The Rich Roll Podcast - John Lewis Is The Bad Ass Vegan — Upending Stereotypes & The Impact of Positive Mindset on Destiny

Episode Date: December 5, 2016

Beyond the chiseled arms and imposing six-foot six physique, the thing you notice most about this week's guest is his smile — a smile the size of Texas that only hints at the even bigger heart within. But John Lewis wasn't always the exemplary model of health and advocacy he is today. Tipping the scales at 315 pounds by his freshman year in high school, things could have easily gone sideways for this young man growing up in Ferguson, Missouri. But instead of drugs and gangs, he turned to sports, finding solace and refuge in basketball and football. Honing his skills in both high school and college helped him ditch his fat kid image and triggered his life-long love for healthy living. Nonetheless, John began experiencing some serious, negative health issues despite maintaining an athletic nature post-college. He sought medical advice and was informed that excessive animal protein consumption just might be the culprit. That advice, combined with his mother's colon cancer diagnosis, catalyzed an experiment with vegetarianism. Little did he know, that experiment would change his life. In short shrift, ditching meat resolved his health issues. More importantly, the lifestyle aligned with his values. So it wasn't long before John jettisoned all animal products from his plate and went entirely vegan. Needless to say, this was an unlikely move for a football loving gym rat. His friends were not amused. But John never felt better. The lights went on, opening him to an entirely new way of living and being that brought his life path into focus. Today, John is an in-demand public speaker, personal trainer, and entrepreneur tirelessly spreading his his broad smile as the Bad Ass Vegan — busting traditional stereotypes as an entirely new breed of vegan evangelist with a unique ability to communicate and positively impact a wide diversity of people. He has appeared on multiple television shows and been profiled in several magazines, including Muscle & Fitness, Men’s Fitness, Fitness Rx, Vegan Health & Fitness, Thrive, Origin, Maxim and even Sports Illustrated. You might have seen him flexing in all those P90X television ads that were ubiquitous a few years back. Beyond the nickname, Bad Ass Vegan is also John's apparel and lifestyle brand — a health and nutrition company striving to upend traditional notions that surround what it means — and what it looks like — to be vegan by educating individuals on plant-based nutrition and more conscious living. I first met John a couple years ago and always enjoy spending time with him at various lifestyle events — his energy is beyond infectious. So I'm proud to share his powerful, super uplifting message with you today. This is a conversation about taking personal responsibility for ourselves, our well being, and our life paths. It’s about the impact of mindset on personal destiny. It's about the power of community. And it’s a conversation about the power we all possess to positively transform ourselves and make a real difference in those we touch. Enjoy! Rich

You got to put yourself in that right mind state. And that's why I'm all about positivity. Like, look, you control your destiny. That was like one of my first tattoos I ever got was I control my own destiny. You do. Like, you really do. And there may be some situations where there's some outlying factors. But when you're in that situation with the outlying factors,

you put yourself in the situation to even allow those outlying factors to affect you. That's John Lewis. And this is The Rich Roll Podcast. The Rich Roll Podcast. Hey, everybody. How are you guys doing? What's going on? My name is Rich Roll. I am your host. Welcome or welcome back to the podcast where I go deep and long form and get intimate with some of the most intriguing, inspiring, positive, paradigm-breaking thought leaders and wellness evangelists all across the globe.

People who have really devoted their lives to making the world a better place, all in the interest of people like myself and yourself, you guys, the audience, to help us all unlock and unleash our best, most authentic selves. Got a great show for you guys today. My friend John Lewis is coming on, aka the badass vegan. That's what he goes by. That's his moniker. And let's see, what can I say about John? Well, I met John several years ago

and I keep seeing him at all these events where I'm speaking. And I got to spend some quality time with him in Miami a couple of weeks ago. And we'd always talked about having him on the podcast. So it just took a little while. I'm glad the stars aligned to allow him to be in Los Angeles for us to do this.

But when I was in Miami, I got to hear him speak. And he was just great. He's just a really good dude who is promoting a super positive message around healthy lifestyle and sustainable and ethical eating and living. And I think the word badass is an appropriate moniker when it comes to John, because this guy is an absolute beast. He's a six foot six powerhouse who created this brand, Badass Vegan, really to bust the stereotypes of what vegans look like and to really upend traditional stereotypical ideas about what it means and again, what it looks like to live and exude and sort of step into this plant-based way of eating and living.

But it wasn't always this way for John. He started out as a 315-pound kid. He grew up in Ferguson, Missouri. We have an interesting conversation about that. And he was a kid who could have gone left, but he found solace and refuge in sports. He played basketball and football in high school and college, and that really helped him ditch his fat kid image and really triggered his love for healthy lifestyle. But it wasn't until after college when he began

to suffer some pretty serious health issues, combined with his mother being diagnosed with colon cancer, that John began to experiment with eating vegetarian and ultimately becoming vegan. And with his health repaired, this sort of catalyzed. It was like this formative moment for him that the light bulb went on and he really stepped into this role of becoming a vegan evangelist. And today he's a personal trainer. He's an entrepreneur. Like I said, he's got this brand called Badass Vegan, which is an apparel and lifestyle brand. It's really a health and nutrition company that is oriented around

promoting and educating individuals on plant-based nutrition and just living more consciously. Again, he's completely ripped. He's built like a tank. But I think most impactful when you meet this guy is that he greets you with just the biggest smile you've ever seen. He's just one of the most warm and positive people you're ever going to meet. And I think he has a really unique talent and ability to communicate and positively impact a very wide diversity of people. John's appeared in multiple television shows, and he's been profiled in all kinds of magazines like Muscle Fitness, Men's Fitness, FitnessRx, Vegan Health and Fitness, Thrive, Origin, as well as Maxim and Sports Illustrated.

And you might have seen him featured in all those p90x television ads that were ubiquitous a couple years ago i got a couple things i want to say about john before we get into the conversation but first all right so john lewis this is of course a conversation about John's really interesting life, but it's also a conversation about taking personal responsibility for ourselves, for our wellbeing and for our life path. It's a conversation about mindset, the power of positivity and what it means to seize the reins of control when it comes to your personal destiny.

It's about community. It's personal destiny. It's about community. It's about ethics. It's about change. It's about how we all have so much more control and say over who we are, who we want to be, what we want to express, and what we stand for. And ultimately, it's about the power we all hold to contribute and make a difference. Are we ready to rock it? Let's rock it.

We got the badass vegan in the house. It's been a long time coming. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Thanks for making it. We started planning this in like 2011. I know. It took a while. That happens a lot, actually.

I'll have conversations and it just, you know, it happens when it's supposed to happen. You know what I mean? Exactly. So we know each other a little bit better than we did back then so maybe it's a better time yeah exactly uh sorry about the la traffic that you know today took you a little bit longer to get here uh i got you a little green smoothie you did so it evens it out so this one is uh usually i start with kale and beets but we ran ran out. So this is spinach, apple, banana, hemp seed, spirulina. And then I tried this mushroom protein powder from Amanda at Moon Juice.

Yeah. So she sent us some of the stuff. This is my first time trying it. So it's pretty good, right? It's pretty good. Yeah. pretty good yeah so we're gonna be that works flying high for this man um anyway uh stoked to talk to you so many things we can uh we can cover um but why don't we uh why don't we just start at the beginning man oh man the superhero origin story of the badass vegan you know and i think it's actually i think it's timely because of your background and and kind of the crazy week that we've just all experienced together to help put it a little bit in context. Pretty nuts, actually. There's a lot going on. But just to start off, like we talked about, I'm originally from Little Rock, Arkansas, born there, raised in Ferguson, Missouri.

We moved there when I was two. So, you know, a had a nice childhood you know i didn't know any better i didn't know it was a a different time zone or a different like area to live in at that time until i moved away did you when did you how old were you when you moved to ferguson we were two i was two so you don't you don't remember arkansas i don't but i have a lot of family there in fact it's so funny being a vegan. I actually have, uh, uh, our family like owns like one of the number one barbecue restaurants in Little Rock. So that's very interesting. So you go back there once in a while? and things of that nature but you know social media helps a lot you know with that as well as you know texting but i haven't physically been back to little rock since maybe 2001 or two it's

been a while it's been a long time so i know my family's gonna be like yeah it's time to come back yeah but you really so ferguson's where you grew up that's where you went to high school and all that kind of stuff so i mean what is that what is that? What was that like when, you know, everything went down in Ferguson? Do you know people? Oh, yeah. Connected to people that were directly impacted by that and involved? Yeah, my mom still lives in Florida. I thought you put that on airplane mode, dude.

I actually did. Look. You did? I don't know what that is. All right, cool. I don't know how that works. No worries, man. That's just life.

Yeah, that's just life. So, that was my wife's just life yeah it's just life so um that was my wife's ringtone by the way so maybe she got a special way to get through she's keeping tabs on you um no it's so funny yeah i um i my mom still lives right in ferguson i actually just went back like three weeks ago and uh still right in the heart of ferguson uh saw a lot of people that i you know i haven't seen in a long time and it's you know it's getting Just went back like three weeks ago and still right in the heart of Ferguson. Saw a lot of people that I haven't seen in a long time. It's getting better, but it's still in the air.

You know what I'm saying? Especially with there's something that always rekindles it. It's like once everything kind of calms down, something else happens. It may not be in Ferguson, but it happens somewhere else and it rekindles it. So, yeah, while it's getting better, it's not gone. What was, uh, what was going on with you when that all went down? I mean, that must've been terrifying. Yeah. I was in Miami, um, at the time. And I remember, I remember actually talking to my mom and she said she was at the gym and they locked down the gym or something like that, I guess. Cause, uh, cause of the rallies that were happening at the time after it happened.

And, you know, just to hear my mom, who's she's 80 now, you know, she was in that were happening at the time after it happened and you know just to hear my mom who's she's 80 now you know she was in her 70s at the time to hear her like she's in lockdown at a gym not at home safe you know it was just weird like to see that and then to see the pictures of like gas stations like totally destroyed and it was just so crazy i mean these you know these armed guards in like ak-47s and things walking down the street you know street that i walked to school in you know just weird it was just it was very interesting to see did you have like high school friends that were in the midst of that like yeah yeah yeah anybody get hurt is everyone all right yeah everybody's okay like my cousin was actually sending me pictures via text you know like man look at this cousin like it's crazy like just seeing these different different images it was

just it was it was like wow like i can't believe this just happened where we were at i mean there was always violence around like i tell people my sophomore year in high school i lost seven friends just so like gang violence stuff or what to what it was it was a mixture you know it may have been gang violence it might just been stupidity on some things you know we we thought we were in gangs there we weren't really in the gang we just that was just poser yeah it was just the end thing to do you know we we weren't really in the game we just thought hey you know this this blood and crip thing going out in la while we just bring it here but there is no real affiliation right but like stupid shit that happens when you're partying and you're yeah there was a couple you know a couple car accidents

too you know that so but it's just you grow numb to it you know like and i hate to say it now like when i hear about death i don't really even when it's an immediate family member i'm not like i'm not like to the point where i can't function anymore. I grieve over it and then I'm just, you know, ready to move forward. So what's behind that? I mean, what's that about for you? I think it became like a numb thing. Like, okay, well, all right, the first time it hurt. The second time in a couple of months, you're like, wow, that happened again.

