June 10, 2025 • 38 mins
You can hear our mascot Toro panting...he just gets so excited...
John Solleder shatters age stereotypes with every weight he lifts. Having just returned from a powerlifting competition where he benched 350 pounds at age 64, John embodies his core philosophy: "Don't let the old person in." This mindset has transformed not just his physical health but his entire approach to life's third chapter.
During our enlightening conversation, John shares how he transitioned from meat-lover to vegetarian eight years ago after watching the documentary "Forks Over Knives." What began as a one-day experiment to alleviate joint pain evolved into a complete lifestyle transformation. Recently, John embraced raw veganism, resulting in not only significant weight loss (approximately 90 pounds over eight years) but also remarkable improvements in mental clarity and physical wellbeing. His nutritional journey goes beyond personal health benefits – it's deeply rooted in environmental sustainability and ethical considerations for animals as sentient beings.
Perhaps most inspiring is John's commitment to continuous growth and adaptation throughout midlife. When COVID-19 derailed his plans to promote his newly published books through in-person events, he pivoted to podcasting despite having no prior experience. More recently, he embraced artificial intelligence technology, which opened unexpected business opportunities, including co-hosting the Top Doctor Magazine podcast. His story perfectly illustrates two principles essential for thriving in midlife: the willingness to pivot when circumstances change and maintaining the agility to embrace new ideas and technologies.
John's journey proves that age truly is just a number when we refuse to let it define our limitations. His example offers invaluable inspiration for anyone navigating the changes in health, career, and purpose that come with midlife. Ready to challenge your own assumptions about aging? Listen now to discover how you might reinvent yourself, regardless of what your driver's license says.
Source:
https://www.forksoverknives.com/
John Solleder Books and Leave Nothing To Chance Podcast: https://www.johnsolleder.com/
Thanks for listening! Follow us on our social channels
https://www.youtube.com/@Letstalkmidlifecrisis-mh2bf/videos
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Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/let-s-talk-midlife-crisis-podcast--6627644/support.
John Solleder shatters age stereotypes with every weight he lifts. Having just returned from a powerlifting competition where he benched 350 pounds at age 64, John embodies his core philosophy: "Don't let the old person in." This mindset has transformed not just his physical health but his entire approach to life's third chapter.
During our enlightening conversation, John shares how he transitioned from meat-lover to vegetarian eight years ago after watching the documentary "Forks Over Knives." What began as a one-day experiment to alleviate joint pain evolved into a complete lifestyle transformation. Recently, John embraced raw veganism, resulting in not only significant weight loss (approximately 90 pounds over eight years) but also remarkable improvements in mental clarity and physical wellbeing. His nutritional journey goes beyond personal health benefits – it's deeply rooted in environmental sustainability and ethical considerations for animals as sentient beings.
Perhaps most inspiring is John's commitment to continuous growth and adaptation throughout midlife. When COVID-19 derailed his plans to promote his newly published books through in-person events, he pivoted to podcasting despite having no prior experience. More recently, he embraced artificial intelligence technology, which opened unexpected business opportunities, including co-hosting the Top Doctor Magazine podcast. His story perfectly illustrates two principles essential for thriving in midlife: the willingness to pivot when circumstances change and maintaining the agility to embrace new ideas and technologies.
John's journey proves that age truly is just a number when we refuse to let it define our limitations. His example offers invaluable inspiration for anyone navigating the changes in health, career, and purpose that come with midlife. Ready to challenge your own assumptions about aging? Listen now to discover how you might reinvent yourself, regardless of what your driver's license says.
Source:
https://www.forksoverknives.com/
John Solleder Books and Leave Nothing To Chance Podcast: https://www.johnsolleder.com/
Thanks for listening! Follow us on our social channels
https://www.youtube.com/@Letstalkmidlifecrisis-mh2bf/videos
https://www.instagram.com/letstalkmidlifecrisis/
https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100091451734861
Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/let-s-talk-midlife-crisis-podcast--6627644/support.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:02):
Welcome to Let's talk midlife Crisis. I'm Ashley and I'm Tracy.
Where your go to hosts for all things midlife, menopause
and Moments of Pure Mayhem. And today we have John
with us, author, podcaster and co host of a podcast,
an entrepreneurur.
Speaker 2 (00:21):
Hi, John, Welcome, Well, thank you very much for having me.
Looking forward to this conversation with all of our midlife friends.
Speaker 3 (00:29):
Yes, my life and third chapter, as we were just
talking about, I think I'm pushing that third chapter myself,
but while I can, I'll consider myself a midlife.
Speaker 4 (00:46):
So you were telling us earlier that you do some
pretty intense weightlifting.
Speaker 2 (00:54):
I still do powerlifting meets. So I just literally returned
from one to McKinney, Texas. So where do you lose?
Speaker 3 (01:04):
Where are you located?
Speaker 2 (01:06):
I'm in Richardson, Texas. Just go up to Dallas. Okay,
I'm not not from here. I'm from New Jersey originally.
My wife is from Monta, Canada, so we're kind of
an international couple. But we've we've lived here, we raised
our kids here, so we we're kind of Dallas sites.
But uh, I'm still still a fan of the New
York sports teams. But yeah, I've lived here a long time,
(01:30):
so I kind of qualify as a Dallas guy.
Speaker 3 (01:32):
Now, yeah, I didn't mean. I didn't mean to cut
you off. I was just curious where you were. So yeah,
so you just had a competition.
Speaker 2 (01:42):
Or yeah, so I've been I've bened three fifty. I
wait waited two forty at the Wagge yesterday. So I've
been street fifty one hundred and ten pounds more than
my body weight at sixty four. And you know, we
were talking as we as we came on to your
show today, just that you know, you can't let the
old guy in or you can't let the old woman in,
(02:03):
because the second day you do, it affects everything from
your physicality to your your your mentality, maybe not your spirituality.
Maybe maybe that's that's a separate subject. I don't know.
I'm sure people's opinions. But you know, these days you
don't have to get old because your driver's license is
(02:24):
an age that would depict in a prior time in
old person. Right. I look, I look, for example, at
some of the mentors that I've had through the years.
You know, people like Jack m'lane who lived to ninety six,
Jay Cordy's the Juice Man who lived to ninety four. Currently,
(02:46):
currently two guys that I follow religiously, doctor Paulo. Esselton
from the Cleveland Clinic and doctor Campbell from Cornell, who
were both in the early nineties. These guys are still
out given seminars around the world to thousands of people,
hopping on aeroplanes, you know, renting cars, going to hotels,
(03:08):
et cetera, et cetera. So you know, when I look
at at those people, those are my role models. When
I look, you know, in the gyms that I go to,
and I look at some of the older people, and
I just say, that's how we're supposed to continue as
the people who say, well, I'm a certain age, so
(03:28):
therefore I'm going to stop my exercise routine, I'm gonna
stop eating, right, I'm I'm just gonna give into all
of those notions. And unfortunately, or fortunately, I guess I
should say, our longevity is affected by what we eat
and what we do. We move the body continuously, we
can live a long time. So there's so much proof
(03:49):
for that, so much evidences science that.
Speaker 1 (03:53):
Yeah, I mean, our bodies are not made to sit around.
Speaker 2 (03:57):
Exactly you know, so move the body to run number,
put the right foods in, try to eat as healthy
as you can. Can't can't always eat perfectly. I get it,
you know, I certainly don't myself. But at the end
of the day, the idea is to you know, not,
you know not let the age dictate how we're going
(04:18):
to live our lives. Now. Can we call stoff? But
can we be more careful? I mean I am I
more careful than I was when I was younger. You
sure about certain things like yeah, you know, for example,
you know, weightlifting, it's like, you know, I get up,
you know, three fifty four hundred, that's that's about my range.
Have I done more than that in my life?
Speaker 3 (04:37):
Yeah?
Speaker 1 (04:38):
I have.
Speaker 2 (04:38):
But I was heavier and I was young, So you know,
I don't have to push it. I don't have to
impress anybody. I'm not to impress anyone. I'm out to
stay healthy and increase my longevity by doing the things
that I'm doing, you know, from a physical standpoint, and
that would carry over, by the way into my business life.
(05:00):
I challenged myself constantly to learn new things. In the
last year, AI has become something I knew nothing about.
That I wasn't opposed to. But I say, you know,
if you asked me a year ago, hey, John, what
do you think of AI? Said, well, I think it's great,
but I don't know think about it. I know what
(05:22):
it is. I know what AI stands for. A year later,
because of some circumstances and because I was open minded
to it, now I not only utilize IT in all
of my businesses, but I also have had an opportunity
given to me to become the co host of the
Top Doctor magazine podcast in addition to my regular podcast,
(05:45):
my own podcast, and that came as a result of
an AI contact that I made who contacted me about
my podcast. Turned out it was an AI written email.
We became friends, and turns out he knew these people.
