Episode #13 Sean Sullivan OCB Board of Directors Team/ Show Promoter

In this weeks episode we interview Sean Sullivan OCB show promoter and member of the board of directors of the OCB Natural Bodybuilding federation. Sully has been involved in natural bodybuilding for 50 years and has a wealth of knowledge and experience in the industry that is unmatched. In this podcast Sully takes us through his journey in the sport and how he has seen it grow and adapt of the past 50 years!

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:01

All right, gentlemen, let's talk some natural bodybuilding. Um, all right, guys, welcome back to the MLF coaching podcast. Today we are um joined by Coach JT, and our guest today is Sully. Sully, give us uh a little introduction about yourself. Obviously, we know you pretty well um with the uh OCB organization, but some of our guests might not know who you are, so talk to us a little bit about what you do and we'll go from there.

SPEAKER_00 0:26

Uh yeah, they uh guys, thanks for having me on. Uh great honor. And about me, the the thing I like to say first and foremost is I'm just a guy. I'm just some guy. Uh but I have had kind of a remarkable journey in and out of bodybuilding. Uh started back when I was 13, and I was living in Columbus, Ohio. We were actually homeless at the time, and I was kind of wandering the streets of Columbus, and I happened upon a health food store, and there just happened to be a bodybuilding seminar going on, and it just happened to be hosted by this guy named Arnold. Uh, long story short, uh, Arnold ended up giving uh me two tickets to the Mr. Olympia, uh the 1978 Mr. Olympia, which Frank Zane deservedly won. Uh still to this day, my favorite bodybuilder of all time, probably just from that early, that early memory and that early moment. Uh, one disclaimer I always like to put in on that is it was nothing special towards me. Um, him and Jim Morrimer, his partner, they were just trying to hand out some tickets to fill seats in the show. And it's one of the learning lessons that I always try to put forward to bodybuilders, particularly bodybuilders, because people are always watching our athletes and our champions and what they're doing. And it's these small, nuanced things that might mean nothing to you, these random acts of kindness that can totally change the trajectory of somebody's life. And that's what it did for me. It got me involved in something for the first time in my life. I spent my time digesting everything there was to know about bodybuilding. And believe me, back in 1978, 1979, there wasn't a lot out there to learn from. Uh, it was all the old bodybuilding magazines and hanging out at the YMCA, which was the only gym in Columbus, Ohio, and now there's about probably 800 of them. So it's kind of like in the old Stone Age. Uh, but it got me into a lot of things and it focused uh a lot of my energy. It gave me something to believe in and to help me believe in myself, which is why I've been so dedicated to bodybuilding the last coming up on 50 years of being involved in the sport, uh and uh coming up in another year and a half, to be 50 years. And before we close, I may want to make an announcement on something I'm doing for my 50th anniversary in bodybuilding, competitive bodybuilding. But uh fast forward through that, I did my first show when I was 17. Uh kept competing from the time I was 17 until I turned 47, uh, which was about almost 20 years ago, uh, about 15 years ago, I retired. I retired in 2008. Uh I competed about 150, 160 times. Um, and here's the one thing I always like to peep have people put into perspective about the sport. All right, I won about 40 shows, and that sounds like a lot. That sounds like an amazing statistic, right? This cat won 40 shows, but I competed about 150 or 160 times. If you take that win-loss record and you put it into any other sport that's out there, I would be the worst team in any sport anywhere in history. And that's the true statistic for most competitors. Not everybody is a five-time Jordan Cup champion who probably only lost three shows their entire life, or Nando Schwarzenegger only lost three shows their entire life. Most competitors are like us, because I know you have a similar story. We compete a lot, we do it for the love of the sport, we do it for the discipline, we do it for the camaraderie, we do it for the friendships, we do it for the journey, and we let the placements fall where they may. And sometimes we do really well and win, and sometimes we fall short of that goal. But it's the continuous experience, the continuous process improvement, the continuous development of the body that's important. Uh, to round all that out, I started judging back in 1990 for one of the federations. I've been judging ever since. Uh, ran into Matt Shepley, who was the founder of the OCB, um, back when the OCB was just a website with a message board. And uh, Matt brought me in as a moderator, uh coach, and somebody to work with people to develop the spirit of what he was trying to create with the OCB. And that was, you know, like like people type first, um, doesn't matter where you come from, nobody crapping on each other, everybody was welcome, kind of an environment. It was a culture we created. And then in 2003, Matt said, Hey, listen, um, I'm promoting for um another federation, which will be neatly remained nameless because it wasn't about that federation um and him escaping them. It was more about he just wanted to try something new and bring what he was learning from the culture created on the OCD website to end OCD production. Uh, so I was essentially patient zero. Uh, I was the first promoter, and it was he and I. My first show was set for 2003, but um I lifelong military person and and uh spent 25 years as a cop in between there, 40 years in the military, about 15 active, the rest guard. Um, and a little thing happened in 2003 that kicked off, kicked a hornet's nest in the world, and I got called to full-time active duties, so I didn't promote 2003, even though I was the first promoter. My first show is in 2004, and that was The Spirit of America, which is now the longest continuously running show in the OCB. There are older shows, like it started with the presidential, but it missed a couple of years and changed hands. The OCB Spirit of America is never missed a year, even in COVID, and so it's the longest running show. So I guess you can say that um when Matt went to transfer from a single ownership to develop a leadership group and a group of owners, uh, I just outlasted everybody, and he just said, you know, hey dude, you've been around so long. You know, here, you know, you take a piece of this action because I can't get rid of you. And that's pretty much it.