The third time it happens and a couple of months later, you're like, this keeps happening. And by the fourth or fifth time it's like running a mile you know the first time you run that mile it hurts after you keep running that mile so many times your body's like okay well we're used to this like right it's a new normal yes a new normal so literally like seven like dudes that you knew yeah and girls like yeah there was like one was a car accident had uh a very close friend and uh which was a female and guy who literally got hit by an 18 wheeler you know out partying and uh it was like two three in the morning they that side of the car got crushed they died my cousin was in the back seat to this day he

has like limited functionality in his right side of his body because he got smashed up against the wall you know his eyes he can't even see out of that one eye so like just different things just kept happening over and over and over you know parties people get shot you know it's just it was just crazy all the time and you said your mom's 80 she's 80 she still acts like she's 20 though this requires a little clarification because you're too young to have a mom that's 80 i mean i know the answer to this but like explain that well so my mom my original mom was basically hooked on drugs so she had me at a very young age and she had me when she was uh 16 got pregnant when she was 15 so my mom i always say my mom is actually my grandmother

she stepped in right off the bat um because my original mom was actually going to sell me for more drug money so my grandmother stepped in and was like no that's not going to happen adopted me legally um well adopted me in a way we lived in little rock arkansas so it wasn't much paperwork to be filed like actually my mom my grandmother i'm sorry her name is actually on the second birth certificate directly from the hospital like they did it in the hospital right there oh wow yeah so i mean i don't know i don't know how legal it was at this point you went home you went home to your grandma straight from the hospital straight from the hospital and your mom went where straight to the same house back to the back to the street is she is she alive now do you have a relationship with her

no no relationship but the funny thing is is not my relationship with her that i do not have now was not because of what happened at birth uh we actually she was raised as my sister actually and then finally it came out um that's just on a second yeah yeah exactly that's that's a mind trip oh yeah how old were you when you realized you're who the person you thought your was your sister was your mom find out at 16 i found that at four uh-huh so imagine being four it's probably learning how to act yeah but if you had found that out when you were 16 oh yeah it probably would have devastated me but the good thing was it taught me how to because at four years old i knew that would hurt my grandmother if i would have went to her with that information so i just kept you know i kept it in i knew about

it you knew it but you didn't say anything i never said anything to her no because i knew i knew that would hurt her so your mom grew up in the same house same house same house and is she did she ever get sober or she still struggles i mean now from what i hear she's doing better she's doing better but i i cut off communication i would say it's almost 10 years i haven't talked to her like i'll hear stories from my brothers and stuff um in fact she just needed she just needed to borrow money just the other day from my brothers like they're like oh i had to go take her fifty dollars i'm like you know sometimes you gotta learn when to let go and not let put yourself in a hole like i'm all about helping people but you know if after so many times so many years if they're not helping themselves at a certain time

yeah it just becomes a codependent situation exactly exactly not helping anybody wow that's rough though so so never knew your dad then i assume no i actually met him at 21 oh wow um we're like twins except he's bald and short but uh yeah i met him at 21 in fact uh i will tell i will say that that's the one good thing she did she found him for and surprised me on my 21st birthday at a birthday party uh-huh and he came out of the back room and i like instantly as soon as i saw him i knew who he was right because i literally saw my face in him like i knew who he was that's crazy but was he super young too i assume yeah he was actually younger than her he was 15 when i was born uh-huh so yeah

and then his family ended up moving to milwaukee so i had no contact so my family moved to st louis from little rock his family moved to milwaukee from st louis i had no contact whatsoever right but you're in contact with him now yeah now i am yeah yeah what's he what's he do what's he gonna do he's actually he actually uh works in uh extermination uh like termites all that kind of stuff he works he's like a facility manager in milwaukee for that um i have a little sister by him as well uh that's up there in milwaukee and then i have his mom and sister and brother so my aunts and uncles i'm close i'm real close with the aunt actually because she's only a year older than me. Yeah. So

we're real close. That's great. Cause your grandma's 80, right? And she's your only, you know, family connection, you know, it's nice that you have that. And that's the other side. So now I get to see the other side of the family too. Right. Yeah. Right. All right, man. So, so you're, you're cruising around Ferguson. Your friends are dying. You're living with your grandma and this, this woman with your grandma and this this woman who your grandma tells you is your sister but she's your mom like yeah what are you doing i got like so many things going on at one time like what kind of kid were you how come you didn't get caught in the crossfire of all that craziness you know i honestly say it is basketball saved my

life man because my mom i mean my mom saved my life of course but basketball saved my life to the sense of i feel so mom you mean grandma grandma just sorry yeah just going forward yeah i've never called define our terms i've never called her grandma just ever i've never looked at her and say hey grandma like not once ever um she's always been mom, but she was, she was strict. She was one of those parents that if you mess up there, there's no like in between you're either good or you're bad. There's no accidents here. Like you put yourself in a situation to do something bad.

I think that's always helped me to understand life today. But I was so in love with basketball that if I messed up, there was no basketball. I was so in love with basketball that if I messed up, there was no basketball. So in order for me not to go play, you know, not to be stuck in the house, I had to do everything right. You know, when did you start playing basketball? I started playing real young, actually. I would say around four, four or five. I really started playing my my older brother, who is so funny.

He's actually my uncle because, yeah it's a it's a it's a weird dynamic so everybody that was under my grandmother legally they shifted so whoever was literally my uncle became your brother my uncles i had two uncles that became my two brothers and we're close and we're so close today uh-huh we talk every day like we talk through text or we make sure that we talk every day um and then the mother the we'll call her egg donor that helps out egg donor became sister right so that's how i got that part yeah yeah so i had growing up i had an older sister and two older brothers okay and i was the youngest right so you start playing basketball pretty young pretty young yeah but i mean right now just for people that are listening and we're going to get into all this, but you're, how tall are you?

Six, six. Six, six, fully strapped, giant guns, just rocking the physique, like unbelievable, you know, example of healthy fit living. But you were like a fat kid, right? I was a fat kid. My mom, I mean. Were you big? Were you always like the biggest kid? I was a fat kid my mom i mean were you big were you always like the biggest kid i was always the tallest kid i was always the tallest kid but then somewhere along the line all the

processed breakfast food and all like my mom used to keep like 18 boxes of cereal on top of the refrigerator that's just how we grew up you know everything was in abundance but it was abundance of processed stuff uh fried foods you know things of that nature so the more and more i ate it by my freshman year in high school i was 315 so even though you were playing basketball all along you're still blowing up but you know you got to think about it little league basketball is not that strenuous you know you show up you do a couple layup drills you shoot the ball and then when i got to high school that's when the weight came off because well hold on a second we're not quite there yet so all right so freshman freshman year in high school 315 315 and how tall i was about five eight you know it's still kind of tall that's

freshman that's right you know um but i was fast i was i was a fast you could still move yeah i was agile uh-huh um but yeah i was able to move real good and i think that's what helped me out but i i always always worked hard on the craft i was always doing dribble drills and the uh brother that played basketball before me he took me under his wing so that helped me out like and i wanted to be like him so i was just one of those trouble too yeah he kept me out of trouble um so you know he, he had me doing pushups at five years old. Like, all right, you want to go play? We got to do pushups first.

And I hated it back then. And now it's so funny. Like, I love to work out. Right. But I hated it back then. Right, right, right. So it's weird because even though you're obviously super overweight as a young kid, you're still able to do all these sports and you're super into sports and as your involvement in sports progresses you're still like what tip what tipped

things over into you actually getting like fit and like losing the weight um yeah i would say like around that the end of that freshman year it just accumulation of like football basketball and and trying to run track i tried to run track because i was too fat but i tried but but you you're still eating all the junk but you're able to work your way out of it but the thing was my activity level had just basically quadrupled right because you know you're doing two days in football you're doing you know you might do a morning practice in a day in a night practice of basketball and then you know just trying to get on the track just running and doing sprints and i had this enormous growth spurt as well so i went from

about five eight to about six one in in in one summer like when you were what like 16 or something no like that that uh i would say about 14 15 that that's somewhere in between freshman and sophomore year right and it just disappeared so we're from like overweight to like not extremely skinny but i definitely it was a big difference you could see that i had lost a lot of weight and we you guys did you guys have a good team we were pretty good actually we were always a competitor when it comes to uh basketball actually a lot of sports were you playing center i don't know i was actually uh they put me in point guard but i would always point guard yeah but you're the tallest kid tallest kid but i i was actually pretty good i will say that uh i was

actually pretty good but they would put me around i would move around uh from center to to point guard to whatever and just depends on what what slot i need to fit in right and that's where i would go right right yeah yeah all right so so where does this take you you think you're gonna you're gonna play college ball i thought i was nba i thought i was nba bound like i thought it was the best thing ever to step on the court you know um but it just it just didn't pan out that way but i I did go play college ball. Ended up going to Harrisville State College in St. Louis, which is a historically black school. But I did have a temper.

I was a good kid, but I had a temper because I had scouts looking at me. And my senior year, actually, our senior night game, most people know senior night, all seniors start. It's like a golden rule. Like, unless you got seven seniors, you know, one might have to or two might have to sit out so senior night we only have four seniors on the whole team and i have been starting the whole year and the coach and i had got into it about something stupid the day before a couple days before and i guess his payback was not starting me senior night so I'm sitting on the bench and I'm it it literally was like a cartoon I had like the devil on one shoulder and the angel on one shoulder like

all right let him have it I'm like no no no you know the angel's like don't do it so he finally puts me in the game in the second half of the game not the first half the whole first half I'm sitting on the bench and and that's coming from somebody that started the whole year so then finally puts me in there's a play that happened i passed the ball to a to a friend of mine a teammate uh wesley miller and he ducks like to this day we don't know why he ducked and the coach got pissed he pulls me out of the game so as i'm walking to the bench, that angel and that demon is still sitting there. And all of a sudden, I just snapped in the middle of the game. It like, I just, I yell out, what the F is wrong with you?

And like, the whole band stops playing. The crowd like goes in awe. And like, at that point, I'm just like, well, I already opened up that can. So I just started cursing the body even at that point I'm just like well I already opened up that kid so I just started cursing him out even worse so I'm an 18 year old kid and I'm just letting him have it and like I was just so upset and I didn't know that one of my major scouts was literally in the crowd at the time right right right scout from where uh that was Arkansas State actually uh where my brother actually went to school so yeah yeah the timing's not good but it's ironic because you're like the happiest dude i know no

that situation every time i see you huge smile on your face big hugs for everybody all around nothing but positivity 24 7 yeah that's and i always always credit that situation actually did you So that helped you grow out of that? That helped me grow. So you've been able to kind of put that to sleep, that side of you? Yeah. I actually credit it because so many things happened after that.

After that happened, I ended up going to the locker room because I was just so mad. And when I tried to come out the locker room, the police were actually waiting on me. So an 18-year-old kid. Remember, we were in Ferguson. So it's already kind of weird. And when I tried to come out the locker room the police were actually waiting on me so 18 year old kid now remember we're in ferguson so it's already kind of weird yeah and when i tried to come out the police are like no you can't go out there and i was like what are you talking about they're like well you threatened his life i was like no i didn't i didn't say i was going to kill him i said i was going to f him up it's a big difference like you know like whatever like

so when i got back to school because because basketball games usually on the Friday night in high school, that Monday I got back to school and about second period, second class, I got called to the office and I'm talking to the principal and the principal's like, yeah, John, because I was a good kid for the most part. And the principal, like, she almost was like in tears telling me what, I'm like, why is she so emotional right now? And so because of that, because of it being on school premises, I got kicked off the basketball team for the rest of the season,

which it was my senior year. So that's done. And we're about to go into playoffs because it's senior night. So it's the end of the year. And I got suspended for 10 days from school. Oh, man. It was crazy. It was.

