#176: The Primal Journey featuring Mark Sisson
Mark, welcome to Austin. Thanks. We are
Speaker 2:Great to be here.
Speaker 1:We are excited to have you. Today is a special day for us because we actually officially have to get a new dream podcast guest because this was from the beginning our dream guest. So just excited
Speaker 2:to be here. Definitely. Okay. Yeah. It's so happy to oblige.
Speaker 2:It's Sorry to put that you in the position of having to find another one. It's gonna be
Speaker 1:tough because people ask us that question all the time and we kinda just have defaulted to you for a while, honestly. So
Speaker 3:Yeah. Because that's the impact that you've had on us from a nutritional perspective. I know Harry was saying it, but when we first started going carnivore and really learning how to cook and be intentional about our nutrition, you know, your blog and your YouTube videos were really instrumental to both of us. So Right.
Speaker 2:And we have a lot
Speaker 3:of other friends and people that can say the same thing.
Speaker 2:No. I love hearing that. And, you know, as I said, almost two decades ago, I wanna change the way the world eats, and I can't do it myself. I gotta pass the baton to people, and I'm happy to be passing the baton to you too. Definitely.
Speaker 3:Yeah. One of the things that we were saying, know, we've listened to so many different podcasts and interviews, and you have so much good content on metabolic flexibility and all these other nutrition topics. People love to focus on the Primal Kitchen exit, but we were curious, you know, we're in our first year of our creative journey going out on our own. I'm 28, Harry's 29, And we were curious, you know, where were you at this point when when you were our age, and how did that kinda lead you to the all the success that you've had? We thought that could be a cool place to start.
Speaker 2:Well, sure. I mean, look, life is a journey. That's cliche, but it is. And it's a process. And I tell my kids I didn't know what I wanted to be when I grew up until I was 47.
Speaker 2:And then I changed my mind again when I was 61. So, there's no time limit on becoming successful or even defining what success is and then trying to make it toward that goal. So, in my early days, into my mid twenties, I was a top athlete. So, my life revolved around traveling around the world, competing first in marathons and then in triathlons. I was a contractor.
Speaker 2:I just, of necessity, had become a contractor, putting myself through college that way. And so when I graduated college, I continued my running career. I wanted to train for the nineteen eighty Olympics. And so, I spent the next three years training hard and paying for that because you could not make money in those days as an athlete, as an endurance athlete. Like the toughest sport in the world for many perspectives, and it paid no money.
Speaker 2:Meanwhile, those baseball players are making all the money.
Speaker 1:Oh, Guaranteeing contracts and all
Speaker 2:So, anyway, so I was a contractor for a while, then when the actual competing fell apart because of things that later became known to me as inflammatory diet and overtraining, and all the things that later became the primal blueprint, I pivoted, I wrote a book on training. I understood early on that we were all sort of overtraining in an attempt to improve performance. We're all chasing performance, but probably the wrong way. So, you know, lot of the Internet gurus in business will talk about find your passion and your purpose and let that drive you. And if you find your passion, the money will follow.
Speaker 2:But a lot of times, you know, passion isn't what's really driving a successful business. It's finding an opportunity. Right? And in my case, it's less passion and purpose. It's more compulsion.
Speaker 2:I felt compelled to share secrets that I learned with with the world. So, I never, like, dreamed I would one day oh my god. One day I wanna be the mayonnaise king of Malibu. And you are the mayo king. It never never, you know, cropped up on my radar.
Speaker 2:But I did early on when I wrote my first book, it was the Runner's World Triathlon Training book. And I realized early on, had some information about training that could save people's lives and at least save them from falling apart in their training because I understood this new sort of technology, this new technique of training. So, I felt compelled to write a book. Years later, I started a supplement company. That was my first really successful business.
Speaker 2:And the supplement company was also contemplated to help elite athletes recover from their training more easily. So, there were things that we discovered in the science that, you know, antioxidants in those days were a big buzzword. And so, I put together these supplement formulas that I couldn't find anywhere else. And I had a degree in biology, and I knew what I was doing. But I felt compelled to create this for myself and then sell it to other people.
Speaker 2:So, it wasn't a passion, it wasn't a purpose, it was just I felt compelled by this insight, this moment that I'd had to do this. So, then, with my supplement business, I was doing a lot of television, of local cobbled together networks of health broadcasts. Little almost public access channels and things like that around the country. It was pretty cool. And so I was able to sell my supplements using that as a platform.
Speaker 2:When that business model dried up with the advent of the Internet, people buying online, I pivoted to Mark's Daily Apple. I created Mark's Daily Apple in 2,006 as a platform because one of the things that happened Brett, you shared that you'd had IBS, I had Or colitis. I had IBS. And it was horrible, and it ran my life. And so, when I got rid of grains, which was my big epiphany there, I thought to myself, wow, if, like, if I defended my right to eat grains for the last fifteen years because I was an athlete and I needed the carbs and blah blah blah.
Speaker 2:If I defended my right to eat grains, and yet I knew all I knew about anti nutrients and gluten and tightly folded proteins, how many tens of millions of people must be suffering doing the same thing I was doing? I'm compelled, I feel compelled to write about this and talk about this and let other people know that there is relief, and it's not found in medicine and it's not found in multiple surgeries and ectomies and all the other things that people go through. So, the through line in my own journey has been a compulsion, feeling It's sort of an irresistible urge to get this out there. Primal Kitchen started because I was pissed off that I couldn't find great tasting condiments and things to put on my food that were also reasonably good for me. You know, the old saw about condiments and dressings is, you know, use them sparingly because they contain ingredients that are harmful.
Speaker 2:In those days, there was fear of fats, so don't use them. And so then out came loads of fat free salad dressings. Well, what is that about? And yet they had artificial sweeteners in them. So I looked at the whole array of these things that you are supposed to put on food to make food taste better, and there was nothing that existed that fit my specifications.
Speaker 2:So, there I am in my own kitchen making mayonnaise, making and I'm not a chef. But out of desperation, I was creating these you know, I made a ketchup, a barbecue sauce, a couple of salad dressings, and then I thought to myself, this can be done. Why aren't other Why isn't big food doing this? Yes. And so, I felt compelled to introduce that sort of technology once we figured out how to commercially make these sauces and dressings, and I introduced it to the world, and it's changed the face of food.
Speaker 2:Now, were the first company to do this, and now there are 50 or a 100 companies doing what we do. And I'm very proud of that because I wanted to change the way the world eats. I didn't have to have all of the glamour and all of the money behind it. If I was able to pass that baton along to other food companies, was happy to do that. So, here we are today.
Speaker 2:I've been a fan of foot health and shoe comfort my entire life, and have been absolutely frustrated at the offerings that even minimalist shoe companies have put out there. So, I designed a new brand of shoe and I felt compelled to share that So, with the that's kind of the through line and that's where we get to where I am today. It's less about passion and purpose. And, you know, I have passion about these things, and I have purpose. But I get up in the morning every day excited to share whatever gift I've discovered with the world.
Speaker 2:It's not me that I'm sharing, it's the gift that I've discovered, and I wanna share it with the world.
Speaker 1:It's it's an amazing transition going from athlete to business person. And I'm wondering if there was a moment that sticks out in your mind or something that just clicked with whether it's Mark's Daily Apple where you started to get some early success or the first products that you made. Was there something that made you really continue to keep being interested in putting these products out there? Because you've put so many amazing things out there that I feel like it benefited so many people. So
Speaker 2:Yeah, thanks. Again, you know, it's a journey and many of the successes have come from the failures, have arisen from the failures that preceded them. And I didn't talk about, you know, the TV show that I had, that I sunk a million and a half dollars into and lost it all. But it was a great TV show, and I took it to my friend, Mark Burnett, who's one of the great producers of reality TV. And he said, it's great stuff, Mark, but I only do salacious.
