From Professional Athlete to Bestselling Author and Beyond – The Story of a Most Unlikely Entrepreneurial Success

It’s been a crazy week. This past Monday, we launched our new iOS mobile app to immediate and rave reviews, posted our 100th episode and surpassed 3 million podcast downloads. Pretty awesome, thanks entirely to you guys — the audience. Most appreciated. But how did all these momentous milestones mysteriously transpire on the exact same day? I call this the principle of Universal Synchronicity. In my book, I wrote something like, “when purpose aligns with faith, the Universe will conspire to support you” (actually I don't remember exactly what I said and right now I'm too lazy to look it up, but I digress). Toss service into the equation and that’s when stuff gets really crazy. My version of the age-old precept (and again I am paraphrasing), give of yourself freely and you will receive tenfold in return. I don’t know why – it doesn’t make sense in the context of our logical three-dimensional world based in fact and physical laws like gravity. But that doesn't change the fact that these karmic principles seem to indeed be law. Spiritual tenets I suppose. Truths you can't touch, feel, see or hear. And yet without a doubt they are undeniable certitudes. The aforementioned events in my life are a small thing in the context of life. They really don't mean that much. And easy to chalk up as mere “coincidence.” But through direct experience I know better. Cosmic signals. Roadsigns along the journey. I am being supported. And for that I am incredibly grateful. When you begin to pay attention — I mean center your attention, turn off the chattering mind, get present and really tune in to your environment — you begin to realize that even the tiniest observations, events and exchanges can carry meaning. Not always. And not necessarily in any external sense, but with the implication that everything is evidence — forensic tools to help calibrate the compass of your life's trajectory. To put things in perspective, I don’t have enough fingers and toes to count the number of times I have found myself in a metaphorical canoe without a paddle – unsure where I was being directed and just surrendering to the current, present and open to what might come downriver and proceeding only on intuition, instinct and faith. Every time I allow myself to get out of the way, simply let go and allow, I end up someplace unexpected. This is not to be mistaken for giving up. In my experience it takes great courage to surrender the reins of control. And at the time it might not seem like it leads to such a great a place. I might (often?) temporally judge it as disastrous. But with the passage of time and the onset of objectivity, it's almost unilaterally something great. Typically a better situation I could never have anticipated. And inevitably a superior outcome than I would have handpicked for myself if given the opportunity to dictate the result. By contrast, when I am clinging to ego, fueled by character defects, self will, self-interest or base impulse (which is more often that I care to admit, although I guess I am admitting it now), my instincts are unreliable. My intuition is adrift. The result? The Universe will inevitably deliver me the lesson I need, which generally involves enduring a proper right-sizing. Time for another compass recalibration. In either case, it's always and without fail exactly where I am meant to be. I know this to be true because every time I peer into my rear view, it always adds up. Good or bad, the math is inevitably perfect. I wish I could access this perspective looking forward, but for whatever reason life just doesn't work that way. That kind of sucks. But it's also kind of great. If I lost you, I get it. I still struggle mightily with these ideas. Too new age for me broseph – I'm out! If you are still with me, I get that too. Enjoy! Rich Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Rich Roll?

  Eating well rarely falls apart because of one big failure. It's the daily question that wears you down. Like, what am I actually going to make tonight? What's in the fridge? And it's exactly why we built the Plant Power Meal Planner. It's a personalized, plant-based meal planning program that matches you with recipes based on your taste, your allergies, your cooking skills, and how much time you actually have. You build, through this program, a balanced, nutrient-dense plan for your entire household in a few minutes. Then it generates a grocery list for you with one click that plugs right into our delivery partners. All the recipes in the program are built by dietitians with culinary training. Plus, you get your own food coach to help you problem-solve along the way.

• 0:44Rich Roll?

  It's kind of an amazing thing. For listeners of the show, all you special people, we're offering an exclusive $20 off an annual subscription right now. To get it, go to meals.richroll.com, take your quick personalization quiz, and enter promo code RICHROLL20 at checkout.

• 1:08Rich Roll?

  Welcome to the Rich Roll Podcast, episode 101 with Brendan Brazeer.

• 1:22Rich Roll?

  The Rich Roll Podcast.

• 1:26Rich Roll?

  Hey, people. Hey, everybody. My name is Rich Roll. I'm your host. This is a podcast. Welcome to my version of audio entertainment, the RRP. What do we do here? What is the RRP? How does it all go down? Well, on a weekly basis, I sit down and perform sort of a Vulcan mind meld with some of the most interesting, forward-thinking, paradigm-exploiting minds I can find. Some you've likely heard of, others maybe you haven't. Nevertheless, thinkers and doers in fitness, athleticism, creativity, diet, nutrition, art, entrepreneurship, personal growth, and spirituality. It's about diversity, people, a diversity of people that inspire and intrigue me, people that are sharing their life experiences, their incredible personal stories, their tales

• 2:09Rich Roll?

  of transformation, and sharing a wealth of information to light your personal path, your path toward maximum life satisfaction.

• 2:18Rich Roll?

  They're here to help you escape the status quo doldrums of life, raise your personal vibration and provide you with the tools, the knowledge, the experience, and the inspiration you need to discover, uncover, unlock, and unleash your best, most authentic self. Why? So we can simply live and be better. All I ask is that you take this journey with me. Find what resonates with you, discard the rest, and use the tools to get out of your own personal comfort zone, because we all have one, and then implement the tools to change, to improve, to grow, to share with others, and to serve. Service, that's what we're here on earth to do. To serve our families, to serve our friends,

• 3:02Rich Roll?

  to serve our fellow man, to serve the best interests of the planet. All right, it's been, uh, it's been a crazy few days. On Monday, a couple of days ago, in the period of just 24 hours, we launched our mobile app, and I'll get into that a little bit more in a minute. We posted our 100th episode, and we surpassed 3 million downloads. 3 million downloads, I can't believe it. It's been less than two years, and we've already surpassed, like, I just, blows my mind. But how do all these things happen on the same day? That's what's so wild and crazy about it. Well, I chalk it up to what I like to

• 3:41Rich Roll?

  call universal synchronicity. I always say that when purpose aligns with faith, magical things happen. And if you throw service into the equation, that's when stuff really gets crazy. And I don't know why it is, it just, it just does. It doesn't make sense in the logical fact-based world, but it just is. And this isn't the first time that I've experienced, you know, something like this. I think if you're paying attention in your own life, you start to see these things happening all around you. When you start to kind of, uh, strip away our masks and step into this more authentic version of yourself, and pay attention to your surroundings, you start to see these little synchronicities. And,

• 4:24Rich Roll?

  you know, I don't have enough fingers to count the number of times I've, I've been in a canoe without a paddle, and not sure where I was being directed, or just surrendering to, you know, what might come, the whims of, uh, the universe, and proceeding only on intuition, on faith. And it's kind of like how I'm surrendering to all the jackhammering going on right now. There's construction going on right outside my office. I don't know if you can hear it or not. I hope I've sort of dialed up the audio so that it blocks it out, but it's driving me crazy right now and forcing me to deepen my surrender to accept. That's a tough one. Anyway, every time I've kind of done this, you know, sort of let go, surrendered, I end up in someplace

• 5:08Rich Roll?

  completely unexpected and basically great, you know, that's the thing, a place I could not have predicted and yet without fail, it's pretty much always exactly where I was meant to be. When I put some time and distance between it and look back on it objectively, when I look in the rear view, you know, everything just seems to add up. The math is perfect. But for whatever reason, we just can't do that looking forward, for whatever reason. We don't have that kind of perception. It's only when we look backwards. But, you know, I rely on all of these past experiences that I've had to give me, you know, greater faith and strength going forward that when I am, when I have my stuff dialed up, you know, when I'm dialed in, when I'm taking care of myself, doing the things I'm supposed to

• 5:51Rich Roll?

  do, that, you know, my intuition is generally reliable, certainly more reliable than it used to be when I was kind of a different kind of guy. But, you know, like I said, all of this stuff sort of requires that we get first, we get right with ourselves. Because if your motivations are driven by, I don't know, character defects or base impulses, if you're disconnected from yourself, if you don't know what's driving you, or you're poisoning yourself with unhealthy foods or unhealthy lifestyle habits or constant mindless distractions and you're prey to the whims of an uncontrollable chattering mind and emotions like fear and anger and resentment, then you know what? It's not going to work. So,

• 6:36Rich Roll?

  like I always say, the hard part, the real work, the work that comes first is the inside work. You do that and then you create a foundation upon which all of these universal synchronicities can manifest. I can hear you. Well, that all sounds good, but you know, it's a little new agey. It's a little woo-hoo. It's a little too ethereal for me. And yeah, I get it. I totally get that. You know, like, well, how can I start? Like, how do I, I'm having trouble even wrapping my brain around what you're talking about. Well,

• 7:11Rich Roll?

  The best place to start is with the food on our plate, what you put in your mouth. If you can change that vibration, you just might be amazed at what might follow. That's my story, and it's also the story of today's guest, a guy who had a passion for healthy, clean, performance-enhancing nutrition that catalyzed a pretty amazing, unexpected journey for this guy, a guy who ultimately has become recognized as one of the most prominent voices, athletes, and entrepreneurs in the health, fitness, and nutrition worlds, Brendan Brazier. For a lot of you guys out there, he needs no introduction.

• 7:53Rich Roll?

  In many ways, he is the guy. He's the guy. He's that guy. He's the guy leading the charge in the plant-based athletic performance kingdom. Recognized as one of the world's foremost authorities on plant-based nutrition and sports performance, I think it's pretty fair to say that Brendan is really, not only is he the guy, he was like the first guy who lit or continues to light the path for so many people who are exploring this nexus between performance and athleticism on a diet that's fueled either entirely or at least predominantly on plants. And he's certainly one of the guys, if not, again, the guy that I look to for guidance and for information and support and inspiration

• 8:36Rich Roll?

  when I made my shift. And he's a guy that I continue to look to today for education and inspiration. Former professional Ironman triathlete, two-time Canadian 50-kilometer ultra-running champion, formulator and face behind the wildly successful, ubiquitous, and award-winning Vega line of plant-based nutrition products. I mean, it used to be that I'd have to crisscross town and go to one weird natural food market in order to find Vega. This is back in, I don't know, 2007. And now you walk into any Whole Foods and there's just a giant section, like an entire section of his product line. And it's just amazing the growth of his company and the wild success that he's having with these

• 9:21Rich Roll?

  products that are helping people get healthier and perform better as athletes. So he's also the founder of Thrive Food Directs. Which is a nationwide plant-based food delivery service. He's a corporate and university guest lecturer and in-demand public speaker on all things plant-based. He even spoke before Congress, I think it was last summer. He's a bestselling author of the Thrive book series. I think there's four of those books and successful performance consultant to world-class athletes and professional athletes of all types and shapes, including players in the NFL, the NBA, Major League Baseball, NHL hockey players, MMA fighters and professional cyclists. I know he's worked with the professional cycling team Garmin Sharp. So this guy knows what he's talking about.

• 10:05Rich Roll?

  He was also named one of the top 40, under 40 list of most influential people in the health industry by Natural Food, the natural food merchandise organization. But you know what? Beyond like the resume and the labels and the accolades and the entrepreneurial success, at his core, Brendan really is, you know, first of all, he's a friend of mine. I've known him for many years and I can tell you that he's really a guy who's simply devoted to service. It's back to service again, this theme of service. He's helping to educate and inspire all people, not just athletes, but all people to access and embrace a more ethical, environmentally friendly and healthy lifestyle.

• 10:46Rich Roll?

  Cool. So quickly, before we get into the conversation, and it's a good one, I want to say a quick word about our new mobile app. I'm pretty excited about it. It just launched this past week. It's an app for your iOS mobile device. So your iPad, your iPhone, your iPod Touch, and you can find it on iTunes and download it. It's completely free and I'll put a link up to the app in the show notes for this episode. And a lot of people are like, well, why an app? You know, I use my podcast app on my phone or I, you know, whatever, whatever aggregator you use out there. Well, one of the main reasons that we wanted to put it out there is that I get a lot of emails from people saying, I love

• 11:28Rich Roll?

  the podcast. I'm kind of new to it. I noticed that on iTunes, I can only listen to the most 50, the most recent 50 episodes. So that's half the catalog that's inaccessible on iTunes and a lot of the podcast aggregators that.

• 11:43Rich Roll?

  That use the RSS feed to get the shows. And so what I wanted to do is put together an app where you could access the entire catalog right in the palm of your hand. You also get all the show notes. You get a cool picture of the guest, so you can see what the person looks like. And I wanted to make it entirely free. So now it's easier than ever to go back and listen to your favorite episodes. You can save episodes. You can share them on Facebook or Twitter with direct links and pictures that will link exactly to that specific episode. I also have an announcement section there where I can make announcements about product updates and discounts and also public appearances and the like. And it's awesome. You know, the early feedback has been great.

• 12:28Rich Roll?

  A lot of people seem to be enjoying it, so I encourage you to check it out. And also, this is just version one. We're going to be adding bells and whistles and eventually having premium options as well, and I'd love your feedback. So let me know what you think in the comments section of the, on the page at richroll.com for this episode page. Also, getting a lot of emails about Android. I realize like, you know, almost half the market is Android users out there. Baby steps, people. If there's enough demand and interest in doing an Android version of the app, then we will certainly entertain making that happen. But we're starting out with the iOS app. We're trying to figure out what people like, what they don't like, and we'll go from there.

• 13:13Rich Roll?

  All right? So check that out. All right, so let's get into today's show. Brendan isn't just an inspiration, but like I said, he's a friend. And I'm really pleased and very honored to share his story with you today.

• 13:38Speaker 01

  Talking to Rebecca Sony the other day. She, we've been doing some boxing down at Amenzone, this boxing studio in Manhattan Beach.

• 13:49Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 13:49Speaker 01

  That Flo, my friend Flo teaches. And so she's been coming out to a few of those. They're pretty fun.

• 13:54Rich Roll?

  It's cool. Well, it seems like, by the way, we already started. So yeah, it seems like you've really been exploring different avenues of fitness lately. Like you're kind of bridging out of the multi-sport world and you're posting pictures of you lifting weights and working with MMA guys and boxing and doing all kinds of different stuff. Like what's been going on with that?

• 14:18Speaker 01

  Well, my fitness is so one dimensional. Like I've swam, biked and ran since I was 15, like pretty much every day. And I got fairly good at doing those things, but I found when I tried doing some other stuff, I tried doing some plyo and some P90X type stuff and I was just horrible.

• 14:36Rich Roll?

  It's really bad. I know. When you start to do what most people are doing at the gym. It's embarrassing.

• 14:42Speaker 01

  Well, it is. And my coordination's terrible, or was terrible. It's still not good, but it's better than it was. And my, my skill level in general is just really low as an athlete. So I've been trying to get better at that and just round myself out as an athlete. Cause I'm not competitive anymore as a triathlete. And I haven't been for a while. And I still do the odd running race, like half marathon here and there. But I just want to kind of round out my fitness. And so I've been doing plyo, I've been doing some boxing, I've been just trying to do some other stuff that just makes me a better athlete in general, as opposed to being a specialized runner. And plus, I think, you know, I think I look better when I'm not

• 15:20Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 15:20Speaker 01

  Super fit.