And that's what i kind of saw like no matter what somebody does to you you control yourself right what was the racial profile of the high school oh yeah it was put it this way we were a totally black team and we had a white coach right so it was like just this and was it like predominantly african-american students or um yeah yeah i would say we're about 70 70 to 30 yeah so it was where the cops white yeah actually they were actually they were so that sucks man yeah that cascading effect you know like the domino effect of like you know you lost your shit for five minutes and all these things that happen so yeah but to be able to have the self-awareness as a young person to say, I'm not

going to do that again, rather than, I mean, you could have easily played the victim and just turn the volume up on that. I'm not saying that I didn't for a little while, but it did click like, okay, because I got that second chance to go to Harrisville State College. Like that was, that was a big thing. When no coach gave me a chance, that coach still was like, look, you know. And he was a hard ass, so he kept me in line. He kept me in check too. Were you a kid who was thinking like, I want to get out of Ferguson

and go make my way in the world? Or, you know, what was your – you know, when you graduated high school were you thinking like what what were your what was your idea about what you wanted to do with your life first of all I cried first of all I cried after I graduated because like you said I'm always one of those guys I'm always hugging everybody learning everybody meeting everybody I knew the whole staff the whole school like I would that was family to me so and I probably was like the one kid at 18 that was like oh it's about to get real after i leave here like i knew that family bond that i had everybody there was gonna be gone but i did have huge dreams of like doing something on a

global scale like i always thought global as a kid i was like writing uh business plans like seven like like oh man if i do this and do that i can do this and make this business and uh clothing companies things of that nature i was always doing it i just never shared it at the time um but yeah i always thought i always thought bigger than ferguson i always thought you know i would make it out of there and uh i mean luckily i feel like i have yeah but i always want to go back and help too so it's not like that but yeah i definitely in high school i was i was a big ball of tears because i was like it's about to get real yeah all right so you go to college and uh you play ball like how

does this how does this pan out for you uh freshman year uh thought i was the best thing on the team of course still you know i wasn't cocky i was just very I was overly confident in my skills um which I always tell people be confident in the first place you just don't have to be cocky about it and uh I ended up getting redshirted my freshman year I was like wow like I thought I was coming in starting you know gonna be like this huge factor in the team so I ended up uh redshirting for that year and um that was a growing experience really you know traveling with the team still being at every game sitting in street clothes i'm not even like in uniform in street clothes uh filming for the team you know things of that nature because we were a smaller school we didn't have the big budget like our meal plan like we would go away

to a game we'd get like six bucks to eat you know like it was it was crazy you know like you're like man like really like this is not how it's uh portrayed on tv where you're gonna get this like you got a new car when you get to school everything so it was a smaller school but it helped me grow definitely and um i hadn't to be honest i had never touched a weight room really till I got to college and uh there's a guy here he'll probably never hear this but Archie McClendon I'll never forget him he was 6'2 had like a 40 inch vertical and was built like he had me beat by like 30 40 pounds just solid rock and uh it was just it was hell for me every day in practice with him. And then one day he was like, hey, you want to lift?

So he welcomed me in. And I was like, yeah. I was like, yeah, if I can lift with him and get better with him, I knew I'd be good. But he put it this way. He was 6'2", and he was 7th in the nation in rebounding and 6th in the nation in field goal percentage. Wow. At 6'2". Wow.

Of all the NCAA? Well, we were in niaa oh i okay but we were d1 naia uh-huh um so we were a smaller school but out of all all of that which that's still the same amount of schools in naia as ncaa right he literally was uh-huh like sixth and seventh in the nation all right so he he pops your cherry in the weight yeah yeah he did and was that from that point on was it game on like it was a dig found this was your thing yeah i was a dig because i i just saw my strength like i became more intimidating on the court because i was already already tall but now i'm starting to get size and my quickness was even getting better so like i'm six six you know go

when i when i went to the rim i used to always say like i didn't care who was under the rim i was gonna dunk the ball like it just it was just that intimidating factor i was like my mom could be under the rim and if my mom's under the rim i'm sorry i'm gonna dunk the ball like and and and i i credit to him because he got me in that weight room definitely so uh do you play all four years i actually only got to play three um there was a situation where uh i had i the year i came back was a situation where uh i had i the year i came back i tore my meniscus in my left knee so i played like the first six games of the year and um we were such a small school we actually there was a situation where after i had the torn meniscus coach needed me to play the game and if i would have played this one

more game i lost i would lost a year and i couldn't come back and use it um but we literally only had four people because of eligibility people ineligible because of grades and stuff like this so imagine a college team only have four people four players four players and he's basically putting this pressure on me like hey if you don't play we only got four players and i got a torn knee and and i was sick like i had like this crazy cold and we ended up playing like central missouri state i never forget and um it's probably one of my best games though like that's the funny thing and as soon as the game was over with i went to the bathroom and threw up like like i just lost my life like it was crazy but that was a that was a situation where i lost a year there so um when it was time for me to repeal for that uh the athletic director

at the time was like no you're not gonna get that year back and i was like man like you know everybody said i had a good case you know because, because, you know, I helped the school, la, la, la. Couldn't find out 10 years later after I left that athletic director was like indicted for like money embezzling or something. So that's why you didn't want to appeal the case because you didn't want to put any intention on you. So I'm like, man, I probably could have got that year back. But when does it dawn on you that maybe the nba is not happening and uh and you start to pull focus on the nba um you know the

nba you take that n and make it into an m yeah yeah i i never really lost it i guess uh at a certain point i i had tried out for a semi-pro team in St. Louis, St. Louis Skyhawks. Pretty much made the team, actually. And you just get to see that, like, this semi-pro life is not that glamorous. You know, you're paying for your own hotels. How many players actually end up making the leap from those semi-pro? I mean, it happens in baseball, but not in basketball, right? Yeah, basketball.

And that's the thing. You got that soft hope in the back of your head you're like man it might we might be able to pull this off we might make it to the league still and for me i guess it just clicked i was like you know what this is this is not it you know um so i i ended up um going back to grad school to get my nba and uh i think that was like a great move for me because even though i was you know doing so much in st louis i was still in the confines of my my comfort zone right and uh when i went to grad school i finally went to miami well i picked it was between three places i was like look i'm tired of. Snow is like my arch enemy, like cold weather. I do not like cold weather. So I looked at L.A., I looked at Texas, and I looked at Fort Lauderdale, actually.

And I knew a couple people in L.A. at the time, and this was back in 2003. I know a couple people in L.A. I didn't know anybody in Texas, but i did know one person in florida and uh he was like you know what if you move here man i'll help you out whatever you need you know and i just i just felt like i could trust him so i was like all right i'm doing it now at that time i hadn't even looked for school or anything i was like all right that's the spot you just you picked the geographic location before the school yeah i picked that out so because i wasn't going to go to school at first i was just going to move the whole idea was like to transfer jobs i was actually working for a singular wireless

at the time i was a manager at singular wireless and i was like yeah i'm just gonna transfer jobs and then when i tried to transfer there was nothing and i had made a promise to myself i was like look if i can't do anything good after two years i'll go back to grad school so i finally graduated um in 2001 from harrisville state college with a degree in marketing so i was like all right you know like let's let's go look at grad schools and i found a school which is a nova southeastern university and the business school was actually named the h. Wayne Huizenga School of Business, which H. Wayne Huizenga was the guy that started Blockbuster, used to own the Dolphins, Waste Management, all these great companies. And I was like, wow.

And he literally helped write the curriculum for that. So I was like, I mean, I guess he knows a little bit about business. And I guess the key thing was it was about entrepreneurship at the school, too. So I didn't know what I wanted to do at the time, but I knew I wanted to start my own business eventually. But there was like one little hiccup was you need like a 2.5 to get into grad school. And I was a party boy in college. What was your GPA? Oh, man, I was like a 2.5.

So you made the cut. I made the cut, but I was so nervous. I didn't even know what my GPA? Oh, man. I was like a 2.51. So I like. So you made the cut. I made the cut. But I was so nervous. I didn't even know what my GPA was when I graduated. So when I had to go back and get my transcripts, I was scared to even open the letter. I'm like, what was my GPA? I just know that I actually left. So I don't know if you've ever seen the movie Van Wilder.

I think I did. Yeah. It was like the guy that was in college for like 10 years. had his own like personal assistant that was me except for the personal assistant assistant and the golf cart he had his own parking space but i just like high school i got to know everybody at the school that's the kind of guy like that's what i'm interested in like you're that kind of guy like you have this sort of innate ability to, you know, create community wherever you go and understand like, hey, man, the party's with me. You know what I mean? Like come with me.

Like and to bring people into that like equation because you have like you're very charismatic. You have a really magnetic personality and people just want to like be around you. You know what I mean? Well, so when you graduated high school and you were like worried like, oh, this is my family and i'm like i'm listening to that and thinking yeah but you're just going to do the same thing wherever you go yeah but as a kid i was like how am i gonna do this again and then i did it and then when i got out of grad school i was like it was the same thing when i got out of a college actually the same thing i was like man i don't want to leave like it was to the point and everybody

that's listening probably understands like when you go when you have to register for classes you have to sit in you have to set an appointment i didn't even do that i was the guy that would just walk in hey sally here's go my registration talk to you later and walk past everybody just walk out class would be registered didn't have to worry about it because i just grew a rapport with everybody like i was the guy that would bring in breakfast for the the people that worked in the office not not even when it was registration that was just me just i would stop in and say hi you know what's going on but i did that with the whole school you know i just i just grew to know the whole school in fact the president of my university actually was my fraternity brother oh wow that's

how close it was yeah but that's that's leadership yeah you know what i mean so that's that's entrepreneurial in its own right yeah right so you go in you're like i'm gonna be an entrepreneur i'm gonna learn business you do the deal you get your mba had no clue what i was gonna do there's no snow so like do you i mean when you graduate do you start a business right away or like what's your next i was i was actually when i went down there i went down on a mission like i literally i knew i played around and screwed around in college and so you know so many people were like you're going to florida to go to grad school because they knew i was a party guy so they're like wait a minute you're gonna go to florida at all places right it's like spring break

yeah and that 12 months that was my motivation i was like all right i'm gonna shut all these people up like i'm gonna go down there and i'm gonna really go into it and um i actually ended up making the national chancellor's list for grad school which was like you know high GPA everything and the university actually hired me before I even graduated to be the manager of admissions for the business school so now I'm actually in charge of the program that I'm actually attending and that was like a big thing for me so I actually worked for the school for about three to four years um even before i did that i actually interned uh at the dolphins uh for marketing oh wow yeah so that was like i said growing leaving st louis leaving ferguson was a huge step for me because i i really got to spread my wings there you know i i grew this

community of my own my tribe in st louis but i i just felt like confined you know like i felt like there was more that I could do right and then you know the internship with the Dolphins working for the school and then and so this is what like 2006 or something yeah about 2006 and um my ex-wife at the time somehow convinced me that we should move to atlanta even though i was doing so good and building this this thing in miami so we end up going to atlanta and i hated it i just completely hated it why is that i think because atlanta reminded me a lot of st louis uh there was still that race racial tension there but now it was kind of reversed that's interesting because Atlanta has such a massive African-American population it's like majority

exactly but the thing was it was like but it's the opposite it's still the south no but it felt the opposite see in St. Louis it felt like the white people felt like they owned everything so they were the more racist people but it was like when i got to atlanta it was like the reverse now like when a white person would show up in atlanta they're like what is this person doing in the city like you know it was the total opposite like miami being a melting pot la being a melting pot new york being a melting pot um i remember being in uh in st louis and i went to actually have lunch with a co-worker and she just happened to be a white girl with blonde hair. We were just at

lunch and by the time I got done with lunch I had text messages talking about, I heard you on a date with this white girl. I was like, wait, what's going on? I was like, even if I was why does it matter but why is it so important? So there was always racial tension. There's not many mixed

relationships in St. Louis or things of that nature. you know so there was always racial tension like you know there's there's not many mixed uh relationships in st louis or things of that nature and atlanta just kind of fall you know under the same boat i just i saw that it just was so you know singular like i was i'm all about everybody loving everybody everybody you know blending with each other being happy and it just felt like that wasn't happening in atlanta so you're like i'm going back to florida and i told her i was like we bought a house we bought a house and everything i was like look okay all right uh and plus i got laid off from the job i was working up there anyway because the recession had just hit then around 2006 2007 i'm like all

right i'm gonna go back down i'm gonna make the money then you can move back down so i actually packed in my car drove back down atlanta found a job in a i had an interview drove back down for the interview got the job started working immediately uh had a great friend who helped me out his name was uh jimmy topple who was uh he's an indian guy like one of my best friends and he was like look man you can have my couch just stay here and i was like nah man i'll give you some money he was like nope you're not and like literally for like six months he let me stay on his couch like literally i stayed on this man's couch for six months and uh he let me work and i would just send the money back to pay

the the mortgage so your wife's still living in atlanta still living in atlanta this relationship is not going in a good direction it's not going in a good direction starting to gather yeah exactly so you know um so she finally got everything i moved back down here i ended up working for uh a for-profit university so i got back into the educational sector, which I wanted to, but it was a for-profit university. So it was like totally, totally different vibe. Working at Nova, it was a non-for-profit. So it was like, it was more about the students.