Speaker 2:And it's not salacious So I couldn't syndicate it. But that was one of those things that when that came up in 02/2005, before I did Mark's Daily Apple, I shot a TV show, fifty one half hour episodes of a show called Responsible Health. And it was a great show, if I say so myself. We talked about a lot of the things that were going on in health and fitness and diet and exercise. And had I not done that, I would go to my grave regretting that I hadn't done it.
Speaker 2:So, some of these things you have to do just because, again, I was compelled to wanna do this TV show. Now, it didn't resonate with the right people, The economics didn't work. The business model didn't work. But I had to do it. And the failure of that show is what led to Mark's Daily Apple.
Speaker 2:Because I took the same concept of I wanna share my information and the information of the guests that I had on the show. What forum can I share that in that's not costing me $10,000 an episode to shoot and $8,000 an episode to air on Travel Channel? So, that became Mark's Daily Apple. So, a lot of these things were pivoting. I had a restaurant experience for a while.
Speaker 2:I had a Primal Kitchen restaurant. One point, we were the most successful franchise that ever existed that didn't have an operating unit going. The business model was not right. And so, we had to abandon that and it cost a lot of money. But I learned a bunch of lessons in that experience.
Speaker 2:So, so much of one's business life evolves. It doesn't just It's not the perfect execution of a business plan that's built or written when you're 28 years old and then all of a sudden magically when you're 35 or 40, it all comes to fruition. So much of it is pivoting and recognizing new opportunities. And also recognizing when your original idea just isn't gonna work, and no matter how much you fight and no matter how passionate and purpose about it you are, it wasn't it probably wasn't a good idea. It's time to move on.
Speaker 3:It seems like Mark's Daily Apple for you is just an engine that so many incredible things came from, whether it's Primal Kitchen, whether it's books that you ended up writing, now Paluba Shoes. I'm just curious, when you started the blog, were there any frameworks that you stuck to, whether it was like, hey, I'm gonna write an article a day, I'm gonna write a thousand words a day. Just, you know, what was your mindset when you were first starting the blog just to stay consistent?
Speaker 2:Well, the the mindset when I first started the blog was I'll start a blog. It'll be an evergreen compendium of information on diet and exercise. I'll write every day for a year, and at the end of a year, I'll have written everything there is to write about about diet and exercise. And, you know, lo and behold, a few months into it, we started having some followers and some regular subscribers, if you will, who were asking amazing questions that then led to other articles and other areas of exploration. And then we had one time we had a forum with 10,000 people participating in the forum.
Speaker 2:But the forum got so contentious, we had to shut it down. And it got contentious because in 02/1978, these were early days of the idea that you could not only survive but thrive on sort of a meat based diet or that fats weren't the enemy, some fats were actually beneficial and you should have more of them in your diet. So a lot of the vegan vegetarian group would come in and troll the forums As they do. As they are want to do. So, we got rid of that.
Speaker 2:But, yeah, it's again, I didn't really have a plan other than I knew I wanted to disseminate information that I had discovered. I wanted to share the research that I'd done in all these different areas, particularly in the areas of evolution and genetics. And this notion that so much of what we can do to alter our health and our physical appearance even comes down to how we turn certain genes on or off. All of that was an emerging science in those early two thousands, right? It wasn't even Now we have 23andMe, but Craig Venter was still spending a billion dollars trying to map the original human genome in those days.
Speaker 2:So, was early days and I was really quite a fringe guy saying, look, statins suck and you shouldn't take statins. Or, exercise is a horrible way to lose weight. Why are you spending so much time in the gym trying to burn off calories? Or, there are certain fats that you should be eating and you should be embracing saturated fat. Why would I've never I used to say, I never met a saturated fat I was afraid of.
Speaker 2:Obviously, within reason. But So, a lot of those statements were really bold. Then, so what evolved out of Mark's Daily Apple was a discussion that prompted thousands, if not tens of thousands of other paleo minded, ancestral minded individuals to start blogs, or write books, or do cookbooks. And it was a fun time to watch this nascent form of health education take root.
Speaker 1:Was there anyone else out there doing it at that time frame, 02/2006? I mean, it's so early.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So, like, Rob Wolf Yeah. Was was he and I were sort of starting about the same time. Art Devaney, I don't know if you ever saw any of Art Devaney's stuff. You learned
Speaker 3:a lot from him, didn't
Speaker 2:I did. So I would consider Art my early mentor. So I wrote two long blog posts for his site. One of them was called The Case Against Chronic Cardio. And that was the first time we'd used the term chronic cardio, and this notion that you can do too much cardio and it actually is deleterious to your health, it's not beneficial.
Speaker 2:And I called upon my own experiences as an endurance athlete and years of struggling with the fallout from overtraining. And then I wrote another post called Escape from Vegan Island, in which I chronicled my I took my extended family on a trip to Costa Rica where we did a seven day retreat with a guy named John McDougall, who was a vegan doctor, who's a promoter of a starch based diet. It was was a real shit
Speaker 1:Sounds interesting.
Speaker 2:It was a real shit show. So, I talked about that from a, you know, from a in a tongue in cheek perspective. And those two posts on Art Devaney's site resonated so well. I thought, okay, I can write on my own site, can start my own blog. So, that's really what so, it was Devaney, myself, this guy Richard Nikolai, who had a site called Free the Animal.
Speaker 2:He was writing in those early days. There were a handful of people, but it was kind of a Like, I got into blogging in 2006 and I'm like, I'm pretty late to this game. There's a lot of bloggers out there. You know, I don't know if, you know, maybe it's maybe it's too late.
Speaker 1:Did you realize that you had that gift for writing? Or was it something you had to explore?
Speaker 2:No. I I've written my whole life. I was I hate writing. It's I'm not passionate about it. I'm not, you know But I feel compelled.
Speaker 2:A perfect example. Right? I'm not passionate about writing. I'm not It's not my purpose, but I feel compelled to say what I have to say. So, you know, and I would I tell my kids, writing is the single greatest skill you can have.
Speaker 2:It's the best way to communicate, and not only with other people, but with yourself. Because writing forces you to really start to put your thoughts in an order and rather than, you know, spewing some diatribe on the interwebs where you're pissing people off and and, you know, calling people out, You know, think about what you're gonna say and then organize it. And then say it in a way that you're ready, willing, and able to defend if if people pop out of the woodwork and wanna troll you. So, like, my greatest teacher and I went to some of the best schools in the country. Right?
Speaker 2:But my greatest teacher was my eighth grade English teacher who taught me how to write. So, you know, these are the sorts of nuggets you pull out of life where you go, you know, how does this all fall into place? Well, it's not because I got a degree in biology from Williams College or it's not because I went to a Yeah. I went to the Phillips Exeter Academy in a private school. No.
Speaker 2:It's my eighth grade English teacher who just set me on a certain path here.
Speaker 1:Let's take a minute to talk about some of the sponsors and brands who support the show.
Speaker 3:What are you thinking?
Speaker 1:I was thinking about Carnivore Bar. What what are your thoughts on Carnivore Bar?
Speaker 3:I mean, it's unbelievable. It's an unbelievable product. We were lucky enough to have the founder, Philip Meese, on the show a few months ago, and he was able to send us a bunch of product when we started the relationship, and absolutely loved it. I mean, you know, it's minimum ingredient product, beef, tallow, salt, and then they do have a honey flavored option as well, but it's so nice to have a bar that's like three to four ingredients. And like, when you're following a carnivore diet, it's really tough to find products that are in line with that specific diet.
