The Chris Cuomo Project - Why “Success” Still Leaves So Many People Miserable

Episode Date: December 30, 2025

Kevin Dahlstrom (Founder, Bolt Health) joins Chris Cuomo for a wide-ranging conversation about why money, status, and constant striving so often fail to produce a good life — and what actually does. The discussion begins with Dahlstrom’s viral list of 55 rules for life and expands into a deeper look at health, performance, purpose, and the quiet habits that compound over decades. Cuomo and Dahlstrom talk candidly about aging, hormones, fitness, family, minimalism, and why wisdom is easy to articulate but hard to live — especially in a culture built around shortcuts, optimization, and comparison. They also explore why performance matters more than longevity alone, how chasing “more” can crowd out meaning, and why the most reliable improvements in life tend to be boring, incremental, and deeply human rather than flashy or extreme." Follow and subscribe to The Chris Cuomo Project on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and YouTube for new episodes every Tuesday and Thursday: https://linktr.ee/cuomoproject Join Chris Ad-Free On Substack: http://thechriscuomoproject.substack.com Support our sponsors: Get 30% off Juvenon's Maximum Male System—Alpha Gold Male and BloodFlow-7—by using code CUOMO at https://bloodflow7.com/CUOMO Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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C-A-L-M dot com slash Cuomo. 40% off unlimited access to Com's library. All right. please tell com you heard about them from me. One of the good things about social media is when someone shares something because it matters to them and it winds up blowing up for the right reasons. Imagine putting out what you believed were your 55 rules for life. And it wound up going viral to the tune of almost 10 million people wanting to read about it and just changed how you were. reviewed and changed what your life was about. And it was for a good reason. I'm Chris Cuomo.

Welcome to the Chris Cuomo Project. You know, I care a lot about wellness. I care a lot about personal performance. But really, it's about philosophy and wisdom. And there's a name that you don't know that you will after this podcast and you'll be happy for it. His name is Kevin Dalstrom. And what's beautiful about Kevin is that he's really not that different than any of the rest of us. It's just that he does what he says. He practices what he preaches, right? Unlike the rest of us, me included, where it's easy to say, but it's hard to do, he turns 55, recognizes that he's living his life the way he wants to, and shares what that means, and he puts out 55 lessons for life, and it goes viral. I see it. I decide, I want to

get to know this guy better. I want to understand how did he come up with these five things, because it's great from finance to fitness to how you deal with friendships and your kids and, you know, personal philosophy. It's everything that matters to each and all of us. And it turns out he is actually the brain and the business mind behind Bolt Health, which is this really fast-growing, innovative set of solutions for what really keeps you young, right? Which isn't just what you do. It's what's inside you. your hormone balance. So it wound up being quite an education on life, but also how to be your best self inside and out.

Say hello to Kevin. Hey, Kevin, thank you for joining us. Hey, Chris, happy to be here. Good to meet you. So were you surprised that I asked you to come on? I was and I wasn't. I mean, I had this post on X that went crazy viral, like 8 million people saw it. And when that happens, crazy things happen.

I mean, I had a few interesting people reach out to me, including like some low-key celebrities that reached out to me in the DEMs. And so the best part about that whole thing is when I can show it to my teenage daughters and they finally think dad is cool for once. Yeah, it disappears fast, though, with the kids. So the post is from, I was actually, you posted it on my wedding anniversary, but right before Thanksgiving, and it says, today I turn 55. We are both the same age. I'm the fittest, sharpest, and happiest I've ever been. If I'm an outlier, it's not because I'm built different or discovered a secret formula. The truth is far less glamorous. It's a million tiny choices compounded over decades. Here are 55. of them. So I start reading these tips, right? And I'm like, oh, I hope this guy doesn't become one of these rich and successful virtue signalers. Like I love when Scott Galloway says, only a rich guy

tells you to follow your passion. Anybody who cares about you tells you to follow what gets you paid. And I was so pleasantly surprised that these are among the 55 best ideas. for people to live a better life. And I had to talk to you about it. One, did you know of this list and was it part of an intellectual construct you had in place or did you develop it just to meet your age and stage of being 55?

