#254: Robert Cheeke - Become an Impactful Vegan
Order The Impactful Vegan
For over 30 years, Robert Cheeke has made a profound impact on the vegan and plant-based lifestyle, both as a champion bodybuilder and a NY Times bestselling author of the book, The Plant-Based Athlete.
His latest book, The Impactful Vegan: How You Can Save More Lives and Make the Biggest Difference for Animals and the Planet is a blueprint for how we can use our time, energy, skills, talents, and resources to make the greatest impact in our daily lives.
Cheeke discusses his definition of effective vegan altruism using your "STRONG-V" to affect change. The episode explores entrepreneurship challenges in the vegan industry, the impact of women and minorities in veganism, capitalizing on your personal strengths, and the importance of progress over perfection.
Yes, this book is about becoming a more impactful vegan, but the pages and the examples translate into anything that holds our hearts.
Episode Highlights
1:57 Reconnecting with Robert Cheeke and recognizing his massive accomplishments
11:54 His Quest for Impactful Change
21:36 The Power of Finding Your Why
27:28 Using Your Strengths and STRONG-V to Serve Others
36:36 Making Impactful Financial Choices
44:52 The Power of Leading by Example
45:27 Earthling Ed: A Voice for Compassion
55:10 Navigating the Challenges of a Vegan Career
1:04:36 Reaching the Right Audience: Key Demographics
1:13:35 Embracing Imperfection and Choosing Impact over Perfections
1:19:21 Choose Your Hard: Making Difficult Decisions for the Biggest Results
1:24:07 Giving Back: Providing Vegan Meals for all books sold
1:27:06 The Impactful Vegan: Saving Lives through Compassion
Order The Impactful Vegan
About Robert Cheeke
Robert Cheeke grew up on a farm in Corvallis, Oregon where he adopted a vegan lifestyle in 1995 at age 15. Today he is the author of the books, Vegan Bodybuilding & Fitness, Shred It!, Plant-Based Muscle, and the New York Times bestseller, The Plant-Based Athlete. He is often referred to as the “Godfather of Vegan Bodybuilding,” growing the industry from infancy in 2002, to where it is today.
As a natural bodybuilding champion, Robert is considered one of VegNews magazine's “Most Influential Vegan Athletes.” He tours around the world sharing his story of transformation from a skinny farm kid to champion vegan bodybuilder. Robert is the founder and president of Vegan Bodybuilding & Fitness and maintains the popular website, VeganBodybuilding.com. Robert lives in Colorado with his wife and two rescued chihuahuas.
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Full Transcript via AI Transcription Service
[0:00] I'm Rip Esselstyn, and you're listening to the PlantStrong Podcast. For over 30 years, Robert Cheeke has made a profound impact on the vegan and plant-based lifestyle, both as a champion bodybuilder and a New York Times bestselling author. Today, he gives us all the playbook on how to become a more impactful vegan. It's the name of his new book, and he's with us right after this message from PlantStrong.
[0:32] Many of us want to become impactful in everything we do, especially for causes that are important to us, but we, many times, we have no clue where to begin, or we simply don't think that our contributions would be big enough to have a real impact. I'm here to tell you that's simply not true, and there are always ways to be more impactful. full. Case in point, Robert Cheeke's latest book, The Impactful Vegan, how you can save more lives and make the biggest difference for animals and the planet is a fabulous blueprint for how you and me and all of us can use our time, energy, skills, talents, resources to make the greatest impact on the lives of animals and the planet. Robert's been doing it now for over 30 years, and he is responsible for raising awareness and funds for the vegan movement, as well as converting thousands of people to the plant-based lifestyle. Yes, this book is about becoming a more impactful vegan, but the pages and the examples translate into anything that holds our hearts. Please welcome back to the PlantStrong Podcast, Mr. Robert.
[1:53] Music.
[1:58] All righty, everybody. I am here with none other than Robert Cheeke. What's up, Robert? Thank you so much for having me. I guess I'll do that little flex early on. Appreciate it. Thank you for having me on the show. It's good to be back.
[2:16] Well, it's great to have you back. For those that don't know, I had Robert on episode 91, back when he and Matt Fraser wrote The Plant-Based Athlete. That was a New York Times bestseller. And you guys knocked it out of the park. But, you know, I'm a little bit hurt, Robert. And let me tell you why. So I just found out that you were in Dallas, like not too long ago at Ben Bella, your publishing house for the impactful vegan that is hitting bookstores and Amazon and everywhere else. June 25th. And I found out that, you know, where's the love? There was no text. There was no phone call saying, hey, Rip, I'm up in Dallas. Come visit. Yeah, well, to the best of my knowledge, that's about a three and a half hour, four hour trip. So I might as well be in another state. But that's nothing when it comes to Robert Cheeke. I would make that at the top of my hat. Well, then we will try that for round two. But also, I was signing books for 16 hours over the course of two days. And I just didn't get a chance to do much else except for eat some vegan food and hit the gym, which I did.
