen ankle. You had just had all this drama with the fight and we were just in your room stepping back I'll put it away.

Fulfilling away and it was crazy, it was cool to see, it was inspiring to see in the it was noticeable of how much you were Doing, so much of the grunt work and now I the seeing all the growth. It just makes perfect. Yeah, in terms of it's like you, you pass that off and now you're able to work on more of the big picture stuff. And I think one of the things that when I got to Vegas the day after the fight that I was a little blown away by was the mindset you had, having just suffered through this ankle injury, you had such a Long camp and you had were juggling so many things for the first time during camp. What? But you were, you were like it was. It was almost like it was all good. You didn't really have too much Anger in terms of what had happened and you were able to just balance things and from my perspective, it seemed like it was because you were getting so much purpose out of the business side of things. You hit a little nail on the head.

That that is for sure, and it took me a little bit to realize that. But I'll tell you right now I was angry like deep, deep anger chip on my shoulder. It's still there, like as we're talking about fighting in February, right now, and like we have an opponent like I have to unleash like a few demons, I feel like I can't wait to get in this training camp because I am pissed off about that situation. But at the same time yeah, you're right, it's not like my only purpose now and I, you know, in the beginning, like I said, I just wrote down a monetary goal for the first time, my notebook, and like I cringed at it. But it's not me writing it for like I don't want that in my pocket, it's me growing something that I believe has it like I have a purpose behind. So it's okay for me now and but it's still I just struggle with it still, like I'll just be an honest, like it's just a mental battle and if I have too much time I can sit there and think about it Like I could work through it and then I'm either happy or like, if I think about it just enough, like sometimes it bugs me Because I'm like yo, like I'm gonna go to the grave, like am I gonna regret not putting everything into fighting. But now is it's way easier. I would say those thoughts crept in like six months ago. Now it's easier because, like I have more time to fight, I'm more time to train. So I kind of just did like two steps forward, five steps. I mean two steps back, five steps forward in that case. Um, but one of the best things that ever happened is like so, like say like I lost it all today, I'd still be happy. I still grind at everything. Let's say I didn't catch like everyone's gonna, you're gonna catch breaks and business for sure. Um, let's say I'm not at the same sales point, matt. Let's say I'm still fulfilling orders right now, working construction and trying to grow monarchy. I'd still be doing it today. I wouldn't never quit, like you. You have to. You can't be fickle. You have to be able to do that.

I think about that a lot, like. I think about like oh, what if you were still fulfilling orders and you didn't get these breaks? You weren't in the position you were in. You know what I mean, and I'm like I'd been okay with it because I did things like I played football in high school for three years and I played two plays or one play. I practice every day in summer, 120 degrees, with a helmet on, and I didn't get a play, cuz I wasn't, I didn't hit puberty yet, and the kids who had puberty were better on the field, you know. So we they waited till we are like 40 points up in a game. One time they threw me in and I was like, yeah, I was like so stoked around out there, try to catch past quarterback win, throw it to me. I was like whatever dude, like Whatever.

So that, though, instilled this thing. Where it's the delayed gratification. It's also like understanding like I could do things for a very, very long time, deal with a lot of crap for it to possibly pay off in the end, and that is like there's nothing not like that's kind of dangerous in regard to that, because like what do you got to do? You're gonna try to take everything you could take everything away from me a day and I'm gonna rebuild it I know I will and I'm not gonna get discouraged like I'm gonna treat it every day, one day at a time. How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time, that kind of mentality you just keep striking along like I don't need. I don't need celebrations, little victories every day.

And when I get them and I got like kind of like holy shit, like this is weird, like you know. Like so like Watch this thing grow the way it did, as fast as it did is it's life is weird right now I'm not gonna lie to you. Like Like there were some great moments, but like at the same time, like holy shit, like I've never had something pay off like this that fast. Like usually have to work way, way longer at it, and that's where I was. Just I get back into the white pill and like what you know, maraki's like kind of show me, like yeah, there is like good things in this world. You know, maybe I wasn't athletically blessed and I had to go crazy and work hard for it, but not everything's like that bands. I was like, okay, cool.