Where does the wisdom come from? Yeah, well, I think for a really long time, I've considered myself a student of what it takes to build a great life. You know, the quick version of my story is I'm one of those guys who went all the way up the corporate ladder, made it to the top, realized that I was miserable. I was playing the role of some other guy who wasn't me. And so I rebooted in 2018, and I've been on this quest to understand, like, what is it that builds a great life?

You know, I learned the hard way that money isn't enough. And so what is it? And so what's funny is this list was a culmination of actually many years of work, because when I had an observation or an idea, I would just write it down in the notes app on my phone. And then I knew that my 55 year birthday was coming up. And so I was like, I ought to just compile these. And it turns out, I had like 52. It turns out. And I added three more and posted it.

And the rest is history. The idea of money is not enough. That is absolutely the case because anybody who ever has any kind of health or kid issue immediately realizes it doesn't matter what you have because you're going to lose what you want to hold on to. most. But it can hit wrong for people. Yeah. For guys like you, for Cuomo and Dollstrom, yeah, money's not enough because you have it. For the rest of us, that's the main pursuit. What are people who are reasonably thinking that missing? Well, first of all, let's be clear, being poor sucks even worse than any other. I mean, but the fact is that there are many, many wealthy guys,

especially in corporate America, but also in entertainment who they have a lot of, and lots of money, but they're fundamentally not happy. And the converse is, there's lots of people I know who don't have a ton of money, but have incredible lives. And what really opened my eyes to it was, I'm a rock climber. And so 25 years ago, I stumbled into a rock climbing gym, kind of discovered a passion, and more importantly, discovered this community where the measure of success wasn't money. These were people who, yes, we all have to pay the bills so they had jobs and they were making money, but they were building what I call multidimensional lives, where you have a job where you do your work, but that's only part of your life, investing in your family,

your hobbies, in fitness and health, and lots of other things. Bolt Health. Where does Bolt Health come from, and why did it wind up being the culmination of what you wanted to be about in terms of doing well and doing good? Wow, thank you for asking that. I was hoping you would. So, you know, I was fortunate enough to essentially be retired for the past couple of years. But I, even, you know, a life of leisure is a life of misery also. It's like, I believe humans need challenging work. We need to tackle hard problems. And as good as it gets, in my opinion, is doing work that aligns with your personal passions and interests. And I've been a health and fitness. enthusiast my whole life. And so Bolt Health is very specifically focused on men's health and even more specifically on men's hormonal health. You know, the fundamental problem out there is that doesn't get talked about actually a lot is men's hormone levels have plummeted, in particular testosterone in the past 20 years. They're like 50% of what the average level was

25 years ago. And it's quite alarming. I call it a silent epidemic. I'm 55 a couple years ago. go, you know, I'd watch my hormone levels and testosterone in particular kind of trends down pretty sharply after the age of like 45. I did everything I could to restore it naturally. I, you know, I did all the right things. And I started having symptoms and they weren't getting better. And so I tried what's now called testosterone replacement therapy. And it was like a light switch being turned on. It changed my life, to be honest. And furthermore, I realized that there's a lot of myth and misinformation out there about this stuff. And we, we pioneered what we call a microdosing protocol, very low levels, just restore physiologic levels. And it's a game

danger. And so I'm super passionate. I was the first customer and I'm super passionate about it just personally. Do you believe a couple things. One, testosterone. All right. The problem is the stigma. And people don't understand that TRT or dealing with what your body needs. needs to get you into the range of normal is different than walking around with twice that amount because it allows you to recover and train in a way so that you can walk around like an NFL lineman. So when you say you're on TRT, people be like, oh, well, that's why you can climb those rocks. You're cheating. What do you, what is the, what do people need to understand about what the hormones mean and what is use versus abuse? Yeah, I mean, look, I just want to feel

grade. That's, it's really simple for me. And, um, what you brought up is a really important point because all of the myths and misinformation I talked about come from the bodybuilding era. You know, the, you know, bodybuilders abuse these drugs, these hormones. So you said twice the level. No, bodybuilders often take 20 to 25 times the restorative physiologic level. And that's why they're so big and so jack. That's not healthy. They also stack it with other hormones. Um, What we're talking about and what we do at Bolt is restore levels to say the top third of the normal lab range. And what guys find is it's about hell. It's not about getting jacked.

