Escaping the Drift with John Gafford - From Paratrooper to Food Innovator: Doug Evans on Sprouts, Creativity, and Conscious Living

Starting point is 00:00:00 It's been a journey. And now when I look at what I want to do for the rest of my life and the impact that I could have, it's all about sprouts. And now escaping the drift, the show designed to get you from where you are to where you want to be. I'm John Gafford and I have a knack for getting extraordinary achievers to drop their secrets to help you on a path to greatness. So stop drifting along, escape the drift, and it's time to start right now. Back again, back again for another episode of Like It Says in the opening, man, the show that gets you from where you are to where you want to be. And today, people live in studio, I got a banger for you. I got a good one. I got a great guest

Starting point is 00:00:43 who has taken time out of his busy schedule to come be with us live in studio. He is a cereal food entrepreneur, which I love. He is deeply concerned about not, you know, we talk a lot about what you put in your head on this show. This dude is deeply concerned with what you put in your mouth and how that's killing you. And he has taken that and turned it into not only a best-selling book, but an incredible business that we're going to talk about today on the show. Ladies and gentlemen, food advocate, pirate, entrepreneur, giant in the industry. Welcome to the show. This is Doug Evans. Doug.

Starting point is 00:01:20 Hey, John. Thanks so much for having me, my friend. How are you, man? I am by far the best ever. I love that. I love that. So, like I said in the bio, let's get right into kind of who you are, and then I want to go back a little bit and talk about what made you who you are. So tell the folks, I gave you a, call it a world wrestling entertainment intro, but give

Starting point is 00:01:41 me the goods. I mean, right now, I am a father. I have a two-year-old daughter. I'm a husband. I'm a very deep spiritual being. And I'm on a mission to share the knowledge that I've come to. It was very difficult getting to where I am today at 58 years old. It's been a journey. And now when I look at what I want to do for the rest of my life and the impact that I could have, it's all about sprouts. So let's go back. Yeah.

Starting point is 00:02:17 Let's go back. What's the origin story of Doug? Tell me who made you who, where'd you grow up? Tell me about growing up. I grew up in New York city, lower middle income family. My father was a untreated combat world war two veteran with PTSD. And he was the sweetest guy in the world until he wasn't. Yeah. And as a result, it was safer for me to be out with gangs in the street, with degenerates, than it was being at home.

Starting point is 00:02:49 Because I could move, I could navigate, I could choose who I wanted to be with. And as a result, I got into a lot of trouble. Until I was 17, I'd been arrested 12 times before I was 17 years old. Okay. 12 times before I was 17 years old. And then when I was 17, I self-elected to like get out of Dodge. So first I got away from my family and then I had to get away from my friends that were like, like on drugs, criminals, degenerates. And I said, I remember reading this proverb, and I'm not religious. The proverb said, those who walk with wise men will become wise. Those who walk with fools will be destroyed.

Starting point is 00:03:35 And I was like, I'm going to be destroyed. I think my favorite version of that is, if you're hanging out with five dipshits, I'll show you the sixth. Yeah. Same thing. Yeah. So you came to this realization at 17. At 17. So I joined the US Army as a paratrooper and I joined the 82nd Airborne and I went to the recruiting office and I said, what is the roughest, toughest thing that you have? Because I wanted the discipline and I knew that I did not have that. Did you have trouble getting in the

Starting point is 00:04:03 army because of your previous arrests and all that stuff? Oh, that's a long story. Let's talk about it. I mean, because it's got to be, because here's the thing. I'm picturing the 17-year-old kid that, I mean, you got to have an edge to you with the shit you were doing. Yes. Right?

Starting point is 00:04:16 And to come to the realization as a 17-year-old kid that, man, my life trajectory is not the direction I want it to go. That's something that a lot of people probably don't figure out until they're mid-20s and a lot of stuff. To have that wherewithal was great. And then you've already built this mountain you have to overcome because you knew what you wanted to do. So tell me that. So I had no outstanding warrants. All of my arrests were for juvenile activities. I knew that if I were arrested again at 17, I would be tried as an adult. So when I went to the recruiting office, I thought my stuff was crystal clear and the recruiter's job is to fill boots. So he did no further due diligence beyond me saying my, you know, I'm good. I'm good. I'm

Starting point is 00:05:10 good. I'm good. I'm good. And when I got out of the army, like I had a lot of discipline, I had a lot of fire in my belly and I went down a very addictive path of workaholism. So I, you know, you get one job, you work 40 hours, they don't want to give you overtime, you know, so you, I got another job and I got another job. So I was working in bars and restaurants and supermarkets, three full-time jobs working well over 120 hours a week. And I was so, like the military helped me. Like when I worked in the supermarket and they would, you'd hear on the intercom, broken sauce, you know, potatoes. Aisle four. So aisle four, I would crash into the other workers who were trying to run away from it.

Starting point is 00:06:01 And I was running there with the mop, with the broom, with the box to clean it up because I knew the value of taking personal initiative. And in the military, most people try to avoid work, right? In a volunteer military, they were avoiding work. And for me, I was like, I'm here because I want to learn. So I did infantry training, airborne training, combat engineer training, special forces, explosives and demolitions training, unit armor training, like any training that I could do. I just sucked it up and did it because I knew that that would be beneficial for me. The more skills that you got, the more valuable they are to everybody. Yeah.

Starting point is 00:06:46 So I took those skills with me. So whenever there was an opportunity. So real quick though, why did you not stay in the army? It sounds like you did one little jaunt with them and then said, I'm moving on. Did you just feel like you'd gotten everything out of the experience you wanted?

Starting point is 00:07:02 I mean, some of the people in the army really didn't see me. They didn't love me. I couldn't relate to them. And like, I didn't drink. I didn't party. I didn't go to strippers and prostitutes. And I felt very, very isolated. And I felt like I got what I wanted out of there. And I felt like,

Starting point is 00:07:28 oh, I could go do anything now. I didn't know what that anything was, but I thought that if I worked and I worked honestly and I was wise with my money, then I could be a millionaire. There you go. So you start trading your time for hours. That's right. And we're working three jobs in New York. That's right. And what does that result on? So that resulted in making money, saving money, having a nice apartment, but not having my passion. Like there was no passion about what I was doing other than working and other than making money. And then one of my people from the past who was not a degenerate, he was actually a trust fund heir to like the Carnegie Mellon steel family. And I met him, I was 13, he was 41 and like super wealthy guy had, uh, you'd appreciate this in the real estate. He had

Starting point is 00:08:28 lofts in Soho. He had, um, townhouses in the West village and he didn't have to work. He was an artist. So he was, he had his painting studio, his sculpting studio. And he said to me, um, what are you interested in doing? Like in a very loving, paternal-like way with someone who wouldn't rage on me. So he's very consistent. A little different from the household you were growing up in. Very different. And my parents, may they rest in peace, they did the best they could. As Oprah said, not what's wrong with you, but what happened to you. It's very clear now what happened to him. So far, we are almost on exact timeline on the hero's journey. Do you realize that?

Starting point is 00:09:12 Literally, this is hero's journey almost exactly because here comes Merlin to the case to say what you want to do. Keep going. So he comes and I said, well, I really liked graffiti as a teenager. And what about graphic design? And so I immediately go from our lunch to Barnes & Noble. I'm looking at all the graphic design books. And there was one name, Paul Rand, who was in many of the books. He had authored many books and he had designed IBM, ABC, UPS, Westinghouse, and was like this living legend. And I couldn't believe he was still alive.