Like you know, this world is not maybe as hard as I thought it was, but I still approach it like it is and that I think is gonna always just play in my favor this kind of leads to something I want to ask you about, which is I Hear a lot of people talk about like 75 heart and these sprints of difficulty in terms like a monk mode or just like Setting out a certain amount of time to be incredibly focused, incredibly dedicated, similar to like a situation and taking that principle of fight camp and applying it to other things.

What do you think about that for, like, for people who aren't in the fighting world there, but they are Trying to do this thing, whether it's Entrepreneurship or social media or something in that world and they say they want to do for the new year, they want to do this, the 75 days where they're fully dedicated to this craft. Having had that experience of fight camp, do you think that's a great principle to bring into other aspects of? Yeah, hundred percent.

I am, I'm all for it. I'm all for doing hardship, making life easier, raising your baselines or like, I guess, lowering it, like when life's this shitty but you can still be happy here instead of you need it here to be happy. I think it's overall performance answer to it's gonna, it's gonna build a confidence and like when you say you're gonna do something, you know you can get it done, that's a huge one for me. Me and Victor did 10,000 push-ups In a month one time because we were talking shit and said we would. And then I was like you said it, we're doing it. You know, yeah, yeah. And then next, you know I'm texting them like, yeah, I'm 3,000 in, how much are you out? He's like I got a ketchup and I was like, exactly, don't do that ever again. So now when we say something, though we're like we're gonna do it, you know we did actually fuck up, though you know it's not all sunshine, right, but we said we're gonna have the splits down by November and me and his unflexible asses, we do not have the splits down. So we're working on that one, but I think overall it is you need these, you need seasons. No, we're right. And again, that's another thing I learned in Mexico seasons for everything.

So we I was very optimized going into Mexico and then I got thrown in a situation where we couldn't optimize, you know, like we couldn't get good meat. We couldn't. You know, we had no form of transportation so we had to eat out a bunch. So, okay, we, it wasn't 80, 20, it was like you know, like 50, 50, like we were. We were having a fuck ton of seed oils, like oh, you know, it's like we were not getting optimal water. All the time we were drinking coax and then we were drinking a little bit, we were partying. You know, there's a lot of nicotine. I luckily had a bad cigar night so I did not partake in a ton of nicotine like right before Mexico. And I tell you what I went from a full nicotine addiction to one bad cigar night and I haven't touched anything in like two weeks. But I have no urge. So that there's lessons in there. Have a have too much one time if you want to quit and it'll help you. But yeah, we are in.

He was saying he's like yo, it's like, you know, you need these seasons, you need to have those, those monk modes, but your life doesn't need to be that and I've done that before. When I look back, I love the seasons of monk mode and I'm gonna get right back in training camp. But I also love the seasons why I'm not like that this was a affogato baby, like homemade ice cream in there, like in the breakfast, like it's okay though. And then because I know like as soon as New Year's over in January comes and like I get that fight lined up for February, it's, it's gonna be crazy monk mode and it sucks when you're doing it. But those those seasons of like really grinding and leveling up, like those are the ones I look back and I love them. And I just wrote that my notebook. I said like 2018, I grinded. That's when I doubled basically my time in the gym because I wasn't getting the results I wanted and I said like, okay, I tried the scientific approach done, we're just gonna do double the work. And then boom, I ripped off like four fight win streak, got the, got the amateur world titles, got the Utah title, and then went pro and everything like that. And then I think I just did that again last year with my business. I said, alright, fuck it, we're just gonna work at it. And I grew everything and now, like I'm reaping the rewards from it.

So I like the, the analogy of the bow and arrow. It's the pullback, pullback, pullback, pullback, pullback, boom. Get the rewards from it. Go pick up the arrow, do it again. It's kind of like the season. So hundred percent, seventy five, hard. Yeah, now there is the guys who will talk shit about it and they call it like lark being for guys who didn't make it in the military and everything like that. It's like dude, if you're bettering yourself, I don't care if you need a drill camp guy yelling at you and making you feel like you know You're in the military. So you play pretend. What's the end result? You know, I don't care about the path you take up the mountain, just get up the mountain. So I don't judge people for doing that at all. If like people, like people were talking shit about it, you know it's just, it's stupid, they're just, they're just posting for Twitter. So that's the other side of the coin. With it, I'm all for it.