The biggest benefits that I found that many of our customers find are actually cognitive. Guys notice as they get older, their brains aren't working as well. They get brain fog. The biggest benefit I noticed was it was like that movie Limitless. I wish. Yes. It lights your brain on fire. And I just can think so much faster, so much more clearly, I don't get sick anymore, workouts are better, recovery is better, I'm more present for my family.

Those are the types of comments that I love getting from our customers because, at least what we do at bold, because we operate at very low doses, it's not at all about getting jacked. I mean, yeah, it does make it easier to put on muscle, which is the number one predictor of longevity, but there's so many other benefits. And the other piece I'd say is a lot of the missed dementia information out there, like it causes heart. disease, it raises risk of cancer, those have been definitively proven wrong in just the past few years. There's been large-scale studies funded by the government that definitively proved that basically all-cause mortality for guys who correct their testosterone levels into the normal range are lower. They're less likely to die. The key is within the normal range. Yes, 100%. especially in men, American men, more is better.

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oxygen to your brain more oxygen to the big head more oxygen to the little head more nutrients to your muscles and yes way better performance are where it really counts guys who use the combo keep saying the same thing i feel sharper stronger i feel like me again my best self, all the things that you want to say. All right? Now, here's the good news. You want to try it? I'm going to make it even easier, okay? The holidays are a great time to start something new, great gift-giving idea, but you can get 30% off your order today, okay? So I want you to try it. 30% off is a great enticement, the maximum mail system. Head over to bloodflow7.com slash Cuomo. Be sure to use my discount code today. Get the discount and get better.

So put the cell on me as a needle averse, supplement averse guy, but I am into performance. I'm not really into longevity. I was just making this point in a different episode where I'm saying, I don't want to live to be 100. I want to perform as long as I can at the level. that I'm at, which is almost the minimum standard of what is acceptable for me as it is. So what would you do for someone like me and what would it require? Well, first of all, amen, I am the same as you. I want to perform at a high level as long as possible. I feel like I'm hanging on by a threat sometimes, but at 55, I'm still performing at a really

high level and it brings me a lot of satisfaction. I'm a passionate rock climber. I live in Boulder, Colorado. I'm looking out my window at rocks right now. I want to continue doing that as long as possible. The goal for me is just saying it's not to live forever. I will say, so I'll give you the short answer, and it's just the truth. There are many ways to raise your testosterone level.

There's oral pills you can take, and I won't get into the details. The bottom line is, if you want the most effective protocol, it does involve injections, but here's the good news. One thing that's changed in the past few years is testosterone replacement used to mean these big-ass needles that you had to stick into your butt. into the muscle and you know once or twice a week the modern protocol uses insulin needle so subcutaneously in the fat typically of the belly or the upper thigh the needle is this big you can barely see it it's so small it's similar to what is being used for like the new glp1 medications

it's like an epi pen yes exactly and it's it's painless you're injecting two drops of medication every morning first thing it's so easy and we have guys all the time who are You know, they just don't want to inject themselves and they're scared. Once they do it once, they're like, oh, why was I so worried about this? It's absolutely nothing. It's so easy. It's easy to travel with. It's so easy.