One thing led to another, and here we are, you know,
seven or eight months later. You know, as we get older,
we have to be open minded. We can't just say hey,
(06:07):
here's the way we did it in nineteen ninety five,
or you know, hey, I started my first business in
nineteen eighty three. The phone plugged into the wall. My
phone's in the other room. But you know, today I
have a phone that I can launch a space Shuttle
with right, yeah, and it really is. There's more technology
in your iPhone than what Space Shuttle was originally said,
(06:29):
you know, out into the Space was. So you know,
things are evolving in a fast way, in a good way.
If we're open to them, we can take full advantage
of it. You know, another thing, you look at medicine,
how medicine has evolved, everything from you know, things that
used to maybe blind us or cripple us, like like
hip surgery for example, or a guacoma, things that today
(06:52):
are very, very treatable. So there's all these good things happen,
and there's some bad things happen in the world, certainly,
But at the end of the day, I see our
time here in twenty twenty five and beyond as one
of lots and lots of opportunity if once again, you're
open to it, and you don't say, well, my driver's
license says to age or that age and airport I'm
(07:14):
supposed to be, you know, sitting in a corner watching
Netflix all day, right, yes, but it's not not what
I would certainly condone or encourage, you know.
Speaker 1 (07:23):
Right right now.
Speaker 3 (07:25):
You also talked about the fact that you're a vegan
So have you always been a vegan? Has this been
something that you have you know, come into later in life.
Speaker 2 (07:40):
Yeah, what great question of how I got there? Eight
years ago, I went vegetarian for one day. Yeah, I'm like,
I was gonna be a vegetarian just for one day.
I wasn't going to eat meat. And I had no
particular reason, like you know some some people have this
dramatic thing happens a lot of times. It is a
help thing. I didn't. My health was good. Now your
(08:04):
audience can't see me, but I was about ninety pounds
heavier than I am now at the time. But I
didn't even do it for that. I did it because
my joints hurt so much from my athletic career. I
was very about in judo, wrestling, power all sports that
just beat up your body. And a friend of mine
in the powerlifting community had gone vegetarian and he said, hey,
(08:26):
my joints feel better, and I said, well, I'll work
for him. Maybe it worked, but I'm just gonna trive
for one Like anything, one day, it's a big deal, right,
So one day you don't need a hamburg. And after
that first day, I felt pretty good. So I said,
let me go two days. And I went two days,
and then I said, well I felt good two days,
let me go a week. And during the course of
(08:46):
that week, let me use an example. You know, when
you buy a new car and you think you bought
the only new car of that model, and all of
a sudden you've bolted a light and there's three of
them next to me.
Speaker 3 (08:57):
Yes, you notice all of the same places.
Speaker 2 (09:00):
Yes, I'm at the gym and I couldn't run. I
can only walk on the treadmill because I let myself
go wait wise, and I'm walking on and I see
this show Megan Kelly, who I think she was Fox
or CNN reporter at one time, and they gave her
an and so it was one in the morning shows
(09:21):
that's on at the gym. And you know, of course
the sound is just the words, you know, you can't
can't hear it, of course. Anyway, So I'm walking on
the treadmill and these three young guys come out appairly
young guys probably you know, thirties, and they showed them
before a narrow beese and they come out and they
all look great. They're obviously not obests anymore. It turns out.
They were a family. They were cousins I think from Louisiana,
(09:45):
and the one guy referenced that he had come across
the documentary called Ports over Night. And I came home
and said to my wife and said, you know, I'm
even vegetarian this week this guy was talking about his
diet and this Sports over Night's thing. Let's see if
we can find So we did. We got on Netflix
that night and I watched it and I was impacted
(10:07):
by the evidence based science that supported vegetarianism, not veganisms.
Veganism is very much further down the road right starts withitarianism,
but it goes So that was eight years ago, and
then I still wasn't getting the results quite honestly, that
I wanted. My diet still was. With some people it
was like, oh wow, what a great diet. Other people
(10:29):
they would go, wow, yeah, you're eating a lot of
processed food. Still you're still eating a lot of burgers that,
even though they're vegetarian, they're you know, they're freeze dried,
stuck in a struck somewhere and it's stuck on a shelf,
and you know, et cetera, et cetera. So I met
a guy before Christmas. Last year Christmas it s would
have been twenty twenty three, and a guy named fran Turk.
(10:52):
So anyway, we became friends, and France said, I'm putting
together a group of raw vegans starting January first, if
you want to participate. It was like thirty dollars. It
was nothing. It was like, yeah, you know what I try,
I'll let me put this way. I'll a least hear
what the guy has to say. It's worth thirty five, right,
And so January first, twenty twenty four was my first day.
(11:16):
ROB began and once again, my my weight dropped more,
so that was exciting. My joints felt better. That was exciting,
and I just felt better. And my wife, of course,
it is nodded into this lifestyle shed eating loves bacon.
Speaker 3 (11:35):
I don't know if I could give up bacon.
Speaker 2 (11:39):
I can't call it the normal way, because I mean,
that's not normal eating that way. But she's still eating
stuff that I would frown upon. But and I never
by the way, I'm not one of those people. I
don't hit people over the head of a bible or
anything else, like, hey, you want to know what I'm
doing I'll tell you. I'll tell you my results. But
if you want to go and you have a stake,
by all means, that's your business. But to make a
(12:01):
long story short, yeah, I got into this lifestyle and
I found that the results were there. I felt increasingly better.
I found that my mind started to work better. I
started to get clarity on things very very quick. I
sort of pick up things quicker than I was, even
as a vegetarian. So I said, there's something to this,
(12:22):
because not only are you obviously loading your body with antioxidants,
fiber and everything else, but just eating this way. It
was like a discipline that I liked. And I'm about
ninety five row by the way. Once in a little
great while, like you know, for example, I got to say,
it was my birthday. We ate out with some friends
and we went through a Chinese restaurant and the chef
(12:44):
there knows I'm vegan, but he makes me green beans cold.
They just wouldn't taste very good. So he warms at
one hundred and thirty hundred and forty degrees about one fifteen.
You could go to and still be wrow these just
to make him taste right and soft, and they'll be
making about one forty for me. So I ate that yesterday,
you know, on my birthday. So you know, no, no,
I said to my wife. Nobody died because I ate
(13:05):
a little bit of cooked food. There's a lot of
good reasons not to eat cooked food. But at the
end of the day, once in a while, it's like
you know when when in Rome, you know, you know, yeah, es,
what I don't do is I don't let myself get
in that habit. Well, that tasted good, which means now
let me go and eat pizza, or let me go
and eat something else that I know is not good
(13:27):
for me once again, might be fine for the person
next to me, but for me personally, you know, this
has worked really well. I just got back from Costa Rica,
spent eight days at a raw vegan event with brand
and when his wife Katie and with their two babies
in love with I wanted to smuggle his home. H
(13:49):
nine months old is vulnerable boy. But anyway, you know,
so those are the type of things that I'm spending
my time, my free time doing now. But to me,
it's an evolutionary process that I'm always need to be learning.
I don't just do things for fun. I do things
because there's something I'm going to learn, something I'm going
to pick up. And there were eight or nine other
(14:10):
people at this event, many of which you've been wal
vegan for many years, so now you pick their brains.
What's their experience been. You know, there's sometimes they fall
off the wagon, whether if they do, how do they
get that quickly back on the wagon, so to speak.
It's like AA for vegans, you know.
Speaker 1 (14:31):
Yeah, definitely a lifestyle. Yeah, I think.
Speaker 4 (14:33):
I mean, you talked a lot about, you know, the
mind and the clarity, and even earlier we talked about mindset.
Speaker 1 (14:41):
I think that is such a huge part in.
Speaker 4 (14:46):
Staying healthy because mental health is just as important as
physical health. And a lot of times, and I've expressed
this on our show several times, physical activity is very
crucial for my mental health, dominating it right and and
for me it's kind of a therapy. It's it's a
way for me to kind of just okay, I feel better.
(15:08):
You know, it doesn't work for everyone.
Speaker 3 (15:10):
Make you feel better, right, Eating well makes you feel better,
Exercising makes you.
Speaker 4 (15:14):
Feel and we've talked about it, doesn't You don't have
to be lifting crazy weights, you know, you can just
go for a walk every day. But again, I think
mindset is huge, and it sounds like you have always
been this very like, very aware of that I have.
Speaker 2 (15:31):
And by the way, I couldn't agree more. I mean
the physical activity, I mean it's only you know, everything
in our body works for good, you know, if you
work with it. But the mindset has been the thing
for me that really has appealed to me because it
carries over to everything that I do know, everything from
(15:52):
you know, exercise and business. But it carries over to
my spiritual life, carries over to my social life, carries
over to my marriage. I have had a good impact
on my wife by the way, she has made a
lot of adjustments. She came she came to the raw
Vegan event thinking she would die for not having coffee.
And that, ladies, you're both gonna hate me. You're gonna
(16:15):
love your husband so much more when I tell you this.
I'm got to Costa Rica and I do not know.
I did go, but I didn't you know, that wasn't
conscious of it. It's one of like the coffee growing
capitals of the world, and I'm like, here's somebody who
loves coffee. Who's not going to be able to drink
coffee for eight days?
Speaker 3 (16:34):
Wow?