[3:30] And so how is the elbow? How are the fingers? Did you know, did you get any any calluses or any cuts from all that signing? And part of that is understanding how hard to grip the pen. That's a big part of it. Sometimes I grip the pen too hard as I'm signing or as I'm writing something and try not to mess up. And I didn't mess up a single book. Well, a couple I, you know, I had to change some words because I started to write the wrong word and had to save it. it, but I didn't ruin any books. But yeah, that's part of it. It wears on your fingers and also the paper touching that amount of paper, it pulls the skin off your fingers. So it was a task, but I think it's going to be very, very meaningful getting those signed advanced copies out people like yourself. And I hope that's going to make a difference in people learning about the impactful vegan.
[4:24] Well, okay. So that's what I want to do with you today on the podcast, the Plant Strong podcast, talk about the impactful vegan. But before we do, Robert, I just need to say that, you know, you, as long as I've known you, and I think we first met in, I want to say 2009, 2010, but you've always had such an insanely big heart, right? I mean, and you wear your heart on your sleeve. It is such a beautiful thing. And I love how supportive you are of everybody in the movement, right? You're, you're there holding up their books, you're, you're doing everything you can to promote everyone else. And so I,
[5:08] It's now time for people to give back to Robert Cheeke a little bit. Show him the love that you so deserve with this book that you're bringing out into the world, The Impactful Vegan.
[5:20] I mean, how much time have you spent writing The Impactful Vegan and why not?
[5:25] Well, first of all, thanks for those kind words, Rip. And there's a reason behind it, why I support everybody else. And that's part of being an impactful vegan. That's part of using my skills and my talents and my resources and my network to amplify others. I mean, I don't write cookbooks, so I get behind those who do, like your sister and mom and Carly Bodrug and everybody else, Tony Akimoto, and give them the best opportunity to land on that bestseller list or make a splash or reach the 99%, reach the omnivores, change hearts and minds and menus and meal plans. That's what it's all about i don't i don't make foods you know like like you do with plant strong foods or like dan does with blue zones i so i get behind that right i don't make protein powders but james wilkes does and brendan brazier did and i get behind that because that can help displace animal-based foods in the marketplace consumer packaged goods vegan restaurants so that's why I get behind that stuff because I know I can turn people onto and I can reduce animal suffering as a result, which leads me to the impactful vegan. How long did I spend on it? Two and a half years. And I wrote more than 1000 pages. We distilled it down into 270 or so. I actually thought it was going to be more like 350, but with the weight and the price and bringing in a fifth editor, We had a team of five editors. It was incredible.
[6:51] We really distilled it down into something that's super consumable and palatable and actionable.
[6:58] And I'm grateful for those additional edits. But, wow, I've got a backup Word document with something like 600 pages in it, another document, and then 40 pages handwritten that never even made it onto a computer. Maybe it's good material. Who knows? It never even made it to the next step. It was a big project, Rip. Yeah.
[7:18] Yeah, yeah, yeah. So let's take a step back on Robert Cheeke's journey. So when and why did you personally become vegan? Wednesday, December 8th, 1995 is the day that I became vegan as an experiment to support my older sister who was vegan and into animal rights. We grew up on a farm. She organized this animal rights week. I was going to fast food restaurants every day. I was eating my favorite food, which was eating chickens.
[7:49] I also liked bacon coming from pigs. And I decided out of respect for my older sister, you know what, I'll be vegan for a week, whatever that means. And on that Wednesday, that fateful day, December 8th, back in the late 1900s, 1995, that was the day it all started. And you know why, Rip? I grew up on a farm. I raised animals. I used to bottle feed baby calves before getting on the school bus and play with them after school. And then I sold them at the auction at the county fair to be turned into someone else's meal. And when I got exposed to more large-scale industrialized factory farming animal testing through videos and through literature and through conversations with people I decided you know what that's that's not what I want to get behind you know that's not what I want to support I want to be I want to spread compassion I always have I've always been this effective altruist but decades before there was a name for it I've always been an impactful vegan that's why I got into fitness in the first place was to combat the number one objection to veganism or a plant-based diet that you can't get enough protein. So I achieved the American dream and put on a hundred pounds. You know, I was 120 pounds when I became vegan. And as you've seen throughout my career, I peaked at 220 pounds as a champion vegan bodybuilder, but it all started as a small kid growing up on a farm and wanting to make a difference in the lives of others.
[9:17] Well, isn't that something? So would you say the primary reason why you decided to get into, bodybuilding, why you wrote Vegan Bodybuilding and Fitness, Shred It, even the plant-based athlete, and you're referred to as the godfather of vegan bodybuilding, is it to basically bust that whole stereotype and show people that you can do this eating plants, you can be vegan and be the manliest man that you can be. Yeah, that's precisely why I did it, Rip. I mean, I was a five-sport athlete in high school. I'm sure you were similar, involved in all kinds of sports until you found your best ones, swimming, whatever it was for you. For me, it was long-distance running, a far cry from bodybuilding and building muscle. But I was a pretty good runner. I was a decent runner.