SPEAKER_01 6:18

Wow, that's an incredible story. Um one thing that really stuck out to me with um all of that is is is something that JT and I talk about quite often, but it's the it's the resiliency and having the mindset and understanding that more often than not, you're not gonna win a show. And like the placement is not the not a good reason. Like putting putting your sole purpose and placement in a show is like it's the wrong thing, wrong thing to lean your hat on, right? Like there's so many things that bodybuilding can add value to your life, and I think just being so hyper-focused on how the outcome of the show is for you and where you place it's I think a lot of that's social media driven, right? Like you see people posting that brag, I think it's last place, they're probably not gonna be posting that brag online. But when people like have six sets in shows, they're posting it online. So I think that's in people's faces a lot nowadays, and people put a lot of pressure, it's like, oh, I've got to win my pro card or I'm a failure, right? But I think it's so important to have the mindset of like, what is bodybuilding actually bring to your life? Like, what value are you getting from this process? Like, because at the end of the day, more often than not, like we can all attest to this like you're gonna lose a lot. Yeah, yeah, you're gonna lose a lot of things.

SPEAKER_00 7:28

Exactly what you said. I want to put stomp on that, not to narrow, but I want to put stomp on that because this is the most important lesson of bodybuilding. Most of us start training as a stress release. We use it as a way to take um take our emotions out on something else. We use it to develop other inner pillars, like we want to be healthier, we want to reduce stress, we want to, you know, have uh personal connections in a gym. These are all the reasons that we start working out. Nobody turns around. Well, I I kind of did. I saw Arnold and Frank Zane and I said, Oh, I'm gonna do that. I'm gonna be a competitive bodybuilder before I even bought a set of weights. But most people start off on their journey because they go, I want to go into a gym to feel better. I want to make friends from the gym, I want to release some emotions because I'm so stressed out. And then they get involved in the competitive aspect of the sport and they stress the crap out of themselves over dieting missteps or a missed workout, or they didn't win a show, and it just becomes this big stressful thing. That's not why you started the journey. So never lose track of what got you on the path to begin with. I love competition. I did a lot of them. I I literally trained for a show in the desert on a deployment. I came back and three weeks later I entered a show. That's how much I love to compete. But I love to compete because of all those things that brought me into the sport to begin with. So just a lesson don't lose track of what got you there. That's your touchstone. The trophies are baubles. I think I've kept five or six trophies that I I earned over the years, and and that's it. That that they became touchstones. It is it's what got you started. If you maintain that as your focus, but then you also need to have that, you know, that that foresight to go, I want to be a champion, whatever, at whatever level, or I wanted to be a pro. That's gonna guide you along that path. But what keeps you grounded on the path is what got you to start it to begin with.

SPEAKER_01 9:32

Yeah, that's great. I think it is so important to have that mindset. And um, when you're when your goals are aligned with that, and I think I think it's just such a so much more of a fun process. I I think so many people just get so rigid and strict and put so much pressure on themselves when it comes to prep and um placement on stage, and it can it can just zap the fun out of what we you know grew up doing and loving, right? Like when you take it at a headitive level.

SPEAKER_02 9:57

I I don't know why you would do anything and not have fun with it. Like, if it's not bringing any joy that like you found in the beginning, like just don't do it. It's not for you. Bodybuilding, you should definitely find some joy in the journey because as you know, talking with a client this week, it's like your stage time with prep is so short. Like, enjoy the steps, enjoy the challenge that it brings, learn about yourself, find the little things that's like wow, I I am doing this, like this is something that I can accomplish, and it's it's a push. You know, we all get in the gym and push ourselves, and then I found bodybuilding through that is like I wanted to challenge myself that much further, but still enjoy what I was doing. But it was just that challenge that took on that I found enjoyment in to get in and compete, and I was hooked from that, not necessarily the the uh winning aspect of it because we're none of us are entitled to the win. You know, uh we we both saw that post like pro pro-physique over like the pro card, like you want to have that. You could have 10 pro-physiques on stage, only one person's coming away with the big win, but that doesn't mean you lost. That that means you came with the best package, and you yourself in that journey pushed yourself to the absolute limit, and that should you should find enjoyment and like be proud of yourself in that.

SPEAKER_01 11:18

Yeah, I think that's something that people overlook with this board of bodybuilding, is how how so much of it is really out of your control, right? Like you can you can check all the boxes through your prep and uh you have your genetic constraints, and at the end of the day, it depends who shows up to the show. So, like you gotta have fun with it and and be realistic at the same time.

SPEAKER_02 11:36

It's not fun, it's not for you. Get out, it's fine, but nobody is forcing you to do this, it's okay.

SPEAKER_00 11:42

So, go ahead.

SPEAKER_01 11:45

Go ahead.

SPEAKER_00 11:46

All right, I was gonna say, and I remember running into Frank Zane at at an Arnold Classic like decades ago, and one of the things that he was talking to somebody else about, I was eavesdropping in on, was at the 1972 Mr. Olympia, his first Mr. Olympia that he had ever competed in. He he was fourth place. I think there were five or six guys in it. It wasn't as big at the time. And I remember him talking about how it was so meaningful to him, even though he was still 10 years away from, you know, eight years away from winning his first one, because it was he had seen so many significant improvements in his physique getting there, that that became his benchmark. That was his driver. That was his like it became about those improvements he made. It wasn't about, you know, fourth place, fifth place, wherever it was that he placed. It was about I made those improvements. This was very successful, this was great. For another competitor who goes in and might be, you know, five out of six people or four out of five people, is like, oh man, what a failure I had. So, and that was the other mindset thing that I would always use to reinforce myself. But yeah, like you said, it's it's it's finding solace in the little things because um, you know, the the if you take it too seriously, the sport will bite you in the butt.