I love what you're talking about about seasons, because what I've learned through doing short spurts of really hard things is that you find balance through touching the two extremes from that incredibly disciplined season and then also that incredibly deoptimized season where you're just kind of going with the flow and doing things a little more and not really worrying too much about whether it's your diet or training, whatever it may be and then, touching those two extremes, you find moderation in the long run.

I think it's how, for a lot of people, you get to that point where you have this way more moderate approach or you do things that are more consistent, things that you could do for a long run, because you touch those two sides of the extreme to find that program.

Yeah, 100%, and that's another thing Noah talked about too. When I talk praise about these guys I was with in Mexico, they were all hammers too, but Noah brought up the also touching the extremes to find that middle ground. And the other part of it is not going too extreme for too long or becoming the top 1% in something only because then you have the deficiencies. It's better to be the top 5% and everything else. And I was like man, you're right, what do you get when you're in the top 1% of something and you're deficient in so many other things? Now you're just competing with the top 1% to get to the top. So, say, with fighting per se.

If I didn't educate myself on anything else, I was just trying to fight, just trying to fight, just trying to fight. I'm fighting with the top 0.1% of the world just to get a little bit of a life out of that, and you're always competing with the best of best. No one cares who's the bronze medalist or the third person to travel the world by airplane. There's all these things like that, and that will break down the other things too. But the biggest thing is, you want to be competent in so many things and the way you do that is by deep diving them and I do that with training and that's something I just yelled at the boys. There's a couple of young kids in our gym yesterday and I like smack them and I was like yo. I was like you know why you guys suck when we do these drills? Because you have no boxing. Like you guys are great strikers but your pure boxing is trash. And I was like you guys need to go and just box, like so the problem with MMA is guys will do MMA, but like what I did in my approach was I went to a straight jiu-jitsu gym with no strikers and just did jiu-jitsu. And then I went to a straight Muay Thai gym, just did Muay Thai. Then I trained with just wrestlers, then I trained with just boxers and the biggest ROI was like the boxing. Like I was a great kicker, I could strike a bit, and then when I went down with like pure amateur Gwongla boxers or pro boxers and I got my shit lit up by them because they know these intricacies that you'll never grasp and you like just you.

I would dive in for like three to six months and just do one trade at a time, those extremes, and then I bring it back in and blend it and that's what you can do with life as well. Just go like get one thing that you want and like go after extremely and then come back and then go into another season. You know what I mean. It's much better than trying to optimize and do like 80 things reading Like they would be the same things, like trying to read four books at the same time. You wouldn't do that. You're going to read one book at one time. Approach life like that was skills Dude.

Yes, that was a big takeaway I got from talking with Danco, because he had tried all these different businesses and tried acquiring these different skills and then he failed at all this different stuff and then it came together in the end. It was like first he tried creating a career in, like graphic design and he was like fuck that, whatever, that's not the path web design and then went into marketing and then into X and into Y and then ultimately it became everything, became his brand, like the whole full, encompassing and encompassing aspect of it allowed him to have success in all the different domains that made his brand work. And I think it's like the same thing as like Bruce Lee, like you see you, the reason why people loved him wasn't because he was an actor, was because he was an actor and martial artist and a philosopher and like those three things together made people be like the super fans of him.

I just think that's such an important message is like becoming this Renaissance man.

Yeah, and I did that with business. I tried to do everything before I handed it off. And so, like we just got a video creator because we might do some paid ads come February on Meta for the towel, yeah, and I sent him a video I edited for Instagram yesterday. He was like you edited this.

I was like, yeah, dude, because like I went down that street and try to learn it one thing at a time, like I was trying to be a streamer and then I was trying to edit videos. So I was just editing them for myself because I don't want to pay someone you know and like you learn all these things and all these different traits and all it does is it levels you up, you know, and then you can pull back and like now I can edit a video. Like like I edit a great video in like 15 minutes, super easy, and that's what it all comes down to is just finding those little things that could like improve your life, your ROI from probably a need, like I couldn't afford a video editor, but I wanted to post fight content. I was like I'll figure this shit out.