That's what I'm doing instead of a statin. So my father died of a very complicated and an unusual heart disease that I don't have, at least not genetically. but I do have genetically bad blood work of like triglycerides and stuff, although I actually, I don't believe in cholesterol as causative the way some do. I also eat a shit ton of meat and high cholesterol food, so I'm not surprised that I have high cholesterol, but my heart health itself is really good. Anyway, they wanted me to go on a stat in the insurance company that I'm using, you know, In my business, you have a lot of insurance because, God forbid, something happens when I'm over in Gaza or whatever.

So they put me on the stat, and I didn't want to take the pill every day because, like I said, I kind of suck with supplements. You know, I do athletic greens because it's just one scoop in the morning. I don't have to worry about it. But the pen that I'm taking for this drug called Rapatha is an EpiPen. And when they told me it was going to be a needle, I was like, no, no, no, I can't do it. And they were like, no, you can do it. It's pussyproof. So I literally just push it into my thigh every.

two weeks and it's it's controlling that and this is the same thing but is that enough is it a pen every day is it able to be applied per week or every other week or is it have to be daily yeah well first of all uh you're my brother from another mother i have i have a feeling we're lying on a lot of what what we're talking about because literally just finished before i jumped on this podcast i had a rib eye and that was my lunch and um and the cholesterol hoax don't get me started on that. So good, good on you for going down a different path. The reason you want to do the shots every day, even though it is slightly less convenient, is because the old outdated method for testosterone was to give a big shot of testosterone once a week. And what that causes is wild

swings in your levels. And that leads to all kinds of side effects. What we see with microdosing is you get the better results on half the dose with very rare do we see any sort of side. effects. And what I'd say is, look, I've spent 30 years studying health and longevity. I've spent hundreds of thousands of dollars. I've done all the things, including some very wacky things that I'm not going to talk about today. But I've been there, done that. And the truth is that for guys, our age, who are starting to see a decline in performance and their levels are low, their testosterone is the big gun. It's 80% of the longevity routine. At both, we also, we also offer peptides for depending on customers' needs. We use even like ED meds like Cialis,

but in very low doses, not for erectile dysfunction, although it helps with that. But there's new studies that have come out that indicate that it's incredibly good for heart health. One recent study showed patients on low dose Cialis saw a 23% reduction in cardiac events. And so there's all these, you know, things happening at the frontier of medicine that mainstream medicine is 20 years behind on. And so our medical team, we're rigorous about looking at the studies and choosing the therapies that are proven to work. Cestosterone's the big gun, but there are also other things. Is it all subcutaneous in the epipens or there are pills involved? Some is pills. And by the way, I forgot to mention. So along my health journey, like 10 years ago,

I was like this Brian Johnson guy where I took like 50 to 100 supplements a day. And what I realized is most of that stuff is just garbage. Guess how many supplements I take now? Zero. I take my daily testosterone. I eat a shit ton of meat, like you said. I try to eat a super healthy diet. I feel better now than I did in my 20s. Most of the therapies we offer are either a daily injection using the tiny needles like the pens or some of them are oral, like the ED meds in low-dose or oral, which take every morning. Do you take all of them? No. I actually personally only take testosterone and microdosing. It's all I've needed. I've dabbled with some of the other things. Like I'm really interested in particular in some of the peptides like BPC 157 for injury recovery. In fact, a friend of mine just reached out this morning. He's an elite level rock climber and he injured his knee yesterday. And he's going to do a course of BPC 157, a two-week course. And we're going to see how that works. for him.

Just for people, first of all, what we're talking about is male-centric because we're both males. But this is a female thing also. And hormones, peptides, testosterone, estrogen, all of these things are part of the aging process for women every bit as much as men, if not more so. So more so. Let me just add in, Chris, if you don't mind. the women for a bunch of bad reasons women have been told for years that hormones for menopause are a bad thing