SPEAKER_01 12:57

Wow, that's really cool. I didn't I don't think I ever knew that you had um met those guys at an early age and that it kind of kind of driver for you to get into the sport originally. It's really cool.

SPEAKER_00 13:06

Yeah, I mean, my journey with Arnold is probably the most interesting because I moved to Cape Cod uh shortly after that 1979. We moved from Clumas, Ohio to Cape Cod to a little town called Sandwich, was right by Hyannis. And if anybody of you anybody knows Arnold's story, he started dating Maria Schreiber around the same time. And so there was only one gym in all of Cape Cod. There was a place called Dunkey's in the middle of Hyannis, it was the only gym. So anybody who would go to a real gym to work out would run into Arnold back in those days. It was pre-Terminator and pre-conan and all of that stuff. He was just Arnold the bodybuilder. He wasn't nothing else. And so I was able to have those continuous interactions with him. Um, now he wouldn't know me from a guy on the street because I was one of you know 60 people that were working out at the same gym at the same time, sitting there going, tell me more. You know, uh, but yeah, it was just uh my I I call myself the four scump of bodybuilding because I've just had the opportunity to just like bump into these people and have these conversations, worked at out at uh Vince's gym back in Hollywood, California. Um, for those of you who don't know who Vince G is, go look him up. Um, you know, Pete Grumkowski, just all those people from back in the day. I just I just had those unique opportunities. And the only reason I bring that up is it's not to name drop, but it's to say all of those people had a similar mindset on what the sport was and what it meant to them, and which is why they've had such longevity. I mean, Frank Zane in his 80s still talking about bodybuilding, still involved. Arnold, obviously, still involved. You go back all the way through that lineage. That's what bodybuilding was back then, and one of the things I'd like to see it kind of get back to in this modern era, particularly for our natural competitors.

SPEAKER_02 14:54

So obviously, you're you're super passionate about the bodybuilding world and you're involved big time in the OCB. So, like, what is your role right now in the OCB? Like, what kind of explain to the crowd, like, what do you do for the OCB? And really, how does that keep you going, like in involved in what's your passion now outside of the competing aspect of things?

SPEAKER_00 15:16

Uh yeah, yeah. My my my 100% of my passion is trying to promote. I promote four events within the organization, and I just want to like try to promote like really, really great shows for the competitors. Uh, role within the organization. Um how do I like to put it? We we call ourselves a leadership team. Yeah, like like most groups of people, when they come together, somebody's got a title and somebody's a this, and it becomes about the title, and it becomes about the that and the other thing. Uh we really don't do that. There's four of us involved in a leadership group. And it was funny how it all came about when Matt decided that the organization was just too big for a one-person, even having people help run the organization. And I've been involved with Matt in things since day one. So did Marjorie, so did Chad, so did Frank, and so did probably a dozen other people. And we were all like assistants. You know, nobody was really getting paid, nobody was really, it was just we were just trying to help move it along. And he realized that there's just no way that that model would keep working with the growth it needed to do. And also after doing it for like 17, 18, almost 20 years, he was like, I'm burnt out. Um, I I want to hand the mantle off. And my my position in the military and what I had done in police work, I was, you know, command, I was, I was really high up. I had done a lot of leadership courses and stuff like that. We had a lot of conversations about how do you build the best leadership team? And I'm like, well, you, you know, in the military, we always look for somebody who's a strategic thinker, somebody who's a relationship builder. And I went through all these, you know, I went through all these little gambits. And he was, I had no idea that he was taking that to roadmap his selections of who he wanted to have in the organization and where he wanted to take it. And that's the kind of forethought that he had. It wasn't just this haphazard, you know, hey, you know, me bodybuilder, me start federation, me hand federation to other bodybuilders. It was people had to have a specific niche, not just in what their technical expertise was, but also what their personality and leadership traits were to build a leadership collective to move the organization forward. And that's why we call ourselves a leadership group. We are a group of people. We have different lanes of responsibility, but everybody is just like an A-T in the Army, uh, A Team is a uh special forces um group, you know, but just like an A-team, everybody's cross-trained into everybody else's situation. So if I get hit by a beer truck tomorrow, all my roles and responsibilities will be taken care of until the leadership group finds the appropriate person to fill in my shoes. And at the same time, we are building a bench around the sport of people that we look at as being also future leaders. And by building a bench, it's not like me talking and saying, you know, you know, hey Nate, we want you to one day. No, it is, you know, let's let's see, can they handle this and can they do this? And it just builds this talent because we try to give a lot back to promoters and we want to see them exercise. And you know that as a promoter, Nate, we give you a left and right guideline, you know, some guidelines to follow. Personality, a show is yours. We just want you to maintain the culture and follow the very few rules we have, and after that, it's your enshalada, and we want to see what you create. We want to see your vision, we want to see you execute, we want to see how you go above and beyond. So everything, whether it's a judging assignment and becoming a judge, or becoming a head judge, or helping one of us in a um in some type of a process improvement event we're doing, or putting together a tiger team, those are all the individuals that we're looking at going, yeah, these people are on the bench. So that when I decide to punch out in five years, or I get hit by the beer truck tomorrow, um, they have a talented group of individuals that they can interview and then find the person who has the right skill set to move forward. So that's kind of the way we do business. I think it makes us unique in natural bodybuilding or in bodybuilding, period. I think every other federation is just a bodybuilder, a couple of bodybuilders who say, hey, I'm gonna, you know, start this and throw this crap together. Um the other thing is that all my my fellow uh people in the ownership group, we all have leadership experience, whether it's academically or in school systems. Three of us served in the military at various ranks. One person is, you know, a high-level GS13 uh in you know, working it within the government. I mean, all of us have developed a lot of these leadership skills, and that's what we use to execute and move the OCD forward. It's also why we always try to keep that two-way door thing happening. Um, a lot of the changes that we make within the organization are not because we sit down and we brainstorm them. It's because people like you guys come to us and say, Hey, listen, I have an idea. And we're like, hey, ideas are great, everybody's got ideas. Give me a feasible, defendable, actionable, fair, you know, process on that idea. We'll work together and tweak it, and we can implement it. So, and that's also the dividing line. People come up to us with ideas, you know, it's like, hey, I think every competitor should wear clown feet and uh, you know, you know, a red clown nose. Okay, great. Put it together so we tell them the process, and then you never hear from again. It's crickets. But every now and again you get somebody who turns around and puts all that together and says, okay, now let's let's work this thing. Those are the plans we implement. So anybody listening to this, if you have an idea to help improve your OCB, that's the way you do it. Don't just turn around and say, I think everybody should wear clown noses and clown booties. Okay, great. Give me the why, then give me a plan that is feasible, actionable, fair. You know, you fill those requirements, we work together to finalize it, your idea will come to fruition. And that's how we work as a leadership group, and that's why we say we are a leadership group. No real titles. You know, titles are for the birds. You know, nobody gets credit for anything. It it's your OCB. That's where the credit goes. To you, promoters, to you coaches, to you competitors, your organization. We just kind of we just kind of set the party, you know. We we we rent the venue for the party. It's your party.