Speaker 3:You know? Yeah. For me, it kinda hits like the holy trinity
Speaker 1:of what you're looking for when you're looking for food. So it's nutrient dense, it's convenient, and it tastes great. And as you said, most people who are trying to eat healthy, the convenience factor is kind of a tough part. So just being able to have something you can grab on the go, that you're gonna have that nutrition for the day, it's huge.
Speaker 3:Yeah. And we we were lucky enough, we got to actually see their factory too in Missouri, and they're just doing things the right way. I love how they offer an option for, like, carnivore purists, where it's just beef, tallow, salt, they also have an animal based option too, if you do want a little bit of sweetness, a little bit of variety, they have a honey in that option, and they're just people that are doing things the right way, they're very mission focused, they're carnivores themselves, and, you know, we're always on the go, we're traveling, we've taken a bunch of flights together to have a bar that has 30 grams of fat too, like, that's huge from an energy density standpoint. Right?
Speaker 1:Yeah. He checks all the boxes, or the company checks all the boxes, and I just think the fact that they're sourcing from
Speaker 3:a regenerative farm as well, and Joyce Farms, just a win win. 100%. The Carnivore Bar. So we got the affiliate link, and then it's code MATHIA for 10% off.
Speaker 1:One of the other farms that supports us is Perennial Pastures, another regenerative farm out of San Diego. Our experience with Kevin Muno, the owner, we had him on the show, a young first generation rancher who's really empowered by this movement of regenerative agriculture and really wants to be a leader in the space. I think our conversation with him was so insightful just in terms of how mission focused he is and how he really thinks about his farm as a business and wanting it to be here fifty, a hundred years down the road even though he's just the first generation of it. And I think just being able to spend time with him out in San Diego was kind of the perfect indication of that where we got to go have a meal with him at his house, hang out with his wife and kids. Like, what an amazing person.
Speaker 1:And I think his mission focus around raising really high quality beef and restoring nutrients to the soil is just one of one of those rare missions that I think everyone can get around.
Speaker 3:Yeah. He has such a commitment to really feeding the local community in San Diego in the San Diego County first and foremost, but he's also passionate about feeding the community around the country. So I know they've invested a lot of time, a lot of money, a lot of resources to being able to order beef in bulk on their website. So I now I know that they now offer quarter half whole cows directly directly off the website. They have that great ancestral blend ground beef product, so it actually has organ grinds mixed into the ground beef, so you're getting the benefits of like an ounce or so of organ meat, but because it's in the ground beef, you really can't taste it at all.
Speaker 3:And I think to your point, Harry, just another amazing person, you know, he Kev was someone that he was following a paleo diet in college and started realizing, wow, when I nourish my body with real foods, I feel amazing, had a really successful stint in tech, but realized that there was just something else that he was passionate about. So he's one of those rare cases where, you know, he put his money where his mouth is, and he's a first generation farmer just, you know, bootstrapping this thing, raising money, and just so passionate about feeding the community. Just an amazing guy.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Absolutely. Thanks for listening. Now we're gonna go back
Speaker 3:to the show. That's incredible. We have our stories play off of each other interestingly because the way that you started writing and growing the blog in 02/2006, our the Meat Mafia brand actually started on Twitter last year writing long form informational threads on nutrition. And we just started publishing these threads, you know, two of them a week, and they started just exploding and doing incredibly well. But to your point, it's the consistency that's the most difficult thing, and we keep reminding ourselves, like, the threads are really what led to us to grow.
Speaker 3:And if you could just help a couple people with those threads, it's worth it. But it's easier said than done, but you're kinda just recrystallizing these ideas of, like, it's really consistency and discipline that that matter there with content creation.
Speaker 2:It is. And and I will tell you, I'm not that discipline is a big deal for me. I'm not that disciplined. I go back in my life and Really? To man, you were a distance runner.
Speaker 2:You ran, you know, a 100 miles a week for seven years and you got up every day and you did it despite whatever. And I'm like, well, that's not discipline. That was what I did. The discipline was actually going to work the next day. You know, the discipline as you will see, a lot of people say, discipline is doing the things that you know you should be doing but don't want to do.
Speaker 2:Yeah. That's the real discipline.
Speaker 1:I'm really interested to talk about this thread of your early career running and kind of this balance that it seems like you found with health where you're not it seems like you've kind of just harnessed the power of not stressing about your health, which I think so many people do. So many people try to white knuckle themselves to good health. And I think that's a trap that most people will eventually fall into on their way to being healthy. But how do you is there a world where you don't have to go through that white knuckling phase where you can actually just be healthy without constantly thinking about it? Because it's just it seems to me that it's seeped in our subconscious now.
Speaker 1:Like, we don't even know what food is anymore. So it's like, how do we how do we start to change that narrative?
Speaker 2:It's tough because so much of what you just described, I think, needs to be experiential. So, I had to go into a deep, dark pit to truly get how important diet was and how training needed to be my training for competition needed to be well orchestrated. I had to go way deep down into that pit to come out the other end and go, okay, once I've survived all of that, life really is about enjoying the moment. It's not like, in your hierarchy of needs, looking fit enough to get the cover of Shape magazine or Muscle and Fitness isn't isn't number one. It is for some people, but maybe inappropriately so.
Speaker 2:Like, how do I feel? That's all that matters. Like, if I feel good, if I'm healthy, if I'm enjoying the day, if I'm enjoying my relationships, that's really the metric that I would use as the primary driver of all this. So, if you back down from that and you say, okay, health is part of that. And so, if my diet is serving me, in other words, if I develop metabolic flexibility, if I'm burning off stored body fat when I don't eat, if I don't get hungry when I don't eat, if good at utilizing ketones when I don't eat, if I'm maintaining my body weight or maintaining my muscle mass and or gaining strength, if I never get sick, if I don't get hungry, those are the metrics I would use versus what does the scale say?
Speaker 2:Or what does my Oura Ring tell me how I slept last night? I don't give a shit about how The data sometimes is not only not helpful, it's harmful. Right? So, I've used some of these devices and, you know, someone will The device will say, out of a 100 you got a 92 on your sleep score last night. I tossed and turned all night, so I don't know where you get that.
Speaker 2:Yes. And other other days, I'll wake up and I'm like, god, this graph slept great. And then the device will say, no, didn't. You slept Then I'm like, okay, am I missing something? Now I worry about I didn't get enough sleep last night, am I gonna get enough sleep tonight?
Speaker 2:All these things complicate the basic issue, which is how do I feel? So, if my diet is dialed in, if my exercise regimen is allowing me to stay mobile and flexible and strong, if my muscle mass is staying where it needs to be, those are the metrics, those are the basic metrics. And then the rest of it that you call white knuckling, which I agree most people do, is some adherence to a dogmatic program that their coach laid out for them. And if they don't do it right or if they skip a day, they get all angsty. When in fact I just look at the biggest picture, which is if over the last several weeks I've eaten relatively well and I've worked out relatively well, that fit my lifestyle model.
Speaker 2:I'm not training for anything, I'm not training to compete anymore. So, I don't need to go to the gym and set personal records at the age of almost 70. It's not gonna happen. So, I have to readjust my sights and come back to what I really want? And I wanna feel good all day long regardless of my body fat level, regardless of how much weight I'm lifting in the gym, regardless of whether I had dessert last night or not.
Speaker 2:All I really want is to feel good and to derive the most amount of pleasure, contentment, enjoyment, fulfillment out of every possible moment. Because, you know, at the end of the day, all we have is now. It's So many people get into a program and they're like, well, this is a ninety day program. So, at the end of ninety days, can you imagine how I'm gonna feel? Okay.
Speaker 2:But what about tomorrow and the next day and the next Like, can you imagine today how you feel? And does that feel good?