Speaker 2 (16:35):
So the first day we were there, we've been starting
to think the next day. So she did have a
couple of good costa Rican coffee, but yeah, and then
she had to do it out, you know. But after
the third day she said, feel great. I said, well,
you know, caffeine is addictive too. I mean it's not
to the level some of these other things are. But yeah,
there's a reason why you know, we've got you know,
(16:58):
Starbucks and Tim Horton's and all all these huge coffee
chains around the US and Canada because people are addicted. Yeah,
and yeah, once again, if you have a cup of coffee,
am I telling you you're going to, like, you know,
drop off the fun and no? Not, of course not.
But if you have poor them, well you might want
to look at what you might be doing to your.
Speaker 1 (17:16):
Heart right and how how you feel. Like try a
day of not doing that and see the difference in
how you feel.
Speaker 3 (17:23):
I've actually never acquired a taste for coffee, so I've
never been a coffee drinker. But it's not that I
don't do bad things in my diet to substitute for
that I drink soda, which I don't know if that's
worse than coffee, but definitely I know it's not good
for me.
Speaker 1 (17:40):
So yeah, yeah, I'm a big coffee drinker.
Speaker 3 (17:43):
Yeah, And I've never had an energy drink either. I
just think there's nothing good that can.
Speaker 1 (17:49):
Come from that.
Speaker 3 (17:50):
And to your point about having a heart attack, I
honestly think if I drink one, it might give me
a heart attack, right, I actually had. I was at
brunch with someone a couple of years ago and had
ordered a drink and I didn't realize it had cold
brew in it, and I came home and honestly, I
(18:11):
thought I was going to die. I literally thought I
was going to die. I didn't know what was happening
to me. My heart was racing, I couldn't get off
the toilet, like everything. And it wasn't until about a
week or so later when I reconnected with this person
and said, hey, after we had brench, I wasn't feeling well.
Did you notice anything, And she's like no, I was fine,
(18:32):
And then we realized that it was a cold brew.
Speaker 4 (18:36):
That that's pretty strong apparently, so for somebody that's never
had coffee to go from that, to having cold brew.
Speaker 3 (18:45):
But literally for the rest of that day, I didn't
know what was wrong with me, and I thought I
was going to stroke out or something because it was
just great. That's terrifying. Anyway, Yeah, there you go, and.
Speaker 2 (18:58):
It does look I mean old thing that you know
we heard when we were kids. Right, you are what
you eat? Well, you know what you eat is is
you know, heavy duty food for breakfast and a bunch
of bunch of meat and everything else and you and
you clog up your poling and then once you go
to Mickey D's or something else and you have a burger,
(19:19):
you clog up your body more. And then for dinner
you've got, you know, three pounds of pasta with Italian
bread and butter. Your body's not gonna work away with that.
Twenty maybe or twenty five, maybe even thirty and maybe
the odd person a little bit older. But the reality
is at some point you've got to give into giving
your body what it actually wants, which are water laid
(19:44):
in foods, which are your fruits, okay, your vegetables for
what they represent terms of nutrition and and and you know,
and you got to give your body the right hydration.
We're seventy percent water. So the end of the day,
we're water. We're not coffee, we're not soda, we're not tea,
we're not these other things that once again, if you
enjoy it, you know whatever, so be it, because you
(20:08):
know we're still getting out of here in a box
or an.
Speaker 5 (20:10):
Earn and.
Speaker 2 (20:12):
Don't but don't rush. It is my point. And you
know you can feel great at any age. I feel
better at sixty four than I did a fifty. I
can pay you that. Wow. Between my diet, my exercise,
and probably my attitude to some degree, I just appreciate
every single day. I appreciate meeting new great pit people
like yourselves. You know, on the way out of the
(20:34):
powerlifting meet, there was a guy there with some kind
of contraption that I didn't get a chance to talk
to him because I was really focused on my lifting today.
There's that He's from Indiana and walking out of it
and I said, I said, notice your machine if some
kind of I'm not gonna show what it does. It's
something to do with the with the muscles, said, I
do want to talk to you. Give me your card.
I'm going to text them later today get with them.
(20:55):
Probably get them on my podcast, right, it looks I
get an interesting device there. So, you know, just geting
new people all the time. To me, how exciting it
is that, you know. So you know, mid life mid
life is is a great time if we embrace it. Now,
the downside is we are getting older and our bodies
are going to break down, and you know, there are
(21:15):
things going to happen. I mean I I go through
right now three friends that have have unfortunately uh serious
forms of cancer, and then you know that's that's a
hard thing to see that in your friends and your family.
Uh you know, you pray for them and you know
they're all getting good medical care and everything else. But
you know, my point is that's a harder thing for me.
(21:36):
That's the hardest thing about getting older, I think is
well we rest Reckoni I say, not everybody's going to
be here. We may not be here, but at the
end of the day, a lot of people we care
about aren't you know, aren't going to be here, right
you know.
Speaker 3 (21:50):
So to that point, I think diet has also helped
those with you know, severe stages of cancer in the past.
You heard that a lot, you do, you hear that
a lot? I mean, it couldn't hurt at that point.
But yeah, so maybe even sharing some of your insights
into diets might be something that would help help people.
Speaker 1 (22:13):
Yeah. Absolutely, well, I.
Speaker 2 (22:15):
Mean, you know, look, the best thing you can do is, folks,
honestly get off the meat. Okay, there's nothing good in me.
I'll just tell you that. I mean, it's loaded with
a lot of chemicals. The animal before they're slaughtered, okay,
realizes it all right there, they're sentient beings, and a
(22:37):
sentient being realizes that there's something happening that is not
really good for them. Okay, and all of a sudden
they're slaughtered. All of that angst and anxiety goes back
into their body that you're they're going to consume. So
that's number one, I would say number two. If you
want an education on this stuff, you go watch sports
over nives. Okay, here's another guy I tripped across. We
(23:02):
all you know, we all know basket in Robbins right,
the great ice cream Yeah place right, we all grew up,
you know, thirty one Flavors. I think I have worked
there when I was a kid, so long I think
had to work and didn't last long obviously, I didn't
make a career of it. But Robbins the Robins, so
they were they were brother and Walls or cousins. I
(23:23):
forget basket in Robins, but the guys that started that company,
but Robin's son. Okay, John Robins wrote the book Diet
for a New America about forty years ago. Wow, now
here here, you're going to inherit a. I don't know
how big Basket Robbins is, but they're big. I mean
(23:44):
probably a billion dollar company. And uh and I believe
he's the only child. I may not be right about that,
but anyway, so John was gonna inherit a company and
he met a woman while he was in college who
turned him on to nutrition. And I'm not even sure
if she knew who his dad was. Okay, but long
story shore. John Robbins writes that book Diet for New America.
(24:09):
And I'm saying forty years ago. It might be longer
than that. It's a long way back. And anyway, needless
to say, he doesn't go to the ice cream business.
And he tells his dad like, look, you know, like
you're not helping people. You're making him sick. I know,
you don't want to ice creams happy. It's fun, right,
we all grew up with it, right, But he is.
(24:31):
So the father starts having some cardiovascular issues, winds up
going to his cardiologist who recommends him to read a
book called Diet for New America by some guy named
John Robins. Wow. Wow, Now I don't know when he
connected to dots that his son, who at that point
was alienated from him they weren't speaking to each other,
(24:52):
had written this breakthrough book for example. Okay, so you know,
so those are the kind of things that I surround
myself with, is reading these things. They're not as wool
as you think. People. If you knew me, you know
I'm a political conservative, like you know, I'm not, like
(25:12):
you know, an old hippie. I'm a business guy all
the way. But at the end of the day, when
I started to open my eyes to all of this
information and I realized that eating animals with detrimental a
way way around. Here's another thing. Uh. If you want
to save the environment, okay, no matter what politics are,
whether you're Republican, Democrat, independent, you can care less. Okay.
(25:35):
You know, at the end of the day, if you
want a planet for your kids and your grandkids get
off the meat. The meat sucks the water supply of
the world down so considerably, okay, that the water supply
needed to grow fruits, vegetables, livestock for milk production and
other things. For example, okay, is getting so depleted so
(25:59):
you can have your cheese.
Speaker 3 (26:00):
Perdon Wow, you never thought of it that way.
Speaker 2 (26:04):
Yeah. If you care about the future, and I do,
I've got I've got a twenty year old, twenty one
year old, a thirty year old, and I'm not a
grandfather yet, but I hope we'll be here the next
few years.
Speaker 3 (26:14):
We have three children too.
Speaker 6 (26:15):
Yeah, I mean I want them to have you know,
I want them to have opportunity, Okay, but I also
want them to have as healthy a planet as possible.
Speaker 3 (26:27):
Okay.
Speaker 2 (26:28):
So you know, once again, I didn't have a soul
of tarsist moment. I didn't get hit in the head.
You know, I wasn't riding on a horse somewhere and
a lightning bolt hit me and said stop eating me.
It was one of those things where it just happened.
By the way, I live in Dallas, if your lady
has been in Dallas, but.
Speaker 1 (26:42):
Like my mom grew up in Houston.