not only was that wrong many doctors have referred to that as the biggest travesty in medicine hormones are even more important for women to get them balance i cannot wait bolt is launching at the beginning of next year we're launching bolt for women and it's going to be a game-changer as well. So my wife owns a company called Purist, P-U-R-I-S-T. She is an integrative nutritionist. And you should check her out. And she is all into this and different wellness practices and things that are conventional and conventional. And I believe in it. I also think that we make so many terrible choices and that everybody's okay with that but when you make choices like this people believe it's controversial um but i was laughing uh to myself when i was watching you hold your hands up

for people i want to show people the difference between a guy like me and a guy like this guy look at first of all he's got huge mitts but look at the thickness of his fingers well also look at the crookedness of yeah because it gets you but then you know rock climbing so my son is one of you he is on the other end of the hormone curve but he is about to be 20 and he is just a beast of strength to weight ratio he's a big calisthenics guy he loves climbing he's working on his little fingerboards all the time and i'll tell you why it's worth thinking about let's say you never want to climb okay but you're a guy and you go to the gym or you're a woman and you go to the gym grip strength goes uh and the more you can do it doesn't go for guys like dalstrom um because

if you're in the rock climbing you're going to have a handshake and forearms like a java man period because you don't you don't have any choice i don't care how well you use your legs if you're bouldering or whatever but grip strength is one of the main indicators of overall strength right Yes, it's one of the top three measures in terms of correlation with longevity. By the way, send your son to Boulder, and I'll put him on some amazing stuff here. I want it. Well, so we go out there, you know, we do the family trips. You know, it's always tougher when they get older now. The kids are 22, about to be 20. They're actually one month after the other. One's about to be 16. One's about to be 20. One's about to be 23.

So it's tough to get them all to go to the same place. But we have been to Boulder several times. And my wife has taken him out there in the summertime. And he loves to climb. He loves all the adventure sports. He's one of those. He was never a team sports guy. But like calisthenics now, I mean, the stuff that this guy can do,

it is frightening to me to watch. But it's strength-to-weight ratio, very different than me. So what I'm trying to do now is, scale down mass, but my body knows its size. So I played it like 240, and my body knows that. And it will go back to that weight. It's just not great body composition because now my nipples are like five inches lower than they used to be.

So I'm trying to bring down the mass and get the hormones right. I have low normal testosterone, but it is low, and I have left it alone because I'm afraid of making it too high and having other things grow and getting prostate cancer or something like that. But I've been doing my research and talking to my endocrinologist. And he turned me on to you and said, look at this guy. This guy is your age and stage and he's physical. And I am a volunteer firefighter and I do a lot of self-defense training and stuff like that. Like those are my those are my passions and they are really you got to be on your hormone game you can't just be in the gym yeah the strength to weight ratio is everything staying lean is everything i believe it or not for

a rock climber i'm absurdly large i have 195 pounds i'm six three that is big i will tell you though chris i just two days ago hit my PR on bench press i just i did 225 four times which for me a skinny guy I'm a skinny guy so if you saw my arms and how long they are yeah but also it's like the most use I know I know guys are crazy about it but it is so useless for what you do in life and what you're using like you know there's so many things that are more important but look I mean you are a great testament to functional longevity and look I'm talking to him a lot about the kev a lot about this stuff because I care about it but if you look at the list of the 55 things things. If you have a positive thought about someone, don't keep it to yourself. Share it immediately. Encouragement defies the laws of physics. When you give energy, you also receive it. So true. And then he goes right into the practical, like shoes with a big toe box. And I just think that it's such a great balanced understanding that I'm not surprised it went big, but you've got to be kind of surprised about how big it went. And what do you make of that? It's literally,

over 8 million people looked at your post. Yeah, like, I'm the overnight success 10 years in the making. I mean, I started writing on Twitter during the lockdown phase of COVID, like in 2019. And I've kind of like, my mantra for everything in life is like I build brick by brick. And so, you know, I like writing. It's I post almost every day. And if you do that, though, it sort of becomes inevitable. I always felt like it was sort of inevitable that one of my posts at some point would take off.