And when you go to a for-profit university, it's about the money. Yeah. And it was just crazy. It's about fundraising. Yeah, about fundraising. Like how many numbers did you get this month how many students did you get in not about what quality students you got in and um that was like the decline of that relationship because i got laid off from that job they got

they got caught under some investigation and they were doing some things unethically and i wouldn't do them so like eventually they were like weeding out all the people that wouldn't do it and i got fired and uh that was 2011 it was like 2011 and uh she was like what are you gonna do i was like well you know i've been working on this company because i started badass vegan in 2010 and i was like well i've been working on this company i think i'm just gonna go all in i was like i'm just gonna go all in And if it doesn't work in five or six months, then I'll do it. Cause I've been saving money while I was working. So I was like, look, I got enough for like six months to live off of. And she was like, oh my God, I can't believe you said that. Like, that's so unattractive. And like, she, yeah, she wanted me to like, in her eyes, she was used to

the nine to five. If you're not doing a nine to five if you're not doing a nine to five you're not you're lazy you're not really working yeah yeah so all right so she's not she's not supporting the entrepreneurial not at all the spark that's uh that's lighting up yeah no not at all so let's back it up a little bit though because uh we haven't even gotten into like the heart the meat of the or the the vegan meat of the whole matter here which is uh so you're i i i presume you're like working out all the time and you're fit and all that kind of stuff and and at some point you decide you're going to go vegetarian yeah so i when i first got to grad school in 2004 um my body went through a cultural shock so coming coming from St. Louis, there's not a lot of different foods to eat. Fast food and fast food.

That's pretty much it. So you're eating like what's a typical day in the life of, you know, what you were eating when you were growing up? Oh, man. It would be something chicken and fried because my mom had this Sam's wholesale cart at our deep freeze. It was full of like different types of chicken different types of fries uh cereals like you know all the sugary cereals that are out there and i was like that was it man just just eating a lot of processed fatty fried foods that were just adding up you know and so when i moved to to uh fort lauderdale my the fort lauderdale

miami area to go to school you know i was in this culture shock i had caribbean food i had jamaican food dominican food cuban food i had uh haitian food and i me i was trying it all and i wasn't vegan yet so i mean all of it and my stomach was just like okay time out like we can't handle this so I remember going to the doctor at uh at the school and I was like you know like man just like I'm I'm having complications what kind of what were the complications specifically this is IBS like pretty much like just being real it was like it was like IBS like so he was like do you eat a lot of meat like no not at all you know we automatically say no of course not he was like do you eat a lot of meat I'm like no not at all you know we automatically say no of course not he was like try to eat meat for a couple days you know like

about 30 days just see how it feels and I was like yeah right I was like you see how big I am man like no I need my meat blah blah and um I had a all right so I kind of ignored that information that was about October 15th I want to say 2004 when i when he told me to do it i was like yeah sure how you know the day yeah it's crazy well i know the day because of what i'm about to say next so october 31st 2004 i had a good friend who had sickle cell and he passed away back in st louis so on ha day, 2015, he passed away. I'm sorry, 2004, he passed away. And right then and there, I was like, well, I was like, damn it. I was like, as an ode to him, I'll just, I'm going to take care of myself. I'm going to do this. I'm going to try it.

And how heavy were you at that time? I wasn't real heavy at the time i was i was in college you know i was i was in grad school i was real i was real active i was still in the gym i was still playing ball every day like i just you know i wasn't playing for a team or anything but that was like one of my main forms of cardio was always playing ball no matter what i'll go play ball like that was my thing and uh i remember that happening when he passed away. And I went to do it for 30 days. And within 15 days, I felt like a million bucks. And I was actually upset. 30 days, no meat. No meat.

I was still doing vegetarian at the time. So you're having dairy and stuff. Yeah, I was having dairy and stuff. But you probably hadn't gone a single day in your life without eating. No, never. I didn't think that was possible. Just like a lot of people in america prior to that were there any vegetables on your plate if they were they were like cooked

in butter or something like you know coming from the down south kind of mentality everything is like we think we think it's made with love but we you know we put all this other stuff on it and that's what made if it was spinach it was like spinach with butter on it and all this other stuff on it and that's what made if it was spinach it was like spinach with butter on it and other stuff it was greens it had like a piece of ham cooked in the middle of it and right all kinds of things like that so yeah so 30 days no meat but here's the thing before we even get into like what happened when you when you did this experiment for 30 days what led your doctor to make that suggestion because that's not it's not normal kind of suggestion that everybody says like it's not normal yeah and the thing is i don't remember the doctor's name i don't remember like i just went in like i just the doctor at the school

right yeah like it was just you gotta track that person down you know what i'm saying like yeah i gotta track him down so uh yeah that's how i actually started the whole vegetarian thing and to even transition to vegan uh like i think i told you like my mother actually uh was diagnosed with uh colon cancer and i remember talking to doctors and checking when they were like you know how did this happen and like too much animal protein things of that nature and this is two years later um because that was like 2004 when i did the vegetarian things was 2006 she was diagnosed with the colon cancer and you know doing my own research too you know i didn't just jump gung-ho into it i found out that like animal protein is just related

to all these diseases and i'm like wait a minute so if we can prevent it then why the hell am i gonna put this in my body so i always say i'm a big believer in learning from my mistakes but i'm a bigger believer in learning from other people's mistakes so like if somebody does it and it's not working i'm like all right you know what it's time to change it up so but you do this self-experiment and how long was it before you felt like so much better oh 15 days 15 so 15 days no meat yeah it's a light bulb moment for you light bulb like and you're like that's it i'm done with meat like i'm done with meat yeah what are your what are your buddies telling you oh of course you know like these

other big guys are like dude you're nuts like you're gonna die like you know like you can't go without meat man like we put on this earth to eat meat you know, like you can't go without meat, man. Like we put on this earth to eat meat, you know what I'm saying? Like the classic myth that we see online and on the internet and on Instagram and Twitter all the time. I got it all back in 2004. Like there's no way. There's no way you're going to stick to it. Right. So 30 days in, you're feeling 15 days in, but I assume you do it. Then you're just all in.

Yeah, I was just all in at that point. 15 days in but i assume you do it then you're just all yeah i was just all in at that point um and having that kind of epiphany you know like like myself i'm sure your whole life it's like milk you know milk does the body good beef sweats for dinner you know pork and suddenly you're like why do i feel better not eating these things i've been told my whole life like i need to have it every meal right and then you start to you're almost in my case yeah you're like wait have i been lied to or maybe i'm an outlier like i don't know what's going on yeah but it starts to make you question other things because you're like oh these this is conventional wisdom but if this isn't true like what else isn't

true so you have this experience of feeling better i mean then did you start you know checking out some books or what what did you start researching a little bit yeah i did uh i was researching a little bit just checking online things of that nature um you know i started to really really like just look at it and it just like the cdc actually was a big a big factor for me it wasn't as much as books until the whole vegan thing that's when the books came into play like the china study of course things of nature but before that i was looking at like the cdc and and and websites like that like disease incidents uh and the relationship between animal protein and disease exactly like um so that was that was a big thing for me i was like wow like let's let's

see what happens like well you know what it's 15 days was amazing let's let's see what happens and the first couple days rough like did you have cravings like how did you because you know like if someone's listening to this and they're like maybe i can try that yeah like walk me through you know how i think i think the cravings were were a less of a worry than just annoying ass people that just kept telling me that i have to eat meat or i'm gonna die you know like but when you like on day one were you telling your friends like hey i'm doing this or did you just keep that to yourself yeah i just kind of kept to myself but then when you felt better then did you kind of come out of the closet on that yeah yeah like they i think they just started to notice like when we would go out i'm like oh man just give me the salad and the fries like i was still i'm real

about it i'm not i didn't just go like straight into like oh i'm just eating uh berries and fruit i still like you know i try to be social with it at the same time so but i would just not really worry about and it was vegetarian so there might be some cheese on the, you know, salad or something like that or whatever the case may be. But I just stopped eating the meat. And around that time, like, there wasn't as much variety as there is now, but we had, like, bokeh. You know, there were some things out there that just kind of helped me out. They had a chicken patty sandwich that made me feel like I was still eating chicken patty, so that helped out a lot. Uh-huh.

And so you do this thing so what what tips it over are first of all like do you lose a bunch of weight like what are are you able to like work out just as well actually maintain that ball just as well yeah that kind of stuff yeah yeah actually i maintained pretty well yeah i didn't lose any weight i most people want to lose weight you you want to keep the weight. You were trying to make sure you keep it on. It wasn't even a focus for me on that point. I think if the focus would have been to lose weight, then I probably would have. But the bowel issue cleared up. Oh, that was number one for me.

That was like. And the alternative with IBS is what? Like steroids and like all kinds of weird. I think so. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And like I said, that was number one for me was to clear it up. But I think it was number one for my roommate too because you had to live through it right so he was like yo clear this up man like we this is this is not good so yeah that that cleared up and

and that once i saw that i was like all right well i can function without this meat in my system and then um i like when you're when your mom gets sick yeah when mom gets sick that that's that's when the the flashbulb went off you know as far as like wait a minute so milk dairy eggs cheese all this stuff has the same dna makeup as the meat so i'm thinking i'm cutting out the meat itself i'm still ingesting it through the milk and all this dairy so that's when i was like all right right now and i'm one of those people like i don't need a month to prepare for something i don't need to go you know what in 2017 i'm changing everything off when i say i'm gonna do it i just do it so that day i was like done that was it that was it yeah and most people aren't like i'm like

that too yeah most people aren't so when people come up to you and say you know how do i start or what's the suggestion i'm like just do it so you're like a forget about like easing your way into it because this is what i tell them like okay so if you know that something's going to help you change your life and you're going to live better why do you put off making your life better like that makes no sense like it's like it makes no sense at all it's like okay you know what like the doctor literally told me if i cut all this out i'm going to increase my chances of living but i'm going to start next year or maybe i'll just do 10 of what yeah i'll do 10 of it or people are always like well or i'm gonna do it but i'm still gonna eat some of this with it i was like okay so that's like saying i'm gonna have an oil change in my car but i'm gonna pour some of the old oil

back in it makes no sense right you gotta if you're gonna change it you gotta change it but but it's hard for people to change your habits but it's hard mentally that's the thing yeah it's not a physical thing at all yeah exactly yeah and that's why i tell people like you gotta put yourself in that right mind state. Like, and that's why I'm all about positivity. Like, look, you control your destiny. That was like one of my first tattoos I ever got was I control my own destiny. You do.

Like, you really do. And there may be some situations where there's some outlying factors. But when you're in that situation with the outlying factors, you put yourself in the situation to even allow those outlying factors to when you're in that situation with the outlying factors you put yourself in the situation to even allow those outlying factors to affect you so if you're in a situation where people like well my husband doesn't want to eat it and my kids don't want to eat it i'm like they're not they're not force feeding you though whatever it is they're not force feeding you take personal responsibility take personal responsibility yeah and i've always been a i've always been a big big like person about that i've always like a big person about that.