[10:07] And so I was a high school athlete wanting to show my other high school friends, that I could do this, that I could build my body. I was on the number one ranked soccer team in the state of Oregon on the varsity team. I then actually left that even though we just won the state championship the year before I made the team. I left that team to run on the number two ranked cross-country team in the state. Mostly just I didn't get along. I didn't fit in as well. I wasn't cool enough to fit in with all the soccer players because they were the most popular people in school. And I ran on the cross-country team where my friends were and where a few other fellow vegan athletes were. And we were the number two ranked team in the state. I went on to run cross country at Oregon State University for a year. And it was all to show that I could perform at a high level on a plant-based diet to help encourage those around me to reduce their animal product consumption. Now, this was largely very much like you, Rip, before the internet or before we had computers at home or before we really knew what the internet was around 95, 96.
[11:10] And then as we got into more of this internet age, 2000, Y2K, 2001, that's when I embraced bodybuilding. And I actually started my website in 2002 veganbodybuilding.com became a competitive bodybuilder right around that time, 2001, 2002, competed for a decade, won multiple bodybuilding competitions and ended up on magazine covers featured in flex magazine and natural bodybuilding and iron man magazine, all these very heavy bodybuilding sports specific magazines, not just the vegan ones. And it was because of that desire. I wanted to reach the masses. That's what I've always tried to do. I failed a lot of times and I've succeeded
[11:52] a few times reaching the general public. And that's why I also wrote The Impactful Vegan to show other people how to use their own skills and talents to reach the masses as well.
[12:06] Well, you have done such a phenomenal job piecing together this book.
[12:12] And so what I'd love to do for the listener right now is I just want to grab little gems that you talk about from each chapter. And so hopefully what I can do here is kind of serve it up to you and then, and then we can talk about it. But I think just to get the ball rolling here, Robert.
[12:31] Your first chapter, you basically, you throw out this term, effective vegan altruism, which is what inspired you to kind of write The Impactful Vegan. My question to you is, what is effective vegan altruism? Because I've never heard that term before. And I doubt that many of our listeners. Yeah. Well, thanks, Rip. I actually added the word vegan to it. So effective altruism is simply doing the most good for others. So it's maximizing our impact on reducing suffering. And this is very much aimed at reducing global poverty. So I first came across this from Peter Singer in his book, The Most Good You Can Do. It's all about effective altruism, which again is maximizing our impact on reducing suffering. So not just doing some good, not just volunteering here and there, or not just donating without being mindful about it or paying close attention to it, but how can I use impartial and a scientific approach to measure the impact of my actions and therefore reduce suffering the most? For example, let's be really clear.
[13:44] One of the ways Peter Singer and others, William McCaskill, who co-founded Effective Altruism, talk about this is reducing suffering in Sub-Saharan Africa, where it's just the scale of suffering is so large, where people may have to walk for seven miles one way to get clean water and carry it on their head to get back to their family, where people go to bed at night, not knowing if they're going to get bit by mosquitoes and contract malaria and die. And so they.
[14:15] Figure out how can we help with this. So there's all kinds of ways to donate money to get mosquito bed nets to help prevent people, including children, from getting bit by mosquitoes and dying from malaria. There's ways to get clean water to those who don't have access to it. There's ways to get food to those who are part of the one billion people who are starving and don't know where their next meal is going to be. And they contrast all of this, Rip, with With contributing to other causes like donating to museums or the arts or theater where only affluent people benefit who are already wealthy and have enriched lives and it's not a life or death situation. Whereas poverty in parts of the world, 16-hour sweatshops in Southeast Asia is very common. In fact, just in between the company, the countries of I believe it was Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam back in the 90s, four million people left working on these these 16 hour farms out in the hot sun just so they could work in sweatshops in Thailand. I mean, there is suffering that is so much more extensive beyond the comfort of our luxurious lives here in the United States. And so I was really moved by that. You're right that for whatever reason, and I don't know where it comes from, Rip.
[15:38] When you introduced me, you talked about this heart. And I'm not saying that from an ego standpoint. It's like it's instilled in me that I have a moral responsibility to help others. If I am a privileged individual, which I am, a white heterosexual male born in the United States of America, college educated parents raised in one of the safest and best cities in the world, Corvallis, Oregon, I have a moral obligation and responsibility to make someone else's life better. So when I came across effective altruism, which was doing the most good, maximizing our impact, I thought, you know what? I read three books on the subject and listened to a bunch of podcasts and such and realized that, you know what? I want to do the same approach for animals, especially for farmed animals. 99% of animal suffering, actually 99.99% of animal suffering is in the food industry. How can we impact that? How can we change that? How can we maximize our impact on reducing suffering there? And that's what I explored in my thousand pages of writing, in my 40 or more interviews with world-renowned experts in veganism, animal rights, environmentalism, business, all kinds of stuff. And that's what we came to with the impactful vegan based on these principles of effective altruism of maximizing our positive impact.
[17:02] Yeah. Let me ask you this. Based upon all the things that you learned while writing this book that you probably didn't know before you wrote it, who out there, in your opinion, is doing it well? Yeah, that's a great question, Rip. And I learned a lot. This book is not Robert Cheeke's ideas. is, like Robert's philosophy from his 30 years as a, you know, effective vegan altruist and impactful vegan and vegan athlete. There's some of that, of course. But this was learning from, you know, Bruce Friedrich, who runs the Good Food Institute, $50 million annual organization that works with governments throughout the world to advance alternative proteins and change the landscape of food production for the future. I learned a lot from Paul Shapiro, the Better Meat company.