I didn't expect 8 million people would view it, and that I'd get, like, one of the direct DMs I got was from a guy who's like a complete hero of mine, a Wall Street tycoon. He DM'd me and he said, Amazing List, if you're ever in New York, let's grab lunch. And I'm like, I will be in New York. Like, I'll make it happen. And so that's super cool. I'll tell you a funny story. And you've obviously had this happen, you know, much more than me. But like microcelebrity, the coolest thing that ever had.

happened as a result of my online writing. I was in the Dallas Fort Worth Airport one time with my family, and this guy, you know, I'm nobody, and this guy comes up to me and ask if he could do a selfie with me. And my two teenage girls were like, what the hell is happening? So I'll treasure that moment forever. But, you know, it's microcelebrity, right? Well, look, you want resonance, but fame. is kind of useless. You know, I mean, getting the word out about what you're doing with bold health, that's good. It being about how people decide to judge you is never worth it, no matter what comes along with it. But you know this because these are a lot, I mean,

it's built into probably 10 of your 55 rules, which is, you know, kind of, I love the one where you say, look into minimalism, it's not what you think. And certainly fame and self perspective and how you see yourself comes into minimalism as well. What does that word mean to you as a practice? Yeah. So people think minimalism is about denying yourself of pleasure, right? Like living like a monk. And it's actually the opposite.

It's removing everything that you don't give a shit about so that you can gorge on the stuff you do give a shit about. And so that was a – when my family kind of rebooted back in 2018, When we rebuilt our life in Boulder, it was a much simpler life, just the things that we wanted and none of the things that we didn't. And look, I'm a simple creature. I'm not Elon Musk. I'm not trying to, you know, make humankind interplanetary. I just want to climb rocks and hang out with my friends and feel good and eat good food

and travel and right in my little nerdy corner of the online world. And Boulder, Colorado, where did you grow up? And why did you choose there? I grew up in a small town in Texas. I literally, you know, my first job was bagging groceries at $3 an hour at Safeway. I'm the son. I have a crazy backstory, by the way, which we won't get into. But I'm the son of a literal cotton picker and a physics professor.

So my dad was a physics professor. He was traveling through South Texas on some academic work and met my mom who was a cotton picker in South Texas randomly, they got engaged two days later and they were married for their entire life. So, crazy story. Why did they get engaged so fast? What was it? How did they explain it? Well, my dad went to a dance hall. This was in the sticks of South Texas because he was bored and it was a literal, like, saw her, my mom was beautiful or is beautiful. She's still alive. And he saw her across the room and literally, and she, I think, saw her. an opportunity to just get the hell out of, you know, the cotton fields. And somehow it worked.

And, you know, we had a crazy upbringing because of that. But, but, you know, a gift in a lot of ways, just very unusual upbringing. What do they say? Women are loved for what they are. Men are loved for what they do. Yeah. I think my mom saw a ticket. Here's this guy who's pretty He's smart. He's going places. And it's funny is my wife and my relationship is not super dissimilar from that. Like, you know, my wife's been a homemaker, our entire marriage, never wanted to be anything else.

And she, you know, I'm the provider. We're pretty traditional, which isn't super popular these days, but it works for us. Yeah. I mean, you know, look, I think it's coming back. You hear this expression, trad wife. I mean, look, we're so young as a culture. I mean, so much of what you lay out in your 55 points is something. timeless wisdom. And, you know, what we see in this culture all the time is just growing pains.

You know, I mean, even with social media and our binary politics, and I just was doing a piece about how the word of the year is rage bait. And I like how you address it within your points, within your kind of personal philosophy of animus and animosity. And you treat it almost as an environmental condition that you've got to be aware of like bad air. Right. Yeah, I mean, I'm a huge believer in the power of positive energy and the problem is it cuts both ways. Like negative energy, you're hurting yourself more than anybody when you're putting out negative energy. And of course, we can disagree. I mean, I was telling somebody the other day, like when I was growing up, my parents would have people over for dinner who had completely

different political views and we would have a great discussion and we would have a great discussion and we would leave and hug and be friends. And for some reason, that doesn't happen anymore. It's become too personal. And, yeah, it's difficult. Well, the reason it doesn't happen anymore is that our politics has become a sport more than a philosophical pursuit. It's cowboys and giants now. So there is no, I want to hear why you like the cowboys.