I've always tried to promote that as much as possible. Right. People want it. The irony, though, is that even if you solve all those questions for people, like, okay, what if I can deliver this to you on a budget? And what if I can make it super convenient? And what if I can make sure your husband or your wife or your kids aren't going to be a problem? There'll be some other reason. So it's not really that reason because if you're really committed and you prioritize it you can make it

work it's a there's a fear there's a fear of success there's a fear of the unknown yeah and there is a fear of of challenging these conventional ideas about how we're supposed to live because i don't know about you but like when i started i had the same experience like i felt so much better wait but everybody's like you're harming yourself this isn't healthy and you know where are you getting your protein i was like i don't know but yeah but when they keep when they ask you so many times and you start to question yourself like maybe this isn't healthy even though like the evidence you know my experience is so positive you start to question yourself so it's a it's challenging to be able to kind of have the the gumption or the backbone to be able to stand tall and like say no this is what i'm doing and i always find

it interesting when people say well you know i was vegan for like five years and it was the best i ever felt i'm like well why'd you go back they're like man i don't even know like you're like wait a minute so and i'm sure it had to do with something there was some peer pressure somewhere it might have been work it might have been socialization that makes it hard yeah you know and i think also for me you know i'm also in addiction recovery so like having that hard line is like really important for me because you want that armor to be firm like i just don't you know what i mean but like yeah you if you if you do a little cheat or whatever you don't tell to be firm like i just don't you know what i mean but like yeah you if you if you do a little cheat or whatever you don't tell anyone you know like then there's a little chink

in the armor it just makes it easier to do it the next time you know and then before you know it you're a burger king every day you know at least that's me like that's what would happen to me uh they do have a veggie whopper by the way if anybody do they now is that nationwide nationwide oh i didn't know i was in i knew they were i was in cumberland maryland and found a veggie whopper by the way if anybody do they now is that nationwide nationwide i didn't know i was in i knew they were i was in cumberland maryland and found a veggie whopper at burger king wow so that that's big that's that's pretty big i got i got it without the bread because i think the bread still probably got the eggs and everything yeah well so does the sauce and i was like i just need it for now and it's not doesn't have egg in it or anything like that it's like a vegan whopper or something like yeah wow yeah so they're

stepping the game up yeah they're trying you gotta like uh you gotta you gotta change these systems yeah exactly yeah um all right but but let's get back into like your your like narrative arc here so um so your mom getting sick kind of motivates you and inspires you to go vegan. So what did, what were, what did you experience like immediately? Or was there any, like, did you feel different? No, that was like, that was even another level. Actually, that was like another level of like being in tune with my body. Um, I had a good, the, the friend that I knew in Fort Lauderdale before I moved, his sister was vegan already. And always like go vegan like she's always like she didn't push

it down my throat but she would you know if i asked she would tell me because i was always intrigued like how do you do it like man that's crazy just like we get all that like how'd you do it that's crazy so um she was like when you do it you'll understand your body more than ever in your life and i was like yeah sure whatever and i never forget i was at the basketball court and uh i was just telling somebody this actually last week and i went up to dunk the ball and i literally felt the energy from my calf muscle to the time i got to the rim and dunk the ball like it just literally shot up from the the leg that I jumped from. But I'm on a court with all these other guys.

I was like, I can't tell anybody. They already think you're crazy. They think I'm weird. You know what I'm saying? So, I never forgot. I couldn't wait to get home and, like, tell her, like, yo, that was crazy. She was like, I told you. Just that connect, just being super connected to your body and how it works. And people always ask, you know, like, well, how does it feel to be vegan?

I say, you know what? I relate it to like losing your virginity. I can tell you how it feels all the time. But until you go through it yourself, then you'll never know. You know, that's what it is. Like once you go through it, now you understand it. Now you see how it is. But you have to go through it.

i think part of that is is a lack of awareness of how much we all eat to like modulate and regulate our emotions yeah and there's so many foods out there i mean you could do this on vegan foods oh yeah the basket uh there are so many foods out there that you know we eat for comfort or we eat to like you know when we're depressed or what you know what i mean and like when you go vegan and then you're just so much more conscious of like okay i'm putting this in my body and you're eating to feel good and fuel yourself optimally uh you become aware of how much you do that and when you're when you've kind of removed those foods that make you feel numbed out then you're so you're just much more present and aware of like what your body is doing. And I'm sure when you're running a marathon, you can feel like when your body's clicking on

this, this nodule and you know, like you can feel your body go through these stages when you, when you're being physically active or even just listen, if you throw, you know, three, three you know double cheeseburgers down the gut you just want to sit on the couch and like watch tv you don't want to you're not you don't really feel anything you're not connected to your body yeah you know that's true so all right so uh so you're starting to feel that right away and then uh your friends probably think you're super crazy i think i'm super nuts and uh i i ended up needing to get knee surgery again uh on the other knee because i was compensating so much on the first knee surgery that i was putting pressure on on the right knee and um i was sitting on the couch just eating you know whatever uh whatever was i could get my hands on and um sounds so funny but

i saw the p90x commercial and i was like damn i might want to try this so i tried it and um sounds so funny but i saw the p90x commercial and i was like damn i might want to try this so i tried it and um a friend of mine was uh he knew the owners at p90x and he's like man i really think you should send in your results and i was like no they're not that that good he's like no i think you are like i'm always hard on myself like when people are like man you're doing good you look good i'm like ah yeah man but i got just like five pounds and i'm working on and then this like this body fat level so i sent them in and they were like please tell me you have more pics and i was like yeah i got i got more they're like yeah we would love to use you so if you ever want to laugh i'm in like all the commercials and ads oh really i didn't know p90x but the thing that really hit was when people

found out i was vegan they're like wait a minute so you got in shape while being vegan i was like yeah i got fat while i was being vegan too like you know it's not you can go either way and i just didn't know it was going to be this big phenomenon when p90x is part of beach body beach body right yeah so what's interesting about beach body is my buddy darren olean who i've had on the podcast he formulated shakeology and he he like this dude i mean he's like a laird hamilton body double like he's jacked he's like handsome and super fit and he travels to all the crazy corners of the world to find these exotic super foods that are super nourishing he's totally vegan like totally plant-based shakeology is

actually a really great product it's it's fully vegan and the whole thing um so there is a a plant-based you know vein right kind of they don't like yeah make a big pronouncement at the time tony wharton was vegan right and you know i'm saying so that was interesting to me too yeah he works out with brendan like all the time yeah i don't think he's vegan anymore uh because we met up tony and i met up at i want to say around 2011 2012 and he was like oh i'm not vegan that's when i like uh i like we just got to sit down and talk and he was like yeah i remember you from the commercials and everything i was like oh yeah uh-huh and he was like uh he's like yeah i'm not vegan anymore and i was like ah i was like hey that's okay i was like no hard feelings like you know nice to meet you she was like you know

people say that and they're like it's like sheepishly like you can't be friends with them anymore no you know what it is people say that to me like i think that's because they feel bad they're like yeah like it's almost like it's almost like yeah man i was at the top of the mountain and i fell off man i'm sorry like you know like you're like no we'll still be friends like there's no problem with that i'm not i'm not one of those people like if you're not vegan we can't be friends no because i well i know a lot of people like that yeah but my thing is i don't think i can influence anybody if i'm not around them right it makes no sense well and if if all you're if you're, the only people you're around

see the world the way that you do and behave the way that you do, then you're not really impacting change. You're not growing yourself. Yeah. So you have to challenge yourself and also be in environments where you can potentially influence others.

Exactly. And that's why I choose to be so positive. Like, I'm not saying nothing ever pisses me off. I just choose to be very, very positive. Gotta be nothing ever pisses me off i just choose to be very very positive gotta be the lighthouse yeah you gotta be a lighthouse that everybody's gonna go to the lighthouse they want to see if they see the lighthouse in the middle of the dark they want to go that way right so i figured i'm usually the tallest person in the room anyway might as well be might as well be your teeth are like the beam of light yeah everybody's always like what do you do

to whiten your teeth i'm like like, I don't do any teeth. And again, I look in the mirror and I'm like, man, those things are like kind of like a yellow tint. It's so funny. I never see until a picture. In a picture, I can see how white they are. In the mirror, I never. But I notice also most mirrors in bathrooms and things that have like a yellow light. Right.

So I'm always seeing my teeth is like yellow but everybody's like no all right so uh so you do the p90x thing that must have lit a spark like hey maybe i can do something with this exactly you know that's how that's why i formed badass vegan because i was like i can do something with this with like my first youtube video has like 700 000 views and it was like the crappiest camera ever but it was the content that people loved and the content of that video was what just my my transformation and p90x just just keep basically you're vegan and you're trying to like snap out of this funk from your knee surgery so you decided to do p90x and so so what happened

like you just got really cut as i got really cut like just really cut like because i just literally i would say for a year straight i didn't veer off once i didn't miss one day uh it was p90x was 90 days so about three months i would go three months straight take a week off go right back to it three months straight go right back to it like i just kept doing that for a year and um just my results like but even after my first 90 days it was just this drastic change um and that like i said i wanted to start something but when i started badass vegan i didn't even know what the company was gonna be about i was just like let me let me see what i can do and everybody laughed at the name of course i was like badass vegan

and like that's the stupidest name you could ever name yeah but your mom always called you a badass she was like how did you get that i was like mom you called me badass since i was like bored like you know saying and then uh this one guy one time too he he commented on one of my videos he was like man you're one badass vegan and i was like hmm i kind of liked it right and i went and checked to see if the website was available it was available so you got the name and you got the url but like what's the company yeah uh badass vegan llc i actually incorporated it literally that monday so i bought the website that saturday incorporated the company that that monday and the premise was literally just to have a safe haven for

all vegans like okay not all vegans sit around barefoot hug trees and smell like patchouli now don't get me wrong on the right day if i see the right tree we got a moment we probably go hug like it it happens i i'm all about being the hippie as well but i think there's another side to it we like to travel we like to go out we like to go out. We like to, you know, go to concerts. Whatever it is, we just, on another level, there's no animal products involved. That's it. And that's why I wanted to have people to see that. I think the biggest compliment I get every time is people are like, wait, you're vegan?

Like, I think that's a good thing. Like, they're still shocked. Like, wait, wait, you're this tall black guy dressed pretty good i'm not gonna say i'm a fashion giant guns yeah you know saying they're like wait you're vegan you know and and it's kind of cool because the crew i roll with dom thompson and tori washington we're all pretty much like these big black guys and everybody's like wait you all are vegan you know and that's good you know so people are seeing that you can do it you know and that's the great thing so um that was the premise behind it but it was also a safe haven

for people that want to be vegan like i didn't shun anybody away i wasn't like hey if you're not vegan don't come to this website like hey if you're vegan come to this website hopefully there's some information that can help you out but the idea the idea at least initially from the start was badass vegan would be like a community and yeah uh in information and resources exactly yeah my whole idea was like to have like a a facebook for vegan you know like that was the whole idea at first but it just kind of took its own path and uh it you know it got viral in a good way online and it just spread and um that's when like i i teamed up with a couple of business partners and we started you know working with some things and first thing i started doing

was like the clothing uh that started working out so right now you're wearing a t-shirt says no way jose way w a w h e y yeah so but you got all kinds of cool t-shirts yeah yeah yeah keep those going um and i started you know uh you know copyright knows because there's people start stealing them like wait a minute i would see people like even though the company was trademarking everything i would see like badass vegan on the other company shirts i'm like wait a minute that's no it's like and um so i started doing that then i teamed up with this company and we worked on like a cookie together um and that went pretty good and then now one of the biggest things i'm doing now is the the protein shake was the right with vegan vegan smart vegan smart so that's like

a it's like a uh supplement nutraceutical right like an all-in-one shake right yeah we and i helped formulate that and uh so that's been a great so i'm one of the business partners plus uh, supplement nutraceutical, right? Like an all in one shake. Right. Yeah. We, and I helped formulate that. And, uh, so that's been a great, so I'm one of the business partners plus the face of that one. I guess I couldn't find another face. So we said, let's just go with me. Right. So that's been going real well. We got that a whole food CVS vitamin shop. Um, so that's been going real well. I'm working on some apps right now, um business partner, which we are doing basically taking like very popular games and just veganizing them. So we have like a candy crush type game,

but we use farm animals. And with the farm animals, when you line up the three, they get to come out the barn and go play in the field. So it's not like we're not like pushing it down people's throats. We're just giving them that subliminal message of like animals are friends things of nature so working on that so you got into this for health reasons obviously you know as did i so when did the other stuff start becoming important to you the ethical you know considerations and the environmental getting called a hypocrite at times you start to you start to like you're like you're like no i'm not i'm doing this for the animals you're like yeah

but you got on leather shoes you're like yeah no they're like so you think that was like a different cow like what do you think and it just started to play into my head i'm like wait a minute so i'm i'm not eating animals at this point but now i'm still killing them to make my clothes and my sofa and my my seats in my car and things of that nature so that's when i really started to like take a step back and look more into like hey is there fashion out there that's that actually has a vegan inspired clothing so okay let's look at it and there wasn't much at the time so that's when i kind of went into trying to create my own which i'm still working on that too uh but that was that was the biggest thing i was like all right well i'm not gonna get rid of my whole wardrobe so my my

process was if i can find something to replace that belt then i replace the belt and donate the belt and if i can find something to replace those shoes now I can get rid of the shoes and put them in. But I didn't get rid of my whole wardrobe at the time. I still had to go to work. I still had things I had to do. Yeah, it's an interesting conundrum. Like, we went through a similar thing. Like, I remember, you know, I'm two years into this and people are starting to kind of pay attention.