Starting point is 00:09:57 And I couldn't imagine that one man had done all this work that I was seeing all over the place as I was growing up. IBM was this iconic logo, very simple. So being fearless, I called up the New York Art Directors Club and they gave me his phone number. And I called him up. I said, Mr. Rand, this is Doug Evans. I just got out of the army. I'm an artist. I'd love to meet you. And he hung up the phone on me. And I was like, this is an old guy. What's he going to do? I had drill sergeants in my face projecting spit in my

Starting point is 00:10:38 face. So eventually he agreed to meet with me and I went up to his home and he took me in as a intern apprentice. All right, real quick. You said eventually he took you in. Yeah. How many shots, how many bites at the apple did it take? Well, it took about three months and he had agreed- Constant communication. And he had agreed to come visit me, um, to call me when he was in New York city. And then I was meeting with someone else and they told me that there was a

Starting point is 00:11:15 Paul, Paul Rand was just here yesterday. So I called him up a little frustrated. I was like, yo, you said when you were in New York, you were going to call me. I'm just going

Starting point is 00:11:25 to come see you now. And it was very definitive. And so he acquiesced and I went up to see him. I took the train up to Weston, Connecticut. He had seven rolling acres in Weston and I sat with him for three hours and I was just telling him stories. He's asking me questions. It was a real interview. His wife was there. And I asked him, I said, excuse me, Mr. Rand, may I use the toilet? And he looks at me and he looks at his wife and he goes, go shit in your own house. And I was like, oh, this is my guy. This is my guy. Because like anyone else might've been intimidated. And i was like sorry i'm happy to go shit under your tree because i gotta go yeah and so i used the toilet that was

Starting point is 00:12:12 it and i would like to point out they may listen to this right now that you know everybody's like oh how do i get a mentor how to get a mentor how to get a mentor people that are in that season of their career where they've had great levels of success, they're dying in some cases to pass that knowledge on, to help that next generation. However, at this point, they've already been let down by so many people that said they wanted advice, that said this, that asked to hold them, they got the advice from them, and then they did the exact opposite, that they're a little jaded. So if you want a good mentor at this level, you've got to absolutely just be tenacious in your pursuit of them because people at that level appreciate tenacity.

Starting point is 00:12:56 That's right. And I worked for this guy for seven years without pay. Seven years. And some of the upside- But you didn't look at it that way. You look at this as I'm getting free schooling. Well, I looked at it like this guy was like Picasso or Matisse and I get to spend time with him and that I would work my other jobs just to support myself so I could spend time in this frequency of genius. And I'll tell you some benefits that came out of it. One of his clients was a guy who got fired from a computer company called Steve Jobs, who started another computer company called Next Computers. And Steve went to Paul Rand to design his logo for Next. And I was the guy, the only guy that worked with Paul because he was a one-man show. And when I said I wanted to learn from him, he said, well, I teach the master's program at Yale. And I said,

Starting point is 00:14:04 Mr. Rand, the closest I've been to Yale is I've been to the Yale club on Thursday in New York city and I eat their free hors d'oeuvres, but I'm not going to Yale. I don't have an undergraduate degree. I'm not doing the master's, but I will do anything that you asked me to do. And I will do it. If I don't know how to do it, I will learn how to do it. And so when he started to work with Steve Jobs, Steve had the experience with Apple. And so Steve said, you got to do this on a computer, Mr. Rand. And Paul was like, I don't work on a computer. And Paul did hundreds of sketches. And then I had the privilege of putting those sketches into the Macintosh. And I had to learn the computer technology that was so foreign for me because I didn't know how

Starting point is 00:14:53 to type. I never used a computer in my life. So A, it pushed me down the path of the beginning of the evolution of graphics going from analog to digital, from black and white to color and the proliferation of the desktop computer. I was like right there, but not doing like shitty Chinese menus to work on for Steve Jobs. And you can watch, and maybe you could put in the show notes. If you Google Doug Evans and Steve Jobs or Doug

Starting point is 00:15:25 Evans and Paul Rand, you'll see an interview I did with Steve in 1994 or 93. He had a full head of hair like you. We're sitting on the lawn in Redwood City, California, and he's talking about his relationship with Steve Jobs. And that was seminal work because Paul was dying. He had cancer. And so one of the gifts that I wanted to give Paul was a little documentary of what his other peers and clients thought of him. So a friend of mine, Rick Boyko, who was president of Ogilvy and Mather, the creative advertising agency, helped me get a director, get a camera crew. And we went out and shot Paul, lots of hours with Paul, lots of hours with Steve Jobs and other legends. And so way before social media in the early nineties,

Starting point is 00:16:26 before even- Forget Paul. What a gift to his legacy, to his family. What a gift for them to have that. Yeah. So I put seven minutes out onto YouTube. It has hundreds of thousands of views. But it's Steve talking about, you know, what he appreciated from Paul. And for me, I look back and said, you know, 20 year old Doug recognized this genius and navigated inside. And so I spent the next 10 years of my, seven years with Paul, then three years post-Paul doing graphic design and computer work and making money, right? But now making, you know, instead of making minimum wage- Exponentially more. Yeah, making a lot of money. But then in 1999, my aunt was diagnosed with type two diabetes and she became overweight, obese, and they were

Starting point is 00:17:30 double amputating both of her feet. And I like couldn't imagine. How could this be happening? Because my aunt was younger than I am today and died of complexities. So after they chop off her feet, then she dies anyway. So just a miserable, miserable death. And so that was like one little wake up call. Then my mother gets stomach cancer and dies. My father gets heart disease and dies. And my brother became diabetic, obese, and had the first of three strokes and two heart attacks. So 1999, I'm 33 years old. I think that I'm like cruising. Everything is going great with my life. I got money in the bank. I got a penthouse apartment. I got girlfriends. Everything is going great. I life. I got money in the bank. I got a penthouse apartment. You know, I got girlfriends, like everything is going great. I had a career that I was passionate about. And then I'm thinking like, I'm genetically cursed. Like I'm just going to die because I'm

Starting point is 00:18:37 cursed because of the health reasons. So I then had my come to cucumber moment. Like it was very, very profound because I'd been eating just whatever food, like addicted to sugar, right? Addicted to meat, addicted. You know, do you know why dairy and cheese are so addictive? Why? They contain casein, which is like morphine and triggers the brain. Why do you think, did you have kids? I do. Did your wife breastfeed? She did. Did you ever see the way

Starting point is 00:19:15 the kid wants the boob? Like they want the milk. Like, and they, like, it's not because it tastes good. It's because it's satisfying their brain and it's survival. So it's no wonder you take milk from any species. It's going to just create addictive behavior in the brain. And if you make cheese, it's just condensed milk. It's like the crack, you know, it's like cocaine as one part, crack is the free base to the next level. So that's what cheese is. So I was addicted to meat, sugar, dairy, cheese, bread, pizza, pasta, candy. And I had the money that I could feed this addiction and eat all this all the time. And New York is quite a place to feed that addiction. Oh, absolutely.