SPEAKER_02 21:32

That's awesome. I like what you learn from that.

SPEAKER_01 21:35

Yeah, I mean, I think I think you can tell like from everybody's experience with the OCD and how well things are run at shows. And athlete experience is always like so high quality for people. Like the way you guys operate things is uh definitely top notch and something to be proud of because I've I've always had a really great experience with my athletes and being involved in shows as an athlete and promoting and coaching and different things. It's like just OCD itself is like. A good culture that people people buy into that and they want to come back. And I think I think a lot of it's to do with leadership and how you guys operate. So props to you guys, it's uh it's something special for sure.

SPEAKER_00 22:12

And we gotta be fair, not everybody. You know, we do have people that are like, you know, ah, they get they get frustrated. Um, and I just want to add one more thing to that. If you're somebody who competed in a show and you're frustrated over something that occurred, you hate your placement, you think this, you think that, do you think the other thing? We have a mechanism to get us feedback so that we understand what you're talking about and we can look into things. And Nate, you know as well as anybody, we let nothing sweep under the rug. If we've made an error, if there's an error in a tabulation sheet, if there's an error, we go back and we correct that stuff. Okay, we we make it right. That so many people would want to like sweep that under the rug, or they don't want the controversy. We are just the opposite. We own it. And I'm usually the spokesperson for that. I'm usually the one calling the athlete saying, Hey, listen, there was an error. You are right, you know, it is being corrected now. You are now this position. And then I we have to call the other person, say, you know, there's like we own that stuff, and because we do that, I just ask that you know, there are people that don't like a placement and they just want to go on social media and just blow it up, and that's how the that's how they bend. That's fine, we ignore that stuff. But if you have a legitimate situation, legitimate concern, you legitimately think something's wrong, reach out to us. I mean, you can do it on the Instagram page. My email is everywhere. I I've had my same email address since there's there's been an AOL. I mean, I've been around that long. I think everybody's got my cell phone number. Um, you know, the website, you can reach out on the website. There's a million ways to reach out to us. Just turn around and say, hey, listen, I'm pissed off about this. I don't like the way it looks here. And I just ask you to do that because I we just had a situation where I had a long conversation with somebody where they just they didn't like a placement from somebody and they just kind of like went off on it. And I made them realize and they understood and they felt bad about it after this. When you do that, you're not making it about your grievance. You're not bringing anything to our attention, you're making it about yourself and you're taking something away from the other people that were there. Turning around and saying that person should have never won, they suck, I'm better. All you did is anybody who is that that individual, all their friends and family, all you did was crap on them. I mean, all you did was just make that you made it about yourself and not about them. Where if you reach out to me and you say that, then I can look into it and say, listen, here are the reasons why. Or you know what, there was an error. We're gonna correct that now, and then I'll take responsibility for correcting it because we're gonna own that stuff. But it's when you go out there and you crap all over the other people that were on the show, the promoters who work so hard to bring it to a great event. The judges who, as you know, are judges, they have to go to meetings on Wednesdays before they they they judge. They have to do in-service training, they have to go through a three-hour block of education, they have to take there's a lot that they go through, particularly that Wednesday night sync up meetings that they have to go to to stay on point and understand the criteria. They invest a lot that is never compensated for. And when they make a decision, they're trying to do it to the best of their ability. If you don't understand why they did it, maybe you don't understand the criteria fully, which happens. You know, people are like, oh, I mean, I I can't have shredded glutes and cross-straded quads and be grainy looking in classic physique. Dobro, that's bodybuilding. Yeah, and they don't know that. And so it becomes educational thing. So I just getting off my soapbox for that now on that. It's just when you have a grievance, bring it to us. When you go on social media and you lash out, all you're doing is hurting people that don't need to be hurt by it. You know, you have a right to voice your opinion, but yell at me. Tell me I suck, tell me I'm awful, tell me everything's lousy. I'll handle it. I I'm good. We'll we'll talk it out. Or we won't. You'll yell at me and feel better. But just don't take it out on you know, on other people who are innocent and don't deserve it.