Speaker 3:Yeah. That's kind of the beautiful thing about what you guys have done at Primal Kitchen is it it takes this style of eating. It's it's not a diet. It really turns it into a lifestyle where every meal, every bite of food can be delicious, it could be nourishing, it can taste incredible, but there's also definitely shades of, I think, orthorexia in the in the carnivore community where they're like, oh, you can't have any spices or, you know, it's really interesting because I know that there are a lot of people in the carnivore community that are so sick that it takes that extreme to maybe get them out. But I think that isn't the goal of health to actually be build resilience with your body so you can have spices and eat delicious food?
Speaker 3:I'm just curious your
Speaker 2:thoughts on that. From day one, the primal blueprint was built upon a foundation of the paleo diet that Lauren Cordain really promoted and popularized. But I recognized early on that it was so exclusive of certain things. Like, dairy, no alcohol, no chocolate, no fat. And I was like, no, there's gotta be a way to include as much food as possible.
Speaker 2:And it wasn't from anything other than a hedonistic desire to, like, I like to eat. And so, don't tell me what I can't eat, tell me what I can eat. So, the primal blueprint became more about justifying your inclusion of, say, some amount of dairy in your diet. And particularly, raw milk, you know, heavy whole cream, cheeses, artisanal cheeses, and things like that. Even in the last couple of years, I've reintroduced a little bit of legumes into my diet.
Speaker 2:We went to a restaurant two nights ago and they had an amazing hummus dish there. Back in the early paleo days, that would've been, you know, the lectins will kill you and Right. Now, it's like, no. A, they won't kill me. And, B, they won't even give me a tummy ache now.
Speaker 2:So, why would I not enjoy this amazing spiced food that's been put in front of me even though my my if you ask me what my diet is, it's largely carnivore. Mhmm. But it's Now, the new term is carnivore ish. But, you know, it's So, I would like for people to become intuitive. Back to the white knuckling.
Speaker 2:My goal for everyone that reads my work is to is to not overthink and is to become so intuitive with your diet that you order what you want when you want, you eat it when you want, you are finished when you know you're finished eating it. You do the right amount of exercise without writing it down every workout you do. You just are intuitive from day to day and you don't have to go think back and go, oh my god, I feel so guilty because I had that hummus the other night or that dessert or whatever. Or, you know, I told my coach I was gonna do, you know, the wad and I didn't I've I've missed the last, you know, four minutes of it. No.
Speaker 2:This is irrelevant in your life. Look, I like David Goggins is a great guy, and he's amazing in what he does. But sometimes that mindset is a little too It's a little too destructive to somebody who's just trying to get through life and enjoy the moment. Right? So, setting a goal that you don't achieve doesn't mean you're a failure, it just means you didn't achieve the goal.
Speaker 2:I tell people goals are great, but lose attachment to the outcome. Right? It's good to have a goal, but not Don't be so attached to the outcome that your life is screwed up if you don't get there.
Speaker 1:Yeah. That hits on something I really wanted to dive into with you because I feel like that can also be like a parallel to how you think about business and risk where it's like sometime like the way you were talking about the failures was so inspiring to me because people should just be able to think about a business opportunity, go for it, don't worry, like, don't worry about the outcome. Like, if you're if you have the conviction and the compulsion behind what you're doing, it's gonna lead you to the next thing. And I think a lot of people today are just afraid to take risks, whether it's with trying a new diet for thirty days or starting a business. They just They've put themselves in a box and they don't want to take any risks.
Speaker 1:And I think that's concerning.
Speaker 2:I think it's really concerning for your generation. Yeah. I mean, I see a lot of that. And I see a lot of angst, you know, around that. When I started Primal Nutrition, my supplement company, I left the only job I ever had that paid a regular income.
Speaker 2:I've been an entrepreneur my whole life. But when I got married, and I had a child and then another child, I thought, well, I better get a regular income here. And that didn't work for me. I couldn't go to someone else's office. Work for the man.
Speaker 2:So, I left that well paying job with a wife, two children, no money in the bank, and I borrowed $50,000 from my mother's husband at the time. And you say, well, that's family money. No. He made me When I signed the original note to repay him, he said, I know that's your signature, but you need to actually let it be known that I can read your Like, I read your name in your signature. That's how stringent that was.
Speaker 2:But anyway, so But I was confident that I could do this. And it certainly pivoted many times since then. Right? But I was compelled to create this formula for athletes at that time. I was with that compulsion and a sense of confidence that I could make this work, I set off to do that.
Speaker 2:But you guys are a perfect example of leaving well paying jobs and going all in on this Meet Mafia and the podcast and anything and everything that comes out of it. Right? So, as Wayne Gretzky says, you you miss a 100% of the shots you don't take. And as I say, you know, it only takes one business success in your lifetime to make everything you did worthwhile. Right?
Speaker 2:So, I was successful and I could have retired on my supplement business. In fact, I did in my fifties. I tried retiring for six months.
Speaker 1:Didn't work out.
Speaker 2:I was a shitty golfer. I'm like, okay, never mind. I was bored. But, you know, I've always had something going on in my life, I could've retired on that. But when I started Primal Kitchen at the age of 61, that's when I made, you know, what I would call my first real home run.
Speaker 2:And when I exited at the age of 64, 65. So, does that make everything I did up to then invaluable because I didn't start this last business until I was in my sixties? No. It made everything else I did valuable in that it all contributed toward the eventual outcome. Because in many cases, timing is critical.
Speaker 2:Like, if I had started Primal Kitchen ten years earlier, I guarantee you it would have failed. There was not this public acceptance of healthy fats yet. There were a lot of things going on in the world maybe would've had that not be successful. So, this notion that, know, you have to have the perfect business plan, you have to execute it, you can't pivot, all that stuff, it's irrelevant. Meanwhile, the advice I will give you is that at your ages right now, live your life.
Speaker 2:Like, don't feel like you need to brag to people like you're working eighty hours a week or ninety hours a week and you don't have any friends, and you don't have relationships, and if you have children, you don't spend any time with them because you're busy building your business. That's bullshit. No, you gotta live your life. We go back to the original premise, which is enjoy the moment, enjoy now, enjoy the journey, enjoy the process. So, as I was building these businesses, as I was all in with had Again, I had no money in the bank.
Speaker 2:I didn't go into debt other than the note that I had with my I call him my mother's husband because he's so far removed from They were married much later in life. And I paid that off within a year. Right? So it was quite successful. But I I went to every soccer practice.
Speaker 2:I went to every soccer game with my kids. I coached I coached little league. I refed soccer. I mean, I talked to kids how to boogie board. I mean, I spent time with my kids because that that's life.
Speaker 2:Definitely. And so people who this is one of the fears I have for you for I don't wanna point to your generation, but young people today who are, like, all caught up in all of the Lambos and all of the shit they see on the on Instagram with all of the people crushing it and, you know, and and, know, theoretically making all this money is no. You gotta it's your life. It's not their life. Don't live their life.
Speaker 2:Don't get caught up in what other people are doing and then compare where you are today with where that influencer is today. The guy who just leased the Lambo for a month and and is renting a mansion just so he can you know, she can show it on, you know, on Instagram. Live your life. That's this is really what it's about. You know, do I feel?
Speaker 2:Yeah. And and am I living my life to its fullest extent now? Not, oh my god. If I work my ass off for thirty five years and I make a pile of money, then I can enjoy life.
Speaker 3:That's such good perspective because there is so much hustle porn that's out there right now. And I think people just assume, oh, you started Primal Kitchen in 2015. You sold it in 2019. You must have just been all in cranking eighty to a hundred hours a week, and it sounds like you had amazing work life balance and worked really hard, but also built an amazing team and also had great balance with your family too. Mean, the
Speaker 2:team the team was everything. Mhmm. I mean, I and I would say, you know, on my top five list of business advice, find the right team. And it took me a long time to get rid of the notion that I'm the smartest guy in the room. Yeah.