Starting point is 00:20:06 That's true in the world. And then there's this other ego associated with the affluence, you know, where Peter Luger Steakhouse and, you know, all these fancy Michelin star restaurants. So food was now part of the culture and evidence of success. If you could eat in these restaurants, if you could buy fine wine or a Remy XO. I remember I had this dilemma where I had a full bar in my house in 1999. And I had bottles of Petrus Pomerol, $1 like um bottles of pachuce pomerol 1500 bottles of wine i had like top

Starting point is 00:20:50 shelf all the stuff i was like what do i do with this because this is poison and like one was like oh just give it away and then the guilt of now you're giving it away yeah i don't want to poison other people so i literally went out and poured it i didn't want to pour it down the drain and poison the fish so i literally found a place and poured it all out and then crushed the glass and like thousands of dollars or maybe $10,000 of stuff. And it felt so good that I was willing to not tie monetary value to something that I knew was bad. And so that became my path where I met someone and they told me about that, that I wasn't genetically cursed, that I was living a carcinogenic, diabetic, heart disease-laden lifestyle,

Starting point is 00:21:49 and that if I changed my diet, I could change my genes, and I could change my future. How often do you, so for me, like our household, I'll tell you the story about our household, which is many many years ago this is probably now 10 years ago 12 years ago my we the 23 and me thing had come

Starting point is 00:22:12 out yeah right and i was like oh let's do this 23 me it'll be fun we'll see what see where our ancestry is all this stuff right and so this is right when it came out and they would give you a lot more information than they give you now and it came out and my wife has two copies of that APOC four gene that have a very high indicator of getting Alzheimer's. Yeah. And so my wife being very diligent as she is, she immediately freaked out when she saw that started doing all the research in the world on Alzheimer's prevention.

Starting point is 00:22:41 And so much of it is the heavy metals in the food that we eat. So immediately it changed in our house. You know, everything's organic. We don't cook anything on aluminum, anything. I mean, all of that stuff where she, she keeps that out of the house because of that situation. You know, everything that happens in all of the supplements that we take are really revolved around that. So that kind of started our life down, regular blood tests, regular all of those things, and making sure that we do the best that we can. Now, you've taken it to just another level. Yeah.

Starting point is 00:23:13 Yeah. I don't have to worry about what I cook on because I don't eat cooked food. At all. Everything is raw. Everything's raw. When did this start? 1999. You're just immediately in 1999.

Starting point is 00:23:22 In a two-week window. So let me ask you a question. So when this started, what did you weigh? What do you think your fat percentage was? What was your BMI? Yeah. If you, if you can remember that. So I would, I weighed 186 and now I weigh 150. Okay. So 36 pounds. 36 pounds. And you know, I, I had both, um, visceral fat and subcutaneous fat. And I was just overall sloppy. Like my face looked inflamed and I had a gut and I was weak. And then like now, I do good habits.

Starting point is 00:24:00 I do 100,000 pushups a year. I do 300 pushups a day. I tear them out in sets of 40, like they're nothing 40, 50, 60, like they're nothing. This is your gym is 300 pushups. Well, yeah. Oh, and then pull-ups. And then I run like even this morning, like I woke up in the desert. I got up, I ran, I did my pushups, I did my pull-ups. How many pull-ups in it? I do sets up to 10, but I'll do three or four sets. And I do wide ones or I do pull-ups or I do chin-ups.

Starting point is 00:24:42 So, but just using the natural body weight things. And I jump, like I'm jumping up and down. So I like, we'll turn on music. I will blast the music. I'll do my jumps. I'll get the energy. Okay. So as one young 52 year old to another mid fifties individual, all right. High fifties, high, but you're high fifties. Okay. So what you do, if you're jumping around like that, you obviously got better knees than I got. So, well, yeah, I mean the broccoli sprouts, by the way, for your wife, broccoli sprouts, there are peer reviewed published papers on how broccoli sprouts are anti-inflammatory, open up the NRF2 pathways, and actually can help prevent Alzheimer's. It's my co-founder, Mike Posner, the singer-songwriter, Grammy-nominated singer-songwriter

Starting point is 00:25:33 who summited Mount Everest, who walked across the country. He became a sproutarian because he learned about the power of broccoli sprouts in preventing Alzheimer because he found out it ran in his family and his father died of brain cancer. So, so this is something that we, you know, look, we're in Vegas right now. You're a baller. I'm here in your enterprise. Come on. I'm here in your enterprise. Yes, more, more, more, more. And the idea that you can choose what you eat. For me, everything that I put in my mouth is a life or death decision. And my goal is to raise my standards. So in real estate metaphors, the same way you're not buying

Starting point is 00:26:25 swampland, when you buy a building or sell a building, you get an inspector to come in and do the thousand point analysis and you check everything. Most people are just eating whatever looks good, whatever tastes good, whatever's put in front of them with or without good intentions, and without going down the conspiracy path. Yeah. It's pretty- Oh, we'll get there. But it's pretty well known that when the tobacco sales were declining-

Starting point is 00:26:58 They bought up all the food companies. They bought up the food companies and they transferred over their marketing experts and their scientists to make processed and ultra processed food more addictive. The food pyramid. So, so for me, like I became aware that the only, and look, I, I love everybody. Like my goal right now is like, I'm just filled with love. I love everybody. My goal right now is I'm just filled with love. I love everybody. I see people

Starting point is 00:27:26 from your receptionist to people outside, every person I walked in the hall. I read Ogmandino, the greatest salesman in the world. I'll greet this day with love in my heart. And how will I confront each whom I meet in only one way in silence and to myself, I will address them and say, I love you. So like, I'm just filled with love. I love everyone. People could do whatever they want. If people want to know what I believe that is not biased because like I grew up eating all this other stuff, but I did my homework against all odds. And because I wasn't trained, you know, in the box, I got to really free freestyle and derive my information that for me,

Starting point is 00:28:17 what I found out the safest thing to eat was fresh, ripe, raw fruits, vegetables, seeds, nuts, seaweed, and sprouts, organic or wild. Okay. Well, let's talk about this. So you started doing this in 99. Yeah. 25 years ago. So walk me through the noticeable health changes in the timeline of those noticeable health changes as it started so you went from being 185 and feeling feeling terrible right so how taking naps in the middle of the afternoon how quickly did this turn out like if you can remember how quickly did your energy change how quickly did your body change how quickly did your the clarity of your thoughts change within within two weeks i felt like a new dog. Really? That fast? Yeah.

Starting point is 00:29:05 And then I probably dropped one pound a day. So within two months, like I hit 150. I never looked back. That's just the standard, right? Yeah. And now I just got stronger and more shredded and just more energy. Like it just keeps getting better and better. Like it It just keeps getting better and better. It really just keeps getting. And what happened, I have to tell you, two years ago, two and a half years ago,

Starting point is 00:29:33 when my wife was pregnant, I was around and supporting and my wife is plant-based vegan, but she's not raw. So all of a sudden, just in the comfort of dealing with the emotional things, I started to eat some cooked food and then I started to gain weight and I started to lose my flexibility. And then I started to have pain and And like, literally like I was in pain and that pain was a message to me. Right. So I just, in my meditation, I was like, what's going on? And I looked, I can show you the before and after. Are you a TM guy? What? No, I do Vipassana. I don't even know what that, I'm a TM guy.

Starting point is 00:30:19 Yeah. Vipassana is a 10 day silent meditation. No reading, writing, speaking, or eye contact. For 10 days? 10 days. Yeah, you would love it. It would build a lot of character for you, my friend. Oh, my God. Yeah. It would build a lot of character.

Starting point is 00:30:34 That is, and you do this amongst other humans? Or you just, or you isolate yourself? So this is like when I went off the rails a little bit. All right. So yeah, you can definitely see. So what's the timeline change between these two photos? Oh, the timeline change, that was six months. Six months.