SPEAKER_01 26:03

Yeah, I think unfortunately in in today's era of social media and things like that, people have that quick fix to take out fresh air on things instead of like sitting on it and letting it kind of settle in. It's so easy to just jump online and kind of lash out your emotions on a situation. Often I think in the body going around that happens quite a bit. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 26:28

I mean, it's great. This new social media thing we have is great in so many ways, but in other ways it's creating bad habits for people trying to be better human beings. So I'll just leave it at that.

SPEAKER_01 26:40

Yeah, for sure. Um next thing I want to kind of dive in, and we can kind of morph these two questions together as we just kind of brought up the social media part. Um, so how over your years involved being involved with the bodybuilding, how have you seen the sport evolve in that time? And then how do you feel like social media has positively and negatively affected uh the sport of bodybuilding in your perspective?

SPEAKER_00 27:03

I I've seen the sport go from being like truly a unique sport. Like you would go to you'd go to most gyms as they were becoming health, you know, like health-oriented gyms, and there'd be no bodybuilders to be seen. I mean, there'd be none. And every city had that one gym where it was all bodybuilders, and it was always the smallest and grimiest and dirtiest gym because there were so few people that they didn't have you know the capital, like really make it a big thing. And I have seen bodybuilding go to where it is now. I mean, back in my day, you you'd go to you know, a big NPC show outside the nationals had 35 competitors. Now bodybuilding has grown. That growth of the sport is huge. That you know, you go to shows that I mean, how many shows just within the OCB? 130 shows, how many shows do we have over, you know, 75 competitors, you know, like well over half. How many do we have at 100? You know, like 30, 40, you know, 280 at the Jordan Cup. So it's a bigger, broader sport. So that's the cool thing that I've seen about its growth and development. The bad thing that I've seen about its growth and development is that it seems to have lost its roots and its essence. Um, I'm just so happy that I had the opportunity to compete, what I call the golden era of bodybuilding and to be part of that, you know, that 78 to like 85, 86 time frame where the culture was was different and the sport was different, and you know, the attitudes were a little bit different. And you know, with growth comes competition, and also with the growth came you know the PED dilemma, which is why we have natural bodybuilding. And I think that the drug culture of the sport kind of changed some things and changed some attitudes and changed some things you know, the way people think and act and talk, and it permeates into the natural part of bodybuilding where the people coming into the sport they see that because they follow all these influencers that are PED users that have a million, three million followers, and they think that that's the whole sport, and that's how you act, and that's how you treat people, and this is what you do, and that's the culture, and and it shouldn't be. And that's why I'm trying to get that culture back, at least in the OCB and natural bodybuilding, back to kind of what it was in that classic era. Um, you know, where there was a, I mean, people hear the stories about Arnold and Sergio and he tricked them into this, and you watch Pumping Iron, and Ken Waller stole Mike Katz's shirt and all that stuff from back in the golden age. A lot of that stuff was staged, a lot of that stuff was media hype. Um, you know, some of those things did happen, but a lot of it was, you know, was just you know, stories told after the fact. But now it just seems like there is there can be a toxicity to the sport from the people that are within it. And I think that part of that is social media, and part of that is a lot of the PED culture. Um, you know, it I think that is something that kind of skews the attitude of the sport. So even though the numbers are are much higher, I don't think the competitors are as happy and as balanced as they were back in the 70s and early 80s um because of that.

SPEAKER_01 30:18

Yeah, I think I think there's so much comparison online now, and I think that's like one of the evils of social media, whether that be in bodybuilding or just like for anybody using social media, it's like you're always looking at the grasses and bringing on the other side of the things kind of like references. It's like I think people just like instead of focusing on their process and their journey, get so consumed with what other people are doing, where they're at, and then feeling down about the progress that they've made. I think that's like one of the areas that I really see um being toxic in the sport of bodybuilding. And then like long term people just consuming that day in and day out. I think it I think it just it puts a cloud over your process and kind of why you start in the first place.

SPEAKER_00 31:00

Yeah, I think that's hard.

SPEAKER_02 31:03

Yeah, it's hard because it it's hard to see the positive of social media right now because there is so much of the the the influencers that have all the followers and they're just you know that it's like just blasting it in front of your face. But like there's some positive to it. You know, we are bringing light as much as we can to the natural world because natural the natural world has has picked up a lot. Like a lot of people understand that they it can be competitive and it's it's something that you can do without you know going on the the uh unnatural side of things. So I it's hard to find that positive stuff um on social media right now because there's so much of the you know, all the fancy um it makes it uh what would you say, like uh influencers or the bodybuilders themselves, they only post their greatest physiques and they think most people think that all that's the that's what they look like all the time. It's like honestly it's not. I think there needs there needs more realism and more like honesty in the social media realm instead of the tiny one percent of the time that you're shredded to the guild.