• 15:21Rich Roll?

  You get so lean and you get that like 12 year old boy thing going when you're riding a bike too much, you know, that sort of, you know, pro tour cyclist physique. And for the kind of message that you're trying to put out to the world or trying to sort of, you know, promote through attraction, the truth is like, you gotta look fit the way people think of fitness in a mainstream kind of way.

• 15:43Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's kind of unfortunate. I mean, the fittest people I know actually look horrible.

• 15:49Speaker 01

  You know, the top cyclists, the top triathletes are so skinny. They look like they've been in a hospital bed for the last three months, but it's amazing what they can do. Their strength to weight ratio is so phenomenal. But like you say, people don't really get that. So they're like, oh, this vegan, skinny vegan guy is going to tell me what to do. Well, you know, like you're saying, the pro tour cyclist, the Tour de France guys, the best triathletes, they're super skinny. They're just so efficient. But then you see them in person and they don't look good. And I just, I don't know, I'm not, like I say, I'm not trying to be competitive in that anymore. So I would rather be a little, a little stronger, put on a little more, a little more muscle and just be a better athlete all around.

• 16:27Rich Roll?

  Right. So what is, what has been like the biggest discovery of trying out these new disciplines in terms of like being an athlete or learning about fitness?

• 16:37Speaker 01

  Well, for me, it's really just doing stuff that I'm really bad at, you know, just learning that because I'm, I was like terrible at trying to, trying to do plyo and trying to do all these different types of exercises that some people are really good at. And like I say, coordination, balance, any of that. I was just horrible at it. So rounding that out. And also too, you know, I'm 39 now and I'm sort of thinking, I want to keep my brain healthy and I want to, I want to keep learning new things. And I've read quite a bit about brain, your brain as it gets older, you know, you've got to keep learning new things and you've got to keep challenging it. And you don't want to get into a routine where you're just doing the same thing over and over. And also, I'm sure a lot of people

• 17:21Speaker 01

  find this, but it seems like the days are speeding up and like time is going faster and every year gets shorter.

• 17:26Rich Roll?

  It's insane. It's almost August. I feel like summer hasn't started yet. And it's like it's, we're in the closing chapter of it already.

• 17:33Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's weird. And it, so I was reading a bit about that a while ago and I learned that once you get into a routine and you get good at things and you get really comfortable at them, time seems to speed up. So if you're bad at things and you're kind of fumbling around, learning new things all the time, time has a perception of slowing down. Like back when you're a kid and you were learning things all the time, everything was new to you. So I've been trying to always do at least one or two things a day that I'm horrible at.

• 17:59Rich Roll?

  That's a good practice, but I'd never heard that, like the idea of slowing time down through challenging yourself.

• 18:04Speaker 01

  Yeah, and it kind of made sense to me, too, because I, you know, as a kid, days seemed to last so long and, you know, years felt like what five years feels like now. So I thought, yeah, you know, the only real difference is that you're just learning and you don't get too comfortable at stuff because you're not good at it yet. But once you've actually become proficient at things, the value of doing it goes down. And also preventing Alzheimer's, too. I was reading about this, that if you're always trying to learn something new, so like basketball, so I'm horrible at coordination. So if I try and play basketball, if I start getting good at it, the value of it goes down to me. So you always want to be bad at something. You always want to be learning something new that is challenging your brain to actually physically change and construct neural pathways.

• 18:47Rich Roll?

  Right. So you're always in that steep part of the learning curve.

• 18:50Speaker 01

  Exactly, yeah.

• 18:51Rich Roll?

  But then you get to a certain level of acceptability with it and then move on to the next thing?

• 18:55Speaker 01

  Right. Yeah, no, that's the plan. I mean, in theory, that's what I should be doing. So that's anyways, to answer your question, that's why I got into doing some of the other types of workouts for my brain, but also to round myself out as an athlete and not, you know, not look like a runner for the rest of my life. Still, I run as much as I ever have, but I just want to be a better all-around athlete.

• 19:16Rich Roll?

  Well, you're definitely ripped. I mean, some of those Instagram pictures you've been putting up lately are ridiculous. Your shoulder muscles and everything. I mean, you're definitely doing something right.

• 19:25Speaker 01

  Well, I think that's just, yeah, you know, just the boxing and the plyo and all the other types of stuff. And, you know, people say, you get this all the time, too. I know that, obviously, you know, they say you can't build muscle on a plant-based diet. But as soon as you start doing the workouts to build muscle, you build muscle.

• 19:40Rich Roll?

  Right. It's really, it's so much more about, well, what are you doing to your body than anything else? It's like when I, you know, I can eat a plant-based diet all day long, but if I stop training, if I stop working out, then I get soft immediately. You know, like the cycling, especially the cycling fitness seems to like vanish overnight, you know, if you're not constantly applying pressure and going out and spending hours and hours and hours in the saddle.

• 20:03Speaker 01

  Yeah, and that's, you know, both, I think, good and bad. It's frustrating because you want to keep what you've built and you don't want to lose it. But at the same time, your body is doing it because it thinks... It's just going to be the most efficient at whatever it is you're doing the most. So it adapts to it.

• 20:18Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 20:19Speaker 01

  Obviously, if it thinks you're not going to be riding your bike much, it has no reason to

• 20:23Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 20:23Speaker 01

  allow you to be a good cyclist.

• 20:24Rich Roll?

  We're done with this, so we can shut this part down, right?

• 20:27Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 20:27Rich Roll?

  Interesting. So you've been traveling a lot, yeah? What were you doing in San Francisco?

• 20:32Speaker 01

  Yeah, I just got back from San Francisco yesterday. I was there for the Green Sports Alliance Conference. And it's a group I've been involved with for three years now and a really good group. It's just a bunch of people coming together, talking about ways to make sport, professional sport, more environmentally friendly. So a lot of stadium owners and managers looking at ways to reduce waste. So putting solar panels on, you know, reducing the amount of water used, giving the food away to food banks instead of throwing it out. And, you know, it's still, it's funny, they're coming around to it. But of course, my big thing in my agenda for being there was like, well, hey, guys, if you're going to be efficient, why don't we offer some efficiently produced food options?

• 21:11Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 21:12Speaker 01

  I.e. plant-based in the stadium. So that was kind of my, my agenda there.

• 21:17Rich Roll?

  And how was that received?

• 21:18Speaker 01

  It's, it's coming along. I actually, I was on-

• 21:22Rich Roll?

  Don't threaten the hot dog man, you know, like-

• 21:24Speaker 01

  Well, that's, that's the thing. It's like, I definitely wouldn't say get rid of those things because people go to sports games and they want hot dogs and all that, and that's fine. And I don't, you know, I've never tried and say, stop doing that, but at least offer an option.

• 21:36Rich Roll?

  An option.

• 21:36Speaker 01

  Yeah, just give people the option if they want to plant-based something, you know, veggie dog or whatever to get started. I think, I think that's a reasonable thing. And I think they get it too. And it's, it's just funny that people just haven't made that connection generally. You know, obviously people in our world have, but just, you just look at numbers, you know, it's just a math thing. It's not like it's anything beyond math.

• 22:00Rich Roll?

  They're running businesses, you know, and they're like, how much money are we going to put into this thing that only a few people really want? Doesn't make sense, you know? So until you reach a certain tipping point, I mean, we live in this bubble where we're surrounding ourselves by choice all the time with people who are like-minded or at least inclined to kind of perceive the world that we do. But it's so easy to, you know, really not fully grasp the fact that- There's so much work to be done and that most people like they they have no point of reference whatsoever. I mean, I I did a podcast yesterday with this young kid, Jackson Foster, he's 21 year old college student, you know, radical vegan activist guy. And he was telling a story of riding his bike across country a couple of years ago and just being in a sort of roadside restaurant in the middle of the heartland somewhere and

• 22:45Rich Roll?

  the waitress didn't didn't know what vegetarian meant like he had to explain what that is. So we forget that, you know, for a lot of people, this is still such a foreign concept. And when you're talking about ballgames in stadiums, I mean, that's where you're talking about really, you know, the heart of America and where kind of America still is with its relationship to food and fitness and whatever.

• 23:06Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's so true. And that's absolutely it. I was actually, I was at a Mets game fairly recently. And that was interesting, you know, it's kind of the blue collar baseball team and you get there. And I was doing this thing. So the folks at Beyond Meat, I don't know if

• 23:22Rich Roll?

  Right, yeah, I know, Ethan. Yeah, yeah.

• 23:24Speaker 01

  Yeah. So they've created this burger, this plant based burger that's really nutrient dense. And it's not a fake meat. It's just

• 23:32Rich Roll?

  It's pea protein. Yeah, it's not that processed. It's all natural ingredients.

• 23:37Speaker 01

  Right. So yeah, I'm on the advisory board for them, the nutrition advisory board. And we're there outside giving it out to these these blue collar baseball fans. And you know, it's really interesting because, you know, you get the kind of standard thing like, oh, if it doesn't have legs, I'm not going to eat it and that kind of thing. And then

• 23:52Rich Roll?

  I hope you guys were filming this. Do you film it?

• 23:54Speaker 01

  We actually, yeah, we did. We do have a bit of footage and it was actually reported on by the Wall Street Journal as well. And there's an article, you can can search that. And it has a few, a few of the quotes in there from some of the people. But it was interesting because, you know, if they actually give you a few minutes to explain it to them, they they're quite open, I find. But it is that initial bit of time. And what I think is interesting, too, is really just taking the argument away from, or even discussion arguments, maybe too harsh of, or just the discussion away from what's better and just talking about transparency. And it's like, do you want to know where your food comes from? And when you buy this, what are you voting for? What are you saying that that you like? Or what are you spending money on that maybe?

• 24:41Speaker 01

  Maybe you don't know a lot about, and one thing I think Beyond Meat did that was really smart, too, is they took the conversation away from is meat good, or is meat bad, or any of that, and they just made it a transparency argument. So they challenged Purdue and the other chicken producers just to put streaming video in their production facility, and they said, we'll do the same. So, right, of course.

• 25:02Rich Roll?

  That would ever happen.

• 25:03Speaker 01

  Exactly. And that was their point, is that they're not, these companies don't want you to see what goes on, whereas they're fully open, because they're just putting together these proteins from plants. So then it becomes a discussion about transparency, and what ought the consumer know, or be able to know, when making food choices. And you gotta think, if the producer of food doesn't want you to see how it's produced, then...

• 25:27Rich Roll?

  It's probably not a good thing.

• 25:28Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 25:28Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I mean, that's a brilliant move, because it really does, you know, obviate any discussion of ethics, or morality, or vegan versus carnivore, whatever. All of that is eradicated, and it's really just, you know, as a consumer, do you think it's right or wrong that a company is, you're eating something that they're producing, and they refuse to tell you how it's made?

• 25:50Speaker 01

  That's exactly it. It's just an argument for transparency. And who's going to argue against transparency?

• 25:55Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 25:55Speaker 01

  It's just, like, that's American. You ought to know.

• 25:59Rich Roll?

  It can be done. Like, look at how Prop 37 was defeated, right? Like, they were able to convince people that it's not in your interest to have a label on your food that tells you whether it's GMO or not, which is completely insane, but another subject.

• 26:12Speaker 01

  That was pretty interesting.

• 26:13Rich Roll?

  Yeah. So, yeah, I mean, when these powerful food companies get together, and, you know, are buttressed by their powerful political lobbies and all that heft, they can create arguments through, you know, tremendous marketing dollars that confuse people enough so that they vote against their interests. So they'll take an argument, whether it's just, you know, a right to know, or a labeling argument, or transparency, and twist it into something that it isn't, to confuse people enough, and turn the tables on the Beyond Meats. You know, that's sort of the pattern or the practice.

• 26:46Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's unfortunate, but it is true. And yeah, I mean, that's some pretty good marketing when you can convince people that they shouldn't actually know things.

• 26:55Rich Roll?

  I know. How do they achieve that? Like, that's actually, that's genius at work.

• 27:00Speaker 01

  It really is.

• 27:01Rich Roll?

  It's diabolical, but you know, it's still amazing that they were able to do that.

• 27:06Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's, um, yeah, that, I mean, it's phenomenal marketing. It's like the Dairy Foundation and it's, you know, it's amazing ability to convince people since early 1900s that it actually makes sense to drink milk from another mammal. And that not only does it make sense, but you actually have to to be healthy.

• 27:23Rich Roll?

  Right. If you don't do it, then there's something wrong with you.

• 27:25Speaker 01

  Right. And that milk equals calcium, calcium equals milk. It's like this.

• 27:29Rich Roll?

  Well, and then beyond that, to get the government on board so that they can put posters up and market to young people in public institutions like schools. You know, it's, it's literally this crazed propaganda that goes down to the core of, you know, our culture and gets us at our earliest, most formative years. And then it becomes incredibly difficult to overcome that predisposition or that, you know, opinion about this food or that food.

• 27:56Speaker 01

  Yeah. And then it becomes a comfort too. It, you know, the way McDonald's smells. I still walk by McDonald's and I don't like that smell, but it's distinct enough that it takes me back to.

• 28:06Rich Roll?

  It triggers something, for sure.

• 28:08Speaker 01

  Yeah. Like when you're a five-year-old, having a birthday party there with your friends and family and it's all this happy time and that smell is associated with it. And of course, that's by design. It's not just a coincidence. So yeah, exactly. Try and get people young, build it into their, their culture and just who they are.

• 28:26Rich Roll?

  So how did you, how many people at the Mets game did you get to eat these burgers?

• 28:31Speaker 01

  Quite a few. Actually, there are quite a few who, who tried it. Um, the team tried it too. There are quite a few on the team. And they, you know, I mean, they're phenomenal athletes and they're, I have a whole new respect for baseball players too. They play, was it 168 regular season games every year? Uh, and that's, that's a lot of games. And recovery becomes huge. So as recovery becomes more important, good nutrition obviously does. And these guys got it. You know, you just spend five minutes explaining it and they're like, yeah, that totally makes sense. I would definitely eat that. So that was good. And then, yeah, going outside and the fans and.

• 29:08Speaker 01

  Quite a few of them were pleasantly surprised. I think they thought it would taste horrible. And it really didn't. And then there are a few people who could hardly, could even swallow. Yeah, yeah, couldn't even swallow it. But then there was one guy who couldn't. He's like, oh, I just, I can't. I can't. This is horrible. And then 10 minutes later, he comes back. He's like, okay, I'll have it. I'll have one now. I'm really hungry. So.

• 29:32Rich Roll?

  Well, if you're going to a Mets game, you should have brought John Joseph because he can connect with those guys.

• 29:37Speaker 01

  Yeah, I should have actually. Yeah, I saw him just the other day, had dinner with John. And yeah, his new book, Metis for Pussies is out, which yeah, you and I both, actually, yeah, you wrote the foreword to that.

• 29:47Rich Roll?

  Right, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 29:48Speaker 01

  So that's cool. Yeah, it's a great, great book and highly recommended.

• 29:52Rich Roll?

  Yeah, me too.

• 30:04Rich Roll?