Starting point is 00:30:56 So yeah, it's, yeah. I mean, I'll try to put this up. Maybe you can, maybe let me see if I can get some sort of a shot on it. Hang on a minute. Let me put this up. See if I can get, no, you're not going to be able to see this at all. But you can zoom in and out if you're on YouTube. I can put it right in front of the camera. Yeah, there you go. If you're on the, I don't know if it'll focus on it hang on a minute and put this up see if i can get no you're not gonna be able to see this at all but you can zoom in and off but if you're on i can put it right in front of the camera yeah there you go if you're on the i don't know if it'll focus on it doug we can try give it all doug standing up now looking at the camera this is how we do it hang on go up up up

Starting point is 00:31:15 up up i don't think it's gonna focus on it no the camera's not gonna focus on it it's all right it's blurry fit and unfit doug if you're watching us on youtube which if you're watching us make sure you like it look i think the the point is that you can really control anything and it's all with the mind and what happened is when i was in pain i got the message that i needed to change so then i did a water fast which i've've done that. How long did you go? I did seven days for that. I made it, I think, five. Yeah. So water only fasting was just incredible.

Starting point is 00:31:51 And then I went really, really strict to back to sprouting and back to fruit and none of the cooked food because the cooked food really was just winged. So where are you driving your protein from? So where did you get that question? I just, because- It's just a crazy question. I know. Like, where are you asking this question from? I don't know.

Starting point is 00:32:13 I'm just, I don't know. You're the expert. I'm just asking. You're getting that question from the meat industry shills. Okay. Protein, every single fruit, vegetable, seed, nut, seaweed contains every amino acid to form complete proteins. So if you were to look at my macro nutrient chart, it's probably 80% carbohydrates, 10% protein, 10% fat. So we don't need more protein. What we need is more fiber. We need more

Starting point is 00:32:46 phytonutrients, but this protein myth and this like machismo that's associated with protein and it's just silly. It makes no sense. Yeah. Cause I do, I mean, this is me, right? Yeah. I try to do, I'm on the, uh, I do the Tim ferris thing where i'm like i try to get 30 grams of protein minimum in my body within 30 minutes of waking up and then 30 minutes of of of cardio on that 30 minutes within of that before i lift weights yeah i mean you you look good um you know i i can but i got the knees of i mean like mine because i'm talking my knees are anything can help me with my knees is what i'm looking for. And you look just a little inflamed. You look a little swollen.

Starting point is 00:33:30 Like there's inflammation going on. And I think you could reverse all that. Like you could be strong and you could be flexible and you can regenerate, you know, without having to do external stem cells and knee replacements. Like the body is a perfect mechanism to heal itself. So, so my, my journey. So in 1999, I go cold cucumber. I start eating fruits, vegetables, seeds, nuts, seaweed sprouts, and then six months into it, your total turnaround. Yeah. Six months into it. Like I'm having the best day ever, but it was hard. And literally my whole life was now focused around

Starting point is 00:34:11 what am I going to eat? How am I going to get, what am I going to eat? And so, um, my girlfriend at the time, you know, we said, Hey, let's hire a chef. And, um, and I love that idea. Like, hey, someone else makes the food exactly the way I want it. And then it was so good that we said, oh, we got to make this for other people. And then I got into juicing. And juicing is really, really interesting because juicing is taking the juice, the liquid, the water molecules, the phytonutrients, the antioxidants from these fruits and vegetables and flooding your body. And by removing the fiber, you're getting this rapid assimilation of the nutrients into the body. But juicing was hard and a lot of the juicers were oxidizing the food, the produce. So we learned about cold press juicing and we started to make cold press juice. So in New York in 2002, we started out of our loft in Chinatown, we started a company called Organic Avenue. And we were making

Starting point is 00:35:26 in the loft cold pressed juice. We had chefs coming in making food. We started to put product up on the walls. We bought a shelf from Ikea. That business grew 100% CAGR, compounded annual growth, for 10 years in a row. And we ultimately had an eight-figure exit of that business in 2012 to one of the largest private equity firms in the world. How'd you grow it? How did you build that level of growth year over year? That's astounding growth to maintain for 10 straight years. So many different things. For one, being obsessed really helped. Two, going into a space that there was no one else in. So if you said, you know, today, like, hey, I'm going to go into the water business.

Starting point is 00:36:22 You know, Nestle's in the water business and Pellegrino, you know, gazillion businesses. But if you were to go back, you know, when we were growing up, bottled water wasn't a thing, right? Bottled water wasn't a thing. And then coconut water wasn't a thing. Jesse Itzler, right? Love Jesse. By the way,esse's a buddy of mine he used to shop at organic avenue um we met i just did running man oh did you so um and i was literally like an obstacle on the course at running man handing out sprouts love that while my my partner mike posner he did the 50 K run. Did he bonus mile loop? And then he did a 16 set solo concert at running man after running a 50 K love it. And on sprouts ran it on sprouts. So if you look on my Instagram, I like literally went into the sauna, you know, and I'm handing out sprouts

Starting point is 00:37:23 in the sauna. I'm handing them out on the track and it's just changing everything. So Jesse and, and people were, were tuned in. So we ended up like going into a space that there was no competition, no direct competition, blue ocean. Now there was a lot of competition for coffee or for pizza or for sandwich shops. But so where it was hard was we had to, you know, navigate this Blue Ocean. So we focused on extreme levels of quality. We focused on glass bottles, cold pressed, all organic. So someone could come into our store and literally put their guard down and know that everything there was fresh, ripe, raw, organic. They didn't have to look for the labels they just knew.

Starting point is 00:38:14 Yeah. You didn't have to look and you could trust. And my partner was a beautiful young woman, you know, deep into the nutrition lifestyle. And the interesting thing, and we talk about business, very hard to make money in the fresh business because everything is perishable, short shelf life, low margins, high waste. But how we grew was we continued to innovate and make it more and more accessible so we had one store and then it was a big question do we open up another store on the other side of town we were in the lower east side and a retail store became available in the west village it's 125 square feet i mean it's like literally half the size of this room. And they wanted a ridiculous amount for it. Yeah. The rent was like $10,000 a month. And we had to, you know, tough, but you could afford

Starting point is 00:39:12 10,000. Like, you know, 10,000 isn't like a million. So you could come up with it. And the question was, would we cannibalize our business? Because people were coming from all over the city to our one single location. And what we found was there was a little bit of cannibalization, but we had the accessibility to new customers of being in their path, going to the subway, from the subway, on the way home to work that we had new customers. So then we just start to open up more stores and we just, you know, so. Because really that first one is a risk. And after that, it's proof of concept and you know, you can scale with the right traffic in New York. And so, but I had to go fund the growth that I went to Silicon Valley and I carried a bag for two online marketing companies

Starting point is 00:40:19 and help them become successful. And I closed the first $25,000 deal, $50,000 deal, $100,000 deal, million dollar deal, $3.3 million deal. And my commissions funded the business for the growth. And so, but I, again, I was into that workaholism. Well, I see, I think again, I want, I want to point this out to anybody that's listening to this, that has a business idea or is thinking of building a business. And this is when I have people that come to me and have an idea, quote unquote, and you know, you should invest in this. You don't do this with me, blah, blah, blah. I, the number one gauge that I'm using even more than the business plan, even more than the viability of sometimes the product is

Starting point is 00:41:01 the founder. And it's this question, are you interested or are you committed? And just from sitting here with you for the last, what is it? 40 minutes now, you ooze, I mean, this is your religion. You absolutely ooze this and it just comes out. And I'm telling you, if you want somebody to believe in your business, you've got to have this level of commitment to what you're doing or it's just not believable. Well, the thing is business is hard. Like business is really, really hard. And I had a mentor that said, no problems, no business. And right. So the problems come up. Like when, if I, if I were to go back to Doug, who is running organic Avenue, we had leaks, we had floods, we had power outages,

Starting point is 00:41:48 we had snow storms, we had strikes, we had union organizers protesting in front of the parts, we had good press, we had bad press. And it was so important to know why we were doing this to stay calm during the bad guys. Yeah, of course. Right. And then ultimately we weren't necessarily planning on selling that business. Um, but when, when the right deal came through and someone wanted to participate and we were looking at grand plans, we said, okay, let's do this. And- Were you always, did you start to scale yourself out of the business a little bit? Did you hire a CEO, OJR CEO? No, no, no. You stayed figuring all the Dan Martell and all the e-myth stuff. I was in the young entrepreneurs organization and I knew these things, but the level of hyper growth that we were going through and developing- You didn't have time.