I got YouTube.

Absolutely, bro. I have a smile on my face right now because I'm thinking about your winter video that you showed me for a while.

Maraki commercial, the band one.

We didn't shoot that band commercial.

I wanted to shoot in Mexico, but in Mexico, oh man.

So for those who are listening, so when me and Vance were in Utah, we filmed a commercial for Vance's company, maraki, and it was the funniest, funniest experience and it came out incredible, but just with super simple editing, vance doing it all himself, and it ended up being this really fun and ended up being a pretty great video in the end as well.

That was a. I might go retweet that today. I feel like the audience grew so much as no one's seen it.

You know, and like they that's a good one to yeah, they need to see the personality a bit like oh my gosh guys, it do this.

I think that strengthens brand. So much is like the personality behind brands. I'm so always so much more inclined to buy products from people that I maybe I don't know personally, but I've listened to and I feel like I relate to in a way. It's like it's. It's an interesting aspect of business with social media now is like the more personality you have, the more likely people are to buy things from you because they relate to you. Yeah, and you know what?

I can't say I can't stand. The people are like like, oh, like, sorry, my DMs are so full, you know, I mean I couldn't. Like they get like upset, people bug them. And I'm like, yeah, you're on social media, like you say you want to help people, but you're upset. They're DMing you like you know what I mean. Like so there's a few people I've been seeing that lately. They just complained. I'm like, yeah, just shut up. Like I've been bad, like my DMs pile up and takes me like two or three days, but like that's what I chose and so I'd, yeah, I get.

I try to respond to tell people like yo, my bad, a lot of shit, but I don't complain, I don't get mad. Or like when someone asked a question from like a thread I post under, and they're like, what about this? I wrote in the thread like I don't try to shame them, like, oh, you didn't read, I just know they have a question, help them out. You know what I mean. We got too many fucking Grim hoods on Twitter. Now everyone's trying to like shame everyone. That guy is like the worst at it, dude. He just tries to shit on everyone. And I'm like, bro, like how hard is your life, dude, you tweet for a living. Calm down, dude, go do some. Go do construction for a year and come back. It's not that it's not hard. So people are just they're fickle babies sometimes, but it is what it is.

Anything we have to talk about today that you want to talk about.

I almost got arrested in Mexico. Do you want to?

remind yourself. Yes, do you tell me about?

that, oh, dude, so you, we get moped in Tulum, tulum, there's like beaches over here and there's like a 15 to 30 minute ride back to the area we're in and there's one road, one way and, bro, it's like you do whatever you want, you know you just go through. So we already got on our way there and the taxi we got pulled out by the cops and, dude, they strip searched us like for drugs, anything like that. And so everyone told me, like hide your money in your wallet a little bit secret. So the guy's going through my, my car and he finds my stash of like I had like $200 bills, like case we wouldn't need to buy anything he's like. And I was like, oh fuck, he's gonna take. So I was like, I looked at him, I like looked around, like as a joke, and then he kind of giggled and he put it back. So we got away with that, because the week before our friends got extorted out there and they just make up oh, you broke this wall, you got to pay this. So we got away with that second time.

Now we're on moped and I crossed over, I went around a car, in a construction zone I guess, and I guess you can't pass car over a ramp. I don't know if they're making the rules up or what, but right when I did, there's a cop there. He lit me up and I was looking. I was like yo, there's one lane right here and it is bumper to bumper traffic, like he's not catching me if I, if I book in on a moped. I was like I'm not doing that though, so I pull over the, I tell the boys to go. The cops doing a five point turn, trying to turn around. I'm just sitting there, wait, wait, wait. And they pull up and like yeah, you did this illegally. You know we're gonna have to give you a ticket.

I was like all right, cool, huh. Like how much is it? And he was like were you drinking? And we were. We had the day club during the day. It was like a Saturday. I was like I had a drink like a couple hours ago and he was like blow on me and I and this is where I messed up I was like it kind of just blew quick. And then he was like no, blow on me. I was like oh shit, so I blew and he was like you're drinking, pulls out handcuffs right away. He's like you're going to jail. I was like, oh shit. So in my head I was like, all right, well, here's training camp, like we're going to Mexican prison.