  In addition to the Mets, you're, so you mentioned like you, you know, you were talking to some of the athletes. And you, I mean, it seems like you're working with a lot of professional athletes these days, like guys from the Yankees and NHL players and guys in the NFL and the NBA and golf and all sorts of stuff. Like, tell me a little bit about like how that started and what your kind of involvement is with professional sports.

• 30:28Speaker 01

  Yeah, so it's interesting. What usually happens is one of these players, their wife, girlfriend, sister, it often comes from a woman, will

• 30:37Rich Roll?

  Of course.

• 30:37Speaker 01

  read my book, Thrive, and think, okay, well, this sort of makes sense. Maybe my husband, boyfriend, brother, whoever it is, would benefit from this. And they get the book. And then that's usually how I get the call. It comes through, through the woman in their life and.

• 30:55Rich Roll?

  Right. So it's individual athlete. It's not like the team manager or somebody says, come on out. Because I know you've worked with like Garmin, the cycling team and other, like on an organizational level, right?

• 31:05Speaker 01

  Yeah, it always starts with with one of the athletes. And and so, for example, with the Baltimore Orioles, I was working with them for quite a bit because of Brian Roberts, who who played with them. Now he's with the Yankees. So he got the Orioles eating really well. You go in their dugout, they have Vega in there and it's just they're, you know, they get it. They like they really understand it. And now he's with the Yankees, so he's kind of doing the same thing over there. And I think that's what it takes. It takes someone who's high level and also a little bit later in their career, you know, when you're 21 year old, 22 year old, probably not thinking about this stuff, but you know, Brian now, he's 36 and he's he's doing great. And these guys, these young kids look up to him.

• 31:46Speaker 01

  And he's, you know, him along with other people, too, is when they get kind of mid 30s, they're looking at how much longer can they compete at a high level? And can they get another couple of years out of their career? Which, you know, you can put a dollar value on that. It can be a lot of money to these guys. So they're starting to think longevity and extending career. So then they sort of, they start thinking about inflammation reduction and things that plant based foods can can bring to them. So then that's usually when when I get the the call because they're like, hey, look, you know, I'm I got inflamed knees or whatever it is. And then they try it and they like it. And some of these guys, they really need it spelled out. They need a meal plan. But then others just need the concept, like Brian, for example, just needs the concept. He totally gets it. He's like, yep, got it.

• 32:31Speaker 01

  So then he can make his own meal plans up. But then it just depends who it is. Yeah, some really need like, just tell me what to eat and they do it and then they feel.

• 32:39Rich Roll?

  Others need your, need you to hold their hand or explain it to them more in depth.

• 32:43Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 32:44Rich Roll?

  So, I mean, a lot of people, I was gonna say most people, but I don't know about most people, but well, yeah, probably most people that are listening to this, they know full well who you are. They're already fans. They're already, they've read your books. They they're on the Vega plan and the whole thing. But for people who maybe, you know, are kind of coming from a different perspective and aren't so familiar with your whole take on on nutrition, like let's, you know, I don't want to spend too long on it, but let's, you know, break it down because you have some really interesting ideas and approach.

• 33:15Rich Roll?

  Which is that kind of extend beyond just basically eating a plant-based diet like you talk about, you know, allergens in your food and the importance of stress reduction and alkaline forming foods and the elimination of biological debt and all these sort of, you know, really interesting fascinating subjects that are, you know, highly appropriate for the athlete, but are really things that I think we all need to bear in mind when we want to think about how can we, you know, raise our vibration or increase our vitality throughout our day?

• 33:44Speaker 01

  Yeah, well, I started off when I was 15 and running track in high school and I wanted to try and be a pro athlete. I thought, you know, it'd be great if I could just run and make that a career. And then I started swimming and cycling. So I thought, okay, well, maybe I can be a triathlete. So that's what brought me into the nutrition world. I knew nothing about nutrition then, as most 15 year olds don't. But I found that what the top guys in the world were doing, the Ironman guys who were winning races were really training pretty much the same as the average guys. So of course, you know, I asked, well, what is it that separates the top from the average? And I found it really had to do with rate of recovery. You know, when you're training a lot for Ironman, basically, it's the more, the more you can do and recover from, the better.

• 34:29Speaker 01

  It's really just that blue collar, kind of just get out there and chip away every day. And so that, that got me looking at nutrition as a way to reduce inflammation and speed recovery. And, and then I just came up with, over years, many years, just a nutrition system that worked really well for me. And I improved at a faster rate than the normal when I was racing and people knew I was eating plant-based. And so they started asking, well, you know, what are you doing? And I wrote and self-published a short book 10 years ago, an 80-page book called Thrive, was really just frequently asked questions. And I put together a nutrition overview of just principles that worked well for me. And I wasn't saying, you know, this is the only way,

• 35:12Speaker 01

  or this is the best way, but it was just the way I did it. And I found it worked well for me.

• 35:16Rich Roll?

  What was the guiding principle that led you to sort of discovering that plant-based was an advantage as opposed to a disadvantage?

• 35:25Speaker 01

  Well, it really just comes down to efficiency. I found that you could spend less energy digesting and assimilating food and getting more nutrition in return. So, less energy out, more nutrition in. And I was under the impression for years, as I think a lot of people are for obvious reasons, that a calorie is a measure of food energy. So, you would assume the more calories you ate, the more energy you would have. And, of course, that's not the case, because if it were people who ate big 3,000 calorie fast food meal...

• 35:50Rich Roll?

  They have tons of energy.

• 35:51Speaker 01

  ...have tons of energy. And the opposite is true, they fall asleep. So, there was obviously a disconnect there. And I found it had to do with net gain, so something I call high net gain nutrition in my book, whereas you want to spend the least amount of digestive energy to get the most amount of nutrition. And when I say nutrition, I'm not talking about calories, I'm talking about vitamins, minerals, phytochemicals, antioxidants. So, for example, I swapped out starchy, refined carbs, pasta, white rice. These foods that had quite a lot of calories but didn't have a lot of nutrition for things like pseudo-grains, amaranth, quinoa, buckwheat, wild rice, more nutrient-dense foods. So, you spend less energy, so therefore you have more of it, because you're spending less, and you're getting more nutrition while expending less energy.

• 36:33Speaker 01

  So, it just really comes down to efficiency. And then, because you have more energy, you can use that to rebuild and repair. We all have a finite amount of energy, it's not something that is just this endless supply. So, if we come up with efficiencies on how to spend it more widely, such as eating foods that take less energy to digest, then it's going to be an advantage. And I wasn't hungry all the time, too. After a while, I used to just fill up on these refined foods. I was vegan, but just wasn't doing it right. So, I had a lot of calories, but not a lot of nutrition. And it's a funny time we're in today, where food is no longer synonymous with nutrition. You can eat a lot of food, doesn't mean you're well-nourished. And a lot of obese people actually show symptoms of malnourishment, which is crazy.

• 37:17Rich Roll?

  It's insane, right? It's like, are we starving, or are we fat?

• 37:20Speaker 01

  We can't decide.

• 37:21Rich Roll?

  We're actually both? It's completely mind-boggling.

• 37:25Speaker 01

  Yeah. So, that's one thing. And another thing, too, you mentioned biological debt. That's something that... You know, a lot of North Americans, I think, become caught up in a cycle where they're tired, they wake up tired, so then they crave coffee and sugar. Caffeine, of course, is a stimulant, sugar is a stimulant. So you get energy right away through stimulation, which treats the symptom of fatigue, but doesn't treat the cause. The cause is you haven't slept deeply enough, or you haven't slept enough in general. And so that is brought about by high cortisol. So cortisol is a stress hormone that whenever we're stressed, it goes up. So stress can come from, you know, traditional stress, too much work, not enough rest. It can come from breathing polluted air.

• 38:08Speaker 01

  It can come from worrying about things we have no control over. It can come from low-quality food. It can come from over-training, just training more than your body can actually rebuild and repair from. So you don't want to cut back on your training, because then you slow your rate of progress. So, you know, you want to find other ways to reduce stress without reducing the ability to train a lot and improve. So you can create and find some of those efficiencies through better food. So when you eat more nutrient-dense foods, cortisol, the stress hormone, goes down. You sleep more deeply, so you wake up, you're fresh, you're rested.

• 38:41Rich Roll?

  And you don't have to wake up and borrow energy.

• 38:44Speaker 01

  Exactly, yeah. And I kind of, I use the analogy, you know, drinking coffee, it's kind of like shopping with a credit card. You get something now, but you pay later.

• 38:53Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 38:54Speaker 01

  And I think, I don't think coffee is a bad thing. I think, you know, as long as people realize that you are getting energy now that you haven't actually earned, and you are going to have to pay it back. So you'll get more tired later, but that's okay if you factor that into your plan. If you need a bunch of energy right now for a hard workout, or you've got a ton of work to do and you have to, you know, stay up really late to get it done, well, that's fine. Coffee can be good for that, but just know that-

• 39:16Rich Roll?

  It's not free. It's not free.

• 39:18Speaker 01

  It's not free, exactly. You are going to have to pay it back. So a good way, too, is to nourish yourself well, lowers cortisol. You wake up and you don't have that dependence on caffeine and sugar. And dependence of, you know, obviously you don't want that, but using it selectively for certain workouts or certain things that you need to get done, that's fine, but know that you do have to pay it back. So the biggest gain can come from improving sleep quality. Which means when quantity goes, or when quality goes up, quantity comes down. So you'll wake up and you'll have slept six hours instead of eight and you'll have two extra hours during the day.

• 39:55Rich Roll?

  Right, right.

• 39:56Speaker 01

  Get more done. You can, you know, train more, whatever you want to do with your extra time. And you are as rested because you slept more efficiently. So again, you know, in a word, efficiency. It's all about efficiency with digestion, with getting nutrients while spending less energy, while getting higher quality rest and recovery with less sleep. So it's really just trying to find a way to get more for less.

• 40:18Rich Roll?

  Right. And you have to, I mean, my experience with this sort of borrowing energy through caffeine is, you know, I've been off coffee, then I went back on, I'm back off, you know, like I've rubber banded and, you know, part of that's because I have such an addictive personality that if I have coffee, like then I'm back in.

• 40:35Speaker 01

  Right.

• 40:35Rich Roll?

  You know, like it's very difficult for me. I struggle with that. And in order to break that cycle, you know, I'll wake up in the morning and if my habit is to have coffee first thing, it's like, no, I'm going to drink water, then I'm going to have a kale smoothie, even though I don't feel hungry and I'm craving caffeine, I'll do that instead. I'll force myself to move my body and exercise and then I'll like feel okay, you know, and it kind of dissipates and it goes away. And it'll take a couple of days, but then the quality of my sleep improves because once you kind of break that, it's like if you're borrowing energy from too much coffee during the day, then that interrupts your sleep cycle. You don't sleep as well. And then you wake up not feeling rested and you're perpetuating this vicious cycle that becomes increasingly more and more difficult to break.

• 41:20Rich Roll?

  So you have to be uncomfortable for a couple of days to kind of get out of it. But then, once you do, then the need to borrow energy is reduced because your energy is high.

• 41:30Speaker 01

  Right.

• 41:30Rich Roll?

  You don't have to borrow it because you actually feel good.

• 41:33Speaker 01

  Right.

• 41:34Rich Roll?

  And that's the payoff with it.

• 41:35Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly. So that's the investment, you know, in the beginning, it is going to be a little bit uncomfortable and there is a bit of a hump at the beginning there. But once you get past that, like you say, then it becomes lifestyle. It just becomes second nature.

• 41:47Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 41:48Speaker 01

  And with the palate too, as people transition to a cleaner diet, their palate will start to shift, they'll start to crave kale and, you know, all these-

• 41:54Rich Roll?

  People don't believe that, but it's true.

• 41:56Speaker 01

  It really is. And I've met so many people who have made that transition and I'm sure you have too, where it's just, you know, in the beginning- It just tastes horrible to them, but when you have a really refined, clean palate, you can taste different subtleties and different types of lettuce, whereas someone who eats a standard American diet, it would all taste the same because they're used to over-flavored foods like potato chips that if you or I ate, it would probably taste way too flavorful and our palate's just not used to that. So it's just about recalibration and adjustment.

• 42:24Rich Roll?

  Yeah, and this idea of high nutrient gain, like net gain in your foods, is also like a new concept for a lot of people. And kind of what I say is, look at, what you don't think about, and what you were alluding to, is this idea of how much energy it takes to break down the foods that you eat. So if you eat steak, like that actually takes quite a toll on your body to digest it. It takes a lot of energy to do that. And any kind of like heavy, you know, sort of processed foods or high-fat foods, that's why you feel lethargic and lousy after you eat. But if you can eat foods that are easily assimilated, you don't get that post-meal food coma. You are immediately energized, which is why,

• 43:08Rich Roll?

  having a green smoothie, which is essentially a predigested meal, makes you feel so good so quickly.

• 43:13Speaker 01

  Yeah, again, just about efficiency. And that's what a lot of athletes are finding out now. I've found they're very open to a lot of these high-level guys, especially a lot of MMA guys who are in the UFC.

• 43:23Rich Roll?

  They love it.

• 43:24Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's amazing. Like, I would say they're ahead of everyone. Like, all the pro leagues, UFC, those guys are, I guess they have more on the line, because if they're not feeling good, they're gonna get their head beaten in. So there's kind of a big incentive there.

• 43:39Rich Roll?

  It's so interesting because, for guys like us, runner guy, runner trial, it's like, we're not threatening in this sort of panoply of masculinity in terms of like athletes. We're very different from MMA fighters who are the epitome of what it means to be the ultimate man, right? And their aggressiveness, their strength, their agility, their speed, all of these things. Like, check any box, and those guys are at the top of the game. So it's almost ironic that those are the guys that are, of all the sort of professional athlete disciplines out there, that they're the ones who are really like on it more than any other sports.

• 44:16Speaker 01

  Yeah, and interestingly, their fans are probably the furthest from what they possibly could be.

• 44:20Rich Roll?

  I know. It's amazing, right?

• 44:22Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 44:23Rich Roll?

  Because that's not a far distance from the CrossFit world where it's really all about paleo, which brings me into the next thing. I'm sure on a daily basis, people say, "Well, what's wrong with paleo? I started eating paleo. I feel great. I love my CrossFit gym." How do you feel that? How do you engage people when they come to you with that question?

• 44:45Speaker 01

  Well, a few things. I think some will say, I've done these interviews before, I'm sure you have too, where they compare vegan to paleo, and that's not really a fair comparison. And vegan is very broad. You can be a junk food vegan very easily. A lot of refined foods and all that, and neither you or I are suggesting people should be eating all these refined foods. So I think paleo is very specific, but the sort of plant-based diet we're talking about is really quite specific too. It's a whole food diet. So there's really quite a lot of common ground between what the paleo guys are doing and plant-based. A big, obvious difference is the meat that paleo is doing. And some of the grains, I guess, they're not doing as well. But there is a fair bit of common ground there.

• 45:31Speaker 01

  I think, again, like what you were saying too, with the efficiency of digestion, having more energy, and not being dependent on stimulants is a big thing. And coming down to that, some guys will say, "Well, I only eat grass-fed meat." And I'm sure you hear that a lot too. And my response to that is that, well, one thing that I've become really interested in over the last little while is some of the environmental and the social implications of our food choices, just in general. And eating grass-fed, there just simply isn't enough. If people were to try and do that on a broad scale, it's just, we don't have the land. That's why factory farms were created, is to produce more food on less land.