[17:59] I think you're familiar with them. Perhaps you've interviewed him. I'm not totally sure. I think so. But yeah, they're creating replacements through precision fermentation. They're creating replacements for animal-based meat and sparing hundreds of thousands of animal lives. I learned a lot from Vicky Bond. Is that what Ron DeSantos has basically banned though in florida is that correct that's the kind of stuff that yeah that that he's uh working on uh you know objecting or or banning or i haven't followed in super close detail but yeah it's these alternative uh proteins these cultivated meat products these precision fermentation uh but this is as paul has said many times this is the natural evolution of technological advancements rip i know you're out in texas but when you go down the is it the 35 five in Austin or Mopac. Why are you, why are you not doing that on horseback? It's not because you it's not because you care a lot about horses and don't want them on the hot pavement and all this kind of stuff. It's because we invented bicycles and automobiles and riding a horseback for our primary mode of transportation, especially long distances, is obsolete.
[19:11] That's. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Point point. So that's I mean, Rip, you know, this the American public and the general public at large has communicated to us very clearly that they don't care where their meat comes from. Many of them know it comes from industrialized factory farms. They don't care. And so if their meat comes from precision fermentation, if their meat comes from cultivated meat, as long as it tastes good, it's cheap, and it's convenient, they're going to eat it. And that's what Bruce Friedrich is banking on. That's what many people I wrote about in the book are banking on. So who's doing this well? I think the Good Food Institute is doing it well. I think I was just about to mention Vicki Bond from the Humane League. She's the current president of the Humane League. they're able to spare uh individual's life a chicken's life for as little as 33 cents i think that's very impressive i think they're doing it very very well i also think i also think faunalytics is doing it well if you're not familiar faunalytics is the largest animal uh.
[20:07] I guess animal rights or vegan or anything in that category um animal advocacy largest uh database library in the world maybe 5 000 or so research articles you could get lost in there for months. And what they do is they listen. They listen to the people we're trying to reach, right? They listen to non-vegans. They listen to omnivores. They listen, they do studies and find out that what type of actions, what type of advocacy, what type of behavior most effectively influences people to change their dietary habits. I mean, I don't know about your spending habits, habits rip, but I'm guessing you don't buy six belts per day or six wallets per day or six pairs of shoes per day, but you sure as heck sit down and eat six times per day, three standard meals and some snacks and grazing throughout the day. We all do. And so Fondalytics does research and conducts research and posts research and works with animal organizations, animal charity organizations throughout the world to better understand how to communicate with the 99% that we're trying to reach. So I think they're doing it well.
[21:15] Yeah. Yeah. So I like, I like hooked on phonics. That's good. Now I don't want you to give me a list of, of 20 people that are doing it well, because throughout this, this conversation we're having, you know, I know you're going to drop different names of people that are doing it well. Okay.
[21:33] So let's, let's move on to chapter number two. So you say, when you find your why you find your, find your why you find your way, which I love.
[21:46] But can you give me an example of that? I'm in my 29th year as a vegan athlete. I never forgot why I became vegan in the first place. I sat there in that chair in that auditorium, the animal rights week at my high school, and I watched videos of factory farming, of animal testing, graphic type of footage, as well as liberation footage of animals getting rescued and all of that. And I decided that's what I want to do with my life. I never forgot why I did that. I found my why. Why am I still in fairly good shape in my mid-40s, still hitting the gym last night for 90 minutes and in the hotel in Dallas yesterday at 6 in the morning before signing books and getting on a flight and the day before that and before that in Washington, D.C. At the Animal Rights Conference, the Animal Advocacy Summit, you know, before hitting the all-day conference, getting the gym. Because there's still that objection that vegans can't get enough protein and it hasn't been put to rest yet despite my efforts and despite your efforts and other people's efforts and so i still need to carry that torch i still need to challenge the status quo i and so i still need to show up day after day so i know my why i know what i'm doing why do i write books rip.
[23:01] Because I'm going to say this with no ego, I'm going to say this with a carefully crafted practice I've been working on since I was in Carol Young's third grade class in 1988 at Lincoln Elementary School. I'm a damn good writer. I'm good, and I know that. I don't have my own podcast. I don't have my own products. I don't have my own all these other things, whatever it is, TV show, or I'm not musically inclined and all that. Because I am a writer and I'm one of the best in the world at it. And that's what I do. Because my voice carries on the pages that I write. My book, you graciously mentioned, The Plant-Based Athlete, New York Times bestseller, number one international bestseller, Publishers Weekly bestseller, translated into nine languages worldwide.