Speaker 2 (26:47):
Yeah, same place. I mean, this is cattle culture all
the way. Okay, we're not doing any favors. Last night,
my wife and I went to the movies, which we
rarely do, but we went to see this great new
movie that that Neil McDonough has done and he wrote
it called Rodeo and it's fictional, but it's about an
(27:09):
older man that goes back rides in the rodeo to
help save his grandson's life and it's a nice story.
We come out of there and we notice a woman
and her kids with little piglets selling the piglet. So
I said to my wife, said, I gotta stop. I mean,
I gotta, I got, I gotta pick up plett. So
(27:29):
I picked up this little piglin. He was about this big,
and I started patting him under his under his chin,
and he fell asleep in my arms. Now that is
essentient being. So I put on Facebook this picture and
I said, folks, you wonder why I went vegetarian. Okay,
this little guy, I don't know, this little piglin, he
(27:52):
doesn't you know. I've got four dogs, poor cash. But
but anyway, I'm just rubbing this little guy under under
his chin he falls asleep. Do you really need baking
that batman?
Speaker 3 (28:02):
Okay? Making me feel bad, John, And I'm just saying.
Speaker 2 (28:07):
And then I started realizing that these animals, we were
sentient beings, that they had moms and dads too, that
loved them and cared about them. Right. And you know,
once again, I mean like I said, I mean, if
you met me politically, you think, wow, this guy's into
all of this stuff. It's like, yeah, I have opinions
there for different reasons that we won't wore your audience with.
Everybody's got their politics. But when I looked at the
(28:31):
facts and I looked at the economic damage done to
the planet as a result of eating meat, I said,
I just can't. I just can't do this. And and
by the way, I loved by me. I was you
know before all of before I started, I was a metaholic.
I mean I could eat eat breakfast, lunch, and dinner.
And because I'd been involved in sports, I were all
(28:52):
power sports. It was always like, you know, that was
part of the whole macho thing. And I'm in Dallas, Texas,
and you know, a state has to be hanging over
the side of the play. It's not big enough and
so for me to give it up it was a
big deal. And I shot that hack out of a
lot of people when I did it, and they figured
it was temporary. But the more I found out, it
(29:14):
was like I would never go back. I couldn't go
back for ethical moral reasons. The end of the day, though,
it was like, you know, as you get to know
those animals personally, just say like, hey, you know, somebody
really need baking that bad. This is a sensiy little
animal that if your kids or grandcads had this animal,
they would love this little animal to be in your lives.
(29:36):
It wouldn't that do that. Remember, we would not as Americans,
we would never do that to a dog or cat.
No years, you would not eat your dog or cat
or your neighbor's dog and cat. You just wouldn't do it.
Spye what Donald Trump says people think they are not
eating dogs and cats. Maybe they are somewhere, but for
the most part, everybody loves your dogs and cats. Every
(29:56):
dog in our neighborhood. I know on a first head level,
the guy I'm walking aroun Oh, yeah, that's so. I
don't know the people's stage, but I know probably not
good but my point is, okay, we would never do
that to a domestic.
Speaker 3 (30:13):
True.
Speaker 1 (30:14):
True, very true.
Speaker 3 (30:15):
So John, what's the name of your podcast? And where
can our listeners hear more from you and engage with
you more?
Speaker 2 (30:25):
Well, believe it or not? Leave nothing the chance you
can get there from that chance, yes, yes, but you
also can get there. That's that's how we started out.
And I want to I do want to make an
important point though, because I think your audience will appreciate
this how this all transpired, but they can also get
(30:45):
there by my name, John solid Or on YouTube s
O L L e R. What happened was during COVID,
Like every other person in the universe that was in business,
especially small business, I was affected. Uh. I had written
two books that were coming out. This one came out
in December, okay, of twenty nineteen, called Moving Up twenty twenty.
(31:09):
We're going to have this spectacular year in twenty twenty, right,
and this one came out in February in twenty twenty.
We need nothing to chance. And all of a sudden
I had to do two things, and the first one
being pivoting. Okay, and for your audience, especially because we're
talking to people here where you know, most of us
(31:29):
are at least over fifth right, pivoting. Pick of it.
Like basketball, Okay, you got your back to the brim.
Teammate comes down to court, he throws you the ball.
You've got to pivot on your foot obviously to turn
around to face the basket. Well, that's kind of what
I had to do. I've got these two books coming
out all of a sudden, I'm supposed to be in
sixty cities over the next year with my regular business,
(31:53):
my network marketing business, where you know I would do
my network marketing business. And oh, by the way, I've
authored two new books. And yeah, you bring one hundred books,
been sign them for whoever and everybody else go to Amazon.
Well that that opportunity no longer existed, right, So I
had to pivot. So a friend of mine in California said,
why don't you start a podcast? And I know what
(32:15):
a podcast was, but I had no idea how to
start one. So we started, We hired a company, and
we and we did it under to leave nothing to
chance matter for for a few years, and then we
finally just said, you know what, we can just do
this ourselves. We'll get opus clips and everything, and probably
like you ladies do and kind of you know, most
of us ourselves. We don't need to pay somebody to
do it. But so so the podcast still exists as
(32:38):
we speak. And then the second word, So the first
word is is pivot. Okay, be willing to pivot as
you get older, okay, And sometimes that pivots forced on.
I didn't create, certainly, but I had to pivot because
otherwise nobody was going to know my books were even
out there, because I had no way to talk to them.
Where does the agility come? And think of it as
(33:00):
the ability to move sideways or backwards and forward right,
And I'm doing that with my hand, not realizing that
people aren't going to see the pope right now. But
think about agility this way, agility in terms of how
you think. And we talked about this a little bit earlier,
(33:21):
a year ago. As I said earlier, I was not
an AI guy. Okay, I wasn't against it, but I'm
not a technology guy at all. Okay, I'm a sales
guy at the end of the day. But I said,
you know what, Okay, this is where we were at
some twenty years ago when Bill Gates made the statement
that there were two types of businesses. There would be
(33:43):
those that would be on the internet and those that
would be out of business. And I said, I think
AI is going to be along those same parameters. It's
going to be businesses that say, hey, I'm going to
use this to the best of my ability where it fits.
But it doesn't fit for everything. But where does it fit?
So about a year ago I became open to it,
(34:03):
started to read about it. I got a good friend,
this electrical engineer. I was asking him about it. My
son has studying an electrical engineer. I was asking him
about it, reading about it, you know, like everybody else was.
And a few months ago I got an email from
a guy who's actually called me right now in my
watch a guy in Las Vegas about my podcast. And
(34:25):
then you got to follow this all the moving parts
of this story. I get this email telling me how great,
wonderful I am and how smart I am and how
pretty I am. And I'm like, well, the guy after
you guys hasn't seen me because he wouldn't have a
pretty But anyway, I said, I'm going to respond to
this guy's email, and I did. And when I did,
you know, He eventually leveled with me. He said, Hey,
(34:46):
that email wasn't written by me, it was written by
aih okay, And I don't know whether to be offended
or flattered, but you know, like, okay, fair enough. I
interviewed him on my show, like you guys start with
me today, and we'd become friendly and out of that relationship. Now,
remember AI caused that. Without that AI email, I don't
(35:07):
meet this guy, I don't interview him, we don't become friendly. Right.
It turns out he has some health problems. As a
health product that I represent that I sent to him,
he had some good results with it. And anyway, long
story short. By Christmas, he introduced me to the publisher
of a magazine called Top Doctor Magazine. Now, this is
(35:28):
the second leading magazine that goes to the medical industry
in a world or in the United States, and it
was like six hundred thousand doctors or something some crazy
number like that. And so I meet the publisher. I
wind up through lots of conversations getting the guy who
now owns by company on the cover of the magazine.
Big deal. By the way, only twelve of these years
(35:49):
Bobby Bobby Kennedy was on two months before, okay, to
give you some context. So anyway, because of that relatelationship,
now you know we're going to wind up being the
the the Chris and I the guy that I met
through AI. We're going to be the co chairs of
the Top Doctor podcast. Right. So here's my point of
(36:12):
that agility. If I was not willing to listen to
something that was AI related, I just said, hey, this
got to contact me to AI. Yet I had an
interview and that's the end of the conversation. Good buy instead,
Because I built a relationship, Because AI the robot got
me and another human being in contact, we got to
(36:34):
the point where we've done business together now, okay, And
because of that it opens this particular door, and there's
other doors that get opened. Likewise. I've met other people
now via AIM from a whole different series of events
that we probably don't try to get into right now,
but that I've met to AI that are opening all
(36:55):
sorts of business stores in my life at sixty four
years old. Wow, that's but I was agile enough to say,
let me, let me be open to it. Don't have
to understand it all. Here's don't let a I spare
you you only have to understand what it does for
your particular business. You don't have to understand how it works.
(37:16):
Here's what I can tell you. It'll save you heck
of a lot of time.
Speaker 1 (37:19):
Oh about it.
Speaker 3 (37:20):
We know that great advice, John, and all your podcast lead,
your books, as well as your new co host opportunity.