• 46:16Rich Roll?

  And have you seen Conspiracy yet?

• 46:19Speaker 01

  No, I've heard about it. John Joseph was telling me about it.

• 46:21Rich Roll?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, and I had those guys on the podcast and I saw the film. They introduced it when it's green in LA and they go into all of this and, and they sort of take, there's, because there's an argument out there, I don't know who is the person behind it, that, that actually grass-fed can be sustainable and I don't know how that works. I'm not saying that I've read the studies or whatever this person's position is on this, but I just don't know how that could possibly be true because when you look at the grass-fed, you know, beef farms, the amount of land that they require for a very small head of cattle, it just doesn't seem like it would be possible. Like you would have to cover, what they say in Conspiracy is essentially you have to cover every single, you know,

• 47:05Rich Roll?

  square inch of all of North America, you know, including Canada and Mexico in order to feed the United States. And that would include like turning Manhattan into, you know, sort of grazing land. Like it just, it's not going to work. Like the math just doesn't work.

• 47:19Speaker 01

  Right. Well, only 7% of the US and only 5% of Canada is arable. So it's actually really quite small. And of course, arable land is also, for the most part, the easiest to build on. So as population increases, you know, a lot of the arable land is being paved over for subdivisions to fit more people in. So it's kind of coming at it from both ways. And then, and my thing too is, you know, if it's, if it's not a scalable solution, then it's not really a solution. So we've got 7 billion people on earth and if we're going to do something, you know, in, in the US or Canada or one of these really privileged countries that only works for us, I don't really see that as, as a solution globally. And, you know, something I really admire about what, like Bill Gates, right now, he's doing quite a lot

• 48:04Speaker 01

  of really good work, trying to figure out, and not him personally, but found really good scientists to try and find out, how can we produce protein more efficiently? Like how can we use less land, water, fossil fuel and create fewer CO2 equivalent emissions? And, you know, that's one of the reasons he's an investor in Beyond Meat, because he, he believes that it's through plants and it's just a math thing. I mean, he's, you know, he's not looking at it for any other reason than it's just simple math. And

• 48:29Rich Roll?

  I think he gets heat though, though, doesn't he, doesn't he also invest in like some sort of, you know, Monsanto-type organizations as well?

• 48:36Speaker 01

  Yeah, I've heard, I have heard some of that and You know, it's in Monsanto, of course, you know, they're criticized for a lot of things, and I think rightfully so for a lot of it. But I think there are some groups that are merging food and science that, on the surface, it sounds a little bit scary, but I think some of it, we do need to look at if we're going to produce enough food for the amount of people that are on this earth.

• 49:07Rich Roll?

  Right, like this sort of soylent, sort of soylent, you know, meal in a package kind of idea.

• 49:13Speaker 01

  Yeah, and I mean, in a perfect world.

• 49:15Rich Roll?

  Eating like astronauts.

• 49:17Speaker 01

  Right.

• 49:17Rich Roll?

  You know, well, we might have to if we stay the course, the way that we've been sort of producing food, because it's not sustainable. We're running out of land, we're destroying the environment. Like, it's just, it's not, it's not going to work much longer.

• 49:29Speaker 01

  Right, and there's this, you know, this really nice idea that we all have our own garden, and you know, you and I were fortunate, we're in Southern California, we can grow stuff year round, we have, you know, a bit of land we can do stuff on, and that's great, but what about all the other people?

• 49:43Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 49:44Speaker 01

  And, of course, if you have the ability to grow some of your own food, great, do it. That's, that's perfect, zero food miles and really efficient. But, again, I, you know, I've really become interested in the global implications of food production and trying to help find a solution that is scalable. So that's why, you know, I admire what the folks at Beyond Meat are doing and some other companies, too, that are trying to find a solution.

• 50:07Rich Roll?

  Yeah, beyond Josh Tetrick at Beyond Eggs, similar kind of organization, I'm sure there's plenty others out there.

• 50:12Speaker 01

  Right, and not being afraid of science. I mean, science is a great thing. Science is, you know, can, it can be used really well and responsibly for, for a lot of things. And I think not being afraid of tech and food, I mean, obviously being very careful, you don't want to start creating things that are highly processed and, you know, these weird hybrids of things. But I do think that being open to science being part of the solution and not having this, you know, this romantic ideal that we can all grow our own food is going to help us long term. And, you know, for those of us, like you say, who can, great, let's do it, but let's also try and work on a solution that's scalable.

• 50:51Rich Roll?

  Right. Yeah, there's this tension between sort of getting back to the natural. And I think paleo speaks to that, too, kind of having a real tangible connection to the land and our food and where it comes from and sort of getting our hands dirty in the soil and all of that, which I think is great and very important to be connected in that way. And that's something that we just lack in our modern day. And I think that's why, that's a big reason why paleo speaks to a lot of people, because it kind of pushes that button and helps people to kind of unlock in that way.

• 51:26Rich Roll?

  Versus this idea of embracing innovation and technology, but doing it in a responsible way, like doing it in the way the guys at Beyond Meat and Beyond Eggs are doing it. But also being cautious enough to be wary of the Monsanto's and splicing the DNA and sort of putting food on our plates before we even know what's going on or there's any kind of long-term understanding of the implications of this on our health or the environment, et cetera. So how do you create checks and balances on that that are not just bought and paid for by special interest groups is the trick, I think.

• 52:03Speaker 01

  Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. And the last thing, obviously, is you want to do is have these corporations who have vested interests that get in politically and start paying a lot of money to have their food kind of part of the USDA pyramid and all that. But yeah, I'm very open to and even sort of, I guess, beyond open, like really kind of advocating that we look at science and technology as a way to do it. And I just find in my world, I'm sure in your world too, you see a lot of people are just like, just eat real food. And well, that's great for.

• 52:47Speaker 01

  For those of us who can, but again, going back to looking at this as a global problem and just limited resources and a lot of people to feed and a lot more people on the way, so something has to be done.

• 52:58Rich Roll?

  And we're so sort of America centric too, like we think if we figure this out, then we've solved the world's problems. But meanwhile, China and India are developing and they're finally have a middle class with some extra dollars to spend and now they want the good life. And they're like, screw you, man. You know, I want my burger and leave me alone. And so we can do everything we want to do over here, but until we create solutions and systems that are palatable on a global level, like there's still work to be done. And we have to be kind of the torchbearer and lead the way and hope that others will follow. But when you look at sort of global population, we're only a small slice of that.

• 53:39Speaker 01

  Right. Yeah. And India is emerging and China too. Like you say, that's going to be some serious energy consumption, line consumption going on there. And it's interesting, it's in China, just until very recently, there was just food in China. And now there's junk food. There is KFC, there's McDonald's. So with Western food comes Western problems, Western disease. So now there's whole industry of a health food industry has come to China.

• 54:08Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 54:08Speaker 01

  And it used to just be food. Now there's junk food. So there has to be health food.

• 54:11Rich Roll?

  So. Yeah, they've never, it's never been a thing before.

• 54:15Speaker 01

  Right.

• 54:15Rich Roll?

  I've gone to the Middle East a couple of times over the past year and I've traveled throughout Saudi Arabia. I was in Bahrain. I was in all these places. And yeah, you see KFC, Carl's Jr. They have TGI Fridays. They're like every imaginable like chain restaurant is just pops up all over the place there. And this is a new thing. And for the first time in the history of humankind, like they're having all kinds of crazy problems with heart disease and diabetes and et cetera. And they don't know, they don't know what to do with it. They don't have like, they haven't had this slower ramp up to having to kind of confront these kinds of things. And I went and talked to groups there and they're like, We don't, you know, what do we do? We don't know, you know, we, they have no basis to even begin the conversation about what's healthy and what's unhealthy.

• 55:01Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, just all of a sudden they have all these diseases. And like you say, yeah, it was, you know, a big ramp up since, I guess, the 50s or so in the US. So it's been kind of coming for a while. But there, yeah, it's just all of a sudden, just bang.

• 55:14Rich Roll?

  Right, boom. And then they're like, what? What happened? My kid's fat. He plays video games and wants to go to, you know, Papa John's or whatever, you know, in Riyadh or.

• 55:23Speaker 01

  Right. And has his learning disability and his teachers get mad at him because he can't concentrate.

• 55:28Rich Roll?

  Right. No one, no one knows what to do with it. So that's interesting. So is Vega making like sort of active moves and R and D in that area of trying to, you know, sort of conjure up more scientific based, you know, sustainable ways of feeding people? Or, I mean, like, is the, is the company kind of contemplating that?

• 55:47Speaker 01

  For, for North America, you know, much beyond North America. And obviously, there's, as we're just saying, there's going to be major, major opportunity. And I hate to use that word because it sounds like a good thing. And when it's really actually a very bad thing, it's unfortunate that that opportunity is starting to exist. But we ourselves will not try and, and get it over there because it's just the resources needed to, to get it distributed there. It's just, it's pretty crazy. Like, you know, we, we see ourselves as not just a product company, but as an education company. So we do a lot of education in, in Canada and the US. But to go beyond that, it's just the resources required. It's

• 56:30Speaker 01

  really pretty significant. And, you know, so we try and do a lot here. Of course, there's, you know, Thrive Forward, that online video course that, that's free. There's 40 videos, a bunch of downloads, recipes and stuff. So people can check that out. I know you have a course too. So it's the sort of stuff that, you know, I see, I see it as almost a responsibility for people who have this information to disseminate it because it's, it's going to save people a lot of time. It's going to save them a lot of, a lot of issues down the road if they don't have it. And I'm the sort of person who. Likes to try and learn from other people's mistakes and not have to make them myself to to do that. So and actually figure it out. So I like, you know, I like learning from

• 57:13Speaker 01

  from what other people have done. So I'm trying to do the same thing and put out there. You know, something that's taken me 15 years to kind of put together and figure out and just get it out there so they can learn in, you know, a few months. And I think that's just kind of the social, uh, social benefit of, of a lot of, uh, a lot of information sharing that, you know, we're all part of now.

• 57:33Rich Roll?

  Right, right, right. I mean, in terms of making mistakes, like when you sort of interface with people, whether it's athletes or just people you meet along your path, what are some of the most kind of common misconceptions that people have about, you know, how to eat to be an athlete, or how to eat just to be healthy that are really elementary?

• 57:50Speaker 01

  Well, the big one is protein. You know, it's, it's still a question I get a lot, and I'm sure you do too, just where do you get your protein? And again, that goes back

• 57:58Rich Roll?

  I never get that question.

• 58:00Speaker 01

  And it's, it's funny. It's just back to, you know, the, just this amazingly good marketing that's been done over the last century, uh, to make people feel as though they, they gotta have protein from meat and it's gotta be a lot of it. So I get that a lot. Uh, also too, just how do you do it when you travel? You know, people are always amazed that you can, you can eat well when you travel. And I eat very simply. You know, I, I spend most of my, my time at grocery stores, Whole Foods, if I can. I'm just, I graze. I just eat throughout the day, fruit, vegetables. Um, the salad bar there, of course, is great. So I'm pretty easy to please. I, I can find food that I like at really any grocery store.

• 58:45Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 58:45Speaker 01

  Um, I, cause I've kind of got away from that thing. And I've done this just, I guess it's been, it's been quite a while now, over the last 15 years of getting away from thinking about meals, like breakfast, lunch and dinner. I just eat. I don't really have breakfast, lunch, or dinner. I just sort of eat whenever I feel like.

• 59:03Rich Roll?

  I'm sort of like that, too. Like, I can go to the grocery store and just get a bag with a couple different kinds of fruit in it, maybe like a little thing of nuts, whatever, just like a variety of just things in the produce section. And I just have that like on the passenger seat of my car as I'm driving around LA and I just eat it. And then I don't go, oh, I didn't eat any meals today, but I've been sort of grazing all day long and I feel fine.

• 59:23Speaker 01

  Right. And then you don't have to have a huge meal at night, which then obviously you're not going to sleep as well. You don't digest it as well. You wake up and you haven't slept as deeply and then, you know, you spiral from there. So I think grazing works really well. And it's like Google, for example, at their, their Googleplex in Mountain View, you know, they, they put in those cafeterias, um, free food. It's for all the employees. So salads, smoothies. The idea was to reduce healthcare costs because people wouldn't get sick as often. And that happened. But what also happened that they didn't expect was productivity went way up because people weren't having that 2:00 PM crash after eating a big meal and having all the blood leave their brain.

• 1:00:03Rich Roll?

  They sit at their desk and then they're starving and then they go eat and then they come back and crash.

• 1:00:06Speaker 01

  Right, exactly. So this is just grazing all the time. And yeah, like you say, productivity's gone way up. We, uh, we copied that model for the head office at Vegas. So we have free salads, free smoothies, everything's free whenever you want. There's no lunchtime. You just go and have it whenever. And it's, it's amazing how much more productive people are. And they stay at the office longer because there's free food. So.

• 1:00:30Rich Roll?

  But the core, I think the core behind it that you're getting at is just keeping it super simple. Like, it doesn't have to be some crazy complicated thing. Just go get a couple of apples and some bananas and, you know, some almonds and some walnuts and, or whatever it is, you know, just a couple of simple things and just, if you're going on a plane, if you're, you know, whatever, you're going to be at the airport, all those kinds of things. It doesn't have to be, I think there's this idea that you have to slave in your kitchen and like pre-prepare all these meals and put them in Tupperware things and stack them up and you're in there for hour. It has to be, and it's like, that's never been my experience.

• 1:01:03Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yeah, neither has it been mine. Um, you know, my recipe books, they're. The recipes are, for the most part, a little more elaborate than what I would make on a regular basis, but people want that. My most recent one, Thrive Energy Cookbook, it's more of a transitional book to help people who are wanting to get into this and make good meals. Some of them do take a little bit of time. There are some simple ones too, but I'm like you that way. I just a bit of quinoa, avocado, sea salt.

• 1:01:36Rich Roll?

  I just, like, for me, like, my wife is really, like, she knows how to make, like, these Vitamix smoothies that are just beyond delicious. You know, she'll do just the right amount of this or that. Whereas, like, I just open up the fridge and I just dump a bunch of stuff in there. And no matter what I do, it ends up tasting the same. And like, this is fine. You know, like, I'm just looking to, like, feel good. And like you, I'm like, I'm easy to please. Like, it doesn't have to be any big thing, you know?

• 1:02:01Speaker 01

  Right. And to me, food is, it should complement what it is I'm trying to do. Like, if I want energy, I want to be, think clearly. I don't want to be weighted down by it. So as long as it's serving me, I don't want me to have to feel like a slave around it. It's, you know, eating should be to further your ability to work well. And I think that's something that's kind of resonated with quite a few people, whether it's athletes or business people, high achievers in general. They now see food as a way to boost their performance. It's kind of like base.

• 1:02:36Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:02:36Speaker 01

  You know, if you're eating well, you're less likely to get sick. But also, your mental clarity is going to be greater, your productivity is going to be better. Like I was saying before, you don't have a big, heavy meal sitting in your stomach. That blood has to leave your brain and go there and digest it so you can think more clearly. So there's a lot of real world benefits to this, too. It's not just, you know, this kind of weird fringe thing anymore, obviously.