So I'm up here comes my esoteric training camp four day, fast and fucking sparring rounds. And then I brings him over, his boss makes me blow on him. They're like, yeah, you're going to jail, bud, like we got to take you to the police station. I was like, all right, so I text Noah and the boys. I say, hey, like come grab my bag, I'm going, I'm getting arrested. And they're like shit. And I was like, yeah, dude, like I'm just trying to like hammer it Like the best way. But I was like, stay calm, handle it. Like every great person's been arrested once advanced. And so he's like talking to me, he goes, look, he goes, we can bring you to the police station or you can pay us 2000. And I go 2000, what dollars? I pay those. He goes dollars. And I said jail, like that. Like I was like take me to jail, you're not getting $2,000. And he kind of like laughed.

And then he's like talks to his boss, comes back to me. He's mosey. He's like, no, no, no pesos. I said, how much is that in dollars? And he like showed me and it was like $150. I was like, look, I was like bubba, I got a hundred dollar bill. I was like, oh, I got, do you want it or no. He goes yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So they take it. And he goes our printer's broken, we can't write your ticket, but you got to take it. And I said, oh, thank you, bud. I said you know and everything, and then he's talking to me. He's like you know, and I said like some funny shit, like during it, and I was like I wasn't drinking.

I was just dancing officer, like yo bylo, and then he was like kind of rolling his eyes and then he was like do you work out? I was like, oh, I'm a professional fighter in Vegas. He's like you. I was like yeah, and then like so I was like like this and he was like like this, and I was like yo tengo la mano de piedras, way. And then I was like kind of fake punching him and I was telling him to hit me. And then I was like trying to get him to hit me in the face and I was boxing with a little bit.

And now I'm on the side of the road boxing with them. So I was like all right, let me get a picture with you guys, because you just fucking scam me out of a hundred dollars. I'm like a video with them and everything. We're all good, made them laugh, but I'll tell you what, being charismatic a little bit, take it a long way. Take it a long way. If you can make them laugh, you're probably in the clear. So they let me get back on the bike and drive off. So a hundred dollars cheaper, but whatever. And the guy hit like a bitch. So no respect.

There's a lesson there with being charismatic, because I was going to say that is the most advanced story ever in terms of just the making the officers laugh, being like like a hard to do, talking about like not being afraid and being more just like giggly and fun.

Yeah.

That shit goes a long way, dude. I saw it.

Yeah, it doesn't sound I walked up to the military guys I was trying to get a picture and they were fucking. You thought they were going to shoot me. They were so pissed I was like, okay, so you got to know your audience. And then the second story I have from Mexico is buy a drone. Okay, buy a drone. So I got the boys.

Risk, risk, hates this story. But obviously, like I'm not an idiot, I don't cheat on my girlfriend, I'm pretty monogamous. But we, uh, I got a drone and flew it out while we were on this rooftop pool and uh, there's a game show in France, a reality show, where they take couples, they throw them in a house and then they bring these model girls in and they see if they can get the couples to cheat, you know, with the models, and it's like their big reality show. Well, we just don't happen to be on the rooftop with the model girls and I have a drone dude, and they, what do model girls love? A way to like get videos out of it. So they flock me. And so their boss comes up and says girl, she's like no pictures, no videos. Ah, they're like freaking out. So, anyways, these girls are like, one by one, secretly trying to come and get me to video them on the drone. So then get the videos and it turns out to like we all end up hanging out and like, uh, hang out with the girl who was like in charge of them and she's all mad and like got her to laugh and then like, next thing you know they're like yeah, come back and have drinks. So I got to get the boys in and like they got to go have drinks with a bunch of model girls from France that first night and it was like weekend saloon and Eric is gone and Eric's, eric's his girlfriend at the time too.

So, in, I've been in with Eric around like he's monogamous, like me lesson in there. If you get a business partner, like I did, that's kind of like a shit test because they'll cheat on the girl, they'll cheat on you. So I was pretty happy with that. Uh, he's a good guy. But he wasn't there and I was just sitting there. I was like, bro, like Eric left for the weekend real quick. He's not going to believe this story at all. Like, when he comes back, like, oh, what'd you guys do? Come on, hang out in rooftop pool with a bunch of French models. You know he's like, yeah, shut up, dude. But yeah, we ended up doing that. So that was a cool, fun story right in the beginning.