We'll all be in our show notes for our listeners.
And we really enjoyed having you on our show today. John.
It's been a great pleasure, so thank you.
Speaker 1 (37:39):
Thank you so much. And by the way, you're the
first man that's been on our show.
Speaker 3 (37:43):
That's really exciting for us we've got on our show.
Speaker 2 (37:45):
Yeah, it's it's you know, you just look at the
demographics on what you're doing. I mean it's sixty three
percent of the population in the US here are people
over a certain age.
Speaker 1 (37:57):
Yeah, right.
Speaker 3 (37:58):
And we weren't trying to do it. It just ended
up organically working out that way, but we just thought
we'd let you now. But thank you again for being
on our show today.
Speaker 2 (38:07):
Looking for you guys are doing a great job, you know,
a great service to people by educating them on all
these different subjects.
Speaker 3 (38:13):
Thank you, Thank you so much.
Speaker 2 (38:15):
Best I am with your show, frankly, so thank you again.
Speaker 1 (38:20):
Well that wraps it up for today. Thanks for joining
us on Let's Talk Midlife Crisis. We hope you got
some laughs, a little inspiration, and maybe a few new ideas.
Speaker 5 (38:29):
If you love today's episode, hit that subscribe button so
you'll never miss an episode, and hey, share the love.
Send this episode to a friend who could use a
good laugh and some midlife wisdom.
Speaker 1 (38:41):
Connect with us on social media at Let's Talk Midlife
Crisis and let us know what's on your mind. We
love hearing from you.
Welcome to Let's talk midlife Crisis. I'm Ashley and I'm Tracy.
Where your go to hosts for all things midlife, menopause
and Moments of Pure Mayhem. And today we have John
with us, author, podcaster and co host of a podcast,
an entrepreneurur.
Speaker 2 (00:21):
Hi, John, Welcome, Well, thank you very much for having me.
Looking forward to this conversation with all of our midlife friends.
Speaker 3 (00:29):
Yes, my life and third chapter, as we were just
talking about, I think I'm pushing that third chapter myself,
but while I can, I'll consider myself a midlife.
Speaker 4 (00:46):
So you were telling us earlier that you do some
pretty intense weightlifting.
Speaker 2 (00:54):
I still do powerlifting meets. So I just literally returned
from one to McKinney, Texas. So where do you lose?
Speaker 3 (01:04):
Where are you located?
Speaker 2 (01:06):
I'm in Richardson, Texas. Just go up to Dallas. Okay,
I'm not not from here. I'm from New Jersey originally.
My wife is from Monta, Canada, so we're kind of
an international couple. But we've we've lived here, we raised
our kids here, so we we're kind of Dallas sites.
But uh, I'm still still a fan of the New
York sports teams. But yeah, I've lived here a long time,
(01:30):
so I kind of qualify as a Dallas guy.
Speaker 3 (01:32):
Now, yeah, I didn't mean. I didn't mean to cut
you off. I was just curious where you were. So yeah,
so you just had a competition.
Speaker 2 (01:42):
Or yeah, so I've been I've bened three fifty. I
wait waited two forty at the Wagge yesterday. So I've
been street fifty one hundred and ten pounds more than
my body weight at sixty four. And you know, we
were talking as we as we came on to your
show today, just that you know, you can't let the
old guy in or you can't let the old woman in,
(02:03):
because the second day you do, it affects everything from
your physicality to your your your mentality, maybe not your spirituality.
Maybe maybe that's that's a separate subject. I don't know.
I'm sure people's opinions. But you know, these days you
don't have to get old because your driver's license is
(02:24):
an age that would depict in a prior time in
old person. Right. I look, I look, for example, at
some of the mentors that I've had through the years.
You know, people like Jack m'lane who lived to ninety six,
Jay Cordy's the Juice Man who lived to ninety four. Currently,
(02:46):
currently two guys that I follow religiously, doctor Paulo. Esselton
from the Cleveland Clinic and doctor Campbell from Cornell, who
were both in the early nineties. These guys are still
out given seminars around the world to thousands of people,
hopping on aeroplanes, you know, renting cars, going to hotels,
(03:08):
et cetera, et cetera. So you know, when I look
at at those people, those are my role models. When
I look, you know, in the gyms that I go to,
and I look at some of the older people, and
I just say, that's how we're supposed to continue as
the people who say, well, I'm a certain age, so
(03:28):
therefore I'm going to stop my exercise routine, I'm gonna
stop eating, right, I'm I'm just gonna give into all
of those notions. And unfortunately, or fortunately, I guess I
should say, our longevity is affected by what we eat
and what we do. We move the body continuously, we
can live a long time. So there's so much proof
(03:49):
for that, so much evidences science that.
Speaker 1 (03:53):
Yeah, I mean, our bodies are not made to sit around.
Speaker 2 (03:57):
Exactly you know, so move the body to run number,
put the right foods in, try to eat as healthy
as you can. Can't can't always eat perfectly. I get it,
you know, I certainly don't myself. But at the end
of the day, the idea is to you know, not,
you know not let the age dictate how we're going
(04:18):
to live our lives. Now. Can we call stoff? But
can we be more careful? I mean I am I
more careful than I was when I was younger. You
sure about certain things like yeah, you know, for example,
you know, weightlifting, it's like, you know, I get up,
you know, three fifty four hundred, that's that's about my range.
Have I done more than that in my life?
Speaker 3 (04:37):
Yeah?
Speaker 1 (04:38):
I have.
Speaker 2 (04:38):
But I was heavier and I was young, So you know,
I don't have to push it. I don't have to
impress anybody. I'm not to impress anyone. I'm out to
stay healthy and increase my longevity by doing the things
that I'm doing, you know, from a physical standpoint, and
that would carry over, by the way into my business life.
(05:00):
I challenged myself constantly to learn new things. In the
last year, AI has become something I knew nothing about.
That I wasn't opposed to. But I say, you know,
if you asked me a year ago, hey, John, what
do you think of AI? Said, well, I think it's great,
but I don't know think about it. I know what
(05:22):
it is. I know what AI stands for. A year later,
because of some circumstances and because I was open minded
to it, now I not only utilize IT in all
of my businesses, but I also have had an opportunity
given to me to become the co host of the
Top Doctor magazine podcast in addition to my regular podcast,
(05:45):
my own podcast, and that came as a result of
an AI contact that I made who contacted me about
my podcast. Turned out it was an AI written email.
We became friends, and turns out he knew these people.
One thing led to another, and here we are, you know,
seven or eight months later. You know, as we get older,
we have to be open minded. We can't just say hey,
(06:07):
here's the way we did it in nineteen ninety five,
or you know, hey, I started my first business in
nineteen eighty three. The phone plugged into the wall. My
phone's in the other room. But you know, today I
have a phone that I can launch a space Shuttle
with right, yeah, and it really is. There's more technology
in your iPhone than what Space Shuttle was originally said,
(06:29):
you know, out into the Space was. So you know,
things are evolving in a fast way, in a good way.
If we're open to them, we can take full advantage
of it. You know, another thing, you look at medicine,
how medicine has evolved, everything from you know, things that
used to maybe blind us or cripple us, like like
hip surgery for example, or a guacoma, things that today
(06:52):
are very, very treatable. So there's all these good things happen,
and there's some bad things happen in the world, certainly,
But at the end of the day, I see our
time here in twenty twenty five and beyond as one
of lots and lots of opportunity if once again, you're
open to it, and you don't say, well, my driver's
license says to age or that age and airport I'm
(07:14):
supposed to be, you know, sitting in a corner watching
Netflix all day, right, yes, but it's not not what
I would certainly condone or encourage, you know.
Speaker 1 (07:23):
Right right now.
Speaker 3 (07:25):
You also talked about the fact that you're a vegan
So have you always been a vegan? Has this been
something that you have you know, come into later in life.
Speaker 2 (07:40):
Yeah, what great question of how I got there? Eight
years ago, I went vegetarian for one day. Yeah, I'm like,
I was gonna be a vegetarian just for one day.
I wasn't going to eat meat. And I had no
particular reason, like you know some some people have this
dramatic thing happens a lot of times. It is a
help thing. I didn't. My health was good. Now your
(08:04):
audience can't see me, but I was about ninety pounds
heavier than I am now at the time. But I
didn't even do it for that. I did it because
my joints hurt so much from my athletic career. I
was very about in judo, wrestling, power all sports that
just beat up your body. And a friend of mine
in the powerlifting community had gone vegetarian and he said, hey,
(08:26):
my joints feel better, and I said, well, I'll work
for him. Maybe it worked, but I'm just gonna trive
for one Like anything, one day, it's a big deal, right,
So one day you don't need a hamburg. And after
that first day, I felt pretty good. So I said,
let me go two days. And I went two days,
and then I said, well I felt good two days,
let me go a week. And during the course of
(08:46):
that week, let me use an example. You know, when
you buy a new car and you think you bought
the only new car of that model, and all of
a sudden you've bolted a light and there's three of
them next to me.
Speaker 3 (08:57):
Yes, you notice all of the same places.