• 1:03:10Rich Roll?

  So how do you kind of deal with, I mean, right now, there's this big kind of craze about eating a high-fat, like, high-protein diet, like ketosis, you know, it's all about, like, ketosis and low carb and all that kind of stuff, which is, you know, I guess a distant cousin of paleo in some regard, but it's kind of its own thing. And there are a lot of people out there, you know, sort of pushing this, for lack of a better word, which seems to me, I mean, maybe I'm wrong, but it seems to me to just be kind of a, you know, reinvention of what is essentially an Atkins-based diet.

• 1:03:44Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, I mean, that's kind of my take, too, is, yeah.

• 1:03:47Rich Roll?

  They don't like that when you say that, like, they say it's not like that, but I'm still trying to figure out how it's different.

• 1:03:52Speaker 01

  Right, because, yeah, trying to get your body to burn fat efficiently, which I get, you know, of course, when you go for the long bike rides and stuff.

• 1:04:00Rich Roll?

  Especially if you're in it, yeah, if you're an endurance athlete, you want to be very efficient at burning fat for fuel. But my whole thing is, and tell me if I'm wrong about this, but I think that that has a lot more to do with how you train than what you eat. Like, if I'm training in the proper zone two, and I'm sort of using the correct type of metabolism during my workout, that is going to have the biggest impact on whether I'm burning fat for fuel as opposed to what I'm eating before my workout.

• 1:04:28Speaker 01

  Yeah, I agree. I think it's, you know, comes down to the training, for sure, and getting your body to burn fat efficiently, you know, like, the top marathoners who run 205, you know, they're so efficient that they, they don't even need to take in calories during a marathon, you know, because their body's burning fat efficiently, and that's from training. I mean, that's not...

• 1:04:47Rich Roll?

  From being in ketosis all the time.

• 1:04:49Speaker 01

  Right, it's just, you know, in that state, that those long, easy runs where you're burning fat, and your body becomes accustomed to it. I, yeah, I, I wouldn't say I'm high carb, but...

• 1:05:01Speaker 01

  Definitely closer to high carb than than low carb. I find starchy carbs, if I don't eat enough starchy carbs, I tend to get fairly light. Like if I fuel just with fruit, I feel fine, but I do, I do find I get quite light.

• 1:05:19Rich Roll?

  So I like Meaning like lean and skinny or meaning like lightheaded?

• 1:05:24Speaker 01

  Lean and skinny. I just find I lose too much, too much muscle.

• 1:05:27Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:05:28Speaker 01

  Which is fine up to a point until you start losing strength. Then obviously your strength to weight ratio starts to change. So I kind of try and stay just ahead of that. Especially when I was trying to be more competitive as an athlete. Now I just wanna, like I was saying off the top there, just be kind of a decent all around athlete and just fit in general. But I find, yeah, having some sweet potatoes, having some wild rice, buckwheat, amaranth, quinoa, sprouted bread, you know, it's definitely a part of my, my diet.

• 1:06:00Rich Roll?

  Right. And, and when you go and you visit these professional teams, whether it's a major league baseball players or golf players or what have you, I mean, what is, I mean, you know, what is the typical professional athlete's like approach to nutrition? Like, are they educated about it or are they, you know, how, how does it usually go?

• 1:06:18Speaker 01

  It's

• 1:06:19Rich Roll?

  If you can make a generalization, probably everybody's different, but.

• 1:06:22Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's tough to make a generalization. It's, you know, last three years, there's been big awareness shift where a lot of these guys are really seeing that there's an advantage to, to eating well. Yeah. And most of them, you know, most of them still will say, well, you know, I have vegetables and, and fish, like they'll, they'll talk about fish and, you know, a bit of chicken and, you know, thinking that's healthy, but it's kind of a, a process for them. And most of the guys I work with are not completely vegan. These, they're, but they're kind of transitioning that way. And, and it's, it's progress, you know, they used to eat meat every day and now they eat it a few times a week and, you know, that's good. They're, they're cutting down. And what I think is interesting too, and I think this is actually really important

• 1:07:07Speaker 01

  is now the reason they eat meat a couple of times a week is not because they think they need it, it's because they like it. So they've made that connection. They're like, well, you know, before they said, well, I have to eat it because I need protein or I need iron or whatever. But now they say, I eat meat because, well, I just, I just like it. It's like with my mom, you know, she. She used to think she needed to eat cheese for calcium. And now she's at the point where she knows she doesn't, but she still eats cheese. But now at least she just says-

• 1:07:32Rich Roll?

  At least she knows why she's doing it.

• 1:07:34Speaker 01

  Right. She's like, okay, she just likes eating cheese. Right. And so there's that that connection made that I think will eventually result in not eating cheese. Because you're just like, okay, well, I don't any longer need to eat this.

• 1:07:47Rich Roll?

  Right, right, right. So how did it go down when you worked with the Garmin cycling team? Like, I know you're we're both friends with Dave Z, but you're friends with Tommy D. Like, I know you know those guys and you got hooked up with them. Like, did you and you were at like a couple of their training camps, right?

• 1:08:01Speaker 01

  Right, yeah. Off earlier, the beginning of this year, I was at their training camp in Boulder. And went and talked with each of the guys. We kind of rotated through the these groups as they're going through the training camp. And, you know, some guys, especially some of the the younger European guys, no interest. It's like, no interest at all.

• 1:08:20Speaker 01

  But, you know, that's it's totally different in Europe, of course. And cycling there is so traditional and, you know, it's just, it's not something you mess with. So maybe they'll come to it later in their career, maybe not. But a lot of the the other guys, like Tom Danielson, he, you know, he he's really jumped on it. Like, he's he's completely vegan now. And he's like, he just, he just took it and ran with it. And I went to train with him a bit in Tucson at his place there earlier this year. And I have never felt like a worse cyclist riding with him. Like, it's unbelievable. We went and did Mount Lemon, which is this 20 mile climb in Tucson. And he would do repeats of that. He did it three times. And it was just, it was actually, it was strange. I was riding along with him, just warming up.

• 1:09:03Speaker 01

  And then when he decided to take off, it was just gone. One of the best climbers there is. And, you know, he's another one of those guys who you see him off the bike, just wearing a T-shirt. You would think like-

• 1:09:12Rich Roll?

  He's tiny.

• 1:09:13Speaker 01

  Yeah, he's like this scrawny little guy.

• 1:09:15Rich Roll?

  He's a tiny little guy. Like, I rode up on him on PCH. This was like two years ago or something like that. You know how it's funny when you're out riding and you'll see a guy off in the distance in like a pro team kit? You know, like, and there's a lot of guys who that wear a pro team kit. They're they're fans or whatever. And you can from from literally like, they're just a speck in the distance. But you can tell, like, oh, that guy's just an amateur weekend cyclist. But when you see somebody who's really a pro, you immediately something registers in your mind. Like, oh, that guy, that guy probably is on the Garmin team. And I saw, I was riding with a friend. And saw these two guys up ahead and the guy in a Garmin kit and I was like, that guy I think is on Garmin. We rode up and it turned out to be Tommy D and he was riding with Patrick Dempsey.

• 1:10:00Rich Roll?

  So we just rode with him for a little while and I was like, God, he's so, he's so little. You realize like these guys are so light, they're so tiny. And, and you know, we're going along at a fairly decent clip, but it's like, he might as well have been sitting on the couch, you know, it's like nothing to these guys.

• 1:10:14Speaker 01

  Yeah. So efficient.

• 1:10:15Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:10:15Speaker 01

  And yeah, him in particular, just so good at climbing, just that strength, weight ratio. But yeah, you just look at him and that's the thing. I think a lot of people don't understand if he was going around giving talks about veganism, people feel like, like.

• 1:10:30Rich Roll?

  Right, right. Yeah, I've never heard him like, does he, has he said that publicly that he's eating this way?

• 1:10:36Speaker 01

  I think he said little bits here and there.

• 1:10:39Rich Roll?

  Vodders is not crazy about that.

• 1:10:41Speaker 01

  No, no, he's not. And, and yeah, I know he's given Tom a bit of, bit of a hard time about that, about, you know, making sure his iron's staying.

• 1:10:49Rich Roll?

  He's big. Vodders is huge on the iron thing, which we could probably talk about for a minute, but yeah, he's, that's his big concern, right?

• 1:10:55Speaker 01

  Yeah. And you know, Tom's been, Tom's been riding great, you know, he's, he had a bit of an infection earlier this year from a cut he had on his foot and stuff. So he's had a bit of bad luck, but he's training for Utah and Colorado, I believe, those tours. But yeah, he's I think 35 now and he said he's, you know, he's riding as well as he ever has. And he's come eighth before in the Tour de France. So,

• 1:11:18Rich Roll?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:11:18Speaker 01

  You know, he's like one of the premier guys. So it'll be interesting to see, but he's really, he's, he's really felt good on it and,

• 1:11:27Speaker 01

  and he gets it, you know, I don't have to make a meal plan or anything. He just, he understands the concept and he just, he goes with it. So it's, it's good.

• 1:11:33Rich Roll?

  Yeah, that's cool. So the whole iron thing kind of brings up this whole issue of supplementation altogether. And when you, when you look at. Kind of like the plant-based movement, the whole food plant-based movement. And I was talking about this yesterday with the guest on the podcast. It's very, it's a very fractured movement, right? There are all these like camps within it and they tend to bicker with each other about what's right over these, like the finer details or whatever. And I personally, like there are camps that say, oh, you don't need a supplement. Supplements are, you just eat your whole foods, you're fine. Personally, you know, I believe in supplementation. I think it's important and I think that a lot of us, no matter what diet we're eating, especially since our soil is becoming so increasingly depleted that, that, you know,

• 1:12:18Rich Roll?

  we run deficiencies, especially when we're leading busy lives and we're overstressed and we're not getting enough sleep. All these sorts of things contribute to this. And so I think, you know, they have their place when they're treated responsibly. And so that's kind of like where, you know, Vega comes in. Like, I don't think you would be somebody who says, you shouldn't eat food, you should just eat Vega all day long. Like, it's supplement, you're supposed to supplement your diet with it. So I'm interested kind of in the philosophy behind Vega and kind of your perspective on, you know, the appropriate kind of responsible approach to supplementation.

• 1:12:52Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, I used to actually take a lot of supplements when I trained full-time, you know, back 10 years ago, actually even more, 15 years ago. And I like, I took a lot. And my roommate asked me one day, does that actually help? And I didn't know. So I'm like, huh, that's, I maybe should ask myself that, does it actually help? So I stopped taking supplements and nothing bad happened. You know, my blood work stayed the same, everything was fine. So I know, I just needed to know in my head that I, if I was really meticulous about my diet, I could get everything I needed. And I could, but I agree, it makes it easier. And if, you know, you're getting stressed from breathing polluted air because you live

• 1:13:37Speaker 01

  in a big city, or you're just busy a lot, you're not sleeping a lot, high cortisol because you're training a lot, whatever it is, I think they can help. You know, they can make things easier, but like you say, they're not a supplement for food, they're supplement to food. So and the idea with Vega too, you know, I started making a blender drink for myself years ago and it's it worked well. I wanted to make a commercial version to make it easy for people. When we first brought it out, I thought it would be, you know, a very small thing where it would just kind of be to help people who wanted to be plant-based athletes do it more easily, which is, you know, is very small market. So thankfully, a lot of people found found a need for it who

• 1:14:22Speaker 01

  who were in a completely different category. They're just busy, health-conscious people. Most people who drink it are not vegetarian. They're not vegan. They're just health-conscious, busy people.

• 1:14:30Rich Roll?

  Right. And it's marketed broadly for that. It's not like this is for a small, select group of people. This is for everybody. It's a healthy choice in this world of supplementation where there's a lot of garbage out there.

• 1:14:42Speaker 01

  Yeah, and it just makes it easier. You know, my my goal with it is to, and just in general, is to have good, healthy food easily accessible. And not saying, you know, take away, like we said before, the bad food, but just make it equally easy to eat well as it is to eat bad. It's basically it like if there's bad food around, let's also have some decent food around so people can make the choice without saying it's inconvenient. I just want it to be easy.

• 1:15:06Rich Roll?

  Right. Well, you're also being incredibly humble because, you know, this this enterprise Vega has blossomed into, you know, just an incredible incredible success for you. And it's a, you know, it's a gift to the planet because it's getting people to think about food and health in a different way. And I was reflecting on it today because, you know, we met many years ago, but I but I started my journey. You know, shortly after I turned 40 and I started training and I was eating plant-based. I had no idea what I was doing and I was trying to like slowly educate myself. And if you go on Google, like you're the first guy that pops up, oh, you know, plant-based triathlons, like you're the guy.

• 1:15:47Rich Roll?

  So I'm reading about you and I'm like, oh, you would just, I don't know if you would just come out with Vega, but it was pretty new. Maybe it was new to the United States. I'm not sure exactly the timeline. It was probably 2007, I want to say, somewhere there, mid 2007.

• 1:16:03Speaker 01

  So three years in.

• 1:16:04Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:16:05Speaker 01

  So two years in the US.

• 1:16:06Rich Roll?

  Right, okay.

• 1:16:07Speaker 01

  So pretty new, yeah.

• 1:16:07Rich Roll?

  But like when it, but when you first came in, it was very difficult to find. And the only place that I could get it in all of Los Angeles was the Arowan, like in, you know, on whatever it is, like near La Brea and like Santa Monica Boulevard, wherever that is, Melrose or whatever.

• 1:16:22Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:16:23Rich Roll?

  So I would drive, you know, all the way from my house, it's like, you know, it's like an hour drive to get this stuff. Seventy-five dollars for the thing is the one place. I'm like, alright, I'm getting this. And that was my first introduction to this product. And then today, on my way over to do this podcast with you, I stopped at the brand-new Arowan, which happens to be right near my house, that just opened recently. And I walk in, and there's an entire gigantic section of Vega, devoted just to Vega products. And, you know, I got my Vega bar, and I was just sort of going, oh, I'm gonna go talk to Brendan and look at all the Vega stuff here. And then I go to the checkout, and there's Thrive Magazine, like, right at the checkout. And I'm like, that's amazing. You know, that is an amazing accomplishment. Like, what a trajectory.

• 1:17:07Rich Roll?

  And, you know, it seems like it was a long time ago, that first day that I bought that Vega, but it really wasn't that long ago. And the growth, the incredible growth of this company is just extraordinary.

• 1:17:18Speaker 01

  Well, thanks, yeah. It's, um, it has been good.

• 1:17:23Speaker 01

  And I think that's a testament to, to where things are headed. You know, people, people want good, clean, plant-based food. And, uh, and what I've always tried to, you know, I'm not a business person. I, I have zero education. And I know nothing about business or anything, but...

• 1:17:40Rich Roll?

  You hooked up with the right people, though.