But, dude, other than that, like all we did in Mexico was like wake up, we grind in. We talked about content, like we had these most amazing talks ever, like just ideas, like we weren't gossiping. We were like obviously we were joking around, we weren't talking about dumb shit, we weren't talking about the news, we weren't talking about complaining about the heat. We were talking concepts, ideas, like ways to level up. How can we all grow?

You know, we found those deficiencies early and like we all knew what we needed to work on. You know, me and Eric, me and Eric, me and Eric need to work on our personal brands. Noah and Tim needed, you know, work on their business side of things and, dude, we just started hammering and it was like the best time ever. So, like they weren't like these great big events, like we had a bunch of like memories, obviously, but it was like what we were doing every day and the flow and like the vibe we had among us, like the boys, kind of like it was just you couldn't replicate it, dude, it was. It was better than anything else.

Like I understand the masterminds now, like you get around these groups of people you know, and I was like before I was kind of like, yeah, you're just like, it's kind of like a mine and I was like no dude, like literally like I would have paid money to go hang out with those guys, like I would have probably dropped 3000, like whatever the masterminds are, just cause, like I did level up, like in my business, shows it, like I have, I have receipts on everything you know. Like I hung out with them. So all the way Noah and Tim do their thing, like they coached me a bit, they helped me out, dude, they gave me advice and then boom, 6,000 followers later on Twitter and like a lot of that is because of them. Like they showed me, like what I was doing. They didn't like change anything, they just optimized it and it works, yeah.

Dude, there's such a strong lesson in there and really just creating, creating or living with different people who are doing similar things to you, and just the ability, especially when you're like an uncommon person to deal with and you're doing things that the people around you in normal life aren't doing. Getting around those people where you could actually talk about those things that you guys are both uniquely into and pass off ideas and just get better. I think for anybody trying to do something different, finding those people is is of the utmost importance. It is.

Dude, trent Poppy did that. He's always done that, and I was always like, bro, like you're smart as hell, what are you doing? He's like I was like, why do you have this coach? He's like dude, sometimes you just need to hear it from someone else. You need to put that ball in their court so you can focus on what you need to focus on.

And my whole fight career, dude, we like there's no coaches in Vegas for smaller gyms that are good. Everybody wants celebrity coaching. So like they go and they, like the coaches, want to train the highest guys in the UFC. Well, welcome to Vegas. You know, you throw a rock there. They're all here. You're going to hit a Golden Glove champion or something. So we had to coach ourselves and like just from like, changing to my gym, now I have a coach and like I don't like have to question him or anything like that, or I just let him do his thing. I just am coachable and like life improves that way you grow. You know, get a mentor, get a good network, like that is. So it is insane. The ROI on that Quit thinking you can do it all you can, but why? You know what I mean. If you could focus on what you just need to focus on, you can get more done.

And if you have someone you trust in that regard, it makes things so much easier for you. Like there's a lot said about like the one size fits all diets, but just not have a question. Things makes your life so much easier, like I think that's really the superpower, with a lot of the diets that are very dogmatic that work for people.

100,000% dude, I agree completely, completely. So in next year I do have planned is we are selling the Tulum Master month. No, I'm just kidding. I talked about like we're selling it. But no, dude, we are definitely planning trips next year because of, like, the ROI. We got on that, so yeah, and I know you're including in that too. So we'll all be. I think we're doing Florida, which I'm pretty excited about. So are you going to come? I don't know, if I fight, I can't come in January, but if not, I'll be down there for sure.

If I don't fight, then 100% yeah, I'm going to be there, sweet, awesome brother Dude, I think I think thank you so much for taking the time for this. This was, it was all fun. It was it was great 100%, bro.

I haven't bought it. I'm glad you hit me up. I was hanging. I know we were trying to do in person, but we can do an in person one later.

So they're going to come, the in person ones are going to come, but, dude, just appreciate you taking the time and looking forward to seeing you in person 100% Brother.

Likewise, I'm super stoked. My cat wants to be in the podcast.