It's the cowboys suck. They're evil. And I don't want to hear anything about that. And I don't care that the giants are terrible. on nine different levels because they're my team. Once you make politics that, and it's no longer about coming together or progress, it's just about advantage and zero sum. This is where you get. And then you add to it social media where it's like the inverse of your lifestyle, where you're with people as much as you can be. And here, you're in a silo. And who's going to talk to Kevin

the way they'll talk about Kevin if he's not around? You know, it's a big difference. And that's our world is talking about people, not to them. I had a high school teacher in small town, Texas, who told me one time that it's hard to hate someone up close. And I think that's very true. Like online, it's really easy to be a troll and to hate somebody. When you're face to face, it's harder. And by the way, I've seen a bunch of clips of you over the years. I think you actually do a really good job of trying at least to be that middle ground. There's not many people who honestly even try to do that. And I'm sure you catch a lot of heat for that, but kudos for at least trying. I just look, I mean, it's not even a close call to me about what matters more. I know that

it is not as convenient a growth strategy. I know that what I should do is pick aside and attack the other side all the time. And I'll have my, you know, I mean, my following is enough as it is for me. But I get it, that that's the growth strategy. It's just not the kind of growth I want because I know that it's fundamentally wrong. And of course, the paradox is that being in the media at all means that I'm on the wrong side of everything for most people. So it doesn't matter that I'm trying to do it what I see as the right way because I'm part of the problem no matter what it is. But as you say, in several of your points, to thine own self be true. I got to have my own standard and my own sense of recognition about it.

and I got to let go of all the other things that I don't control and the opinions that I don't control. So what are you going to do with the 55 points? You're thinking about putting it into a book? You're thinking about making it into 155. You think about distilling it into five. Yeah. So I absolutely want to write a book if for no other reason than just for myself.

Luckily, I've got sort of a built-in following. And some of them are super fans who have been asking me. So I am going to write a book. It's going to be much deeper than just. just the 55 points, but that'll be part of it. The biggest challenge for me is, you know, you know how this goes. Like, I've got two daughters in college. I've got this young business.

I've got a wife. I rock climb. I just got to find the time to actually get it done. It's easy to write short posts and post them on X every day. A book, I've tried to, like, dive in, like on vacations and stuff. It's a daunting task. It is big. You need a plan.

You need a plan. You need an outline. You have to really work on that part of it for a while and be collaborative about it. Partnerships are like the new writing. I mean, not so much with fiction, but certainly with self-help, which has always been one of my favorite categories. I'm a huge self. I read everything. It doesn't mean, you know, everything is practice, right? All the wisdom is easy. It's easy to get it. How they package it is, you know, is what the persuasion is. it's it's how you practice it that matters and it gets really simple it's just hard it's hard to live by three let alone 55 of your maxims it is yeah I mean and one of the 55 was to have a bias toward action I think what happens with a lot of people is they think that they have to like learn a certain amount like if I got to read these books I got to listen to these podcasts I got to do this before I get started just get started and then you'll realize exactly what you need to know. So having a heavy bias toward action, like the first step, I found in anything, any big endeavor, it's the first step that's the hardest, like just getting that

initial momentum going, whether it's like getting healthy again, whether it's writing a book, starting a side hustle, whatever it is. Yeah, doing is hard, saying is easier than most things. But look, I mean, we know this. And this is my last thing for you. The 55, You said earlier that you had been writing consistently. How much, at what point in your life did you realize the right ways, whether or not you're where you want to be? I'm sure you're not in terms of your practice of the ways. Are these things you developed over years?