• 1:17:42Speaker 01

  Yeah, and what, yeah, Charles, um, who I partnered with is great. I mean, he's such a good partner. And, and our, our talents are complementary. We don't have a lot of overlap, which is great. You know, it's a great partnership. And, you know, I've, I've always liked the idea of, um... Using the capitalist system to further an agenda that you feel is important. So I think, again, coming back to education, being an education company, we broke the first rule of putting together a product from day one. It was really find a niche and sell to it. Well, I remember the first conversation Charles and I had. He said, so what's the base for this drink? Like, what are you making? And I said, well, I have hemp protein, pea protein and rice protein.

• 1:18:27Speaker 01

  He's like, okay, well, we can't do that. No one knows about those things. He said, and obviously we can't use whey because you don't drink that. So we gotta go soy. And I'm like, well, no, I don't want to use soy. He said, but that's, you know, people know about it. And of course, this is back in 2003, so 11 years ago. And I said, well, I really feel strongly, we need to do something away from that. And he said, well, you know, if you really want to do that, then you're going to have to make sure people understand why that is better. And I said, okay. And he said, you're going to have to write a book. And I was like, all right. And you know, I think the best mark I ever got in English in high school was C or something. And like, okay, I'll write a book. So I did that self published book.

• 1:19:08Speaker 01

  And the idea was to create awareness for better nutrition, of course, and the value that it could have on people's lives.

• 1:19:20Speaker 01

  But it was gritty, of course. You know, I've been to every Whole Foods in the country and trained every staff member and given talks to literally two people at a time. And that's just the gritty work of brand building.

• 1:19:32Rich Roll?

  It's like being in like a band and being, you know, going in a van and, you know, playing at the pizza joint with in front of six people that don't want to hear you.

• 1:19:41Speaker 01

  Right. It was very much like that.

• 1:19:43Rich Roll?

  But that's how you create a groundswell. That's how you create a grassroots movement. One person at a time.

• 1:19:48Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly. And again, getting that education out there. And like I say, in At Vega too, we

• 1:19:57Speaker 01

  We always want to spend a certain amount of what we bring in on education. We just think that's really, really important. We started off equal parts, you know, product and education company. And I think we've maintained that well because it's important, you know, both for people's health, obviously, but for social reasons, like we talked about, environmental and that's kind of what it comes back to is just things that are important. And, you know, I've never really been that into trying to make a whole bunch of money. In the beginning, I was actually kind of opposed to it. I thought, well, it's the only people I know with money are jerks, so screw it. I don't want to make any.

• 1:20:40Speaker 01

  But then I realized, you know, money can buy a lot more than SUVs and jewelry and stuff. You can actually buy influence and you can buy change when you put it through the right channels. And you can, you know, you can create things that are of social benefit and social value. And so that's sort of, you know, what we continue to try and do with it.

• 1:21:00Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I mean, on this show, I've had lots of different kinds of health practitioners, nutritionists, doctors, et cetera, athletes, of course. And then I've had entrepreneurs on, but it's rare that I have somebody, you know, where the entrepreneur aspect of the life intersects with, you know, some other area that is kind of on point for this show. And you really, you have both, you're doing both. Like, I wouldn't say you're the accidental entrepreneur. I think that there's a plan, you know, that you've been following. And this has slowly grown over the years and blossoming into all these new directions. You know, we're going to talk about the magazine in a bit. But you've got, you know, the product line, you have the Thrive Forward series, you have your books, you know, how many books have you done now, three or four?

• 1:21:43Speaker 01

  Four books.

• 1:21:44Rich Roll?

  Four books, so thrive, you know, the new Thrive Cookbook, the most recent book. You know, it's amazing how you're kind of, it's really, you know, it's kind of a media company with a product, right? With a nutritional product. But you're really being, you're really penetrating and getting to people through all different varieties of, you know, print, online.

• 1:22:07Rich Roll?

  What they're putting in their mouth and it's really cool to watch.

• 1:22:11Speaker 01

  Well, thanks. Yeah. And, you know, I was watching a while ago, one of those Bloomberg business profiles and, you know, you start, you watch a few of those and you start to realize that they're pure entrepreneurs like Warren Buffett, for example, I watched the one on him. And, you know, his whole thing was he, he want, he's a business person. He started off selling newspapers, not because he wanted people to have the news, but because

• 1:22:35Rich Roll?

  It doesn't matter what it is.

• 1:22:35Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 1:22:36Rich Roll?

  Yeah, like here's a widget.

• 1:22:38Speaker 01

  Yeah, I can find a way. This is profitable. I'm going to make money and that's great. I mean, obviously he's phenomenal at that, but then, and there's a bunch in that category. And then there's a bunch in the other category, like, you know, like Bill Gates, who just came up with this, he developed this cool code and stuff and software and thought it was interesting. And he had no intention of trying to make money from it. That wasn't his thing. He just thought it was interesting. And, and then folks like Elon Musk.

• 1:23:06Rich Roll?

  Well, Elon Musk is the best example.

• 1:23:08Speaker 01

  Yeah. He's, you know, he's like, okay, well, we have, we need energy.

• 1:23:12Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:23:12Speaker 01

  And we're getting too much from Middle Eastern oil and even domestic oil creates all kinds of problems. So let's try and reduce our, our dependence on oil and let's, you know, let's create these electric cars and let's get the electricity from solar. And a lot of people don't know that, but he also has a solar company.

• 1:23:30Rich Roll?

  Right. I mean, he's almost like kind of done with Tesla. He's ready to move on to bigger problems like, you know, wind turbines and all that kind of stuff, including space, of course, but

• 1:23:39Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 1:23:40Rich Roll?

  solving our energy crisis, you know, beyond the automobile.

• 1:23:43Speaker 01

  Right. And that to me is just so appealing to me, you know, he doesn't sit back and hope the government saves us. He's like, okay, I'm going to use capitalism and solve some serious problems here.

• 1:23:55Rich Roll?

  And he opened up his patents.

• 1:23:56Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:23:57Rich Roll?

  Like, because he knows he can just, he's not threatened by saying, here are all our patents for these batteries. The world needs this. And I'm not threatened by that because I'll out innovate anybody anyway.

• 1:24:07Speaker 01

  Yeah. No, and I love that. And it's just, and it's so, he's obviously doing it for, for, for many reasons, but, um, you know, he Financially benefits too, which is great because he can do more of that which benefits us all. So I like that system a lot. And that's something we've done at Vega too. You know, we don't have any of that proprietary blend stuff. And whenever I would read that, I would see proprietary blend. That to me just means that this company cares more about making money than they do about the person being able to make this. We want people to make it. Like I've given away the recipe so that people can make it. And you realize too, like someone will make a smoothie with all the ingredients and they realize it's more expensive anyways because you have to pay markup on every ingredient, whereas we get a large volume from the farmer.

• 1:24:52Rich Roll?

  Plus it's a pain in the ass.

• 1:24:54Speaker 01

  Well, and that's the thing is people, people realize that, but I want them to know that they can do it, that they don't, they don't have to be dependent on Vega or any product.

• 1:25:02Rich Roll?

  Well, it goes back to transparency also, which is what we were talking about at the beginning.

• 1:25:06Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly. It's just like, let's, yeah, you don't want people to feel as though they have to buy a certain thing to benefit.

• 1:25:12Rich Roll?

  Right. So, uh, so the magazine, this is the newest venture in Brendan Brazer Enterprises.

• 1:25:20Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:25:21Rich Roll?

  So where did the idea from this come from? I mean, what made you interested in trying to get involved in starting a magazine?

• 1:25:27Speaker 01

  Well, I, I've gone to meet a lot of really interesting people over the last 10 years or so, and people who have just done really inspirational things, just amazing big things. And I wanted to create a platform for them to share their insight and to interview them and find out how they got really good at what they do. And also for them to have a platform to write articles and tell people how, how they've been able to do it and the efficiencies they've found and how to get better. It's, the whole magazine is about improvement. It's about, um, it's just, it's about performance and not just athletic performance, but whatever kind of performance, technology, entrepreneurship, green tech. Um, you know,

• 1:26:12Speaker 01

  there's a lot of sport, of course, there's a lot of fitness and nutrition, but it's just about improvement. And one thing too-

• 1:26:17Rich Roll?

  It's the print version of my podcast.

• 1:26:20Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's actually, that's a good way to put it. And it's, it's kind of, um- And the thing too that differentiates it is that most magazines, of course, are about a subject like Car and Driver. It's about cars and architecture magazines and food magazines. They're about a subject, whereas this magazine is not about a subject. It's for a type of person. It's for the type of person who wants to get better. And that's, that's what I wanted to do is just, you know, help people get to where they're trying to go quicker, learning from other people.

• 1:26:52Rich Roll?

  I like that. And I think it also speaks to something that I've been putting a lot of thought into lately, which is, you know, this idea of, you know, growing beyond the plate. You know, I think it would be very easy for you or for me to just get stuck and be like the plant-based nutrition athlete guy and just go around and talk about protein and micronutrients, you know, for the rest of your life. But I don't know about you, but like that gets kind of boring and you're stunting your growth if that's where you're staying. And like for me, I cleaned up my diet and got healthy so that I would have more energy to go do things with my life and continue to grow and expand and improve in other areas. And so for me, the plate is, is the first step. It's a huge first

• 1:27:34Rich Roll?

  step. It's really important and it's important that we talk about it and figure it out and have as much dialogue about it as possible. But I'm interested in what's next. You know, I want to grow spiritually. I want to grow mentally, emotionally. I want my relationships to be better. I want to be strong and fit. I want to enjoy my children. I want to be, you know, sort of, you know, I want to thrive in the modern world, to use your terms, you know, as a, as somebody who can provide for my kids and beyond. And so it becomes less about, you know, what kind of kale are you eating? And like, you know, what's the latest, you know, watch and heart rate monitor that you're using, you know, and, and more about, you know, more important, bigger, bigger issues.

• 1:28:18Speaker 01

  Well, that's absolutely the way I see it too. And I think people who have been at this for a while kind of go that route. And I know we've both had conversations with people who are new to this and, you know, they, they do want to talk about what kind of kale is best.

• 1:28:29Rich Roll?

  Right. And that's good. I, you know, like when I put on Twitter, I said, you know, I'm having Brendan on the podcast. What do you want to know? And there was a lot of really interesting questions, which we're not going to get to. But I mean, there were like, I don't know, last I checked, 75 comments on the Facebook page. And a lot of them were about like, how to train for a triathlon. And you know, it's just like, I could talk to you about that, but I don't think that that's the best use of the time that we're going to spend together. Because I think that you have more important things to talk about. And if somebody wants to learn how to train for a triathlon, there's plenty of resources online.

• 1:29:02Speaker 01

  Yeah, and that's what I figure. I mean, I definitely see it that way. I kind of see this as the base. You eat well and all the extra energy you get and the mental clarity. What are you going to do with that? You know, like, that's, that's the next step. And that's what's interesting is because now all these opportunities open up because you have this like nutrition capital or whatever you want to call it. You know, all this, this, this gain from, from eating well. Now you can go off and look for cool projects to do and, you know, try and actually make a difference and do things that are of benefit to, to a lot of people.

• 1:29:36Rich Roll?

  Right. So what's exciting you right now, other than the magazine, which I'm sure is taking up a lot of your time, but?

• 1:29:41Speaker 01

  Yeah, the magazine has taken up a lot and will probably continue to, but.

• 1:29:46Rich Roll?

  Where are you, I know, I know you partnered with Miranda from Origin Magazine. But where is the, like, do you have an office here? Or what's the, how does it work functionally?

• 1:29:55Speaker 01

  No, it's run really lean. Yeah, we have a great designer. We have, we have a good, great copy editor.

• 1:30:04Rich Roll?

  Are they in Austin or are they where Miranda is? Or how does it like, where are the actual, are they just spread out?

• 1:30:09Speaker 01

  They're just spread out. Yeah, actually. Melody, the graphic designer is in Dallas. Karen, who is the, the copy editor, I believe, is, is in somewhere not too far from here, somewhere in Los Angeles. But that's about it.

• 1:30:26Rich Roll?

  We're not too sure where, but somewhere around here.

• 1:30:28Speaker 01

  Somewhere around here.

• 1:30:29Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:30:29Speaker 01

  But that's the beauty of this.

• 1:30:30Rich Roll?

  The beauty of the modern world, yeah.

• 1:30:31Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 1:30:32Rich Roll?

  You could have a magazine that's in all these stores and go, yeah, there's only a couple of people that are actually putting this together.

• 1:30:38Speaker 01

  Yeah, and people often say, well, have someone on your team contact me. It's like, well, this is kind of it.

• 1:30:44Rich Roll?

  Right, right.

• 1:30:45Speaker 01

  It's kind of, so that, you know, that was appealing to me too, because I know you've, you've done this too, but going into those big magazines, like you go and visit the folks at, you know, Rolling Stone or whatever, and it's like this huge building to put out this magazine, and that's, that's great, but I think that model, yeah, exactly. It's bloated, it's a bloated system, it's old fashioned, and I think you can really lean things up. And here we are in Whole Foods with equal facing to these huge magazines, like Rolling Stone, or Esquire, or Men's Health, or whatever it is. So it can be done, and it can be done really lean. And that was kind of an exercise for myself, too, just to see, you know, what can be done. Again, coming back to efficiency, what can you get the biggest return from

• 1:31:27Speaker 01

  with the least amount of expenditure? So just finding these, these efficient systems to, to work within.

• 1:31:35Rich Roll?

  Right, it's cool. I mean, on the sort of tip of, you know, old paradigms and, and, you know, magazines, what is your perspective on publishing as somebody who's written four books with traditional publishers? I mean, what has that experience been like? Just on a personal level, I'm interested in that because of my own experience.

• 1:31:54Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, it's, all in all, it's been good. It's, I've made a few mistakes. I'm, my book was originally published in Canada by Penguin in Canada, and then the US publisher, De Capo, got the US rights, and they had a completely different view on how to market the book. So I have, it looks like I've written way more books than I have, because the publishers decided on different, yeah, they decided on different covers, different subtitles, and then people will think that the other, the Canadian version is a completely different book, understandably, because it looks completely different. And so that's, that's not been good. I would like a consistent package, so that it's, you know, it keeps the brand stronger, and I feel that that's kind of not been something that's been done so well. And I look at the Canadian version, and

• 1:32:38Speaker 01

  The word vegan is not in it and it's sold to the mainstream and it's sold as many copies in Canada as in the US, which doesn't make sense because there's 10 times the population in the US. The US publisher wants to tie vegan into it, really wants it to be a vegan thing. So even, you know, my fitness book I wrote, they even worked vegan into the subtitle, the vegan training guide.

• 1:33:00Rich Roll?

  Oh, really? But it's your book. Couldn't you put your foot down and say, no, I don't, I don't want that word in here? Or didn't you have the final say on that?

• 1:33:05Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, that's, I, that's the thing with traditional publishing, you know, you kind of, maybe I should have read the contract more closely, but I think it's, it's pretty much up to them at that point. And, and so they're really going after the vegan market, which to be honest, I'm not as interested in because they find out about it.

• 1:33:23Rich Roll?

  They'll know anyway. Yeah, they'll find it.

• 1:33:25Speaker 01

  Right. And the change is going to come from not the vegans, it's kind of from everyone else, you know, and they're the ones who I want to try and help are the non vegans.

• 1:33:34Rich Roll?