SPEAKER_01 32:10

Yeah, I think that's one of the bigger issues with social media, is it's it's kind of wild wild wet. Like there's really no regulation to what people can post and what information they can they can claim is true, and I think that cause a lot of misconception and confusion around the sport, especially um in the bodybuilding around the movement.

SPEAKER_00 32:28

That that is you you make a very, very good observation on that. That is absolutely true. It's unfiltered, and everything is immediate, raw emotion. Nobody has a chance to think about what they say. Back in the day, everything was magazines. So by the time the magazine article came out, you're reading about something that happened two months prior. And by the time anything's written and then rewritten and edited, you know, it was it was made more presentable. So maybe there was the same ranting and raving, and I didn't realize it in the so-called golden era because the magazines were were edited. I I don't know. But I also didn't notice it in the gyms, I didn't notice it within the culture, I didn't notice it backstage, I didn't notice it to the degree that I see it now on social media. But you gotta remember, social media and bodybuilding on social media is just the microcosm of society and what's happening in society right now. Uh, everything has become tribal, everything is for and against, everything's either you're with me or I hate you. Um, and it everything is an all or none. Uh, one thing I think I'm starting to see, and I hope that it's starting to merge, is that particularly the younger generation, like like my stepson is 21, and like his generation, the way he talks about things, they're starting to gravitate away from that. They've identified it. So, like, you know, he's even the one who pointed out to me about the algorithm that you know, I did a podcast about it a while back, but about this algorithm and how everything on social media feeds off a hate. The more you hate something and the angrier you get, the more it's gonna send you stuff that make you angrier, and you just like, ah, because you know it keeps you on there longer and you see more advertisements and you buy more stuff. Well, the younger generation's onto that, and they're starting to say, yeah, you know, like he says, you know, you're not gonna weaponize my thinking just because my boss is, you know, you know, you know, from X party and I'm from Y party. You're not gonna weaponize my thinking. So I'm hoping that we're starting to crawl out of that. But I think that if people understand that when they go on social media, maybe they'll be less likely to, you know, go a little crazy with the keyboard and get so frustrated, you know.

SPEAKER_01 34:40

So yeah, I do think uh it's social media's definitely forced people to to grow a lot faster because you can't you can't bounce back from the mistakes you make online like you can um in real life, right? Like the like your generation, you make a mistake, not that many people know about it. Like I know my generation, younger generation is like anything you make a mistake on, it's online, it's there forever.

SPEAKER_00 35:02

So how many times have you heard about somebody posting something stupid online and taking it down 20 minutes later? But it's all over the place forever. As soon as you hit as soon as you hit, you know, send, it's done. There's no recall. There's no recall.

SPEAKER_01 35:23

So it's obviously um you've you've been at this quite a while. I'm sure you have some, I'm sure you have some really funny stories, some crazy experiences with your time promoting and judging and and and running some bodybuilding. What what's some good stories that come to mind for you that the audience would we get some enjoyment, get a laugh out of? Even something that's like really memorable.

SPEAKER_00 35:42

We're gonna we're gonna laugh at me because I like to keep the innocent you know out of it. First bodybuilding show I ever did. I had no idea where to buy posing trunks. So we went to Sears and Robuck. Um, young kids look it up. It was like the Walmart of my day. And we bought a pair of underwear that didn't have a caracha in the front of it, and that's what I wore in my first bodybuilding show. So, yes, when I show pictures of me and my first bodybuilding show at 17, I'm wearing men's underwear. I was the only one there who wore them. And fortunately for me, I had some people explain to me the era of my ways. And by the by the night show, somebody had given me a spare pair of posing trunks and I had ditched the undies. But yes, I was in my pre-judging, in my undies, and yes, they were white, covered with gunky tan. Another funny story is when I was in flight school, uh, we had um we had PT every day on the flight line. I was down in Alabama, and I decided I was going to compete in the bodybuilding show. And so I had to put all the the old dyes and tans on. It wasn't like our modern day tanners, we didn't have that back then. We could go into a show on Friday, you get sprayed, you look great on stage, and there's a now you had to start throwing this crap on your body on Tuesday. You know, like you dye yourself and it bleeds off and you shower and you die. Anyone who's been around the sport a long time knows what I'm talking about. So on Friday we go for our PT run, and I'm in my white shirt. And of course, running in the Alabama sun in a white t-shirt with all that orange stuff on. My shirt was totally orange when we got done running. And this was right about the time that we were selecting our flight names. And I was going for Conan or something, you know, Thor. I wanted something cool, I wanted a cool flight name, you know. I wanted my flight moniker to be something badass. And my flight instructor walks by, he sees my t-shirt, and it is totally orange. And he looks at me, he goes, Jesus Christ, Sullivan, you all rusty. What the hell happened to you? You look like Tin Man been left out in the rain too long, and then everybody yelled, Tin Man. And I then spent the rest of my aviation career as Tin Man that night. Tin Man. Yeah, that was my flight name. This is why anybody goes, you know, hey Sullivan, you got a nickname? Yes, Sullivan. Tin ain't Tin Man.

SPEAKER_01 37:56

So is it to call you Tin Man when we see you at the next show? Is it is it appropriate to call you Tin Man at the next show? We see you at the okay.