Speaker 2:Right? So when I finally hired people who were energetic and owned the mission, really bought into the mission of eating better, and who had experience and could take on tasks that I could have taken on but would not have been as good at, that's really when things started come together.
Speaker 3:Mark, one of the things that I I wanted to ask you, I know you wanna know this too, you you were talking about your mindset of when you took out that $50,000 loan from your from your mom's husband. You had two kids. You had a wife. What was your mindset like at that period of time? Like, were there naturally some doubts there or lack of confidence?
Speaker 3:Or did you just know like, did you just have that vision and that that trust in yourself? Because I think there's a lot of people that listen to our show that are in the midst of building something out and don't have that financial success yet. So it'd just be amazing.
Speaker 2:Oh, man. There were sleepless nights. I mean, when I say
Speaker 3:I had
Speaker 2:confidence, I had confidence in the daytime in my ability to And I'd orchestrated that move to start this supplement company, but I also had in place a couple of consulting contracts that I had arranged. So, I was creating bars and supplements for QVC and Home Shopping Network and Beachbody, which became P90X. So, I had some consulting agreements that paid the bills while I was building this business. So, didn't know I didn't And the idea of going to a private equity firm and raising money, that was early days for that. That kind of thing in '96 and '97 didn't even exist.
Speaker 2:Venture capital was still all about tech, and that was even early days for venture capital. So, yeah, I was I would stay awake nights like, what if this fails? What if I can't, you know, do this? What am I gonna do? But I'm also confident enough in my skills and abilities that I could get a job.
Speaker 2:Right? And so, part of the Like, one of the caveats to living your life as a young person and building your business is try not to go into too much debt. Right? Don't live the high life on the credit cards and then find yourself in that hole. But the point is, you could be making $75,000 a year and living a great life and saving no money.
Speaker 2:Or you could be making $250,000 a year having a great life and saving no money. In either case, you're having a great life and saving no money. The only difference is the size of the place you're living in, the type of car you're driving, the number of bottles of of great wine you're buying. You know, those are all kind of bullshit differences. But it doesn't take a lot of money to live a great life.
Speaker 2:All it takes is a cell phone, a laptop, a big screen TV, roof over your head, some form of transportation, and some food. Right? And you're set. So, that's not Anybody can kind of use that basic set of guidelines and say, okay, as long as I've covered those basic needs, my enjoyment of life from there isn't about the McMansion or the car. It's about the hike that I took with my girlfriend or my wife.
Speaker 2:It's about the workout I did. It's about how much I love my kids. Rich people don't love their kids any more or less than poor people do. Warren Buffett or, you know, Jeff Bezos doesn't enjoy a hike in the Aspen Highlands any more or less than somebody who has almost no money is living out of a backpack. It's the same hike.
Speaker 2:So, all the things that make life, the real things that make life enjoyable are accessible to just about everybody.
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 2:It's just somebody Some people are so caught up in the business part of it that they give up that hike. They give up spending time with their kids or their relationship. And that's the real sad part.
Speaker 1:Before we get into the episode, let's talk about Fawn Bone Broth's carnivore blend.
Speaker 3:A 100%. Yeah. We've been huge fans of bone broth the last few months. It's really fueled our carnivore journey. Bone broth is incredibly nourishing, especially on a carnivore, animal based, or just any type of diet, to be honest with you.
Speaker 3:And what's great about Fond is that they're a very simple, pure product. So their product is just boiled bones, water, salt. And most of their products have spices like turmeric, cayenne, cracked pepper. But they actually just came out with their carnivore broth, which is very simple chicken bone broth, water, and salt too. So they're eliminating all their spices and just giving you something very pure that won't disrupt the gut.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Think one of the things we talk about with the elimination diet is the fact that there's so many things that do actually affect how your body reacts to the food you put in your body. And the fact that they're just doing a pure bone broth with bones and just the minimal ingredients, I think is huge. And the carnivore audience will love this one. Fawn does regenerative bone, so it's really high quality stuff.
Speaker 1:Go check it out. Use our promo code in the link below.
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Speaker 1:Yeah. It's it's a great perspective. Like, we talk about it and almost jokingly talk about it all the time. Like, all we need is like a gym, a sauna, a bed to sleep in. Ocean.
Speaker 1:Yeah. And like family and community. I mean, those things set you up for a life full of happiness. Right? Like taking care of your body and being with good people.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So, I have a fair amount of money now. I'm very well off. Thank you. And I have a friend who's one of my best friends who's essentially a billionaire.
Speaker 2:And we joke about how we walk around in, you know, shorts and a t shirt or a cutoff and crappy shoes all the time.
Speaker 1:Not anymore.
Speaker 2:We take yeah. Yeah. Exactly. Not anymore. Yeah.
Speaker 2:That's why I have these, right? And that's why, you know and so we'll but we'll do, you know, a hike in different parts of the world together. Now, we were able to get to that different part of world, but the hike is the hike. Right? You know?
Speaker 2:Or the workout is the workout. And some of the best workouts I've ever had are in are in really ragtag gyms, Not, you know, a lifetime fitness with a 100,000 square feet of gym space. But, you know, Joe's gym down the street where he made his own equipment and I got an amazing workout from that. So, you know, if you boil life down to those sort of essential moments, time with your family, time with your significant other, enjoying meals. I mean, some of the best meals I've ever had are at very inexpensive restaurants or stuff I've cooked at home.
Speaker 2:Some of the worst meals I've ever had, just in terms of like, seriously, are you kidding me? You charge this much money for this fine dining experience. So, so much is available to enjoy the moment, enjoy life, and not be caught up in if I bust my ass, one day I'll be able to have all this stuff. I'm arguing that all the stuff that you think you really need, you don't, and all the stuff that's important, you have access to right now.
Speaker 3:Mark, when that deal with between Primal Kitchen and Kraft Heinz actually closed, you realized that you had created generational wealth that day, was there ever any fear of, like, oh, I've seen money change a lot of people, like, I hope this doesn't happen to me, or were you just someone that's always really just trusted in who you are and your principles and knew that it's, the simple things that make you happier? I'm just curious, like, what your mindset was like on the day that that deal actually went through.
Speaker 2:Yeah. It was it was an interesting day because it was the culmination of a lot of work and a lot of, you know, a fifty year overnight success story. Right? Yeah. And it was amazing high because I realized I was set for life and I could do whatever I wanted to.
Speaker 2:And just as a victory, as so often happens with sports, the next day I was depressed. Like, okay, now what? It's like running
Speaker 1:an Ironman, like the next day you're just miserable. That's exactly right.
Speaker 2:It's like running an Ironman. Yeah. It's like this is greatest day of my life, and the next day is like, Jesus. So now what? Now, what do I do to follow-up How do I chase that high?
Speaker 2:So, was that. The generational wealth thing, means how does it trickle down into my children and my grandchildren? I'm not concerned about any of that. My kids are my daughter and my son are both extremely well adjusted. It's interesting how the generations work.
Speaker 2:So, that generation, they saw what it took to get there. They saw the blood, sweat, and tears, and they saw look, I don't wanna paint a picture like it was all fun and it was all like I knew what I was doing. There of was a failure in there. So, they saw that, and they saw what having no money looked like, and they saw what it took to get to build this. So, there's an appreciation of what it took to get there.
Speaker 2:With most situations like this, it's the next generation that you have to be most concerned about. Because they didn't see it happening, and they didn't work for it, and so But, you know, it's it's I it won't be an issue with our family. We've got, you know, trusts and things in place that sort of prevent wild abuse of Yeah. Of any of that stuff.