  Right. I mean, that's, that's like, I had a very long conversation with John Joseph about this, where, you know, in, in a different vernacular, he's like, I have no interest in talking to vegans. They, they, I don't need to talk to them. I'm trying to talk to the, the Mets fans, you know, I need to talk to those guys. And if you are not careful in your word choice, you're gonna flip these guys off, turn this, turn the switch on them, and they're not going to be able to hear anything that you're saying. So, language becomes really important.

• 1:34:01Speaker 01

  Yeah, absolutely agree. And I think we've, we've seen that, or I've seen that with my books, like I say, equal sales in Canada and the US, which makes no sense with 10 times the population in the US. So, I think the Canadian package there, how it was marketed more to mainstream group was, was the right way to do it. So, that, you know, it's always a challenge with publishers. You know, I see publishers more as printers, they print your book, and they allow people to buy it, but they don't really sell it. You know, they really leave that up to.

• 1:34:31Rich Roll?

  That's the big, that's the big secret that you don't learn until you've actually written a book.

• 1:34:36Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:34:37Rich Roll?

  Because you, and, you know, I didn't learn it until I was well into the process, where you think like, well, they own this book, they bought it, I have this contract, they own and control it. So they have a vested interest in marketing it and selling it. And so you think ignorantly, naively, that they're going to, you know, do all this stuff to get it out there. And then you realize it's, it's pretty much on you.

• 1:34:56Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:34:57Rich Roll?

  You know, and, and. You know, they're good people. I had a good experience with my publisher, but they have a lot of books, you know, and they're, you know, they're, they're cutting budgets and cutting staff and these people are overworked and, you know, probably underpaid, a lot of them. And so they just, they're never going to give it the attention that you're going to give it as your book. And it just becomes your job to get it out there.

• 1:35:17Speaker 01

  Yeah. And it's interesting too, like the publisher, my US publisher, they have a marketing department, but they don't have a marketing budget, which is funny because the, you know, the definition of the word marketing is a paid use of media. The first word is paid and they don't have a budget. So I don't know how that's supposed to work. But yeah, it's just kind of, you know, left up to us to do, but.

• 1:35:36Rich Roll?

  The good news about your books are that they don't, there's no shelf life on them. You know, it's sort of like they're always, you know, they're there for anybody who kind of reaches that point in their journey and wants to have that primer on how to, you know, take the first step and get going. And it's always available and it's never going to go, it's never going to be dated, you know?

• 1:35:55Speaker 01

  Yeah. And, you know, I have found that my books have never had a big spike, like when I've, when I've launched.

• 1:36:01Rich Roll?

  They probably sell consistently always.

• 1:36:03Speaker 01

  Very consistent. Yeah. Like my first book, Thrive, I think, you know, I looked a little while ago, it sold as well last year as it did the year it came out. So yeah, I think, I think that's true, that it's just kind of one of those consistent sellers. You know, self-publishing, you probably do, if you have a decent social media reach, make more money. But my goal with the book was to get it to as many people as possible, which you still probably do better through a traditional publisher, you probably get it to more people.

• 1:36:33Rich Roll?

  Yeah. You can't, you know, get it in all these stores on your own, you know, no matter what your sort of profile is online. Like they're, they, they have the trucks, you know what I mean? And the trucks take the books to the bookstores and you're never going to be able to do that yourself.

• 1:36:47Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:36:48Rich Roll?

  Financially, yeah, you probably make more money doing it on your own with your profile.

• 1:36:51Speaker 01

  Yeah. That's, I mean, that's, you know, I've, I've seen people go that route and do really well with it. And just even eBooks.

• 1:36:58Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:36:59Speaker 01

  But still, I looked a little while ago and I don't know how it is with your book, but mine, I think it's 80, over 80% of sales are still the actual physical book as opposed to downloads. And that was a little surprising to me. I figured more people would download, but I think. You know, people still like holding on to that book.

• 1:37:19Rich Roll?

  They do. And yours is the kind of book that gets passed around and it's kind of the one you want. Because it has, it's so, you know, information rich. It's not like a, something you read on an airplane. It's something you kind of want in your kitchen or what have you. There's that tactile aspect to it. I mean, my book was pretty much 50/50. So.

• 1:37:37Speaker 01

  Interesting. Yeah. And I think with magazines too, I know magazine sales of physical magazines are going back up. And I think one of the reasons is people sit in front of a screen, a lot of them throughout the whole day. When they get home, they want to read something that's not on a screen.

• 1:37:52Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:37:53Speaker 01

  So I think, you know, that kind of opens the door for a nice, high quality, whether it's a book or a magazine, again, to, to come along. And kind of what's happening in the music industry too. People can obviously download music a lot more easily than getting something physical. But there's still something about that physical element to holding something.

• 1:38:11Rich Roll?

  Oh, my kids are super into vinyl. Like, they want to go to the old record stores and like spend hours, you know, plowing through the vinyl and finding some gem of a record. It's that yearning for something tactile, you know? Like, they love it.

• 1:38:24Speaker 01

  Yeah, even Whole Foods now, I think, sells records.

• 1:38:26Rich Roll?

  Do they?

• 1:38:27Speaker 01

  Yeah, I was at the El Segundo one just a few days ago and they had some vinyl there.

• 1:38:32Rich Roll?

  That's crazy. I wouldn't have thought that. So, cool. So, the magazine is blowing up? And are you working on a new book? Or like, where's the, where's the kind of, I know you're doing some video stuff with Matthew Kenny, right? The plant-based chef in Santa Monica?

• 1:38:48Speaker 01

  Yeah. So Matthew and I have been friends for a while. So we're doing a video course that will be out in the fall. So people can, can just sign up and actually like get certified in a course. And there's two, there's sports nutrition and elite sports nutrition. So we're doing that. We're actually, Matthew's going to be opening a restaurant on Abbott Kinney.

• 1:39:10Rich Roll?

  Oh, wow.

• 1:39:11Speaker 01

  Kind of a, just a really nice, it's not all raw. It's a mixture of, of some cooks. It's all plant-based, of course. And I'm investing a bit in that and a few other folks. So it'll be this really nice space there.

• 1:39:22Rich Roll?

  When is that? Is that right on Abbott Kinney?

• 1:39:25Speaker 01

  It is, yeah. Right on Abbott Kinney, September, supposed to open. So that's kind of been a fun project. It's really his project, but I'm, I'm a little bit involved with. You know, a few aspects of it and investing a bit.

• 1:39:36Rich Roll?

  Uh huh. That's cool. So for people that are listening, he's a, he's a very high end sort of gourmet raw chef who's got an amazing restaurant called Make in Santa Monica, which you should go check out if you're in town.

• 1:39:48Rich Roll?

  Yeah. And he's got like a pretty cool, he does a lot of stuff online, right? Like he does cooking stuff online.

• 1:39:53Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:39:53Rich Roll?

  Educational stuff.

• 1:39:55Speaker 01

  Yeah, a lot of online and also his academy too.

• 1:39:58Rich Roll?

  Right, the academy, right, right.

• 1:39:59Speaker 01

  That's people come from all over the place to take that. So they learn how to, to make good food.

• 1:40:05Rich Roll?

  And you're gonna write another book?

• 1:40:07Speaker 01

  One day.

• 1:40:08Rich Roll?

  One day.

• 1:40:08Speaker 01

  You know, I actually was writing, I thought that I was burned out from writing, but I found out I was burned out from writing about nutrition. Kind of like back to what we were saying before. I just like can't write about the nutrients in buckwheat anymore.

• 1:40:23Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:40:24Speaker 01

  It's kind of just, I just can't do it. So I started writing about some of the things I've learned over the last 10 years with Vega, just brand building essentially. And, and what I've learned in that whole process. So I'm writing, I'm writing a business book right now about how to, or maybe not how to, but how I, I built Vega with, with the, with the other folks involved there. And, and just what I, what I learned and just a few principles, very similar approach to the one I took with nutrition, you know, after 10 years of, of doing it, what I found worked. And just coming up with a set of concepts that I followed and that are transferable. And so I'm writing the outline to that now.

• 1:41:07Rich Roll?

  That's pretty cool. I mean, what are some of the kind of core ideas of that?

• 1:41:11Speaker 01

  Well, one is, it's, it's gonna be about transparency is a big one too. Not that traditional way of business of protected formula and that kind of thing, but being very open and having a social element to it as well. Like creating something that is, that kind of adds to. To the tapestry of what's already out there as opposed to trying to find a niche in the market and

• 1:41:41Rich Roll?

  Creating community. I mean, from the very beginning, like you, I remember when Vega launched like their sort of forums and you know, you were very like, the company was incredibly proactive about getting ambassadors and you know, trying to really create allegiance and loyalty and and kind of excitement about the brand by having people interact with each other, you know, all the plant-based athletes out there.

• 1:42:07Speaker 01

  Yeah, so creating community for sure and creating a sense of belongingness too. You know, I haven't written it yet, but I'll probably write in there something about the big impact that Nike ads had on me back in the, I guess in mid 90s, that whole just do it campaign. You know, it was as though, cause then I was a kid in high school and you know, you got the teachers telling you that if you don't do well, your life is going to end and all that stuff. Like you gotta go to, you know, gotta get good marks and go to college and all that. So when the Nike ads came out in that campaign, it was just, I felt like there was a group that understood me. Like, and it was just smart marketing, but I still felt

• 1:42:48Speaker 01

  that like, you know, all the stuff around running, just the, some of the good taglines they had, it felt as though I belonged to something and that they got me, they understood me and I was part of it. And it was just such a well-done marketing campaign. And with Apple too, you know, what they did, the whole thing away from convention and just really, you know, not being an individual for the sake of it, but for a reason. You know, this is not like anti-establishment just for fun. It's just finding a better way to do things that may not be socially acceptable or normal within the group that you're part

• 1:43:27Speaker 01

  of. But again, that belonging to, to, to a group that understands you. So I think that's important too in creating that and creating space for, for people to feel understood and valued and, and getting You know, having them add to the tapestry. Because everyone has something to add. You know, I've never met anyone who hasn't had a good idea. It's just implementing those ideas that becomes a challenge, you know, I'm sure.

• 1:43:53Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:43:53Speaker 01

  You know, I've heard so many people say, oh, I could have invented Velcro. It's like, well, yeah, you probably could have, but you didn't.

• 1:43:59Rich Roll?

  Yeah, you didn't, you know, and that's funny. I had a, I interviewed a guy for the podcast, this guy Casey Neistat. He's a YouTube filmmaker and he said something interesting. He said, I hate, you know, I don't give a shit about ideas. Everybody has an idea, whether it's their idea for a movie or an invention or anything like that. It's like, it means nothing.

• 1:44:18Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:44:19Rich Roll?

  He's like, it's all about implementation.

• 1:44:20Speaker 01

  Yeah, totally.

• 1:44:21Rich Roll?

  So when you look at, you know, you look at the supplement business. I mean, is there a more, a more crowded, you know, sort of space? It's like, there's a million of these companies out there. And, uh, you know, some of them just chug along in relative anonymity. I would imagine most go out of business. And then to see, you know, kind of Vega rise above and then just sort of slowly take over, you know, gigantic shelf space in, in, in Whole Foods over time. You know, there's something else going on other than just a good product. Like there's a core, um, you know, idea, like sort of a foundation, foundational sort of,

• 1:44:58Rich Roll?

  you know, uh,

• 1:45:01Rich Roll?

  culture, I would imagine at this company that's allowing it to, you know, again, to use your word, thrive where others, you know, are just sort of struggling.

• 1:45:10Speaker 01

  Yeah, well, a brand is really just a set of values. It's like, what do you, what do you value? What's important to you? What do you believe in? And if your values are aligned with other people's, you know, it's, it's common ground and you want to, you want to associate with that. And I think, you know, because it's very genuine, this, these are the things we believe. And there are a lot of other people out there who believe those things as well and have those same values. So it's, um, yeah, a community has grown from it, which, uh, you know, is very, very pleasing to see. So it's, it's hard to do, to finding a lot of like-minded, ambitious people who, uh, who want to come together and, uh, and share, sharing something.

• 1:45:51Rich Roll?

  Right. I mean, how many people do you have working there now?

• 1:45:54Speaker 01

  In the head office, there's about 115, 120.

• 1:45:58Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:45:58Speaker 01

  And then out in the field, there's about the same.

• 1:46:00Rich Roll?

  Mm hmm. Yeah, it's not like, it's not like super huge, though. You know, I would have thought like, oh, you got like a thousand people.

• 1:46:07Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:46:08Rich Roll?

  You know what I mean?

• 1:46:09Speaker 01

  No, we still keep it, we try and keep it as lean as possible and just run it. You know, I mean, it's easy to let things get bloated and hire a person.

• 1:46:20Rich Roll?

  Right, of course.

• 1:46:20Speaker 01

  For things that you really don't need them for.

• 1:46:22Rich Roll?

  Right. Well, you've been traveling a lot and one of the reasons it took us, you know, like a year to figure this out is I've been out of town and then I come back in town and then you're out of town. So it took us a long time to hook up. But, but I want to hear a little bit about.

• 1:46:39Rich Roll?

  Your, I know you were in DC not that long ago and you were speaking on the Hill, right?

• 1:46:44Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:46:45Rich Roll?

  What was that all about?

• 1:46:46Speaker 01

  Like over the last few years, I've done little bits and pieces in DC and it. It's always something that's interested me. Just how government works and getting involved at some level there. And I've become good friends with Tulsi Gabbard, who's a congresswoman from Hawaii. Who's, you know, a really great person and very ambitious politically as well. And so we got together a few times in DC and just talked about trying to do some things. And earlier this year, we met up with Sam Cass at the White House. He's the Obama chef and he's, he's a president of Let's Move Campaign. So he works for Michelle Obama and he was actually, I guess, the, the leading force on getting the, the garden put in.

• 1:47:31Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:47:32Speaker 01

  At the White House. And all that's a really interesting guy, very progressive and made a good conversation about trying to do something. That involves food and nutrition and fitness and all, all these things, basically to.

• 1:47:47Speaker 01

  You know, I mean, it seems so basic to everyone, but actually getting it implemented, I think would be hard and trying to get it so that the system is proactive. And right now, it's of course very reactive. You don't go to a doctor. If you're healthy, you go when something's gone wrong. And so trying to set up a system where people are just less likely to get sick and be less likely to to need government assistance and this reactive medical system.

• 1:48:09Rich Roll?

  Now you're just talking crazy talk, you know?

• 1:48:10Speaker 01

  Right. It feels like it sometimes with some of the looks you get.

• 1:48:14Rich Roll?

  I mean, do you think that like, I'm so jaded. I mean, I grew up in Washington, like I grew up around politics and like, living out here, I'm so less informed and attuned than I was like in high school, just being around it. Like, I grew up, you know, Susanna Quinn, right? Like, that was my sister's best friend growing up, you know? But, you know, I'm jaded because I'm like, ah, nothing will come of that. Like, it's just impossible to get anything to change.

• 1:48:41Speaker 01

  Yeah. And I can see how that that can be. And, you know, after a few meetings and you just realize what best intentions these people have, but just getting stuff done there and just how everything, of course, is political. And, you know, if they, like even that whole Let's Move campaign, they're saying, you know, they're, they get so much heat from opposition about, you know, saying that they're trying to tell people what to eat and what to do, whereas, of course, they're not. They're just providing options. I mean, it's just, you know, how can another option be a bad thing? But of course, it's twisted.