Speaker 2 (09:00):
Yes, I'm at the gym and I couldn't run. I
can only walk on the treadmill because I let myself
go wait wise, and I'm walking on and I see
this show Megan Kelly, who I think she was Fox
or CNN reporter at one time, and they gave her
an and so it was one in the morning shows
(09:21):
that's on at the gym. And you know, of course
the sound is just the words, you know, you can't
can't hear it, of course. Anyway, So I'm walking on
the treadmill and these three young guys come out appairly
young guys probably you know, thirties, and they showed them
before a narrow beese and they come out and they
all look great. They're obviously not obests anymore. It turns out.
They were a family. They were cousins I think from Louisiana,
(09:45):
and the one guy referenced that he had come across
the documentary called Ports over Night. And I came home
and said to my wife and said, you know, I'm
even vegetarian this week this guy was talking about his
diet and this Sports over Night's thing. Let's see if
we can find So we did. We got on Netflix
that night and I watched it and I was impacted
(10:07):
by the evidence based science that supported vegetarianism, not veganisms.
Veganism is very much further down the road right starts withitarianism,
but it goes So that was eight years ago, and
then I still wasn't getting the results quite honestly, that
I wanted. My diet still was. With some people it
was like, oh wow, what a great diet. Other people
(10:29):
they would go, wow, yeah, you're eating a lot of
processed food. Still you're still eating a lot of burgers that,
even though they're vegetarian, they're you know, they're freeze dried,
stuck in a struck somewhere and it's stuck on a shelf,
and you know, et cetera, et cetera. So I met
a guy before Christmas. Last year Christmas it s would
have been twenty twenty three, and a guy named fran Turk.
(10:52):
So anyway, we became friends, and France said, I'm putting
together a group of raw vegans starting January first, if
you want to participate. It was like thirty dollars. It
was nothing. It was like, yeah, you know what I try,
I'll let me put this way. I'll a least hear
what the guy has to say. It's worth thirty five, right,
And so January first, twenty twenty four was my first day.
(11:16):
ROB began and once again, my my weight dropped more,
so that was exciting. My joints felt better. That was exciting,
and I just felt better. And my wife, of course,
it is nodded into this lifestyle shed eating loves bacon.
Speaker 3 (11:35):
I don't know if I could give up bacon.
Speaker 2 (11:39):
I can't call it the normal way, because I mean,
that's not normal eating that way. But she's still eating
stuff that I would frown upon. But and I never
by the way, I'm not one of those people. I
don't hit people over the head of a bible or
anything else, like, hey, you want to know what I'm
doing I'll tell you. I'll tell you my results. But
if you want to go and you have a stake,
by all means, that's your business. But to make a
(12:01):
long story short, yeah, I got into this lifestyle and
I found that the results were there. I felt increasingly better.
I found that my mind started to work better. I
started to get clarity on things very very quick. I
sort of pick up things quicker than I was, even
as a vegetarian. So I said, there's something to this,
(12:22):
because not only are you obviously loading your body with antioxidants,
fiber and everything else, but just eating this way. It
was like a discipline that I liked. And I'm about
ninety five row by the way. Once in a little
great while, like you know, for example, I got to say,
it was my birthday. We ate out with some friends
and we went through a Chinese restaurant and the chef
(12:44):
there knows I'm vegan, but he makes me green beans cold.
They just wouldn't taste very good. So he warms at
one hundred and thirty hundred and forty degrees about one fifteen.
You could go to and still be wrow these just
to make him taste right and soft, and they'll be
making about one forty for me. So I ate that yesterday,
you know, on my birthday. So you know, no, no,
I said to my wife. Nobody died because I ate
(13:05):
a little bit of cooked food. There's a lot of
good reasons not to eat cooked food. But at the
end of the day, once in a while, it's like
you know when when in Rome, you know, you know, yeah, es,
what I don't do is I don't let myself get
in that habit. Well, that tasted good, which means now
let me go and eat pizza, or let me go
and eat something else that I know is not good
(13:27):
for me once again, might be fine for the person
next to me, but for me personally, you know, this
has worked really well. I just got back from Costa Rica,
spent eight days at a raw vegan event with brand
and when his wife Katie and with their two babies
in love with I wanted to smuggle his home. H
(13:49):
nine months old is vulnerable boy. But anyway, you know,
so those are the type of things that I'm spending
my time, my free time doing now. But to me,
it's an evolutionary process that I'm always need to be learning.
I don't just do things for fun. I do things
because there's something I'm going to learn, something I'm going
to pick up. And there were eight or nine other
(14:10):
people at this event, many of which you've been wal
vegan for many years, so now you pick their brains.
What's their experience been. You know, there's sometimes they fall
off the wagon, whether if they do, how do they
get that quickly back on the wagon, so to speak.
It's like AA for vegans, you know.
Speaker 1 (14:31):
Yeah, definitely a lifestyle. Yeah, I think.
Speaker 4 (14:33):
I mean, you talked a lot about, you know, the
mind and the clarity, and even earlier we talked about mindset.
Speaker 1 (14:41):
I think that is such a huge part in.
Speaker 4 (14:46):
Staying healthy because mental health is just as important as
physical health. And a lot of times, and I've expressed
this on our show several times, physical activity is very
crucial for my mental health, dominating it right and and
for me it's kind of a therapy. It's it's a
way for me to kind of just okay, I feel better.
(15:08):
You know, it doesn't work for everyone.
Speaker 3 (15:10):
Make you feel better, right, Eating well makes you feel better,
Exercising makes you.
Speaker 4 (15:14):
Feel and we've talked about it, doesn't You don't have
to be lifting crazy weights, you know, you can just
go for a walk every day. But again, I think
mindset is huge, and it sounds like you have always
been this very like, very aware of that I have.
Speaker 2 (15:31):
And by the way, I couldn't agree more. I mean
the physical activity, I mean it's only you know, everything
in our body works for good, you know, if you
work with it. But the mindset has been the thing
for me that really has appealed to me because it
carries over to everything that I do know, everything from
(15:52):
you know, exercise and business. But it carries over to
my spiritual life, carries over to my social life, carries
over to my marriage. I have had a good impact
on my wife by the way, she has made a
lot of adjustments. She came she came to the raw
Vegan event thinking she would die for not having coffee.
And that, ladies, you're both gonna hate me. You're gonna
(16:15):
love your husband so much more when I tell you this.
I'm got to Costa Rica and I do not know.
I did go, but I didn't you know, that wasn't
conscious of it. It's one of like the coffee growing
capitals of the world, and I'm like, here's somebody who
loves coffee. Who's not going to be able to drink
coffee for eight days?
Speaker 3 (16:34):
Wow?
Speaker 2 (16:35):
So the first day we were there, we've been starting
to think the next day. So she did have a
couple of good costa Rican coffee, but yeah, and then
she had to do it out, you know. But after
the third day she said, feel great. I said, well,
you know, caffeine is addictive too. I mean it's not
to the level some of these other things are. But yeah,
there's a reason why you know, we've got you know,
(16:58):
Starbucks and Tim Horton's and all all these huge coffee
chains around the US and Canada because people are addicted. Yeah,
and yeah, once again, if you have a cup of coffee,
am I telling you you're going to, like, you know,
drop off the fun and no? Not, of course not.
But if you have poor them, well you might want
to look at what you might be doing to your.
Speaker 1 (17:16):
Heart right and how how you feel. Like try a
day of not doing that and see the difference in
how you feel.
Speaker 3 (17:23):
I've actually never acquired a taste for coffee, so I've
never been a coffee drinker. But it's not that I
don't do bad things in my diet to substitute for
that I drink soda, which I don't know if that's
worse than coffee, but definitely I know it's not good
for me.
Speaker 1 (17:40):
So yeah, yeah, I'm a big coffee drinker.
Speaker 3 (17:43):
Yeah, And I've never had an energy drink either. I
just think there's nothing good that can.
Speaker 1 (17:49):
Come from that.
Speaker 3 (17:50):
And to your point about having a heart attack, I
honestly think if I drink one, it might give me
a heart attack, right, I actually had. I was at
brunch with someone a couple of years ago and had
ordered a drink and I didn't realize it had cold
brew in it, and I came home and honestly, I
(18:11):
thought I was going to die. I literally thought I
was going to die. I didn't know what was happening
to me. My heart was racing, I couldn't get off
the toilet, like everything. And it wasn't until about a
week or so later when I reconnected with this person
and said, hey, after we had brench, I wasn't feeling well.
Did you notice anything, And she's like no, I was fine,
(18:32):
And then we realized that it was a cold brew.
Speaker 4 (18:36):
That that's pretty strong apparently, so for somebody that's never
had coffee to go from that, to having cold brew.
Speaker 3 (18:45):
But literally for the rest of that day, I didn't
know what was wrong with me, and I thought I
was going to stroke out or something because it was
just great. That's terrifying. Anyway, Yeah, there you go, and.