Speaker 1:Yeah. What what are your thoughts on the critique? There just seems to be this critique online, Elise, of people exiting their businesses and selling to big food and them almost like losing their mission. And the reason I asked the question is we had on Taylor Collins who started Epic Provisions, and he's caught a lot of slack from people for selling to General Mills, which I think that there's a lot of positive things that came out of it. But just interested to hear how you think about that because, you know Taylor's a great example.
Speaker 1:He's amazing. Yeah.
Speaker 2:So Taylor would not be able to do what he's doing right now without that exit. So, Taylor took an early exit with Epic. And I was in awe of what he'd done so quickly. I thought their branding was exceptional. I thought everything they did.
Speaker 2:I don't It's not a product that I stay abreast of, so I don't know how much it's been altered or changed over time. I almost don't care because what Taylor's done with his proceeds of that and with Force of Nature is spectacular. And so, he's going to 10x the effect that he has on the world by virtue of the fact that he took the exit that he took. In my case, we had a number of suitors that wanted to buy Primal Kitchen. And the people on the team at Kraft Heinz were so compelling in their desire to take on what we were doing, which was changing the way the world eats.
Speaker 2:We reimagining how big food could look at mass produced food offerings. So, I was quite clear that, a, I didn't want them to change any of the team. I didn't want them to change any of the ingredients. And so, that was sort of built into the agreement. So, it's now four and a half years since that sale.
Speaker 2:And my team is the same team it was on exit, except we've hired more people. But nobody got fired as a result of the transaction. Kraft Heinz has been an amazing partner in supporting the marketing and supporting the r and d that we lead. So all the R and D is, you know, we're the ones driving like, we need this, we need this, we need this. They'll provide it.
Speaker 2:They've been an amazing partner. And they've been willing to listen to, you know, my observations about their other brands. You know, Kraft is is a great company. Warren Buffett owns, you know, part of it, a large part of it. And then a company called three g out of Brazil owns another large part of it, the rest of it is publicly traded.
Speaker 2:And Warren said a couple of years ago, he said, you know, they had to write down the value of Kraft because they recognized the future of some of those brands was not bright, was not brilliant. And as Buffett said, we bought a great company. We just overpaid for it. So the idea that some of these brands are not growing and they're legacy brands that have been around for a long time. So Kraft isn't even its own brand.
Speaker 2:It's Kraft Mac and Cheese, it's Heinz Ketchup, it's Oscar Meyer, it was Oreo, had potatoes, Kool Aid, Maxwell House Coffee, Planters Peanuts. You go down the line, it's 50 different 50 different companies that are under this umbrella. And and they they they each have their own demographic and their own group that they speak to. Primal Kitchen happens to be an expanding group. We've grown significantly since we were acquired.
Speaker 2:And that pleases me because so many people are now have now have access to better for you condiments that they put on their food. Right? So we have 85 SKUs now. We have 85 different different products that we sell in the stores. And that would not have been as easy to do, if not it may not have even been possible without the assistance of Kraft.
Speaker 2:And they're well, not they're they own the company, but but they're looking to us. And they literally stand back and go, you know, show us show us what we can do. Show us what you can do, but then show us, you know, how we can maybe incorporate some of these learnings into the rest of our brands.
Speaker 3:That's a good answer. Because there is just this blanket fear mongering of, oh, just because you sell to a larger company, that's inherently bad. And a lot of people don't understand the retail and distribution benefits of going with a large company. I have a lot of family friends that, you know, they shop at, you know, Wegmans or ShopRite or Costco, and now they have access to Primal Kitchen. They're getting the big bottles of dressing and buffalo sauce and stuff, and they never would have been able to do that if you guys didn't have the distribution of Kraft Heinz because they would never would have had access to that before.
Speaker 2:No. And and I've seen it go the other way. I mean, I've seen it. I've seen brands get acquired and then get, you know, altered with the ingredient choices. But, you know, we were so based on our ingredients.
Speaker 2:That was what we brought to the table, was this choice of raw materials and ingredients that no one else had had before. It's like, why would a company buy us for that reason and then change that?
Speaker 1:Yeah. It seems like a lot of these There's a lot of these smaller companies popping up that are either trying to ride the wave that you've created, like this alternative health space, like no seed oils, maybe more regeneratively sourced. And I'm wondering what do you see for as like the future of the food system? Because one of the things we talk about a lot on the show, we've had some regenerative farmers on. We think that there's a bright future there if we can get more people on board and understanding what that actually means.
Speaker 1:But can that coexist with what already exists with big food? And will these big companies come around to actually really improving the food system through real food and not just more ultra processed food?
Speaker 2:Man, that's a real tough question. That's an economics one zero one question. Right? Supply and demand. I mean, the demand for crunchy, salty, fatty, sweet is always high.
Speaker 2:And that's why big food and again, big food has this bad reputation because of what they produce. On the other hand, they are owned not by one guy, but by millions of people. Many people have some big food in their four zero one ks, and they want it to go up in value. And these corporations have to answer to their shareholders and have to demonstrate a profit and growth over time. And it's really tough to do when you're using expensive ingredients and you're only selling to a small percentage of the population.
Speaker 2:In terms of regenerative ag, I mean, I think that's how we save the world. I really do. I'm such a fan of regenerative ag, which is why I'm a big fan of what Taylor's doing. And there are a lot of these local growers and local farmers who are embracing that concept. The good thing about regenerative ag is that it doesn't lend itself to scaling other than from a large organizational point.
Speaker 2:Because part regenerative ag would suggest that you wanna get the animal You don't wanna put the animal in a truck in any configuration, whether it's a live animal or a butchered animal to drive 2,000 miles to the point of distribution. So, the localness of regenerative ag is of interest to me. I I have all these wild ideas that just if you find me executing them, come come remind me that I told you to stop me from doing this because I have this idea that we could we could train a generation of of farmers in agricultural programs and literally give them each 400 acres to share crop and you know, of a local farm to grow beef and to and chickens and cows and rebuild the soil and then convert that soil into vegetables for some people. I know that's a dirty word here. No, but the idea that we could First of all, the notion that animal meat is bad for humans just drives me crazy.
Speaker 2:And seeing that on Twitter and on Instagram and being promoted by the World Health Organization and all of these World Economic Forum and all these so called organizations that think they have our best interests at heart are actually one of the worst things that could happen is getting rid of meat. So, I don't if you've had, you know, Diane on with Sustainable Dish. She and Rob wrote the Sacred Cow. Sacred Cow. Great book, and everybody should read that.
Speaker 2:So, I'm all about sustainability. Now, the future of food, what does that look like? Well, that's a big part of it. If we could get more acceptance that meat is the ideal form of highest level protein for every human on the planet, that would be a big step forward. The fat thing, that's a tough one because Primal Kitchen's been one of the largest buyers of avocado oil in the world.
Speaker 2:And it's tough. Avocados are a tough commodity. They're very expensive, they're hard to grow, they take a long time. Once you plant a grove, it takes years before it produces. Most avocado growers would much rather see their avocado be on a table, be table fruit than be pressed into oil.
Speaker 2:So, where does that leave us with access to large amounts of inexpensive and better for you oils? And so, and have been for a long time a fan of the cultured oil thing that's cropping up. We looked at that in 2016, looked at doing a mayonnaise with a cultured oil. We couldn't get enough of it to mass produce. But it tasted fabulous, it had the best fatty acid profile of any oil we'd ever seen.
Speaker 2:So, I think there's probably some allowance there for tech to come in and produce that essential type of fat that we're all looking for. But that up to now, we've had to rely on these industrial seed oils that have more problems than benefits.