• 1:49:13Rich Roll?

  But that's just a K Street lobbying group, you know, on behalf of the meat and dairy industry or whatever, processed food company, you know, who stands to lose from that getting traction. So they push back and they couch it as something other than what it actually is.

• 1:49:26Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:49:26Rich Roll?

  And then nothing changes, right?

• 1:49:28Speaker 01

  Right. And I think, I mean, that's kind of my little bit of experience over the last year in there. And I can definitely see that's, I think that's where things would go. I mean, you know, my ultimate goal eventually would be to, and again, I don't know that this would happen, but I think that taking, you know, taking the power and having people be able to do things just by governments taking a step back. And for example, like government saying, you know, Any company that creates a product or service that is of social benefit, we will collect less tax, like tax breaks for these companies who are doing things that are socially beneficial.

• 1:50:11Rich Roll?

  Social entrepreneurs.

• 1:50:12Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly. So, you know, John Mackey wrote that great book, Conscious Capitalism. And kind of getting back to not relying, I mean, definitely you don't want to rely on the government. You want to, you know, innovation is going to come from the private sector. It always has and it's always going to. And I think if the government steps out of the way and lets innovation happen and just, people who are chasing money and don't really care about social issues could actually be part of the solution. If government gives some, just steps out of the way and allows people to make more money by lowering taxes. And food is a good example. So, any company that makes, you know, food product or an education company or whatever, that is of, like I say, social benefit.

• 1:50:57Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:50:57Speaker 01

  That is solving a direct problem. It's going to make people less likely to be dependent on a government-funded healthcare system. That's even more so in Canada where it's even more socialized, but.

• 1:51:08Rich Roll?

  Yeah, the solution lies in making it profitable to do good. Ultimately, within the construct of the system under which we all operate, right? And if the government can help, you know, sort of spur that along by creating additional incentives for that, that's truly how you create change, I think.

• 1:51:30Speaker 01

  Yeah, I agree. And I think, yeah, government saying, hey, look, you guys, you know, Americans, you're going to come up with the innovation. You're going to be able to solve problems and let the free market and capitalism solve those problems. And as governments say, okay, you guys go to it, you know, tax reduction. And then, of course, a whole industry is going to pop up that is, one, creating value for all of us. And I agree. I think that's the way. You know, things, things could really change.

• 1:51:59Rich Roll?

  Right. So when you look at kind of technological innovation, food innovation, this plant-based movement, all these things that are kind of happening right now, it really does, I mean, to me, it does feel like there is a groundswell that's picking up steam and people are interested and excited, you know? I don't know that Thrive Magazine would have been possible five years ago, you know? But the fact that, you know, it has a massive circulation and people are picking it up, I mean, that says something, right? So are you, does this lead you to be optimistic about the future? Or where, you know, where do you see all of this going?

• 1:52:36Speaker 01

  I'm definitely optimistic. I kind of have to be.

• 1:52:41Rich Roll?

  You're too invested not to be.

• 1:52:43Speaker 01

  Right. I don't know if I, if I wasn't, I don't know if I could get out of bed in the morning.

• 1:52:47Rich Roll?

  It's so terrible. Yeah, no.

• 1:52:49Speaker 01

  So optimism is a good thing. It's kind of the thing that keeps me going and I'm sure it's true with you too. I mean, you ought to be optimistic. If you think your work is, is of no value, not doing anything, you know, it's, it's not really a good feeling. So you kind of gotta be, but I am too. I do think that, like you said, there is that groundswell. And the last three years has been, been amazing. You know, I do think that tipping point is, is getting closer more quickly. And, and it's a good time, you know, it's, there's a lot of progress happening.

• 1:53:22Rich Roll?

  Cool, man. So where are you headed next? Are you traveling soon?

• 1:53:27Speaker 01

  Yeah, I go, um, let's see, on Sunday, I go to Boulder just for a couple of days, doing a couple of things there.

• 1:53:34Rich Roll?

  Oh, wait, I know what I wanted to ask you about. I just saw your tweet about doing this cooking class with the 30 Seconds from Mars dude on Vert, like, tell me about what's going on with that.

• 1:53:48Speaker 01

  Yeah, so Tomo.

• 1:53:49Rich Roll?

  Yeah, Tomo Milosevic.

• 1:53:50Speaker 01

  Yeah, my, my new buddy. Actually, we have a really good mutual friend in common. So he introduced us, but yeah, so Tomo, we actually had a Skype call this the other day. He's in Russia. And, and he has this, this cooking show on Vert, which is a platform that Jared Leto, who's also in the band 30 Seconds from Mars, created and apparently is doing really well. It's very popular. Gets a lot of views.

• 1:54:16Rich Roll?

  Vert is like their sort of own social media platform that they built, right? Like, and now it's sort of available to artists and other kind of creative professionals to create communities there. But is that right? Like, I'm not super familiar with Vert, but I know it started with that band.

• 1:54:33Speaker 01

  Right. So like 30 Seconds to Mars will play a concert in Jared's living room and have a camera there.

• 1:54:39Rich Roll?

  Broadcast it.

• 1:54:39Speaker 01

  And broadcast it. And you can sign up and watch it for, I don't know how, like a concert ticket, basically. You buy a ticket and you can watch this concert. So it's kind of cool.

• 1:54:51Rich Roll?

  Talk about creating a movement. I mean, those guys have created like an incredible community around their band and what they're doing. Like, it's pretty amazing.

• 1:54:59Speaker 01

  Really smart. I mean, they're just, you know, and they're using technology, obviously, for, for a really good purpose and, and to create change and to, to get eyeballs on them. And then they have that, that platform. And so, yeah, so Tomo has recently become vegan, which is cool. I believe Jared is too.

• 1:55:19Rich Roll?

  I think he goes in and out of it. I'm not sure. Who knows? But I mean, who, you know, who really knows?

• 1:55:23Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:55:24Rich Roll?

  Unless you know him. You know what I mean? Like, people speculate online, but you know, that's just gossip.

• 1:55:29Speaker 01

  Yeah. And again, you know, it doesn't even really matter, I guess. The point is, is they're trying to get the message out there that, you know, if you eat more plant-based, it's going to help you perform better and feel better. And so Tomo, I was talking to the other day, and he said his signs have cleared up when he stopped eating dairy, which of course, you know, really common. He just feels better. He has more energy. He's, you know, not needing to drink coffee as much anymore.

• 1:55:52Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:55:52Speaker 01

  So all these things that, you know, we've, we've heard a lot before, but he's really excited about it. So he's done taco cooking shows before, because I didn't know this, but he was, I guess he was trained as a chef.

• 1:56:03Rich Roll?

  Oh, wow.

• 1:56:04Speaker 01

  And then he became a musician. But he's kind of going back to his roots there. So, yeah, it's August 31st. I'm on Cooking with Tomo.

• 1:56:13Rich Roll?

  Right. And it's like a live thing, right?

• 1:56:15Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:56:15Rich Roll?

  Like, it's, you can watch it live.

• 1:56:17Speaker 01

  Yeah. So you buy a ticket. I'm not totally sure how it works, but you buy a ticket to watch it live, or you can, I guess, get the download later as well, which also costs something. I'm not sure.

• 1:56:28Rich Roll?

  Right. Kind of like how CreativeLive does it.

• 1:56:30Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:56:31Rich Roll?

  Yeah, that's cool, man. And then you're going, you know, you're going to Boulder. What else are you doing?

• 1:56:36Speaker 01

  Yeah. And then, um, Then I speak at CanFitPro, which is a fitness conference in Toronto in early August. And then actually, I go to Whistler and Vancouver for the Vega AGM. It's basically a week long.

• 1:56:54Speaker 01

  I may be speaking at a tech conference in Whistler, too. There's this tech company in Vancouver I've been doing some work with.

• 1:57:01Speaker 01

  But we'll see about that.

• 1:57:02Rich Roll?

  Cool, man. Dude, what's a typical day in the life like? You're spread pretty thin.

• 1:57:07Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's not really, not really typical anymore.

• 1:57:11Rich Roll?

  Yeah, there's no, there's no typical day.

• 1:57:13Speaker 01

  Yeah, I get a run in or a bike ride in when I'm at home each day.

• 1:57:16Rich Roll?

  It seems like you do a lot of those in the evening, right? Like, you're not like a morning guy with your running and your riding.

• 1:57:22Speaker 01

  Well, I am more so with running. I usually ride in the evening. I like riding later and I like, I don't like to run as much after cycling. Because of course, you're, you know, you're more worn out. So I'd rather run in the morning and then cycle in the evening. And the evenings here in the Santa Monica Mountains are just so amazing right around sunset. And I have a really good light now. So if I'm out after sunset, it's, it's okay. I can still find my way back, okay? So yeah, and again, you know, some boxing stuff, some P90X. Tony Horton, you know, he, he lives in Santa Monica. I've started, well, actually, it's been two years now. I've been going over to his house. He has a workout group over a couple of times a week when he's in town. So he's been great, you know?

• 1:58:05Speaker 01

  He's, he's such a good, good guy and he's so, so patient with uncoordinated people.

• 1:58:12Rich Roll?

  That's cool. All right, man. Well, I think we did it.

• 1:58:16Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:58:16Rich Roll?

  How do you feel?

• 1:58:18Speaker 01

  Pretty good.

• 1:58:18Rich Roll?

  We did it all right, right?

• 1:58:19Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think we got a lot in.

• 1:58:20Rich Roll?

  All right, cool. Maybe not answered all those questions out on the internet, but hey, I think we, we did. We gave you something better.

• 1:58:27Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:58:27Rich Roll?

  Right? So cool. Thank you so much.

• 1:58:31Speaker 01

  Yeah, thanks, Rich.

• 1:58:32Rich Roll?

  That was awesome. If you want to connect with Brendan online, the best place to do that is, he's on Twitter at @BrendanBraser. You got a Facebook page.

• 1:58:43Speaker 01

  Yeah, so Twitter.

• 1:58:44Rich Roll?

  Where are all the places?

• 1:58:46Speaker 01

  Yeah, Twitter is Brendan underscore Brazier.

• 1:58:48Rich Roll?

  Brazier, right.

• 1:58:49Speaker 01

  And Instagram is just Brendan Brazier and Twitter, or no, Facebook is also just Brendan Brazier. And also Thrive Forward is a web series. You can check that out.

• 1:58:58Rich Roll?

  Tons of videos there that you can sign up for. If you're new to this whole plant-based thing, Brendan walks you through everything you need to know to dial up your diet and get super fit and all that good stuff, right?

• 1:59:11Speaker 01

  That's it.

• 1:59:12Rich Roll?

  And pick up your Vegas stuff at your local Whole Foods.

• 1:59:15Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:59:15Rich Roll?

  Right?

• 1:59:16Speaker 01

  That's right.

• 1:59:17Rich Roll?

  All right, man. Cool. Well, thanks so much for doing it, this. And yeah, it took us a while to get it done, but we did it. And I appreciate everything that you do, man. You're a service to the planet and you're an inspiration. And I hope that you just keep doing what you're doing.

• 1:59:31Speaker 01

  Thanks. You too, Rich. Yeah. And congrats on the podcast. I know lots of people who love it. And it's great. It's getting out there.

• 1:59:39Rich Roll?

  Cool. And even though, you know, we live down the street from each other, maybe we should try to go out on a bike ride one of these days.

• 1:59:46Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:59:46Rich Roll?

  We've only been talking about it for like two years and we run into each other from time to time on the bike. We can't seem to get our stuff straight.

• 1:59:53Speaker 01

  Yeah, our schedules are all over the place. But yeah, we should definitely do that.

• 1:59:56Rich Roll?

  All right, we'll make it happen. All right, peace. Plants.

• 2:00:08Rich Roll?

  All right, you guys, that's the show. I hope you dug it. I hope you dug Brendan. He's a good guy, right? I think that we got to hear a lot about Brendan and his life that maybe we haven't heard in other interviews. So I'm pretty excited that he was willing to open up and give of himself today. So I hope you dug it. If you want to stay current with all things plant-based, make sure you subscribe to my newsletter at richroll.com. It's the only way to get exclusive content and deals and sales and discounts on products. We've got some new specials coming up soon and some new products. So I'm not going to be tweeting and Facebooking those things. So if you want to know or be in the know, stay current with everything,

• 2:00:51Rich Roll?

  subscribe to the newsletter, download the app, of course, if you are inspired by Brendan and want to learn more about how to get plant-based. You can check out my ultimate guide to plant-based nutrition at mindbodygreen.com, three plus hours.

• 2:01:07Rich Roll?

  Of streaming video content broken down into little bite-sized pieces organized by subject matter. There's an online community. There's tons of very helpful downloadable tools to get you started no matter where you are on your diet journey. And if you're feeling stuck in your life, you want to access a better, more authentic version of yourself, but you don't know where to start, you can check out my other course at mindbodygreen.com, The Art of Living with Purpose. It's all about developing a better relationship with yourself, trying to figure out what's motivating you. And then it gets into how to set, properly set a goal, and how to establish a proper trajectory and plan to achieve that goal.

• 2:01:49Rich Roll?

  So, check that out. What else? We got, of course, some cool products at richroll.com. Got awesome t-shirts. Our Run RRP shirts are cool. We got signed copies of my book, Finding Ultra, which if you haven't read, you can check that out. We got some excellent nutritional supplement products, a vitamin B12 product, my repair product, which is a post-workout recovery supplement that also tastes delicious. We got Ion, which is our electrolyte tablets, all good kinds of things for you to fuel your workouts and get you as healthy as possible. If you want to support the show, the best way to do that is to tell

• 2:02:30Rich Roll?

  a friend, always is, always will be. Also, please bookmark, save, and use the Amazon banner ad at richroll.com for all your Amazon purchases. It's back to school right now. You're gonna have to buy a bunch of stuff. I'm sure a lot of people out there are using Amazon to do that. Well, if you use the Amazon banner ad at richroll.com, Amazon kicks us some free commission change. It does not cost you one cent extra on your purchase. And it's just a great, simple, easy way to show your support for what we're trying to do here. So, thanks so much for you guys using that. Again, keep sharing your pictures

• 2:03:10Rich Roll?

  on Instagram of where, how you're enjoying the show. I love that stuff. I love commenting, and reading, and seeing.

• 2:03:21Rich Roll?

  All the different places all over the world where people are listening and how they're listening to it. So I dig it. Thanks. All right, you guys, that's it. Everybody, I don't have to tell you what the assignment is for next week. I think it's pretty obvious. Get more plants in your diet. You know, between Brendan and I, the message was pretty consistent and pretty clear. So even if you're not on a plant-based diet, whatever sort of dietary regime, regimen you subscribe to, I think it's safe to say that we can all be healthier by upping the amount of fresh vegetables and fruits and legumes and seeds that we get in our diet. So focus on that. Good, clean, organic energy, you

• 2:04:05Rich Roll?

  guys. And that's it. Thanks for stopping by. Thanks for taking the journey with me, and I'll see you guys next week. Peace. Plants.