You know, getting ready for Ultraman, doing these races. And, like, PETA came to our house to kind of pay attention. I, you know, getting ready for Ultraman doing these races and like PETA came to our house to do a little story. And we had like a cowhide rug, you know, like just stuff we'd had, you know, for years or whatever. And I was like, and I actually asked Lisa Lange, I was like, what is the most ethical like sort of response? Like what are we, what's the ethical thing to do here? Like, do we keep it because, you know, and use it as best as we can for as long as we can, do we donate it? Do we get rid, you know,

get rid of it? Like, I don't know what the right thing to do is. And she was cool. She was like, listen, it's different for everybody. Like, I can't tell you the answer to that. And I think your response is, is valid. You know what I mean? And I think also in terms of kind of getting a big picture on the impact our consumer decisions have on the planet, like being vegan with regard to your consumer purchases is important. But there's even more. It's like how much plastic are you consuming? Exactly. How much single-use items are you bringing into your life? We're actually working on a new jar for the protein shake that's gonna be like biodegradable right

because we're like man like yeah we're helping as far as uh as far as you know supplying a vegan alternative and a vegan staple for people but it's in this plastic jar right so so there's still there's always like there's always another level yeah i think it's always important too when you look at the community of you know people that are interested in these issues like you know every we're all living in glass houses man you can't like throw stones because it's like you're okay so you're 100 vegan but like if we if i went into your house and like analyzed everything you know it's like there's always something you're not doing that you could be doing better yeah and so it's aspirational it's like that's what gene bauer always says it's like we're just aspiring to be better every day and and and we evolve into this like if you had told me you know in 2007 like oh

you got to get you you can't wear leather shoes whatever like i'd be like what are you talking about you know it's like you have to be open to the message and that requires you to kind of step into it and feel it out as you go right yeah so you're a guy who like it's not like you're you were a bleeding heart for the animals that came as a byproduct of like living this lifestyle and i think there is like when you said you told that story about your feeling your achilles and and you know, your calf muscle. Right. Yeah. It's like on some level, that's like an awakening of Kundalini energy.

You know, like there is a heightened awareness and an elevated consciousness that starts to take you in a new direction with your life. And then suddenly you're open to these ideas that before you'd be like, yeah, I'm not doing that. No way. You're like, no, I would never do that. And now'd be like, yeah, I'm not doing that. No way. You're like, no, I would never do that. And now I'm like, yeah, that's me. Like growing up the way I grew up and eating so many processed foods until I moved to Florida, I had never had a mango. I had never had an avocado. I had never had a plantain. Uh uh there was so many different things that i had like the process fake version i don't have a mango soda that had no mango in it whatsoever so when i had a real mango i'm like damn this is what a mango tastes like i'm like wow like i don't even want the fake stuff anymore like you know there's so many things that like that you get awakened to as time goes on like wow like

this is amazing well that it it it combats that idea that if you're gonna go vegan suddenly your diet's gonna be super boring but like when you look back at what you were eating before you probably you need to save the same four things yeah like and you spent more money without even thinking about it because if you if you buy a meal plan a meal at you know mcdonald's or burger king whatever you're literally looking at about five dollars and then you don't just leave it at that yeah cheese yeah let's supersize it uh you know what give me two of those anyway and you're looking at about ten dollars every time you go in there and you can buy subsidized that should be like forty dollars exactly that's subsidized right but if you go i tell everybody you can buy rice

and beans and it'll last you forever but the thing is we've been so conditioned and so spoiled that we think we can't eat the same thing every day i'm like before we industrialize the world and you know deliver things here and there wherever you grew up that's what you ate every day if you grew up under a mango tree damn you ate mangoes every day but we've been so spoiled now to think that oh man i can't eat the same thing every day that's like that's horrible like no you can eat the same thing every day just make sure it's balanced net meal every day and you can eat the same thing every day and you're gonna save money i'm a creature of habit i could eat rice black beans with like maybe a little avocado and hot sauce.

I actually do better. I could eat that like every day. I do better when I eat the same thing every day. Like my body reacts better. If I eat the same thing every day that's clean and good to go, same thing. And I might have a little something that's a treat for me. You know, I'm not telling people to like not have anything they enjoy. But the funny thing is you start to enjoy that food.

You know, the food, you enjoy that rice and beans and whatever you're putting in it. You enjoy that. Like, and so you look forward to that every day. So are you still, were you doing like 80-10-10? I did it for a while. Yeah, I did it for like a year and a half, man. I started eating cooked food and it literally was just like, man, I want something to cook. It was like there was nothing like I wasn't feeling weak.

I just I think what happened was I was visiting somewhere cold and I just wanted like this hot. Like it'd be really hard to be all raw in a cold place. Yeah, I wanted like some hot soup. And that's actually when I put like the first recipe up uh which was a badass sweet potato soup it was like sweet potato dates jalapeno and uh like and i blend that all together and then i chop up onions and like then i would cook them all together with that the onions kind of like caramelized in it it's just amazing like i'm thinking about it now like i you know but i think that's what it was it was there was no like diminishing my performance or anything like that I just missed the taste of cooked food that's all it was all right so you're what 210 right now I'm actually I've been bulking I'm

actually up to 238 238 yeah all right 238 66 yeah talk me through like the impact that adopting this diet, this lifestyle has had on your workouts, your fitness routine, just generally being like athletic and healthy. I would say the biggest thing I noticed was that my recovery time. And I've heard that from a lot of vegans as well. But my recovery time is just nuts. Like I can go through a workout and just literally, um, just blasted that day. And right now I'm actually working on a new program. Like I just released a free program like recently, which was good. It was pretty good. But now I'm working on the volume training. Like just, I'm actually doing about 540 reps a workout now on one body part, just going

all in. And while I may be sore the next day i can go right into it like i've noticed that like my acidity levels down my alkaline level is up so for people that don't know about that check that out you know that that's when your body is literally at a great level to where you're not acidic um i can my endurance is longer too like i started doing the half marathons when I went vegan and I was like shocked myself. I'm like, oh man, I'll never do that. And then I never went a whole marathon, but I did about seven halves and it just, I got that runner's high. I really did get that runner's high. Like now could I've gotten it not being vegan? Probably,

but I probably wouldn't have tried it you know if i would have been vegan um but no diminishing uh returns in terms of like strength what you can push you know no no no it's it's crazy like those all those silly myths that are like associated to it it's just they're they're they're nothing so when you go into the weight room or you're interacting with your buddies you know that aren't that aren't vegan or that you know would play ball with or whatever like what is the like what is the core message uh that you want them to take away from who you are and what you're doing i think i think the biggest thing for me is that i want people to look at me and say basically if he can do it i can do it like if that guy over there like

i like i'm not trying to be a superstar my thing is i want it to be like that guy if he can do it oh yeah i can definitely do it you know i'm saying i want them to be like oh man he's nobody special right well you look at you look at john sally or something he's like yeah but he's a big celebrity yeah i know but i mean john is like yeah but he's john sally you know what i mean like you're you're like very accessible yeah i answer all my emails i mean it might take me a while but i answer them all you know i just want to be i want to be that normal guy that shows that extraordinary can be done that's it i'm an ordinary guy that's showing you that extraordinary can be done and you can do it too but you just got to make those changes nobody's gonna do it for you nobody's gonna come in and and and do the work

for you you have to do it but it can be done and that's that's my whole that's my whole mission right there is to just show to everybody like you know you can be compassionate and you can still be strong it's cool like you don't you don't miss anything by doing it and when you look at kind of what's going on with health care in america right now you know one out of every three americans will die of a heart attack 70 of americans are obese or overweight uh by 2030 you know something like 30 to 50 of americans are going to be diabetic or pre-diabetic like it's just insane and i would imagine that those statistics are even more heightened in a place like Ferguson. So the communities, you know, the community that you came from, this is much more of a flashpoint crisis than it is in, you know, Venice, California.

You know what I mean? Yeah, exactly. So do you feel like a responsibility to the African-American community or to speak out and address the socioeconomic divide that has created these urban food deserts that are contributing so massively to these chronic ailments that are killing a lot of black people? You know what I mean? Like killing everybody, but like killing a disproportionate number of underprivileged people that people hate to admit it but people hate to admit it but diet diet is killing black people faster than any gun is like we're we're dying at a rapid rate because of what we're eating like yes the gun violence is horrible it's happening but you talk about somebody's diet they'll get more pissed about if you talk about their diet than if you talk about you know somebody getting shot which is crazy you know and that's something

we have to look at i mean i look at it as we have to control what we're eating like i say it all times in all my speeches i'm like you can check you know there's so many myths that are associated with eating this vegan way of life that they'll have you scared and in fear. But if you check any hospital in the world, you can check the richest country in Dubai. You can check Haiti, the poorest country. You can check the ICU, the ER. You can check all the floors. You can check all the rooms and you'll find one thing. It's not getting full of vegans.

Like people aren't coming to the hospital because they had too many plants that day you know i'm saying like and that's what we have to realize is that it's not about science all the time just step back and look at the actual picture you know heart disease heart failure uh high cholesterol you know type 2 diabetes all this stuff is not coming with a plant-based diet it's not it's just not happening and that's what i've been trying to emphatically like put that out there for people to see you know for the african-american community to see as well like look look what we're doing to ourselves yeah we got so many outside forces that are coming at us so let's not help them out like let's not

help them out let's not let's not have them out like let's not help them out let's not let's not have you know one foot a knee everything in the grave already like let's be the best we can be and not only that you start to realize like what we talked about earlier your mind starts to clear up you start to see things totally different like you don't look at everything with anger because it's hard to think of a master plan when you're pissed you know what i'm saying like you know it's hard it's hard as hell like if you're pissed about the situation probably the the plan that you came up with is probably misguided just a little bit reactive because it's emotional yeah yeah it's like you know it's like business as well like i

tell people you can't you'll never find a good businessman that's emotional you'll never see it because once you get emotional you your tactics have been altered and you're going to do something that's out of character of a good business it's just like life like if you're trying to make your life stop being emotional about it be be factual like look at what what needs to be done right so what about the person that comes up to you and says, I hear you, John, that, you know, all I got is a liquor store in my neighborhood. Like, I don't have, like, forget about Whole Foods. Like, I just can't even find, like, produce, you know, where I live. Like, how do we, like, what do you say to that person and how do we begin to, you know, solve that problem? begin to um you know solve that problem i think i think the biggest thing for that is that we have to realize that yeah you might not have the you know extravagant grocery store but there's always

a grocery store somewhere like the thing is people people will make a means to do something good like don't support that liquor store like the um lupe fiasco had a great line in one of his his raps he said he said if you don't support if you if you don't support the liquor store then what you buy liquor for like if you're mad that that liquor store is in your neighborhood just because you don't buy it in your neighborhood doesn't mean it doesn't go to the same bank account you know what i'm saying like if you buy the liquor store if you buy the liquor in beverly hills it's still going to the same bank account as if you buy it in the middle of Compton. It's the same bank account. Like we get we have to look at the bigger picture. So don't support that liquor store. Support fresh food. Go get you might have to travel a couple more miles.

You might have to get on the bus, whatever the case is. You might have to walk, but go there and get that food. Because what's going to happen is these companies spend billions of dollars on marketing research and then they see the people from these neighborhoods are going to buy good food they're going to be like well let's like let's let's keep them from going 18 miles to go get it let's give them one that's convenient because we know we're going to get their money because if there's one 18 miles let's say i won't say a company name but there's a grocery store 18 miles, there might be a competitor that's 16 miles. So guess what? They're going to keep competing to get closer and closer to you,

so you're the one that they're going to go to. Yeah, it's... You speak with your dollars. Yeah, so to bring it back to the example that you used at the beginning, like Burger King has a vegan patty now or whatever that's not because they thought it would be cool yeah they want money so there's consumer demand like they did their market research and realized this is a trend people are into this and if we want to maintain you know market share we have to be able to deliver what people want so

these corporations you know you can perceive them as monoliths, but they're malleable depending upon what we decide to do with our dollars. Yeah. And so that is a political act and it's super important and it's potent and it's impactful and it's meaningful. And that doesn't mean it's convenient. Yeah. That's the thing. Yeah. So it's like being successful is not convenient.