SPEAKER_00 38:06

There you go. Yeah, yeah. I still say I I still I still accept it. It it's on my, you know, I have I have my my old flight suit, it's in a shadow box, and it has my flight, it has tin man right on the alley. I expect is what they give you. You know, you you don't pick your own. The flight instructors would they'll tell you what your call sign is going to be. Your flight name is your call sign. They're gonna tell you what your call sign is. So you know it's tin man. And then my favorite one, and this goes back to always trust what people tell you, coaches and stuff tell you to do, but verify what they tell you to do. And it was before a show, I was told that I should drink a case with 24 Diet Cokes the Friday. Don't drink any water you drink, nothing but Diet Coke. Something about the carbonation in the water, it's gonna do this miracle transformation and it's gonna be yeah. I I I got to about you know, Diet Coke number 13, uh sick as a dog, the next day at the show. Let's just say when you try to drink 24 diet sodas the day before a show, it does really awful things to your body. And when you try to crunch your abs, bad things happen. We're gonna leave it at that. So trust but verify your information before you do something stupid in your contest prep. Uh so yeah, those are yeah, 10 man diet coke and underwear. There you go. That's how people should remember me. Not from anything I ever won. Remember Sully as underwear tin man diet coke.

SPEAKER_01 39:35

Cheers. Big Soda. That was the uh that was the peaking protocol in the golden era bodybuilding. Yeah, that's hilarious. All right, we got time for one more question, Sully. So, what's something that you feel like people overlook when it comes to the production of a bodybuilding show? Obviously, there's so much that goes into ins and outs of a show weekend and seeing that firsthand, like what it takes to do that over the years. Um, what's anything a lot of people just overlook and maybe don't know about what goes into show production?

SPEAKER_00 40:05

I think what it comes down to is what is your focus on. You know, like like um, and this is for all my promoters out there. This is the one key takeaway that I want you to have on where your primary focus should be. And that is making every single person who competes in your show feel appreciated, feel special, and feel respected. Because at the end of the day, they're gonna remember how you made them feel. They're not gonna remember their award, they're not gonna remember what your stage looked like, they're not gonna remember where the venue was, they're not gonna remember who the judges were, and half the time they're probably not gonna remember exactly how they placed, but they're gonna remember how they were made to feel by the promoter and the staff and the people that were there. Because it's not about blame, and it's not about, you know, who are this promoter because I invented this, whatever. You know what? At the end of the day, nobody cares. What they want to know is that that they were made to feel good by the promoter, that that you took care of them, that you appreciated them, that you respected them, that you talked to them, that you made them feel like they were something special. And that's what the culture of the OCD is all about. And this is why we so carefully pick our promoters. What people don't realize about us is that we turn down more people than we accept to promote for us. I mean, the leadership team and I, we we probably have 20, 30 meetings a year for people who want to promote for us. Nate, how many new shows do we add a year? Two, three, maybe five at the most? And that's what it comes down to. It comes down to we want to talk to people that, you know, like, hey, what do you want to do? Well, I'm gonna be the greatest in the world because I'm gonna do this, this, this, and this, and not one time do they mention the people. Not one time do they well, listen, I really love people, and I want to get in, I want to do this for the competitors, and I want to fist bump them, I want to high five, I got this idea, I want to give them a candy bar when they come off stage or whatever it is, you know, something like that. Then it's like, you're gonna have a successful show. Whether you have 20 people, you have 200 people, it's gonna be a successful show because they know you care, and that's it. And you can't fake that crap, and that's the other thing I would say. You can't fake it. If you're a promoter and that's just not your personality, then find somebody on your team that can be that person. Because people know you can't you can't fake people these days. If if you're if you ain't about them, if you're hollow, if you're fake, if you're they're gonna identify that and it's gonna turn them off. Um, but yeah, I mean, fortunately for us, we have a great bunch of teammates. I I you know our promoters, our promoters are some of the best people in the world. And that's our embarrassment of riches, is is and that's why we carefully select who we allow on the team. Uh, we're not gonna let anybody on the team that is you know is is gonna yell at competitors and make them feel like crap. Um, no, it is it's about them, and it's not just about your winners. I want to know how a promoter did. I go find the person that was in the biggest category and the biggest class and place the lowest, and I ask them, how was the show? How was it the best experience of my life? I'm disappointed I didn't place, but they did a good job.

SPEAKER_01 43:25

Yeah, I think that's something that people don't really realize about the promotion and production of the show, is how much it goes really goes into it, how much the small details add up, like your staff, like what you have in place, making sure that people have roles that are appropriate for their skill set, and making sure that the hacking experience is not because at the end of the day, that's what it's all about, right? Like most of us get into show promotion or coaching or or or whatever it is, like judging because of the love for the sport of bodybuilding and how how good of an experience it was for us, right? So I was like being able to get that to Somebody else and portray that and let them get to experience the things that we love about bodybuilding. I think it's so special. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 44:06