Starting point is 00:43:00 And we didn't have the time or the money. But what I did do was I really focused on project management and details so things wouldn't slip through the cracks. So before there was Trello and Asana or even spreadsheets, I would follow the checklist manifesto and I'd follow things through. I love the checklist manifesto and I'd follow things through. I love the checklist. Yeah. I'd be OCD on making sure that things didn't fit through the cracks because otherwise it's so easy to get overwhelmed and forget things. And, you know, there's a lot of, you know, you can learn a lot from reading the books, but you really learn from being in the arena.

Starting point is 00:43:46 Oh, sure. And I think with me personally, I try to scale out my weaknesses. I'm a great visionary, but sometimes I'm not the best integrator. I'm not the best executor, which is why having clutch COOs for our businesses are so important to me. Because I am, let's attack the problem, like storm the beach full head right now. Whereas a good COO is like, okay, let's see what that action would take. And let's be a little more strategic about solving this problem. And so now I've gotten much better in my later years of deferring problems to my, I still want to hear

Starting point is 00:44:24 them. I still want to know what they are. So I want to give my input, but I defer the solutions to my CEOs because they're just better at it than I am. Well, it's really interesting and there's no judgment, but there are all types of businesses, right? There's all types of businesses. There are franchises, you know, there are small businesses, there are venture backed businesses. So there's a whole range of business and it depends on what level, um, you can endure, right? What level you can endure, how badly you want it and what the motivation is. What I found for me is that money today is not a primary motivating factor in any of my values. Just

Starting point is 00:45:10 not a factor. What is for me is what is the quality of the experiences that I'm having? Who do I get to work with? And what impact does my business have on myself, my family, and society? That's much more important to me than just making money. Yeah. So what happened is I had another business after Organic Avenue that was in the juice business, but it was so crazy. It was such a visionary idea that it got attacked. And 50% of the people like you and 50% of the people don't like you. And it was not understood. And that business went from zero

Starting point is 00:45:57 to $500 million value back to zero. Yikes. Right. No one went to jail. There were no crimes committed. It was the businesses when you're growing really quickly, like driving, you know, your car 250 miles an hour, things break, right. Things break, or you can go off the rail. I mean, it's, it's hard to move that quickly. And if you don't build the solid foundations, And also I went basically from running a lemonade stand to running a high-tech venture with hundreds of people and 50 engineers and all this capital. And the investors who you partner with, depending on who they are, can really make or break the business. So, you know, venture capital.

Starting point is 00:46:46 That's a good question. So what did you look for in good partners that were venturing? It wasn't just about the money. I'm assuming that you were looking for what they could do, what they could bring to help grow the brand. Correct. I really look to see like, what was their motivation of investing? And it's interesting. You get the top tier venture firms, their motivation of investing is they want to make money. Like they want to make money. They're using other people to make money. And before they even invest, they want to know how they're getting their money out. Like it's a very clear path and they're looking to make 10 X, 20 X, a hundred X. And if they feel that once their money is in, that there is a better path to get their money out than you, then you're out. There's war going on. There's turmoil going on.

Starting point is 00:47:41 So what I looked at, what I look for, and I've raised money, over $150 million in my career across various businesses, and I've had wins and I've had losses. Now at the level I look at, it's like, who are these people? What kind of people are they? What do they want? What is the end game here? Yeah. And also how do they operate? Like in a way in this abundance consciousness where we have seven plus billion people in the world and trillions of dollars, there's no shortage of money. There's no shortage of investors. What's really important is saying, who are these people? Who are you going to relate with? And not necessarily, like some investors

Starting point is 00:48:26 may not add any value other than their money or an attaboy or some support or can ask them questions, but others could be disastrous for you. Like they could really be, you know, there's this asymmetry of capital where someone who is the richest guy in the room also thinks he's the smartest guy. He or she thinks they're the smartest guy in the room. And they have all these ideas and, you know, like the ideas are coming into their brain and they may expect you to listen to their ideas. The next thing you know, McDonald's is selling pizza. Yeah, or selling stuffed animals. What happened? So it's really interesting to understand who you're dealing with.

Starting point is 00:49:16 You know, like I have investors, like one of my investors is so committed to what we're doing. Like he'll get up at five 30 in the morning to come help me go set up, you know, at an event for no pay using his car, his house, his resources just to be supportive. Right. Others like in the past may not have returned a call.

Starting point is 00:49:44 And I could tell you that after this, right? Imagine, you know, having a $500 million loss, right? People lost real, real capital. You know, I watched, you know, and I owned a significant portion of that go to zero and like a lot of people would be upset. Yeah. And I was like hurting, but I didn't know it because I was, I had my armor on, but I knew my next step was I needed to take some time. So I decided to go to Burning Man, and I had a good time at Burning Man, and then I also saw the world through a different lens and a different aperture, and I said, you know what? I'm done with this asshole triangle. I was doing New York, LA, San Francisco, you know, staying in apartments and working and hustling. And I didn't need to work. Like I didn't need to work. Yeah. Cause your exit would,

Starting point is 00:50:52 do you still have equity in that business? No, no, no, no equity. I had no equity, but I had capital. Yeah. Right. Like I still, you know, if you, if you go out, it'll be very easy for you to identify my car. We could see your Maserati. Why do you assume that's my car? We could see your- Why do you assume that's my car? Because it matches your shirt. We could see your Maserati and we could see my 2010 Toyota Prius with 180,000 miles and

Starting point is 00:51:22 a new hybrid battery because I don't give a shit about the car. What I care about is the mission and the car was fine. I got my wife a safer vehicle. You know what's so funny, man? Years ago, one of my buddies was a really big agent in Washington, DC, in that DC area. And this was when the foreclosure crisis was happening. The banks were taking houses back, and they were selling them as foreclosures. And agents, unfortunately, part of the business is that's what we have to work for the banks sometimes, is liquidating these properties. And this dude, he was probably selling 100 houses a month.

Starting point is 00:51:58 He was one of the biggest guys in the country. And I went to visit him, and he picked me up from the airport in a Prius. And I was like, what's with the Prius? And he said the funniest thing him and he picked me up from the airport in a prius and i was like the prius and he said the funniest thing and he goes he goes well he goes when i drive it to the hood nobody fucks with it and he goes in if i go to a rich person's house i'm an environmentalist he's like he's like this is the world's most perfect car i never forgot i mean it's it's so it's so interesting and you know but I have to tell you, having the Prius when shit hit the fan, right?