You got to, you have to make it a priority. Yeah. That's it. You know, you got to decide that this priority yeah that's it you know you gotta decide that this is important to you and look around your community you know do you see a lot of obese people that are having trouble like you know i was in the i was in some airport in the middle of the country a couple weeks ago and it's like everywhere i looked were like people in their 30s in wheelchairs like motorized wheelchairs and those golf carts everywhere i was like dude you're like yeah like people like when and coming from where i come from somebody who died like 35

i'm like man he had a nice life no no he didn't that's 35 that's not a or they'll say a long life you're like that's not a long life like that's not long like we have to really sit back and look at it and um like i'm actually actually this is like the i announced it yesterday but this is so you're basically getting exclusive on this so i sat and talked with cal conspiracy for like two hours on a saturday uh-huh with kip and keegan yeah yeah i was with keegan and uh so what we're gonna do we're actually about to make a new documentary uh basically talking about the impact that hip-hop has on uh the community as a whole and how many hip-hop artists now that are from these areas that

we talk about are now vegan right this is a huge thing that's going on right now it's huge so who are some of the guys uh we don't have we don't we literally we we were like okay we're doing it but like just off the top of your head like who are some of these hip-hop artists oh waka flaka uh you got russell simmons you got uh andre 3000 from outcast stick from dead prayers you got styles p from the locks jada kiss from the locks uh you got maya who's a singer you got um oh man all these all these amazing artists and i'm sorry if i'm leaving somebody out i'm sure there's there's plenty more i actually have a list on my phone because i was like all right who do we reach out to now because as crazy as it is oh jermaine dupree he's vegan yeah jermaine dupree's vegan yeah these people want to reach out too i've heard that usher is i'm not i'm not 100 sure oh stevie wonder stevie wonder's vegan now i didn't know

that either yeah stevie wonder uh common has been known to be vegan as well um so kiwan and murphy lee who are with the saint lunatics with nelly from saint louis they they're vegan even moby you know we got Moby here. So we're going to like primarily look at hip hop for sure, but we're definitely going to talk, you know, reach out to everybody else. Jhene Aiko, those are just the names I came up with. And I'm sure some people will hit me up now that I said it. And they'll be like, oh, you know, you got to talk to this person.

Yeah, you did the, I know. And I'm sorry. I apologize. But so did you go to Keegan or did Keegan come to you? He came to me. Oh, come to you oh he did so he wants to do that's pretty so basically what he wants to start off he likes to keep things on the dl though yeah i'm like we better check with him no no he actually he actually told you you could talk about he told me to talk about it and i was like you're sure he was like no put it out there because um and that was that was amazing that he said that that's how i know we're going to do it because he was like no put it out there and and what they want to do is they want to start with my story coming from ferguson coming from this like place with with violence and things of that nature and and relate our

our eating habits to our okay our okayness with violence like we're okay with murder like think about it we're so numb to it now i was literally when i was back home i talked to a lady at my mom's my mom works at my elementary school that i went to now so it was like surreal to go back to this elementary school that i went to 30 years ago and this grandmother came in and she was explaining how her son had just got shot in the head like literally like the week before and she had no tears in her eyes at all it was just so calm that's like you know i'm saying like we're just so like used to it it's insane like can like i hate to say that but anybody listening imagine talking about your kid getting shot like you'd be in tears but she was just so like yeah and you know like oh her his friend and we know it's a setup and

it was emotional and she was just so calm about it right you know like no emotion her voice never cracked once but drawing the parallel to diet drawing the parallel to diet meaning that when we see all these people who become ill from the food we're just we're checked out on we're checked out on it we don't even think about it to seeing people that are really overweight now all the time all around us yep the is, we can talk about somebody else harming us and we'll get pissed. But we talk about what we do to ourselves. How dare you? How dare you tell me about that?

Like, I'll stand up for somebody else doing it to us. But I'm not going to stand up for you telling me that I'm doing it to myself. I won't stand up for that. I won't hold myself accountable. So how do you resolve that like how do you how do you go into those communities and begin to have a conversation about that in a way that's going to be impactful and hopefully you know shift attitudes and behaviors around diet and nutrition especially when you're dealing with look you know a lot of people on welfare food stamps you know it's like they got bigger you know worries yeah in this that are more and

that's the problem maybe they don't have bigger like in the in the macro sense that they don't because your health is everything but in the immediate like sort of you know i just got to get through the week yeah and and we we kind of got to play like wizard of oz on them we got to pull the curtain back we got to let them see that what what has been painted as a big problem for you has nothing to in comparison as your health like out of like i always i like to ask people all the time i want you to write down a list of 10 things that's the most important to you and half the time health is never on there it's never on there because we we've checked out with health being our most important thing without health you can't do anything else on that list anything that's on your list you can't do it's not that people don't think

it's important they take it for granted yeah it's like yeah i'm gonna be here another 30 years i'm gonna be another 40 years even though my heart hurts when i step when i stand up from a chair you know i'm gonna be another 30 40 years right and it's basically just taking that picture back and and letting people see that most of the things that are normal are not right because we have a we have a bad association of the word normal being right you know it's normal to be 30 and be overweight it's normal to be 25 and oh you know that was my college years i was in shape in college i'm not in shape anymore and i'm not saying anybody has to be a supermodel but you have to be healthy like we because what are you teaching the next

generation what are you teaching your kid you know if if you went to school if your child went to school and somebody cursed him out you'd be pissed but if you went to school and they have an overweight teacher that's teaching them something wrong you don't say anything about that right so it's health we have to we have to think about health there's so many things that are that we can pull like pull back that curtain the thing is people have to be ready for that curtain to be open yeah because you can't you can't and you can't compel somebody to be ready that's a yeah exactly driven exactly right and that's where i think the documentary will come in play because so many people will listen to waka flaka so many people will listen to jermaine dupree they will listen to russell simmons they will listen to andre 3000 they will listen to

these people because they listen to them already they listen to their lyrics every day so now it's like wait a minute so he's krs1, I'm sorry. He's the OG. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Sorry, everybody. Sorry, everybody. Somebody hasn't even heard this yet, and they were already typing that out. I know. Yeah, KRS1.

Yeah, he came in hot and early before anyone on that. So to get those people that they idolize already to be like, look, man, all right, okay, forget the money, the flash, and all this. You can't okay forget the the money the flash and all this you can't even enjoy that money and that flash and all that stuff if you're just if you're bedridden how you gonna enjoy that and what i love about that this whole idea is is that it upends the argument that all these other documentaries get which is like it's a rich white yes this is like a one percenter problem you know what i mean like all these food documentaries about it's like that doesn't apply to my life but here's a here's a way to communicate with a completely different section of society and and perhaps no for a fact

the people that that really need to hear that message the most yeah yeah and it's gonna it's gonna happen to everybody and then the thing is too like hip-hop influences everything you could be at a basketball game you're gonna hear hip-hop in the background it it influences rock it influences you could you could be it could be a funeral and when you go home everybody has some kind of hip-hop playing it influences everything i don't care if you what generation you come from it influenced the urban market it influences everything so that's why we're tapping into that to get these people to be able to tell everyone what's going on and why they changed they came from the same place as you and look it wasn't a rich thing it wasn't because they got money now that they did it you know what i'm saying and why they're so adamant about helping out other people with it. We're not trying to preach it to you.

We just see people in pain and we're like, look, we can get you out of this pain. I'm not trying to charge you for the pain. I'm not trying to charge you something. I'm not trying to get, I see you in pain. I'm trying to get you out of pain. You can't get mad at somebody that's doing that. Right. Well, you have to come from a place of, like, I'm here for self-empowerment.

I want to empower you so that you can make better choices in your interest that that that you know allow you to live more fully exactly you know yeah and that's what it's all about that's beautiful man i can't wait to see that i didn't know like keegan usually tells me what's up no we literally had the meeting two days before we're recording this right now that Uh-huh. That's great. Like, is he going to freaking finish What the Health or what's going on, man? Yeah, that's actually February. I know they're almost done. He said February that should be releasing.

Okay. So, February that should be releasing. That's exciting. He's working on one more project and then we're starting that one. That's great. So, I actually, and I'm just honored that he wanted to use my story to start it off. Uh-huh. You know, like where I came from, what I've been through, you know, things of that nature, like, you

know, it, and, and being able to choose the path that I chose. Cause we all choose, we all choose every day. Well, what you're doing is really powerful. And I think that it's, it's really important because yeah, you're not, you're not like kicking a hacky sack up into pain, you know, it's like, you're like you're not, you're not like kicking a hacky sack up into pain. You know, it's like, you're like, you're, you're cutting a very different, you know, uh, picture of what a vegan is and can be. Um, and, uh, you know, you Dom David Carter, like these, you know, powerful, strong, strapping,

athletic, you know, African-American dudes are really, uh, challenging these stereotypes and shout out to my boy dave too yeah dave's my boy too in case somebody's like well he didn't mention dave no david carter yeah dave my boy he's the man yeah dave's my man and there's lots of other guys too i know this is yeah yeah this is not like we're not excluding anybody you know i'm saying like this is just just at this conversation that's who came up just now but yeah everybody everybody knows i travel and you you you said it the other day you're like where where you at now like i travel the world pretty much promoting this and like i'm i love meeting everybody so i'm i'm down with everybody i'm not one of those guys it's like

oh you're not part of my clique my crew i don't mess you No, I mess with everybody, vegan or not. I mean, I hang with more vegans. That's true. But I hang with everybody. I'm all about, you know, like bringing everybody in. Let's have a good time. And somebody is going to be influenced. And that tactic for me works a lot because I've had friends since I was a kid and I've been vegan for 10 years now. And I got a friend now that's been vegan for two years it took her eight years of me being vegan and she finally was like literally I can remember the text message she sent me she saw me at a good friend of mine his wedding I was in his wedding and she saw me and she was visiting from DC to the wedding went back to DC text me when she got back she said

all right I'm tired of this shit she said you are happy you're always happy your skin's always glowing you're always having fun you're always the life of the party like you said the lighthouse she's like i'm down let's do it and she's been vegan two years since that text message that's great you know it took her a while to get there but but for me i never pressured her i never pressure anybody it. I feel like the more we enjoy it, the more we have fun in this party over here, people on the outside of the party are like, damn, I want to be a part of that party. But if you try to go preach to somebody, defense wall comes up immediately. Well, above and beyond that, I mean, you bring up a really important point, which is sort of the vegan community online and what that looks like. And there's a lot of

great things about that, but there's also some things that are problematic like if you just sort of stumble into the youtube uh the vegan youtube ecosystem yeah it's not gonna take you long before you're gonna see videos of people gossiping about who's sleeping with who and pointing fingers about this guy should be doing and and a lot of people taking other people's inventory about they're doing it wrong and this is the only right way to do it. And there's a lot of that back and forth. And I find like, I don't want to be part of that. I don't find that to be productive.

And they're arguing with each other. But if like you're genuinely interested in learning about this lifestyle and you see that, potentially you're gonna be turned off because you're just seeing a lot of like sort of petty behavior as opposed to helpful information and people that are um like yourself like you know exuding the lifestyle in a really positive way that's encouraging and also welcoming yeah like we um i don't know if you know mike rashid he's a youtuber uh so i mean just as a

caveat like he's not vegan like amazing vegan youtubers out there so i'm not casting aspersions on anybody in particular it's just a general observation what you've seen but uh mike rashid big youtuber real good friend uh tory and i and vegan food share if you've seen him yeah i know how yeah he's been here yeah yeah yeah so we went to we went to work out with mike rashid one day and when we gave him a vegan food share shirt and he he wore it he posted it and you should have seen the negative comments he got from vegans like how dare he wear this i'm like no you're not seeing the big the funny thing is what they don't know is we talked for three hours about him going vegan

and seeing all the negative backlash he got for it he was like what and he even commented he usually doesn't take the time to comment he was like all these people talking negative about me why would i want to be vegan why would i want to associate myself with this but they were like he doesn't deserve to wear a vegan food shirt shirt he didn't earn that. I'm like, so how long do you have to be vegan? You don't even know if he just went vegan last night. And he wants to wear it. Yeah. You got to fan the flames of positive change.