[23:49] That is what I'm good at. That's my why. I found out at an early age where my talent lies. I think, like you, I'm very lucky to have a very talented father. My father, animal science professor at Oregon State University for more than 30 years. He wrote, I think, 15 textbooks or more on various subjects involving animal agriculture. I got some of that DNA to be a good reminder. And that's what I do. And, you know, I used to travel around the country. That's when I first met you 15 years ago when you invited me to speak at Whole Foods Market. And I was sleeping in my car, traveling in my old Prius all over the country, hanging out outside a warehouse or parked in a parking lot at 24 Hour Fitness. I could use the bathroom, brush my teeth before reclining the seat and lying down there to go to rest.
[24:42] Because I knew I connected the dots 15, 20 years ago, Rip. I knew I was going to be a bestselling author. I wrote about it in my journal back in the 90s. I described precisely what happened 15 years later, like even insane details that were very kind of eerie. Yeah. What, what would you say, what would you say to somebody that's out there that is trying to find their why and doesn't know what their why is that will help them find their way, especially when it comes to finding, you know, maybe a, a piece of their heart that, uh, that they didn't know was there that will allow them to become a impactful vegan. What makes you smile the biggest? You know, what makes you, I don't want to be cliche here, but you know, get out of bed in the morning, excited to start your day. But let's get, let's get more nuanced. What, what warms your heart? I was in the gym last night, listening to Shankar Vedantam, the Hidden Brain podcast. And I just had a genuine smile because the attitude, the episode was about gratitude.
[25:48] And I'm just sitting there doing lat pulldowns with a giant grin on my face, hearing someone else's story about gratitude. And that, that moves me, that gets me going. You know, I was able to help someone out yesterday or two days ago, wherever it was in Texas, who was a little bit down on their luck and needed some, you know, some money for food. That, that, that warms me because I know I'm helping them. So find what, what that why is for you. Maybe you love, maybe you love numbers and you love math and you love data, or maybe you love music or you love art or you love your this whatever craft it is and if you don't know rip ask some people around you like for their observations about you like what they think that you get most excited about what they think that you are best at and and what you what they think that you love because their observations might be even be more accurate than your own.
[26:47] Yeah. Yeah. Sometimes others know as much or more about us than we do. That's interesting. And one of the people you talk about in the book is plant-based on a budget, Toni Okamoto, who I've had on the podcast and how I think you're like, you know, she found her why, and that really led her down the path. Oh yeah, absolutely. I mean, she worked for nonprofit animal rights organizations. She worked for animal sanctuaries and she found her niche in there with plant-based on a budget, making plant-based food accessible and affordable and teaching people in creative
[27:23] ways and amassing a following of, I think, across all platforms between one and two million people. She found a way to make a living at it. She found a way to turn this hobby into a career. And most importantly, she was able to reach a lot of people. She was able to inspire a lot of people who don't identify as vegans or plant-based, but from that. And so what she did was she found her why of wanting to make a difference in the lives of animals. And you can do that, Rip. You could do that volunteering at a sanctuary. That's great. You can do that creating a consumer product good, some sort of plant-based ice cream, let's say, perhaps.
[28:02] You could do that in many, many ways. She decided to create intellectual property, a blog about it, and then expanded that to writing books, very, very popular cookbooks that are available in bookstores throughout the world. And that was also because she never forgot her why. You know, her creation, her craft is an extension of her desire to help others. And I think that's...
[28:30] I mean, I'm not just saying this. I'm saying it because you're right in front of me right now, because it's an example. I think that's why you changed Engine 2 in Austin, Texas to be plant strong, because you cared about your buddy's cholesterol levels and his health and his family and your other fellow firefighters. prodigies, or else you wouldn't have done that, right? You wouldn't have taken the time or effort. You'd say, okay, you do you, I'm going to do me, you know, best of luck with it. But you said, no, I know my why. And I'm guessing you got a lot of that from your parents. I know my why, I know my commitment to improving the health of people around me and therefore improving the planet at large, improving the healthcare system, improving the lives of animals, including improving the environment and crops and land. But it started with it, knowing your why. And I think that naturally extended to creating food products and all of those types of things to reach a community. I believe there is altruistic reasons behind that. And so, you know, you're an example too. But thank you for highlighting Toni. She's doing great work, as are so many others in our movement who really understand their why quite well. Yeah. Yeah.
[29:45] So I want to move on to chapter three, where you talk, you talk about basically using your strengths to help others. And I want to read this, this passage that you have. And it's actually a quote by Carrie McCarthy that I find to be really powerful. You start, this is how you start out the chapter. Just being vegan is so useful in terms of society, Because when you exercise that muscle of empathy towards a voiceless group, animals, it means that every time you sit down to eat a meal, you're forcing yourself to look beyond your own selfish wants out to the bigger picture. And as the wider world emerges to you, you can see that it's something worth your attention and something connected to what you do. Right on. Yeah.
[30:33] Yeah. Good stuff. Yeah. I love that. And, and rip, I created something called the strong V. Uh, this is something that I think is perhaps one of the biggest foundations of the whole book, along with the undertones and underpinnings of effective altruism, or as I call it, effective vegan altruism, working to maximize our reduction of animal suffering. Strong V is, is just, I'll explain what it is in a moment. It is foundational rip. If you, if you can identify these things, you can change the world around you. Let me tell you what I mean. I came up with this acronym Strong V to leverage our skills, talents, resources, other strengths, network, generosity, and volunteering to maximize our impact on others. Let me give you some examples of Strong V, Rep. I don't have a lot of money. In fact, I'm often an unemployed contractor. I've sold a lot of books and, you know, I do my touring and all that. But I just don't have, you know, I'm not really built for the world of business. That's just not who I am.