Starting point is 00:52:30 And owning it outright, no leasing and everything else. Like I felt like, hey, I'm fine. Like I can weather any storm. And so I ended up, and this is like a whole vector. I don't know if you're ready for a three hour podcast, but I decided that I was going to live in the desert, but the criteria that I had was I wanted hot springs. So I start to tune in and different I'm like, I'm in my 50, 50. This is screaming Sedona to me, by the way. No, no, no. This was Joshua Tree.

Starting point is 00:53:12 Okay. 50. So I honed in on Joshua Tree because Sedona was too far from commerce. Yeah. Okay. Sedona is too far from commerce. Like Tucson and Phoenix don't count as commerce. So I looked at Joshua Tree because it was equidistant between San Diego, Los Angeles, Vegas, and Scottsdale. It's in the center and it was an artist community and it was up and coming and you two did the Joshua Tree album. Best album I ever did.

Starting point is 00:53:46 And I had never been to Joshua Tree, but I thought like, wow, if I could buy land in Joshua Tree that had hot springs, then I could be very peaceful. Because I'm high energy. The only time that I can relax is one after sex or B while I'm soaking in a hot spring. Okay. Other time, like I'm, I'm am I'm ready to go. This guy shot out of a cannon. So people, so I decide like, I'm going to find land with hot springs. So I go to Joshua Tree, no hot springs. Turns out Joshua Tree National Park is like a million acres and it spans into 29 Palms, city of 29 Palms. And in the unincorporated

Starting point is 00:54:37 part of the city of 29 Palms, there's a little town called Wonder Valley. And Wonder Valley was on the fault line at geothermal activity. I hired realtors, well drillers, geologists, water witchers. And I found- Find me a hot spring. And I found the geothermal activity and I did a land grab. And now we had 16 houses. We have 14 left. We sold the two because I was wrong in two places that didn't have hot springs. So we divested from that. And I moved into a tent because I was really living an austere lifestyle. Yeah. This is straight out of Burning Man. You just want to keep going. Yeah. So I took my Burning Man tent. I took a Yurtastic tent. Shout out to Yurtastic,

Starting point is 00:55:31 $3,000 yurt tent. The guy came and installed it on the land. I'm filling up the hot spring with a garden hose and I had a cowboy trough and like, I'm great. And I had a big Yeti like cooler and Arctic cooler, 60 liter cooler. I'm good. It's all I need. Filled with fresh produce and organic raw prepared food from air one. And like, I'm, I'm the most peaceful guy in the world. That's all I need. Right? Peaceful. And then as my cooler went down, I'm like saying, okay, no problem. I got food for the next day. And then when it went to zero, I get on my phone and I do vegan near me,

Starting point is 00:56:21 health food near me. Nothing. And I realized not only was I in an environmental desert, I was in a food desert. And that meant like existential crisis for me because I always had access to food. Like I had money, I had credit cards, I had Apple Pay. No farmer market, no health food stores, no restaurants, nothing, not even a gas station. So then that night, I'm thinking, hey, I've made mistakes. I can recover. I paid cash for this. I got no debt. There's no problem. And then as I'm staring at the dark sky, We have really dark skies in Wonder Valley. And I'm looking at the

Starting point is 00:57:06 sky and I'm at the hot spring and the constellations are starting to twinkle. And I see, holy cow, sprouts. This is like alfalfa sprouts and mung bean sprouts. And I'm starting to hallucinate. And I'm thinking like, OMG, I could live on sprouts, sprouts, sprouts. And like that night, like literally I stayed in the tub all night. And when I got out of the tub, I went onto my little laptop and I wrote sprouts and I got my insights about sprouts, which were number one, sprouts were vegetables, AKA they were food. They weren't just a garnish. Like if you ate a little amount, it's a garnish. If you ate a lot amount, it's a vegetable. And number two, sprouts were vitamins and minerals that had 20 to 100 times the nutrient density of mature vegetables. And I knew that. I was like, wow, so sprouts are vegetables. They're really nutritious vegetables.

Starting point is 00:58:13 And then the third, I'd met a guy named Brian Clement who had a place called Hippocrates Health Center in West Palm Beach. And people would go there to be treated for cancer and they'd pay $500 or $1,000 a day. And do you know what was on the menu? Sprouts. Sprouts. That was it. So I was like, wow, I got the idea that's going to write the Sprout book. So having never written, because you asked about this in the beginning, having never written

Starting point is 00:58:46 anything longer than an email or a love note, I said, I'm going to write the Sprout book. I went to New York. I pitched one publisher, Macmillan St. Martin's Press, and I brought tons of Sprouts. I had Oprah's recipe developer make recipes for me. I had a chef put them together. I went there with platters, with my little summary and Elizabeth Beyer, the editor there was literally eating sprouts out of the palm of my hand and bought the book. And like everything I want to do with the book, she didn't want to do with the book. I want to have four color coffee table book, et cetera. She's like, no, she said, yeah, trade paperback. And she made me pay for the photography for the cover and the book.

Starting point is 00:59:45 And I hired photographers because I really wanted this book. Oh, sure. And so hardest thing I had ever done in my life was writing 288 page, 60,000 words, writing a book. I just got done doing it. Okay. It's not easy. Well, I did before chat gpt

Starting point is 01:00:06 i didn't use any chat you can't you can't use chat gpt you can't because you know what chat gpt can't do tell stories yeah it can give you a research paper but it can't tell stories so and and well anyway my book came out five years before Chachi. Lovely. And so everything was great. It was supposed to launch April 2020. Then COVID comes. So my book tour, all the Barnes and Nobles, all the signings canceled. My launch in the ABCV with chef Jean-Georges Michelin star chef canceled. So now in my early fifties, I'm saying I got to make, like, if it is to be, it is up to me. So I start saying, okay,

Starting point is 01:01:00 I got to do something. So I get onto TikTok. I get onto Instagram. I start calling people and I start to go on podcasts. I start producing content around sprouts. It's huge. Fast forward today. It blew up. Yeah. I have a hundred million views of my content. I've been on podcasts and the book became a national bestseller became the number one vegan book vegetarian book on amazon broke in to the top 70 best-selling books on amazon yeah it's got crazy it's got like 4 000 five-star reviews or something yeah i i i don't

Starting point is 01:01:41 look for from why i looked because i look for the show. Yeah. So I'm glad. So the book became legit. And so I made a lot of friends doing the book and I got, you know, great things. But then people were asking like, okay, how do I get started? And there had been no advancements in sprouting technology for hundreds of years. People were using a mason jar that was designed for canning. And I lived on sprouts. So after I got the sprout religion, I got six jars and in one cubic foot, I was growing these six jars, eating thousands of calories a day of sprouts, getting every micronutrient, every phytonutrient, six jars, eating thousands of calories a day of sprouts, getting every micronutrient, every

Starting point is 01:02:26 phytonutrient, six jars, every polyphenol, bioflavonoid, antioxidant, every amino acid to form complete protein. So I'm living on sprouts and my life becomes unleashed. Dude, this is like, listen, if you're interested in changing your health or whatever, but I'm thinking, I'm going zombie apocalypse here. You should want to know how to do this in case there's a massive, you look at the we had wells, we had a desalination system, we had batteries, and we had hundreds of pounds of sprouting seeds. So our family, we didn't worry about masks, we didn't worry about social distancing, we didn't worry about social distancing. We didn't worry about vaccinations because we had our self-contained homestead, abundant life. And then Starlink came and now we had internet and we could recharge and run everything. So it was just amazing. And then Wonder Valley Hot Springs

Starting point is 01:03:41 became a wild success. If you were to look at my Wonder Valley Hot Springs on Airbnb, over 3,000 five-star reviews. And you own all 14 of those homes around these hot springs. Yeah. That's great. Yeah. So, and we- We're running a resort, man.