Speaker 2 (18:58):
It does look I mean old thing that you know
we heard when we were kids. Right, you are what
you eat? Well, you know what you eat is is
you know, heavy duty food for breakfast and a bunch
of bunch of meat and everything else and you and
you clog up your poling and then once you go
to Mickey D's or something else and you have a burger,
(19:19):
you clog up your body more. And then for dinner
you've got, you know, three pounds of pasta with Italian
bread and butter. Your body's not gonna work away with that.
Twenty maybe or twenty five, maybe even thirty and maybe
the odd person a little bit older. But the reality
is at some point you've got to give into giving
your body what it actually wants, which are water laid
(19:44):
in foods, which are your fruits, okay, your vegetables for
what they represent terms of nutrition and and and you know,
and you got to give your body the right hydration.
We're seventy percent water. So the end of the day,
we're water. We're not coffee, we're not soda, we're not tea,
we're not these other things that once again, if you
enjoy it, you know whatever, so be it, because you
(20:08):
know we're still getting out of here in a box
or an.
Speaker 5 (20:10):
Earn and.
Speaker 2 (20:12):
Don't but don't rush. It is my point. And you
know you can feel great at any age. I feel
better at sixty four than I did a fifty. I
can pay you that. Wow. Between my diet, my exercise,
and probably my attitude to some degree, I just appreciate
every single day. I appreciate meeting new great pit people
like yourselves. You know, on the way out of the
(20:34):
powerlifting meet, there was a guy there with some kind
of contraption that I didn't get a chance to talk
to him because I was really focused on my lifting today.
There's that He's from Indiana and walking out of it
and I said, I said, notice your machine if some
kind of I'm not gonna show what it does. It's
something to do with the with the muscles, said, I
do want to talk to you. Give me your card.
I'm going to text them later today get with them.
(20:55):
Probably get them on my podcast, right, it looks I
get an interesting device there. So, you know, just geting
new people all the time. To me, how exciting it
is that, you know. So you know, mid life mid
life is is a great time if we embrace it. Now,
the downside is we are getting older and our bodies
are going to break down, and you know, there are
(21:15):
things going to happen. I mean I I go through
right now three friends that have have unfortunately uh serious
forms of cancer, and then you know that's that's a
hard thing to see that in your friends and your family.
Uh you know, you pray for them and you know
they're all getting good medical care and everything else. But
you know, my point is that's a harder thing for me.
(21:36):
That's the hardest thing about getting older, I think is
well we rest Reckoni I say, not everybody's going to
be here. We may not be here, but at the
end of the day, a lot of people we care
about aren't you know, aren't going to be here, right
you know.
Speaker 3 (21:50):
So to that point, I think diet has also helped
those with you know, severe stages of cancer in the past.
You heard that a lot, you do, you hear that
a lot? I mean, it couldn't hurt at that point.
But yeah, so maybe even sharing some of your insights
into diets might be something that would help help people.
Speaker 1 (22:13):
Yeah. Absolutely, well, I.
Speaker 2 (22:15):
Mean, you know, look, the best thing you can do is, folks,
honestly get off the meat. Okay, there's nothing good in me.
I'll just tell you that. I mean, it's loaded with
a lot of chemicals. The animal before they're slaughtered, okay,
realizes it all right there, they're sentient beings, and a
(22:37):
sentient being realizes that there's something happening that is not
really good for them. Okay, and all of a sudden
they're slaughtered. All of that angst and anxiety goes back
into their body that you're they're going to consume. So
that's number one, I would say number two. If you
want an education on this stuff, you go watch sports
over nives. Okay, here's another guy I tripped across. We
(23:02):
all you know, we all know basket in Robbins right,
the great ice cream Yeah place right, we all grew up,
you know, thirty one Flavors. I think I have worked
there when I was a kid, so long I think
had to work and didn't last long obviously, I didn't
make a career of it. But Robbins the Robins, so
they were they were brother and Walls or cousins. I
(23:23):
forget basket in Robins, but the guys that started that company,
but Robin's son. Okay, John Robins wrote the book Diet
for a New America about forty years ago. Wow, now
here here, you're going to inherit a. I don't know
how big Basket Robbins is, but they're big. I mean
(23:44):
probably a billion dollar company. And uh and I believe
he's the only child. I may not be right about that,
but anyway, so John was gonna inherit a company and
he met a woman while he was in college who
turned him on to nutrition. And I'm not even sure
if she knew who his dad was. Okay, but long
story shore. John Robbins writes that book Diet for New America.
(24:09):
And I'm saying forty years ago. It might be longer
than that. It's a long way back. And anyway, needless
to say, he doesn't go to the ice cream business.
And he tells his dad like, look, you know, like
you're not helping people. You're making him sick. I know,
you don't want to ice creams happy. It's fun, right,
we all grew up with it, right, But he is.
(24:31):
So the father starts having some cardiovascular issues, winds up
going to his cardiologist who recommends him to read a
book called Diet for New America by some guy named
John Robins. Wow. Wow, Now I don't know when he
connected to dots that his son, who at that point
was alienated from him they weren't speaking to each other,
(24:52):
had written this breakthrough book for example. Okay, so you know,
so those are the kind of things that I surround
myself with, is reading these things. They're not as wool
as you think. People. If you knew me, you know
I'm a political conservative, like you know, I'm not, like
(25:12):
you know, an old hippie. I'm a business guy all
the way. But at the end of the day, when
I started to open my eyes to all of this
information and I realized that eating animals with detrimental a
way way around. Here's another thing. Uh. If you want
to save the environment, okay, no matter what politics are,
whether you're Republican, Democrat, independent, you can care less. Okay.
(25:35):
You know, at the end of the day, if you
want a planet for your kids and your grandkids get
off the meat. The meat sucks the water supply of
the world down so considerably, okay, that the water supply
needed to grow fruits, vegetables, livestock for milk production and
other things. For example, okay, is getting so depleted so
(25:59):
you can have your cheese.
Speaker 3 (26:00):
Perdon Wow, you never thought of it that way.
Speaker 2 (26:04):
Yeah. If you care about the future, and I do,
I've got I've got a twenty year old, twenty one
year old, a thirty year old, and I'm not a
grandfather yet, but I hope we'll be here the next
few years.
Speaker 3 (26:14):
We have three children too.
Speaker 6 (26:15):
Yeah, I mean I want them to have you know,
I want them to have opportunity, Okay, but I also
want them to have as healthy a planet as possible.
Speaker 3 (26:27):
Okay.
Speaker 2 (26:28):
So you know, once again, I didn't have a soul
of tarsist moment. I didn't get hit in the head.
You know, I wasn't riding on a horse somewhere and
a lightning bolt hit me and said stop eating me.
It was one of those things where it just happened.
By the way, I live in Dallas, if your lady
has been in Dallas, but.
Speaker 1 (26:42):
Like my mom grew up in Houston.
Speaker 2 (26:47):
Yeah, same place. I mean, this is cattle culture all
the way. Okay, we're not doing any favors. Last night,
my wife and I went to the movies, which we
rarely do, but we went to see this great new
movie that that Neil McDonough has done and he wrote
it called Rodeo and it's fictional, but it's about an
(27:09):
older man that goes back rides in the rodeo to
help save his grandson's life and it's a nice story.
We come out of there and we notice a woman
and her kids with little piglets selling the piglet. So
I said to my wife, said, I gotta stop. I mean,
I gotta, I got, I gotta pick up plett. So
(27:29):
I picked up this little piglin. He was about this big,
and I started patting him under his under his chin,
and he fell asleep in my arms. Now that is
essentient being. So I put on Facebook this picture and
I said, folks, you wonder why I went vegetarian. Okay,
this little guy, I don't know, this little piglin, he
(27:52):
doesn't you know. I've got four dogs, poor cash. But
but anyway, I'm just rubbing this little guy under under
his chin he falls asleep. Do you really need baking
that batman?
Speaker 3 (28:02):
Okay? Making me feel bad, John, And I'm just saying.
Speaker 2 (28:07):
And then I started realizing that these animals, we were
sentient beings, that they had moms and dads too, that
loved them and cared about them. Right. And you know,
once again, I mean like I said, I mean, if
you met me politically, you think, wow, this guy's into
all of this stuff. It's like, yeah, I have opinions
there for different reasons that we won't wore your audience with.
Everybody's got their politics. But when I looked at the
(28:31):
facts and I looked at the economic damage done to
the planet as a result of eating meat, I said,
I just can't. I just can't do this. And and
by the way, I loved by me. I was you
know before all of before I started, I was a metaholic.
I mean I could eat eat breakfast, lunch, and dinner.
And because I'd been involved in sports, I were all
(28:52):
power sports. It was always like, you know, that was
part of the whole macho thing. And I'm in Dallas, Texas,
and you know, a state has to be hanging over
the side of the play. It's not big enough and
so for me to give it up it was a
big deal. And I shot that hack out of a
lot of people when I did it, and they figured
it was temporary. But the more I found out, it
(29:14):
was like I would never go back. I couldn't go
back for ethical moral reasons. The end of the day, though,
it was like, you know, as you get to know
those animals personally, just say like, hey, you know, somebody
really need baking that bad. This is a sensiy little
animal that if your kids or grandcads had this animal,
they would love this little animal to be in your lives.