[31:35] But within snapping of my fingers, I was able to raise $100,000 for the Game Changers, for example, because of my network, which is part of, you know, that's the one, two, the fifth letter in Strong V. Be because I'm connected with some celebrity friends, some wealthy people that I know. And within literally 30 seconds, send an email. Here's a little bit about the game changers back when they were still raising money, even before James Cameron put in his, his money. Yeah. I brought in a hundred thousand because of my network. Uh, same thing years later, uh, still in the same situation, uh, where I don't have a lot of money, but I was invited to this gala event at this animal sanctuary that I I'm quite fond of, not just because they're local, not just because I have a bias towards them. But because I understand the great work that they do, sometimes, Rip, getting 5,000 people in the general public to attend their farm in a single day to edit for a fall festival or spring festival, interact with the animals, make donations, all that kind of stuff. So I could barely afford the $150 tickets for this gala event for me and my wife to go. But I wanted to go, so we did. But what I did before I went was I sent out a few emails. Didn't take me very long. and I requested for product donations for their silent auctions. You know, full-size tubs of protein powder and food and apparel and supplements and nutrition and coaching services and all that.
[32:55] And I contributed literally thousands and thousands of dollars to their fundraising when I didn't have it in my own wallet, but I had it within my network, within my resources, within my community, my connections. And we raised nearly a quarter million dollars in three hours at that event for that sanctuary that's doing tremendous work. I give examples. I don't need to spoil them all, but I give examples of people using their website design skills to create powerful websites for animal charity organizations, which save those organizations tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars they would have had to hire someone else to do it when people volunteered their skills and talents. I talk about my friend who is a champion vegan powerlifter. He literally volunteers his physical strength to carry hay bales and buckets and all this stuff at animal sanctuaries.
[33:46] And it's also to recognize, Rip, that every single one of us, has talents we're not aware of. We have skills, learned skills that we learned in school or through other ways that whether it's a foreign language or filmmaking or something like that, we learned along the way that we just forgot that those could help animals. And we also have an incredible network. I mean, just think of the people who are in your phone right now. You have people who can work in construction. You have people who are managers. You've got people who are pretty wealthy, perhaps affluent. You've got people who are skilled laborers. You have people who can speak foreign languages and who can help translate programs into Spanish or German or French or some other thing to help advance a message.
[34:33] Our strong V is something that if we can leverage and utilize for good, can make a tremendous impact on the world around us. And I'm very proud of the examples I give throughout the book of people who are doing that you actually talk about one gentleman in sri lanka of all places that was able to save a hundred thousand monkeys from basically being yeah yeah it was a monk in sri lanka i actually just i was just talking about him three days ago with bob isaacson the president of dharma voices for animals who was on that video facetime call with me with that monk in sri lanka where he was spaying spaying and neutering uh dogs and cats at the same time and he because Because of his connection to the parliament, Rip, and he's very well-respected, this very well-respected monk in his country, he said, no, not on my watch. We are not sending those 100,000 primates to China to be experimented on, which is where they were headed. They were headed to animal experiment laboratories. And he said, no, not on my watch. And he prevented that. Many of us can do that. I mentioned a bunch of politicians. In fact, I was just with Dennis Kucinich, who ran for president twice. I was with him just a few days ago and his wife, Elizabeth. Yeah, he used to be the mayor of Ohio.
[35:49] He's been a U.S. representative for decades, I think, and ran for president in 2004 and 2008. And he's running for U.S. House of Representatives again, as I believe from what his wife just told me. But there's other people, too, whether it's Cory Booker or Dr. Amish Shah, who I just saw also in Washington, D.C., less than a week ago, who's passed the strongest laws protecting animals in the history of the state of Arizona.
[36:13] Too many others. I don't want to spoil it, but there's others in the book, too, where these are connections that if we use that leverage to help animals, we can do tremendous good. And so I I'm very pleased to be able to provide those examples of strong V for people to find out what your own strengths and talents are and how you can best utilize those for good.
[36:36] Yeah. Yeah. So let's move on to chapter four. Let's say that we have financial resources and.
[36:50] We want to do something with those financial resources. What are there any, like how do we determine what charities do the best kind of work? Is there a way to audit and look at the data that charities are doing so that we know we're putting our money to a place that is being impacted? Yeah, absolutely. Rip. And luckily there have been organizations that have already done the leg work. They've already determined that animal charity evaluators is one of them. Ace. they've evaluated over 3,000 animal charities over the last 10 years and they come out with their list every year of the top four and then they're on you know then maybe the next eight or ten honorable mentioned or the second tier than the third tier honorable mention so they do this every single year animal charity evaluators uh they were they were co-founded or inspired by william mccaskill the co-founder of the effective altruism movement uh way back uh 2012 i believe or 2013 uh maybe it's 2014 but anyway uh they've been doing this for a decade or more and so what they do is they look at all kinds of area of criteria just like joel firman does with his andy score you know the aggregate nutrient density index he's got like 37 you know differentiating factors like where you can measure the nitric oxide the antioxidant the fiber the the dietary cholesterol, vitamins, minerals, protein, whatever of a given food.