Starting point is 01:03:58 That's not Airbnb. No, no, no. I got it. We have no, we are running individual short-term rentals. I'm sorry. Yes. Yes. We're not running a resort.

Starting point is 01:04:09 That's not happening. Land use. We are entitled to single family homes. But the interesting thing, and you're in real estate, how hard would it be to buy your neighbor? Oh, God. Yeah. No. On one side, if you want to buy your neighbor? Oh, God. Yeah, no.

Starting point is 01:04:25 On one side, if you want to buy the neighbor to your left, how hard would that be? I mean, I like to think in my neighborhood, money talks. It'd be very expensive. Right. But I can, you know, it'd be expensive. But some people, no matter how much you pay, don't want to live. So imagine buying the house to the left, the house to the right, the house across the street.

Starting point is 01:04:47 And all down the street. And literally putting together like a epicenter of 14 houses within a half a square mile. Yep. One of the guys that works here actually bought every house on his street downtown. When downtown was being revitalized here, he moved down there. We're like, you're crazy, bro. He's like, no. And he wound up over through the revitalization, buying every house on his street. So that's what I did. I bought every house on the block, on multiple blocks. Yeah, that's awesome. And paid cash. And then when the universe said,

Starting point is 01:05:19 Doug, you're done. You got to focus on Spr sprouts. But I was still like wanting to buy more real estate. Like Monopoly is a fun game. Nothing else would be sold to me at any price, period. You say money talks. Woman's like, no, no, we're keeping in the family, not selling it, not selling it. So the property that we got, like that was it. The universe like literally said, no. You're done. You're done. And so now, like my whole mission, I just did the Hollywood farmer's market with Red Fu.

Starting point is 01:06:00 Do you know Red Fu? So Red Fu is a prodigy. Yeah, his dad was-hanie no no um bet bet barry gordy very gordy from motown records yes his father created motown records and the story you know right from the horse's mouth was that his mother said to him, you're too short to play basketball. So, and he turned out being six, two, so an inch tall than Steph, than a Steph Curry. But to, you know, his mother said that, so ruined his dream. Well, they made a decent amount of money with what they do. Yeah. Well, I'll tell you how he got there though. And then his father said, you're not good enough to

Starting point is 01:06:46 be a rapper. You don't have the voice. You should work in the office administration. So he went out on his own and changed his name from Stephen Gordy to Redfoo. He had red hair, he's half black, half white, did stand-up comedy, and created a goal, two goals. One goal was he was going to become a millionaire. The second goal was he was going to have a number one song. So just think about, there's 75,000 songs written every week. To have a number one global song. They did it. They had two i think it's

Starting point is 01:07:27 16 hits but but number one i think they had two that i'm gonna well yeah well he had um uh party rock and then that shot song well sexy and i'm not sexy and i know yeah you're right you're right so we had a lot of but but he created red foo yeah like he created red foo and like created this like um well it's it's very similar to what ludicrous did in atlanta because he i don't know if you know that story he was he was a dj called chris lover lover on the main urban station atlanta and then he cut his first demo as ludicrous and he would play his own demo, not saying it was him on the radio show. That's how he broke himself.

Starting point is 01:08:10 Yeah. I mean, music is really phenomenal. Anyway, back to the farmer's market. Back to the farmer's market. So Red Fu, he's more vegan, more conscious about animals and health today than almost anybody I know. He won't even eat in a restaurant that's not vegan. And he has a sanctuary.

Starting point is 01:08:38 He has two cows, two pigs, five dogs, chickens, roosters, and every one of those animals will live until they die natural death. Like he just loves the animals, loves the things, and he loves sprouting. And how I met him was interesting because you got to think a successful guy like that, you can't just approach and befriend, right? Just, you know, the protective layers around them are great. But if you do your thing and you focus on the law of attraction, right? So I'm at Rich Roll's house and Rich Roll has a podcast, health podcast, and he lives in, um, California. I'm at his house with my wife and his wife. We're having, you know, dinner, dinner ends at eight o'clock.

Starting point is 01:09:34 I get on my phone and I see a DM from a beautiful woman named Jazzy. And I read the, read the thing and she goes, hey, my boyfriend likes sprouting. I think you guys would get along. We're vegan. And it was him. Well, and she was talking about Red Food. But I never gave myself the gift of music. So if I'm on my phone, I'm listening to books on tapes at 2x speed, one book in each ear, like literally just not interested, not knowing anything about music or entertainment. And I go, where do you guys live? And it turns out they were six minutes away from the house that I was in in California. So we drove down the hill. We spent three hours. My wife is talking to his wife, his girlfriend. I'm talking to him. We're like going deep on all this stuff. Now it's midnight

Starting point is 01:10:33 and we live in the desert. So they said, oh, why don't you just stay here? So we stepped, we slept over in their house and now like our babies are almost the same age and they're playing. And so we got invited, the sprouting company, to go do sprouting classes at the LA Hollywood Farmer's Market, which is the largest farmer's market in California. It gets like 8,000 people and they put us in the center tent to give sprouting classes. And so I said, Redfield, you're here. So he's like, do you want to do it? He's like, yeah, let's go. And he's like, you know, gets his whole garb set up, the whole thing.

Starting point is 01:11:17 We meet at 5.30 in the morning. We drive the Rivian in, which has the power cord, brings the refrigerator from the guest house. We set up and we're giving out hundreds of samples of sprouts to the market. And he's like, they're just, you know, connecting with people. Like a lot of people. He's a magnet. He's a magnet. But he's passionate about sprouts. So he's talking about sprouts. He's talking about nutrition. He's talking about the animals and you couldn't pay him to do that. Like he turns out and he won't do ads for non-vegan companies. Like, you know, he'll only do what he wants to do.

Starting point is 01:12:02 And then my other, you know, close friend and partner, Mike Posner. Do you know the story of Mike Posner? No, but we honestly don't have time to do it though. We're an hour in, where are we at? We're at an hour and 10. I got to tell you a little. Tell me the Posner, go ahead. We got it.

Starting point is 01:12:16 So Posner wrote 10 years ago, I'm cooler than me. Okay. Breaks the charts, hits top on the charts, doesn't have another hit for seven years, right? His record label won't even put out his music anymore because, you know, he wrote, um, you know, just other songs, but nothing, nothing of that level, nothing was that level of success. And then, um, he was speaking to someone else about the journey, about how alone it is. And then he wrote, I took a pill and Ibiza, which broke the charts. Yeah. Two and a half billion streams. And then his father died and Mike from brain cancer and Mike becomes depressed and then goes to Tony Robbins. I take him to

Starting point is 01:13:08 Tony Robbins. UPW or? We did Date with Destiny. Date with Destiny, great. As Tony's guest. And so we're doing Date with Destiny. I'm, you know, my raw food veganism. So I have a special pass to bring in my healthy food. So Mike is eating sprouts and then he's learning about sprouts and he's becoming unleashed and he's changing his whole life. He had like 700 hookups, but never had an intimate relationship. Now he's in love and he just wrote a song called It's a Beautiful Day. He wrote that one month after doing Date with Destiny. Song just came out and Tony is closing UPW and BM with It's a Beautiful Day to be Alive. So Mike Posner is just great. Mike decided that the music industry, him and Redfoo actually knew each other back in the day where

Starting point is 01:14:00 they were both touring at the same time in the same realm. But the music industry is a very, very fierce industry. Yeah, it's tough. And so like they're both doing different things. So Mike, you know, did Wim Hof breath work. He summited Mount Everest. He walked across the country. He invested in co-founded the sprouting company because he sees the food equality, nutrition superiority, and the benefits of being able to eat sprouts.