Speaker 3:Does the concept of doing, like, a dressing or a mayo with something like tallow or lard, is that of interest, or is it just really tough behind the scenes trying to render that down and do it at cost?
Speaker 2:Well, so we have a lot so many factors that that have prevented other companies from entering this space for the longest time. Even an extra virgin olive oil salad dressing congeals in the refrigerator. So, you have to be able to refrigerate these products because you don't put preservatives in them. So, they're shelf stable if they're unopened for up to a year. Once you open them, you have to refrigerate them and you have to use them within a reasonable amount of time.
Speaker 2:But if you refrigerate tallow, it turns solid almost immediately. Same with extra virgin olive oil. So, there's a limit on the types of fats that you can use to make these popular fatty foods, the dressings and the condiments, you know, the mayonnaise and things like that. It's quite an interesting challenge. There was a company that based their entire line on extra virgin olive oil and no other oils in their salad dressings.
Speaker 2:And you would keep it in the refrigerator, but you'd have to run it under the sink for forty minutes in hot water and then shake it up before you could put it on the salad. So, it was quite inconvenient. Or you could put it in the microwave, but that's sort of and, you know, contrary to everyone's idea of what an all natural, you know, best ingredient formulation would would would have to go through.
Speaker 1:Yeah. It seems like the tallow trend is here like, just in its early innings. Like, a lot of people are coming around to tallow as like a skincare product or just like all these different uses. Yeah.
Speaker 3:I Masa chips.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Masa chips.
Speaker 2:Have you
Speaker 3:tried Masa chips before? No.
Speaker 2:All that stuff is amazing, and and you're right. It's coming around full circle from a 150 ago. You know? Right. Just like bone broth came full circle.
Speaker 2:Look. For the longest time, we made bone broth. I'm not we, but our but our our ancestors, our grandparents, our even sometimes our parents would take a chicken carcass and then boil it for a couple of hours and make a broth or stock out of it. Same with leftover full parts of whatever beef or pork or lamb that we had. There was always some sort of a stock, a bone broth that was ready to be used in a soup later on or consumed on its own.
Speaker 2:For some reason, the convenience, the hectic pace of modern life and the convenience of just eating the choice cuts of meat and just not even having to go to the butcher anymore, just going to the supermarket and getting a Saran wrapped flank steak, and that's all you need, kind of got us out of this habit of consuming bone broth. And so my thesis was one of the reasons that people, especially athletes, had injuries so much in the eighties and nineties and early two thousands was because we no longer ate bone broth. We didn't eat any other parts of the animal. So, we didn't eat nose to tail, which is where a lot of the collagenous material In comes my youth, we ate Jell O. It was a dessert and it's gelatin.
Speaker 1:Or beef gelatin?
Speaker 2:It was Jell O. It was just It would derive from beef gelatin, but it was Jell O. But then, in the nineties and February, it got a bad reputation for being full of sugar and too much of a sweet treat for kids. And so, it kind of fell out of favor. So now, we're not eating bone broth, we're not eating nose to tail, we're not eating any of the nether parts.
Speaker 2:God knows, the bodybuilders ate skinless chicken breasts for And years and we had no access to collagen in our diet. And so all of the connective the ACL tears, the MCL tears, the Achilles issues, the ruptures, the tendinosis, my thesis is that's all a result of depriving the body of the basic bodybuilding or building ingredients, the building blocks it needs to repair connective tissue, fascia, tendons, ligaments, cartilage. And so that's when bone broth came back on the scene about ten years ago. And then collagen supplementation, I got so into collagen supplementation that I started to produce Primal Kitchen made its own collagen. And now, with the idea that we're not only supporting skin, hair, and nails, which was always sort of a marketing thing for women for collagen, now we're supporting the healthy tendons, ligaments, fascia, connective tissue, and things like
Speaker 3:That that collagen with some raw cream is so good in coffee. I've I've done that, I think, since, like, 2020. It's incredible. You were one of the first guys that I remember saying you should gnaw, like, gnaw on chicken bones to get some collagen in too.
Speaker 2:Yeah. And every kid, you know, growing up would gnaw on on the soft end of a chicken bone. Mhmm. Yeah. I I I remember very distinctly being a child and loving that part of the chicken.
Speaker 1:Are you a Weston A Price fan?
Speaker 2:I mean, yeah, over time, sure. Sure. I mean, I think he way ahead of his time. And, you know, his recognition of the dental health of indigenous peoples was pretty spot on. Where he started to lose me was the amount of time spent in preparing grains and seeds and nuts and things like that.
Speaker 2:Because I become less enamored of those over time. And I think as our buddy Paul Saladino would say, a lot of those are emergency foods. They shouldn't be the highlight or basis of a diet in my estimation. Ironically, my downstairs neighbor is Dan Buettner. Do you know who Dan Buettner is?
Speaker 2:No. The Blue Zones diet guy?
Speaker 1:Oh, gotcha. Okay. Cool.
Speaker 2:So we have these and we're very good friends and we Do
Speaker 1:you guys take the same elevator?
Speaker 2:Totally take the same elevator, exactly. And we become very good friends and he's a great guy. But we have a lot of fun talking about all the In the Blue Zones concepts of the seven basic things that define the habits of sentinarians, the source of protein is just a tiny subset of one of them. Right? The rest of it is all moving around a lot, community, having strong relationships, play, you know, things like that.
Speaker 2:So But it's on this source of proteins that we differ, and he's like, you need to have a cup of beans a day, you know, for the rest of your life to live to a 100. I'm like, I don't think so. Yeah. It's like So, back to your Weston A. Price thing, I mean, he had some amazing early investigation into the lifestyles of indigenous peoples who had exceptional health.
Speaker 3:Mark, does the big ass salad still have a place for you at all?
Speaker 2:So, does not. I eat salads still on occasion because I like the crunch. But I've sort of lost the Not just the desire, I still maybe have the desire. I literally have lost the capacity, the ability to consume that much food in one sitting. So one of the things that happened as a result of my experimentation with keto years ago, and then eventually my two meals a day intermittent fasting regimen, which I continue to use, is I don't eat that much food at any one meal.
Speaker 2:It's uncomfortable for me to eat that much food. And that was an moment that I had where I realized I can eat a lot of food, but I don't need to. I can eat a lot of calories, but maybe it doesn't serve me that well. Maybe I'm getting I'm getting away with eating more than I need to. But the fact that I'm not getting fat or I'm not gaining weight isn't necessarily indicative of this notion that eating a lot of calories is good for me.
Speaker 2:And, you know, we've talked in other podcasts, and you probably heard me say that, you know, I did a thought experiment a while back where I said, you know, most of the world revolves around this idea, like, what's the most amount of food I can eat and not gain weight? What's the biggest amount of this portion I can eat and not feel guilty? What's the most amount of cheesecake I can eat and not stay up, you know, awake at night? What can I get away with? And my response to that after learning about the basic requirements of the body is the reverse, which is what's the least amount of food I can eat and maintain or build muscle mass?
Speaker 2:That's important. Not get sick. Have all the energy I want, and most importantly, not be hungry. What's the least amount of food I can eat? And tick off all those boxes.
Speaker 2:And it turns out it's a lot less than most people think. It's probably 30% fewer calories than most people would assume. So I've cut back on the volume of my intake, and I certainly use the meat portion of my meal as the primary indicator. Like, that's gonna drive all my other choices of whatever meal I'm fixing or ordering. And I eat far less because I'm focusing on protein which comes with its own built in fat.