You can't like throw, you know, water on the spark. And there's a lot of that going on. And that's a big problem. Yeah. You know, it's like, yeah, I sympathize with him. He's like, yeah, I was excited about this. He was so excited. And now like this is your community. Exactly. Like I'm not interested in that. you know it's like yeah i sympathize with him he's like yeah i was excited about this he was so excited and now like these are this is your community like i'm not interested in that he said

it he was like why would i want to associate with that like yeah yeah so for all you that left that negative comment i want that to sink in now and that was years ago but i mean you know and i'm sure that from what we just saw in that one i'm sure that happens all over the place and people like they'll tag me when they're being negative on somebody in that one i'm sure that happens all over the place and people like they'll tag me when they're being negative on somebody else's page i'm like if i'm like if you come to somebody else's page and you're negative about what they're doing what does it say about you that's like going to somebody else's house and judging their house now if they come to your house or your page and they're saying something negative then by all means defend yourself

but you're going out here talking bad to them getting and then flaming up the fires and now both of you are arguing and cursing and uh you know the say like the saying says like never take time to argue with a fool because people from a distance can't tell who is who if there's two people on the corner arguing you don't know who's right or wrong just take whatever impulse you have to leave a negative comment on somebody's social media channel and and you know and then use it in a productive way in your own life exactly like you know what i mean like check yourself yeah and and make sure you know because sometimes i will say this and i've i've learned this as time went on that everybody that actually says something that

opposes you is not hating and they're not saying the wrong thing sometimes it's actually an eye-opening thing because i used to be that militant go after everybody vegan and i had a good friend in fact the same friend whose wedding we were at he was like hey bro man i just gotta tell you like that's that's not really helping anybody yeah he was like you got you gotta tone it down dude and i was like really i was like no man i'm trying to help everybody he was like yeah but you're basically calling him stupid and then say hey listen to me he's like all right after you call me stupid i don't want to hear anything you said at that point and i was like wow i never i never thought about that and then so i just had to step back and come back to this like positive zone and i'm like okay all

right well this is how you can help yourself and then i took that that realm like don't get me wrong i'm sure those people may be helping somebody that's just not my tactic that's not my way you know i'm sure they i'm sure they've changed some people because i know one of those accounts that we didn't say but i know one of those accounts is pretty like out there and goes after people and they've helped some people change but that's just not my way like i feel better sleeping at night if i feel like i'm being that that yeah there is a certain section of the population that responds favorably yeah so i just know me if somebody talked to me like that we got a bigger problem than just social

media yeah i hear you um we got gotta wrap it up here but there's one more thing i wanted to ask you about which is what's your response look right now it's very popular to adopt this like low carb high fat high protein diet like you know are you in ketosis are you taking exogenous ketones like are you you know butter is back like yeah this is like sort of commandeered the the headlines in the health sector yeah um so i'm sure at the gym you have dudes coming up to you saying what do you think about what do you think about this way of eating like so how do you how do you confront that and talk about i think the problem the problem has happened because people are are

putting carbs in this bucket they put them all in the same bucket and all carbs are not the same like we know that a carb from banana is not going to be the same as carb from bread you know like that's what's happening they're thinking carbs is this processed junk that they're putting in the same bucket as natural foods and now so they're like you know cut out carbs completely but if you eat a banana or if you eat a sweet potato and you try to compare that to the same thing as pasta or bread or uh all these other processed carbs cereal things of that nature your body's not going to react the same to that. And that's what's happening is that, again,

it's normal now to put all carbs in a bucket. You're all on the same list. I don't care where you came from. I don't care how natural you are. You're a carb, and we don't do carbs. Right, there's certain doctors out there that say there's no difference. You know, in terms of how your body metabolizes these sugars, it doesn't matter if you're drinking a Coke or eating an orange or something like that.

That's like, I don't know if they ever played the commercial out here in California, but a couple of years ago, there was a commercial that literally said your body can't tell the difference between good sugar and bad sugar. And they were talking about like, I think it was actually a C& cnh sugar and i was like what like it's like yeah your body can't even tell the difference between good sugars and bad sugars so they were promoting like sugar i was like yeah your body can't actually tell the difference between good sugar bad sugar like if you if you're actually eating the sugar cane your body can digest if you, if you're actually eating the sugar cane, your body can digest that better than if you're sitting or eating grains of like processed sugar. That's, and I can't,

I can't, well, actually I can't believe they came in with a commercial because there's so many commercials out there that you, as soon as you see them, you're like, wow, they really did that. So what do you say to these dudes in the gym? My thing is that, you know, when they talk to me about, I like look like look at your energy level your energy is gonna be gone like you think you you think you might look okay more appealing to yourself in the mirror but you're probably like one more day from like getting rushed to the hospital you know i'm saying like this thing about long long term we all need carbs i don't care what you what what kind of kind of person you are, what kind of athlete

you are, even if you're just sitting on the couch all day, we all need carbs. That's just a part of life. The thing is, where are you getting your carbs? And that's what we need to look at. Once you start seeing where you're getting your carbs, then you'll see, oh, I guess I can incorporate it in there. So this is what I tell them. Like, start looking at more natural, unprocessed carbs. Look at that. And I'm like, you know, if you've been going this long without carbs, because sometimes they'll be, you know, you try it for 30 days or something like that. And I'm like, no, don't just dump a gang of carbs. Because now you're going to go exactly the opposite way. And you're probably going to have like an insulin problem at that point but you want to like incorporate something that's natural because the more natural you eat across the board people fail to realize the more you can eat period like well also the body sorts all this stuff out

like people are always asking me what's your ratio of this to that to the other and it's like i just know i eat like real food i eat plants all day all day long and I let my body figure it out. It's never been an issue for me. Yeah, I'm like, I don't even know my numbers. Like, you know, I hate to say that to people. They're like, well, they're like, first, like, how much can you bench? I'm like, dude, it's probably low, actually. I don't even know.

I don't sit there and measure how much I can bench press. And then they're like, well, what's your macros? Like, how much is your protein, fats, and carbs like man i don't even know like i could i could tell you what i eat for that day but it might change tomorrow like i'm like you like how does my body feel today what do i got to taste for today you know and what i've come to realize is that we can almost eat anything we want but you have to have that trigger as far as like all right i'm not gonna eat the whole cake i'm gonna have a piece of i'm gonna have a piece of that piece of cake you know like i don't have to have the whole thing and that's where we we fail to realize like

because i can honestly say with traveling so much people always invite me to the restaurants and they're giving me like like a whole spread and i'm like all right i don't want to be rude but i'm not gonna eat the whole thing i'm gonna try it all but i'm not gonna sit here and eat eight platters that they laid out for me you know and that's where we have to that's that's another thing that we have to look at when they're talking about all this carbs it's like yeah you can have carbs the thing is sometimes like a box of rice we're like oh okay mini rice we eat the box of rice but if you look on the back of the box it says that's four servings of rice so yeah that's gonna be bad but we think of it as i can eat this whole box you know a serving you don't need the whole box

just a serving things of that nature so that i just tell them to just be more mindful of the process how much process are you eating and how much natural are you eating the more natural you go the more the better your body will adjust and react to it so that's what i tell all right man yeah we gotta we gotta we gotta shut it down we gotta wrap it up i can talk to you for like two more hours it's actually getting dark outside it's cool man uh that was really great uh you are a lighthouse of hope and positivity and inspiration um i love what you're doing you are a true example of of living a healthy happy satisfying life and you are uh also an amazing example of service because i like we were talking about earlier i

know how committed you are to getting this message out there. You're always on the road. You're always showing up at all these events. Yeah. And that ain't easy, man. It's got to be draining. You know what I mean? It's fun, but it's also like. People think it's just fun. I'm like, man.

It is fun, but like. Six six on a plane is not fun. It's tough, man. It's not for five hours at a time. It's tough. And for people that are listening, you know, go to the episode page on my website and I'm going to put all kinds of crazy pictures of of john up there and you can see how super cut and ripped and and you know he's

he's like saying i don't know what i benched like just if you see the picture of him like this guy knows what he's doing in the gym and it's all working out in his favor uh he's also killing it on instagram at badass vegan on instagram and the website is badassvegan.com yep uh twitter you're badass vegan yeah everywhere i try to keep it straight and you'll uh there's been a couple copycats coming up now but yeah you'll see me though you'll see me there's guys trying to pretend they play themselves off like you really oh dude it's so funny man it's so funny but like i don't talk bad about them i'm like all right i guess it's supposed to be flattery i guess you know things of that nature well between you and and uh dominic thompson you guys you guys got the that corner of the internet covered i think man you guys are doing a great

thing it's a great it's a great service and uh if there's ever uh anything i can do to help spread your message and uh and and uh be of service to your mission i'm i'm all about it appreciate it man thank you cool so uh so the documentary is exciting that's what's coming up and are you like you have are you done traveling now or you got more travel is there any more people with they want to connect with you i got one more trip that i know in uh december for uh the portland green festival i'm speaking there um and i've been getting a lot of emails to speak more now. So it's like I'm still promoting my brand, but I'm speaking as well.

So it's like an in-between thing. So yeah, if anybody's looking for me to speak, you can still email me. Just give me some time to get back to you at johnatbadassvegan.com because I've been getting a lot of emails. And I love love it i love that people like my message and my delivery dude you're gonna get a lot more emails now for yeah i know but but just understand that i am getting to you i'm definitely getting to you and if people want to uh get one of your dope t-shirts or check out the garment

garments that you're doing is that all on badass everything's on badassvegan.com uh we're working on shoes now we're working on everything so because i i've been looking at the shoe game for the vegans it's not too good there's an opportunity there i think yeah and my biggest thing is too like you'll never see a shirt over 20 on my website like i i mean yeah i've built this brand i've done i've done a lot to do it. But I just feel, I come from a place where people can barely afford a meal. Like, a $30, $45 t-shirt, just, I can't see myself doing that. So, like, you'll never see a shirt over $20.

Like, it may say $25 but don't sell for $20. Believe me, it was $20 to begin with. Like, there's just, it's out of the question. It's not a permanent sale. It's a permanent sale. Don't worry about it. Everything is $20, you know. So, but, yeah sale it's a permanent sale don't worry about it everything's 20 you know so um but yeah it's a lot of things it's coming coming this way so yeah the documentary is going to be like the biggest and probably the most influential thing that i do in 2017 for sure yeah good talk thank you man peace plants Good talking to you. Thank you, man. Peace. Plants.

All right, that's it. We did it. Hope you guys enjoyed that. Super cool. I love that guy. As always, please make a point of checking out the show notes on the episode page at richroll.com. Got lots of links and fun stuff to explore beyond the parameters of the audio format and learn more about John and his mission and a lot of the things that we

talked about today. As always, thank you for sharing the show with your friends and with your coworkers and on social media. Take a moment, leave a review on iTunes. If you haven't done so already and click that subscribe button. And again, mad love for everybody who is using the Amazon banner ad. Also, if you haven't signed up for my free weekly email, make a point of doing that. It's called roll call. Every Thursday, I send you a really short email with just a few tips, resources, documentaries. I've enjoyed whatever book I'm reading an article I came across that I thought was interesting. Just some, you know, useful stuff. No spam. Uh, it's not complicated. It's totally free. I've been doing this for, I don't know, 15 or 16 weeks. People seem to enjoy it.

And so if that sounds like something you would like to grace your inbox on a weekly basis, you can sign up on my website. I'm never going to spam you or anything like that. Also, go to richroll.com for all your swag needs. We've got signed copies of Finding Ultra and the Plant Power Way. We've got cool t-shirts, tech tees, all kinds of cool stuff. I want to thank everybody who helped put on today's show. Jason Camiolo for audio engineering and production, Sean Patterson for graphics, Chris Swan for additional production assistance,

and for help compiling the show notes and theme music by Annalema. Thanks for the love you guys. Peace. Plants. plants. Thank you.