Did you have a eureka moment and bust out like three dozen of them? No, it's over the years. And honestly, a lot of it came from, you know, I, when I came out of college, And you know, you were not at the same age. Like, I did, you know, I came from a small town, went to school not far from where I grew up. I'm a longhorn. And when I came out of college, the internet was just like just beginning to be a thing. I didn't know, like, you could actually, I thought there was like one path to success, right?

You get a degree. You go into the corporate world. You work your way up. And I'm, like, I'm an artist at heart. I've never been cut out for. the corporate world, but I was really good at faking it. And I faked it my way all the way to the top and, you know, was never happy the whole time. But what it allowed me to do, I'm a pretty astute observer. So I look at, and I judge things by the results, by the fruit. And so I saw

what worked and what didn't. And the, the ugly truth is in the corporate world, especially in the upper echelons. Like I was in the C-suite. And 100% of those guys are miserable. I'm being a little bit, you know, exaggerating a little bit. But, but, you know, I'd have these guys come to me because at least I had my climbing and I had other things going on in my life. You'd be like, what are you doing, Kevin, to be happy because I'm worth $50 million and I'm miserable. And it's surprisingly common. It's a quality problem to have. At least they've got the money. But it was just observing what works and what doesn't and then slowly developing sort of this point of view about life that resulted in these 55 things. I think one of the trickiest things, and certainly I struggle

with it, is understanding the difference in appreciation between more and enough is a really tough measure. And again, easy to say, you got to move away from more. because the eternal quest for more is it's just that. It's eternal. And realize enough. And people will put it a million different ways. You know, it's not about what you want. It's about appreciating what you have. You know, we all heard all the same hallmark say. But easy to say, hard to do. But I feel like you really grab that spirit in the 55 rules. And I love, I haven't seen anything like this since that guy was dying and wrote that that the guy who wrote the um the the the uh speech for the graduates i know what you're talking about that's that was a while back wow what that guy yeah

yeah so i remember how that like that like overtook the media why because we're desperate for the way we're desperate you know whether it's religion or philosophy or in you know in our society fads trends quick fixes, you know, we're desperate for understanding. And I just think it was a real gift you gave people. And I was so happy to connect with you. Thank you so much. This has been a super fun discussion. And thank you for recognizing the work. And yeah, I'm now, I've become a Chris Cuomo fan now. Wow. Sounds like we've got a lot of things in common. Well, I certainly aspire to a lot of the things that you are. So Kevin Dahlstrom, thank you very much. I appreciate you.

I look forward to what comes next. And I'll probably be hitting you up about both health because I got to get to a better place. So thank you for being with us. Appreciate it. You got to love it because it's working for him. And the science is simple. Everybody knows, especially 50 plus fitness people.

We all know. it's what you can't control that you've got to figure out. And that is definitely about hormones, more so than diet, more so than training. It's what's happening inside your body and what can you do about it. So Kevin Dollstrom is definitely on the right path with that. But I get why it went so viral and it's continuing to grow. His 55 reasons may have been tailored to his age, but man, do they work for every stage in your life? I hope you check them out.

And I hope that that meant as much for you as it did. for me. I'll check you out on Substack where I'm doing my wellness stuff, where I benefit from people like Kevin, my wife, Christina, who has her integrative nutrition business purist, and I'm talking to you about my workouts, my food practices, what's working and what isn't, and there are opportunities in there to subscribe in ways where you can get more access to me that is coming. And I'm all about us spreading the good word, be a critical thinker, show that you are different, show that you are different, that you are a free agent. That's why the merch is there

so that we can crowdsource contributions to causes we believe in. Gave away like 30 grand this year of money that came from you guys. I'm not doing it to put in my pocket. I'm doing it to put into the pockets of people that we all respect. So I'll see on News Nation AP every week, day night.

Thank you very much for checking me out on social media. And of course, the Chris Cuomo Projects spread the word. Let's get people to subscribe to YouTube and become part of this conversation. The problems are real. Our approach has to stay the same. Let's get after it.