And that's what comes into like when you create your awards and your backdrops. That's the thing, like you know, like you guys, you know, you guys be our promoters, but you know, you as well as everybody else. It it's I love when they come to us like, look at this metal that we created for the competitors. It's not about, you know, because they don't see it as a reflection about the look what I did. It's like they're gonna love this. It's always about they are going to love this. Not about, you know, look what I did, or you know, look at this backdrop. It's all about, you know, whatever. No, it's gonna, they're gonna love standing in front of this because, and that's the thing that that's the thing, whether it's the bling, the awards, the whatever, when it's about them, they know it. And they're gonna respect it and they're gonna come back, and shows are gonna grow. I mean, we have a show coming up in uh in uh far, I think it's in Fargo, our Dakota show. It's coming up. They had seven competitors their first year, and we thought if they can get to 15, now they're in the Dakotas, it's not a hotbed of bodybuilding, it's not a very populous area. They have almost 60, and they're still two weeks out from the show, a week or two out from the show. And it's because they they know they know that they made it about those seven people, and those seven people were 20, and now they're almost 60. You know, and then that's what resonates. That's what grows, that's what grows the show, it's what grows the culture, and that's the thing that can't be faked, and that's what we're so concerned with the OCD, and that's what I mean about our culture. You can't fake that shit. You you can't, you know, it you either got it or you know.

SPEAKER_01 45:41

That's a big takeaway of the day. Care about people, care about people.

SPEAKER_02 45:45

You got to no matter if the competitor thinks otherwise, you gotta care about people. They work really hard to get there. They got a memorable experience.

SPEAKER_00 45:54

And nobody gets there alone.

SPEAKER_01 45:58

Sorry.

SPEAKER_00 45:59

Uh nobody gets there alone.

SPEAKER_01 46:03

Yeah, no, it takes a village. Yeah. Well, so this was great, man. Uh, we really, really appreciate you taking some time to come on. Um, you obviously have a wealth of knowledge uh with bodybuilding has been involved for a long time. So we know you're a busy guy, so we really appreciate you um honoring us with uh taking some time to be on the podcast, answer questions, and let our kids hear more about your journey and then also more about natural bodybuilding and what the OCB offers. So I'm sure people are really gonna get a lot out of this video um and this podcast. So thank you so much, man. Absolutely.

SPEAKER_02 46:33

You got an announcement? You got an announcement maybe at the end of the show? Yeah, what's the big what's the big all right?

SPEAKER_00 46:39

First, first time anybody's hearing about it, details to follow. Like I said, I'm coming up on my 50th year in bodybuilding, and I am planning in uh in uh another year and a half, so uh 2028, I am planning a major bodybuilding competition where entry for as many classes, as many categories, as much everything from the time you sign up, everything. Soup to nuts is fifty dollars. Not a hundred plus fifty plus fifty, but fifty bucks. And that should be just enough for me to pay for the venue and then to host all the awards or whatever, everything else, all the bling on me. It'll be a lot of bling. Everything else to do with the show, it's just that's it. It's going to be a I'm not even gonna give the give the name of the show away yet, um, but I want to put the announcement out there now. Um, start looking for it and uh where the location's gonna be. Um, but yeah, you know, um straight up $50 entry, um, as many classes, as many categories, as much as you want to do. Well, if you only enter one category, uh, but if you're a debut, you can enter debut novice, open, masters, one fifty dollar meetings on stage.

SPEAKER_02 48:00

Yeah, yeah, yeah. We don't have to wait until open the just the competing.

SPEAKER_00 48:05

Nope, and there's gonna be celebratory meals backstage, there's gonna be pizzas and cakes and all kinds of stuff. It is going to be a festival with a bodybuilding show attached to it. So uh, yeah, so that that's my announcement. I'm gonna start marketing that up coming up in the next month or two. Uh more to come. Uh, it will be an OCD event, but anybody from everywhere, you know, will be welcome considering that I competed in every federation on the planet. Uh, I was a pro in all of them except the IFPV. So uh, you know, anybody, you know, anybody come that wants to be there, but yeah, it it is going to be a festival. Um, yeah, it's gonna be a big party time thing. And uh, so yeah, yeah, it's gonna be my 50th anniversary, and it's the way I can give back to the sport. I just need enough to cover the venue. Um, but like I said, all the t-shirts, all the bling, all the medals, all the awards, that's on me. I'm invested in that tall of you. I love it.

SPEAKER_01 49:08

I love a good party.

SPEAKER_00 49:09

Well, it sounds like a body staff party.

SPEAKER_02 49:12

It sounds like a bodybuilding party. I love it. Everybody's going to be competing those days.

SPEAKER_00 49:16

That sounds like nothing better than that.

SPEAKER_02 49:19

Oh.

SPEAKER_01 49:19

Yeah, that sounds like a breakdown. Well, we'll be sure to we'll be sure to clip that part into a little reel and post that online so people can people can get exposure to the uh the upcoming event. That's awesome. I'm excited to be the uh to be the inaugural uh release on the uh upcoming show. That's awesome. That's exciting.

SPEAKER_00 49:40

I may even I may even try to do some pro categories, but but all dependent on what's happening, you know, that time with other pro because I can't take away from other pro shows, but if I get out of the pro categories, of course, bodybuilding would be one of them since that was my category, you know. So I could see doing that.

SPEAKER_01 49:57

Mike taught me out of the surplus.

SPEAKER_00 50:00

There you go.

SPEAKER_01 50:02

I need to be taught.

SPEAKER_00 50:04

So there you go.

SPEAKER_01 50:05

There you have it.

SPEAKER_00 50:07

That's it. There's just two.

SPEAKER_01 50:18

Wow. Well, this was great. Thank you, Sally. Appreciate it. We'll talk soon. Bye.

SPEAKER_00 50:23

Every day, be safe, train hard, stay natural.