Starting point is 01:14:27 He'll do that. And on the mission, and people are just, the doors are opening. Things are flowing. Like, you know, to go do an event like Running Man, they have a sponsorship fee. And instead, they invite Mike and I, me to talk about sprouts, Mike to give breath work and and do a concert and then oh i can totally see jesse wanting that there so but but being both of us on the same stage like with with the audience and then you get the extra content and then the people but

Starting point is 01:15:02 it's just a matter of growing exponentially it's growing exponentially. It's growing. Like we're creating a movement. What's in the box? That box is a gift for you. Oh, okay. I thought it was something you wanted to show off. I was like- Yeah, this is really a gift for you. Oh, thank you.

Starting point is 01:15:14 No, that's lovely. So this is a- I'm trying to get the mic on. Yeah. So this is- Here we go. This is the most nutritious food on the planet grown by you. Okay.

Starting point is 01:15:28 Right? And inside, you know, and by the way, the entire box is compostable. Right? So we're not using plastic and styrene. And inside, you have a sprouting kit comes fully assembled. Okay. And I'll take it out of the box.

Starting point is 01:15:48 so you put this down. I'm going to move this the box out of the way. So in here Mike is grabbing everything he needs to make this work this is the first like if you're if you're listening to us I'm sorry you have to go to

Starting point is 01:16:10 YouTube and see this this is like a live demo we've we've gone full-on late night infomercial here on the podcast so tell them what the what's next Mike you take one scoop If you take one scoop of seeds, this is a salad mix seed that has alfalfa, broccoli, lentils. Turn over there. This is hilarious. This has alfalfa, broccoli, lentils, mung, and radish

Starting point is 01:16:38 seeds. One scoop of this will fill up this entire jar in five days and we'll give you five servings of organic vegetables and for under a dollar a serving. And this is the most nutritious, freshest things you could have because sprouts are 20 to 100 times more nutrient dense than mature vegetables. So what I'm showing you, and this is like your whole family is going to be sprouting, that sprouts have been around since the beginning of time. And you grow

Starting point is 01:17:11 them without soil, without sunshine, without fertilizer, and their food, their medicine, their nutrition. So this is a gift for you. I wasn't playing on doing the infomercial, but. I love it. Thank you. My wife will, this is, I mean, trust me, like I said earlier, this is a gift for you i wasn't playing on doing the infomercial but i love it thank you my wife will this is i mean trust me like i said earlier this is this kind of stuff is so up her alley and because it's up her alley it becomes up my alley so there we go i love it thank you and and part of it is we're really having and by the way i just have to you know give a shout out to gary v and vay and VaynerMedia because they are just so helpful and thoughtful about how do you create an online business to create a movement that's blue ocean. This is blue ocean. Nobody else is doing this. This is like a thousand mile race

Starting point is 01:18:06 with no one ahead of us and no one behind us. And when I look about sprouting, which is the most exciting, John, is that we're not competing in the sprouting world. No. We're looking at the $60 billion produce world, the $100 billion supplement world, the trillion dollar pharmaceutical world, the medicine. So the $50 billion home gardening, right? And all I can think of is the suspender people looking at the guy that came up with the belt going, that's never going to work. Oh yeah. You know what I mean? That's all I can think is, and where are the suspended people now? Where are they now? Yeah. Look, I think the idea that now people actually know

Starting point is 01:18:51 because sprouts have been around since a period of time. So people are familiar with sprouts, just that little insight that, hey, sprouts aren't a garnish. They could be the center of the plate. Yeah. Like that was a big shift. So what we're doing right now is you're seeing like the market for parents buying this. So, you know, they're doing their own science project and the kids are watching the sprouts growing every day, right? We're seeing people like right now, weight loss is a big issue, right? Almost a hundred billion dollar industry of weight loss. Turns out sprouts are the number one weight loss food in the world because they are high fiber, low fat, low calories. So it's hard to do a water fast and you could, water fast is risky because,

Starting point is 01:19:42 you know, all sorts of things,, but eating sprouts fills you up and actually naturally will produce GLP-1 peptide in the stomach, similar to that of Ozempic. So you could actually eat sprouts, lose weight, get healthy, and flooding your body with necessary micronutrients and phytonutrients. And when you take a seed and you sprout it, you increase the vitamin C 500% in three days. Wow. So you don't take any other supplements. You just do this.

Starting point is 01:20:15 Why would I take a supplement? I mean, I'm, I'm living on sprouts. So, so what I would suggest, like, and I'm inviting you and you're already in great shape,

Starting point is 01:20:26 you could add sprouts to your juices, to your smoothies, to your salads, to your sandwiches, and you can actually use them as the base of the salad. Because most salad, and I like salad, I eat salad. Most salad is coming from Salinas Valley. It's coming on a truck or a train. It's a week or two weeks old. And with sprouts, you're getting a fresh crop. I like fresh. And other things like once you get the rare and unique foods that you are eating the entire plant organism, the root, the shoot, the endosperm, the embryo, the testa. It's like the stem cell of the plant. So that's why it's 20 to 100 times more nutrient dense because that seed contains within it everything that it needs to grow for that one week where nature has made it a perfect

Starting point is 01:21:33 organism. So it doesn't need the soil, doesn't need the sunshine, doesn't need the fertilizer. It can grow for the week and you could be consuming it, which is why it's so nutrient dense. I love it. Well, if they want to find you and they want to buy this, they want to buy the book, how do they find you? You can find me at Doug Evans on Instagram. The company is The Sprouting Company. The book is The Sprout Book. It's available everywhere. It just got translated to Spanish. Love that. And you could take my free sprouting master class you know i did a five-day class available for free like this is where is that where is that that's you could uh it's at one commune one commune.com slash doug got it or you just do sprouting

Starting point is 01:22:21 master class as you said no one else is doing a sprouting masterclass. You don't have to like sort through the sprouting masterclasses to find Doug's sprouting masterclasses. And on TikTok, you know, I'm sproutwiz on TikTok, but if you type Doug Evans, you'll find me. Love it. Well, brother, thank you for coming in. Your enthusiasm for this is infectious. I got to tell you, I love it. And it was such a joy having you on. And for those of you at home listening, man, let this be a lesson. There were so many great things in this today, dude, from how to get a mentor to the tenacity it takes to really build a brand and the things that you need to do to make sure that that brand grows and does what it needs to do all the way to, man, you might want to take a little bit more of a look at what you're putting in your mouth because it's probably affecting everything that goes on.

Starting point is 01:23:09 Well, if you didn't learn something today, hopefully you learned something next time. But I know you learned something today. See you next week. What's up, everybody? Thanks for joining us for another episode of Escaping the Drift. Hope you got a bunch out of it, or at least as much as I did out of it. Anyway, if you want to learn more about the show, you can always go over to escapingthedrift.com. You can join our mailing list, but do me a favor. If you wouldn't mind, throw up that five-star review, give us a share, do something, man. We're here for you. Hopefully you'll be here for us. But anyway, in the meantime, we will see you at the next episode.

Escaping the Drift with John Gafford - From Paratrooper to Food Innovator: Doug Evans on Sprouts, Creativity, and Conscious Living

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