[38:15] Animal charity evaluators does that with these animal charity organizations. So what's their return on investment as far as how many animal lives are spared per dollar spent? What's their organizational structure like? Is it even a positive place to work by interviewing members who work there and managers and all of that, to what degree do they fill a void and work in areas that are often neglected by other organizations? How far does their money stretch? Do they work internationally where the U.S. Dollar stretches so much further? I mean, imagine, Rip, the power, I know you've done a lot of traveling, of the U.S. dollar stretching India and Bangladesh and Nepal and Sri Lanka and Vietnam and Cambodia and Laos. It's unbelievable. Or any country, essentially, on the continent of Africa and many parts of Central and South America. And so they have already done this work. And I did highlight it's also part of the summary of the conclusion of the whole book. So I don't want to give it all away. But I will highlight one of those organizations, and that's the Humane League. They're doing some incredible work because, I mean, look at the cover of my book, Rip.
[39:34] We chose a chicken, a hen, on purpose. Yeah. It takes about 150 to 200 individual animal lives, chicken lives, to create the same amount of edible meat as one cow. So almost 200 lives to one. And chickens are often overlooked. We don't care about them as much as we do dogs or cats or horses or even other animals, perhaps like goats. Votes, yet they're slaughtered at the tune of $65 billion annually, I think over $9 billion or $23 billion right here in the U.S. alone. And so the Humane League can spare chickens life for as little as $0.33. I mean, imagine that, what I like to call, or my friend gave me this name, unnecessary beverage that many of us are going to eat or drink later today. You know, this overpriced coffee, this energy drink that we don't need, the sugary beverage that has more than our entire daily recommended allowance of sugar in one single beverage. Imagine if we just forego that just for a day and we can spare 15 individual lives.
[40:47] Lives. And the same can be said about fish who suffer in incredible ways to the tune of 1.3 trillion annually, shrimp and fish of all types. There are organizations, Rip, that have been in place for decades. They've done the trial and error. They've done the research. They have entire teams. Some have teams of hundreds of people. They're very skilled. They're very well-versed. They're very talented. They put people with the right talents in the right position to do the most good. That's so much more than you and I can do on our own. And I think maybe this is a good time to say this, Rip. I don't want everyone to listen to this and absorb this and take it to heart.
[41:30] Just you and I living our plant-based or vegan lifestyles, however we wanted to define that or describe it, we're going to spare about 365 animal lives per year. It's one a day. It's pretty good. But I talk about in the impactful vegan, how altering your behavior just a little bit could spare 135 times more animal lives, 16,000 in a year, instead of, you know, 365 or even more than that.
[42:01] And that's by contributing to the most effective animal charities in the world. Even if it's just a very small percent of your annual income i already told you five bucks will do right save 15 lives five bucks imagine if you have a monthly donation or you have a yearly donation when you're at the end of the year doing taxes you recognize that there are many wealthy donors that double or triple a donation they match it this happens all the time during giving tuesday in the in the fall and winter and around the new year right before the new year and even i I got an email from Vegan Outreach literally yesterday. They had a wealthy donor doubling or matching your donation. So this happens throughout the year. So the Humane League is just one of the organizations that I want to highlight. And guess what, Rip? They have been an animal charity evaluators finalist as one of the top four effective and impactful organizations for 10 consecutive years and now for an 11th year.
[43:04] Who runs the Humane League and where are they based?
[43:24] And this goes back, this is beautiful about the strong V, Rip. She was a veterinarian and she was able to help one animal at a time. But by taking on a role with the Humane League and engaging with literally thousands of food companies and getting them to enact practices of getting animals out of cages, getting chickens out of cages, getting egg-laying hens out of cages, working with farmers to improve conditions, or eliminate suffering as much as possible. The numbers are there in the book. It's unbelievable. She's been able to help, I think at this point, hundreds of millions of individual birds compared to just one at a time as a veterinarian, because she took a step back and realized as a doctor, a doctor of veterinary care, as an influential and very, persuasive individual from her credentials and her background, her experiences, she is able to persuade uh companies food companies farmers to enact different practices that are much more compassionate that that's an incredible story of using her her inherent skills and talents that she's got to do more good.
[44:44] I love that. Let's move on here.
[44:49] You talk, I think it's in chapter, let me think, chapter six. You talk about how important it is to lead by example and how your actions really make a big difference. And you talk about a gentleman named Earthling Ed.