(29:36):
It wouldn't that do that. Remember, we would not as Americans,
we would never do that to a dog or cat.
No years, you would not eat your dog or cat
or your neighbor's dog and cat. You just wouldn't do it.
Spye what Donald Trump says people think they are not
eating dogs and cats. Maybe they are somewhere, but for
the most part, everybody loves your dogs and cats. Every
(29:56):
dog in our neighborhood. I know on a first head level,
the guy I'm walking aroun Oh, yeah, that's so. I
don't know the people's stage, but I know probably not
good but my point is, okay, we would never do
that to a domestic.
Speaker 3 (30:13):
True.
Speaker 1 (30:14):
True, very true.
Speaker 3 (30:15):
So John, what's the name of your podcast? And where
can our listeners hear more from you and engage with
you more?
Speaker 2 (30:25):
Well, believe it or not? Leave nothing the chance you
can get there from that chance, yes, yes, but you
also can get there. That's that's how we started out.
And I want to I do want to make an
important point though, because I think your audience will appreciate
this how this all transpired, but they can also get
(30:45):
there by my name, John solid Or on YouTube s
O L L e R. What happened was during COVID,
Like every other person in the universe that was in business,
especially small business, I was affected. Uh. I had written
two books that were coming out. This one came out
in December, okay, of twenty nineteen, called Moving Up twenty twenty.
(31:09):
We're going to have this spectacular year in twenty twenty, right,
and this one came out in February in twenty twenty.
We need nothing to chance. And all of a sudden
I had to do two things, and the first one
being pivoting. Okay, and for your audience, especially because we're
talking to people here where you know, most of us
(31:29):
are at least over fifth right, pivoting. Pick of it.
Like basketball, Okay, you got your back to the brim.
Teammate comes down to court, he throws you the ball.
You've got to pivot on your foot obviously to turn
around to face the basket. Well, that's kind of what
I had to do. I've got these two books coming
out all of a sudden, I'm supposed to be in
sixty cities over the next year with my regular business,
(31:53):
my network marketing business, where you know I would do
my network marketing business. And oh, by the way, I've
authored two new books. And yeah, you bring one hundred books,
been sign them for whoever and everybody else go to Amazon.
Well that that opportunity no longer existed, right, So I
had to pivot. So a friend of mine in California said,
why don't you start a podcast? And I know what
(32:15):
a podcast was, but I had no idea how to
start one. So we started, We hired a company, and
we and we did it under to leave nothing to
chance matter for for a few years, and then we
finally just said, you know what, we can just do
this ourselves. We'll get opus clips and everything, and probably
like you ladies do and kind of you know, most
of us ourselves. We don't need to pay somebody to
do it. But so so the podcast still exists as
(32:38):
we speak. And then the second word, So the first
word is is pivot. Okay, be willing to pivot as
you get older, okay, And sometimes that pivots forced on.
I didn't create, certainly, but I had to pivot because
otherwise nobody was going to know my books were even
out there, because I had no way to talk to them.
Where does the agility come? And think of it as
(33:00):
the ability to move sideways or backwards and forward right,
And I'm doing that with my hand, not realizing that
people aren't going to see the pope right now. But
think about agility this way, agility in terms of how
you think. And we talked about this a little bit earlier,
(33:21):
a year ago. As I said earlier, I was not
an AI guy. Okay, I wasn't against it, but I'm
not a technology guy at all. Okay, I'm a sales
guy at the end of the day. But I said,
you know what, Okay, this is where we were at
some twenty years ago when Bill Gates made the statement
that there were two types of businesses. There would be
(33:43):
those that would be on the internet and those that
would be out of business. And I said, I think
AI is going to be along those same parameters. It's
going to be businesses that say, hey, I'm going to
use this to the best of my ability where it fits.
But it doesn't fit for everything. But where does it fit?
So about a year ago I became open to it,
(34:03):
started to read about it. I got a good friend,
this electrical engineer. I was asking him about it. My
son has studying an electrical engineer. I was asking him
about it, reading about it, you know, like everybody else was.
And a few months ago I got an email from
a guy who's actually called me right now in my
watch a guy in Las Vegas about my podcast. And
(34:25):
then you got to follow this all the moving parts
of this story. I get this email telling me how great,
wonderful I am and how smart I am and how
pretty I am. And I'm like, well, the guy after
you guys hasn't seen me because he wouldn't have a
pretty But anyway, I said, I'm going to respond to
this guy's email, and I did. And when I did,
you know, He eventually leveled with me. He said, Hey,
(34:46):
that email wasn't written by me, it was written by
aih okay, And I don't know whether to be offended
or flattered, but you know, like, okay, fair enough. I
interviewed him on my show, like you guys start with
me today, and we'd become friendly and out of that relationship. Now,
remember AI caused that. Without that AI email, I don't
(35:07):
meet this guy, I don't interview him, we don't become friendly. Right.
It turns out he has some health problems. As a
health product that I represent that I sent to him,
he had some good results with it. And anyway, long
story short. By Christmas, he introduced me to the publisher
of a magazine called Top Doctor Magazine. Now, this is
(35:28):
the second leading magazine that goes to the medical industry
in a world or in the United States, and it
was like six hundred thousand doctors or something some crazy
number like that. And so I meet the publisher. I
wind up through lots of conversations getting the guy who
now owns by company on the cover of the magazine.
Big deal. By the way, only twelve of these years
(35:49):
Bobby Bobby Kennedy was on two months before, okay, to
give you some context. So anyway, because of that relatelationship,
now you know we're going to wind up being the
the the Chris and I the guy that I met
through AI. We're going to be the co chairs of
the Top Doctor podcast. Right. So here's my point of
(36:12):
that agility. If I was not willing to listen to
something that was AI related, I just said, hey, this
got to contact me to AI. Yet I had an
interview and that's the end of the conversation. Good buy instead,
Because I built a relationship, Because AI the robot got
me and another human being in contact, we got to
(36:34):
the point where we've done business together now, okay, And
because of that it opens this particular door, and there's
other doors that get opened. Likewise. I've met other people
now via AIM from a whole different series of events
that we probably don't try to get into right now,
but that I've met to AI that are opening all
(36:55):
sorts of business stores in my life at sixty four
years old. Wow, that's but I was agile enough to say,
let me, let me be open to it. Don't have
to understand it all. Here's don't let a I spare
you you only have to understand what it does for
your particular business. You don't have to understand how it works.
(37:16):
Here's what I can tell you. It'll save you heck
of a lot of time.
Speaker 1 (37:19):
Oh about it.
Speaker 3 (37:20):
We know that great advice, John, and all your podcast lead,
your books, as well as your new co host opportunity.
We'll all be in our show notes for our listeners.
And we really enjoyed having you on our show today. John.
It's been a great pleasure, so thank you.
Speaker 1 (37:39):
Thank you so much. And by the way, you're the
first man that's been on our show.
Speaker 3 (37:43):
That's really exciting for us we've got on our show.
Speaker 2 (37:45):
Yeah, it's it's you know, you just look at the
demographics on what you're doing. I mean it's sixty three
percent of the population in the US here are people
over a certain age.
Speaker 1 (37:57):
Yeah, right.
Speaker 3 (37:58):
And we weren't trying to do it. It just ended
up organically working out that way, but we just thought
we'd let you now. But thank you again for being
on our show today.
Speaker 2 (38:07):
Looking for you guys are doing a great job, you know,
a great service to people by educating them on all
these different subjects.
Speaker 3 (38:13):
Thank you, Thank you so much.
Speaker 2 (38:15):
Best I am with your show, frankly, so thank you again.
Speaker 1 (38:20):
Well that wraps it up for today. Thanks for joining
us on Let's Talk Midlife Crisis. We hope you got
some laughs, a little inspiration, and maybe a few new ideas.
Speaker 5 (38:29):
If you love today's episode, hit that subscribe button so
you'll never miss an episode, and hey, share the love.
Send this episode to a friend who could use a
good laugh and some midlife wisdom.
Speaker 1 (38:41):
Connect with us on social media at Let's Talk Midlife
Crisis and let us know what's on your mind. We
love hearing from you.
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I’m Jay Shetty host of On Purpose the worlds #1 Mental Health podcast and I’m so grateful you found us. I started this podcast 5 years ago to invite you into conversations and workshops that are designed to help make you happier, healthier and more healed. I believe that when you (yes you) feel seen, heard and understood you’re able to deal with relationship struggles, work challenges and life’s ups and downs with more ease and grace. I interview experts, celebrities, thought leaders and athletes so that we can grow our mindset, build better habits and uncover a side of them we’ve never seen before. New episodes every Monday and Friday. Your support means the world to me and I don’t take it for granted — click the follow button and leave a review to help us spread the love with On Purpose. I can’t wait for you to listen to your first or 500th episode!
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Special Summer Offer: Exclusively on Apple Podcasts, try our Dateline Premium subscription completely free for one month! With Dateline Premium, you get every episode ad-free plus exclusive bonus content.
24/7 News: The Latest
The latest news in 4 minutes updated every hour, every day.