Speaker 2:How convenient is that? And then a couple of bites of something else, but not a lot of something else. So, the volume of my meals has come way down. Hence, this idea that I would consume a six quart bowl of of a big salad with 18 different ingredients, it just doesn't appeal to me anymore. It's not like I have some renewed or or or new sense of of Saladino's right and all these vegetables are harmful for you.
Speaker 2:It's just that I just I don't feel compelled. You notice how many times I've used the word compelled in this conversation? Are you writing
Speaker 1:a book called Compelled?
Speaker 2:I should. I should.
Speaker 3:Yeah. Mark, does your does your wife subscribe to the same approach to nutrition? Are there any differences of how men and women should maybe be thinking about protein?
Speaker 2:Yeah. She's very protein centric. And we were on a podcast with Skinny Confidential yesterday, and she was on the podcast and Lauren asked her, you know, what her regimen wasn't. And my wife, a year ago, she said, and I quote, I want a bigger booty. And so she started diving deeply into what would it take, and it was gonna be increasing her protein.
Speaker 2:She was prescribed a hundred and forty grams a day, and then obviously serious leg work. So, squats and hip thrusts and all the things that the interweb ass models are doing to build their booties up. And my wife is she's in her sixties and she's gained five pounds of muscle and she looks fabulous.
Speaker 3:That's incredible.
Speaker 2:And it's proportional. And she got the booty she wanted. And I'm telling you, man, it's like, not to get too TMI, but it fabulous. So, I'm very pleased with it. And so, the fact that she was, a, able to have that as a goal and increase her protein to 140 grams a day, and then do the work.
Speaker 2:She's always done the work. Loves working out in gym, she loves lifting weights. She hates doing cardio and aerobic stuff. So, she eats quite similarly to me. In fact, she would like a year ago, she would brag that on every meal she ate more than I did.
Speaker 2:I don't know that it was bragging as much as an observation, but at any rate So, has the same sort of order of operations, which is protein first, and then what is gonna satisfy my crunchy, salty, fatty, sweet, whatever the next levels of that hedonistic experience of having meal. Because I know you've heard me say this as well. I want every bite of food I eat to taste great. I don't eat something just because it's supposed to be good for me. And I don't eat something typically if it's bad for me, but it's gonna taste, you know, fantastic to my pleasure sensors.
Speaker 2:But somewhere in between is a lot of opportunity for taste sensations.
Speaker 1:Yeah. You mentioned you and your wife went on Skinny Confidential for the first time together, and it seems like you guys have a really healthy relationship. I'd love to just get your wisdom on what goes into that, because it obviously is a massive factor in happiness and health. So, any wisdom for the young guys on just, you know, finding the right person?
Speaker 2:Yeah. Well, we've been together thirty five years, married thirty three. And, you know, it's not been without its moments of like, I'm out of here. But every time we've had those moments, we've worked on it and gotten it back and it became better. So, one of the I think And as my wife said yesterday for the women, don't just pick on the observation that, okay, this guy will marry me.
Speaker 2:But go down the list and make sure that all the boxes are checked off. Because I think a lot of women in particular, the idea of getting married is foremost. And then the idea of having kids is right behind that. But there are a lot of other factors that have to be considered for a long term relationship. We would both say that communication is, it's almost cliche, but you have to have the communication.
Speaker 2:You have to have the mutual attraction that has to that has to go exist beyond, you know, the the the first date and then the honeymoon, and then, you know, there has to be that attract and then common interests. And our common interests are, you know, while we never work out together, we both work out every day. She has a trainer, and I work out alone. And she doesn't like doing aerobic stuff, but I do. But, for example, I have a fat bike that I ride on the beach.
Speaker 2:I have a carbon fiber, beautiful, amazing machine. It's a hell of a it's a really hard workout. It's the hardest workout to do all week. Wow.
Speaker 1:Really?
Speaker 2:Yeah. It's in the sand. So it's in the sand. We'll go anywhere from 10 to 12 miles just in the deep sand on Miami Beach, in the hot sun, by the way, sometimes against the wind. So she has a fat bike, but it's an electric assist.
Speaker 2:So she'll ride with me and she'll be able to get her workout in, but be able to, you know, dial the electric assist part up or not based on the sand conditions that we're in. So, but we have common interests in working out, in in we have common interests in looking good for each other, which is again, I think a huge thing. We have common interest we have kids together and grandchildren together, so that's clearly an an obligatory common interest. Right? We like to travel.
Speaker 2:So I think the common interest part is it can't be overlooked. And, you know, and and then there's a yin yang part of it too, where we're, you know, we disagree on on certain things,
Speaker 3:but we agree to disagree. So I think it's also really cool that you've been together for so long that she's truly been right by your side, seeing this whole trajectory of your career, obviously, for the amazing times and also the moments where maybe you needed the push from her when you were really starting to get going and didn't have that success yet.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Well, one of the things we got into the other day in a discussion was she was reminded by a friend the last time that we almost got divorced. And it's a true story. And once we got back together, it's better than it's ever been. Her friend had said, look, when you met Mark, he was personal trainer and a house painter.
Speaker 2:And you treated him like a personal trainer and a house painter. But he became a king, and you still treat him like a personal trainer. So, treat him like a king. And she like and I'm not saying anything that was horrible that way, but she got the concept, like, oh, Jesus. Yeah.
Speaker 2:You know? So that's one of those things that people in relationships, I think, have to recognize the other person for not just their potential, but then who they who they become and what they contribute to the relationship.
Speaker 1:That's really powerful. Is there a moment in your life that you wish you could go back to and relive just because I think about what we're going through right now, and I'm like, I feel like I'm gonna, like, wanna come back and be living with Brett and doing the podcast with Brett in the early innings. Like, it just is a special moment for us. I'm curious if you have a moment that you think back to.
Speaker 2:Every once in a while, I think about that or I get asked that and there's not one thing I would change. Even the most painful parts of it contribute to where I am today. So, at the age of 69, I'm fit, I'm healthy, I can go up against most 30 in any sort of athletic contest. And the only reason I got here is because the mistakes I made and the wrong turns I took. So if I said, well, I wasted seven years doing this one thing in my twenties.
Speaker 2:Like I was an early frozen yogurt entrepreneur. Like I opened a frozen yogurt shop in Palo Alto, California in 1981. And it was an amazing success. Right? So, it was such a success that my partner and I decided we would build a larger frozen yogurt emporium near Apple Computer that also had a 60 foot long salad bar and healthy muffins were a thing back in those days.
Speaker 2:Yeah. And so, borrowed a lot of money and we built this amazing emporium and it tanked horribly. You'd have thought I'd learned my restaurant lesson back in those days. So, every once in while I think, well, if just hadn't built that other place and just stuck with our five fifty square foot frozen yogurt only location, we would have been the frozen yogurt kings of the country because this was really early days of frozen yogurt. No.
Speaker 2:Things turned out so much better for me based on what didn't happen than on what might've happened. So, I feel like that going back and second guessing is such I'm a fan of the butterfly effect, that whole concept. Like, no, I wouldn't change anything because everything I did got me to where I am today, and I'm very happy where I am today.
Speaker 3:Yeah. Whether you think about the whether it's the frozen yogurt, the TV show, the Primal Kitchen restaurant, it's like all these things that average person would say it's a failure, really, it's a learning experience Yeah. Led you to exactly where you're supposed to be. Yeah. So it's cool for us having you in studio just because we've looked up to you for a long time, and to to go beyond just Primal Kitchen to learn more about your actual story about when you were younger that got you to the point here, it's it's really special for both of us and just like a great proof of concept that I think we're on the right track to, and, you know, just very thankful for you sitting down and joining us and everything that you do, man.
Speaker 3:Thank you.
Speaker 2:My pleasure. Thanks, Mark.
Speaker 3:Yeah. This is Cool.
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