[45:04] Let our listeners know, who is Earthling Ed and why is he in your book? Yeah, Earthling Ed, I was supposed to see him a few days ago, but he didn't make it to the event, had to do a keynote speech via video. Earthling Ed is probably, he's considered the most powerful voice in kind of
[45:25] the vegan advocacy area right now. Now, as far as vegan activists, he has a very calm and persuasive voice about very logically and reasonably adopting the tenets of veganism and having and living a more compassionate life. He's spoken at more than one third of all universities in the UK. He has a course he teaches at Harvard. He I mean, listen to this, it's unbelievable. believable. He has opened up multiple restaurants in the UK, in two different cities, in London and in Brighton, I believe. He co-founded an animal sanctuary. He's written two bestselling books. One is called This Is Vegan Propaganda. And the other one is How to Argue with a Meat Eater and Win Every Time.
[46:15] He has started a podcast.
[46:18] He has his hands in all kinds of things. Uh he's award-winning documentary filmmaker a keynote speaker around the world and you ready for this he's 29 years old he he has done so much in in such a short time and you know why it started because he was sitting there watching television watching the bbc and learned about a massive truck carrying 7,000 chickens that crashed on the highway out in the UK and killed 1,500 chickens on impact. Others had broken wings and legs and flesh hanging off their faces. And he felt empathy for them. He felt sad. And then he looked, he turned around and looked at it in his refrigerator where he had a bunch of dead birds from KFC, his absolute favorite restaurant. They knew his order her by heart when he walked in and he realized for the first time that his actions were not in line with his feelings at that moment and then he asked there's a couple quotes in the book these are direct quotes from ed and i don't have it off the top of my head but it's something along the lines of is is their suffering worth you know the the brief sensory pleasure of my taste buds or.
[47:40] Could I do better or should I know better? And that's when he decided that he would not, not contribute to animal suffering anymore and would dedicate his life to animal advocacy. And I'll tell you something interesting, Rip, when I interviewed these 30 or 40 experts in the vegan world, you know, a lot of people, you and I both know and love Jean Bauer and, you know, dozens of others. We'll leave it for the reader to get to explore some of these names and read their, hear their stories. The name that came up more than, I mean, more, Honestly, to just be fair, more than everyone else combined was Earthling Ed. When people talked about those who are impactful, I asked people very directly, who in our movement is the most effective, the most impactful, and why is it and all that? His name came up. Much like, to give credit, your family, when you talk about Whole Foods plant-based, it's Campbell and Esselstyn. It's Campbell and Esselstyn. You get some McDougal and Furman and Forks Over Knives and a few others in there, but But it's Campbell and Esselstyn, really, on the Mount Rushmore. And you can argue who else joins that list. Gregor, Barnard, you know, rock, paper, scissors at this point. But Campbell and Esselstyn are not moving from Mount Rushmore. They're there. They're not going anywhere. They're historically going to be there. Ornish, perhaps.
[48:57] Earthling Ed is on that Mount Rushmore right now. And he has been for years. And he's just been an effective debater and communicator on behalf of the voiceless who are suffering and he's done tremendous work. And so I was honored to be able to write about him and it all started because of this news story. He just, it wasn't because he got in some argument or fight or debate with somebody. It wasn't because of a meme on Facebook or these could be the cases. And some of those things- But that is my question to you is I think that each and every one of us, Robert, most of us, I'd say 98% of us have big, compassionate hearts. We're kind people. And that is part of our values as empathetic human beings. But there is a huge disparity between the love that's in our hearts and then how we eat. And I know that there's Beyond Carnism and there's been all kinds of stuff written about that, Melanie Joy. But what do you think could be the thing...
[50:20] Or is it just an individual thing where Earthling Ed, it was seeing that on the BBC? Is there something that we could do to get everybody in one fell swoop to realize that the way you're eating is not in alignment with your values? You know, Rip, unfortunately, there's not. I wish there were. I wish there was one fell swoop approach. But as many people say, there's the really the biggest objection to veganism is not the protein concern. It's not even a taste cost and convenience concern, in my opinion. And I think that perhaps the data suggests this. The biggest objection is I don't care. It's apathy. And that is our biggest obstacle. We have something you got to quite you got to follow up there. Well, I was, yeah, my thing was, and you use this quote in your book, and it's a Gene Bauer quote, which I really like, which is basically, if we can live well without killing others, why wouldn't we? And it's mostly because people don't want to. They are fine with consuming fast food. 80% of Americans consume fast food once per week. 37% of Americans consume fast food once per day. 20% of Americans regularly consume a meal in their car, which again is indicative to typically fast food.
[51:45] I disagree with the notion, very famous quote, I think I mentioned in the book too, that if, I mean, maybe I stand alone here, I'm not sure, but I don't think so. I disagree with the quote that says, if slaughterhouses had glass walls, we would all be vegetarian.
[52:02] I'm just not so sure, because I think most people do know what it takes for a burger to be turned in, you know, going from a cow to this edible thing here. And I think apathy is our biggest obstacle. Now, there are some approaches, and Fonalytics does a great job of explaining which approaches are good and better than others. So, for example, Rip, news stories and positive social media posts are more effective than disruptive protests, for example, because disruptive protests tend to turn people away the 99% we're trying to reach. It's very empowering for those who are doing it, right? I'm a voice for the voiceless. I'm fighting for animals. I'm a liberator. I get that. It's almost self-serving. Like I am doing my part and I feel empowered by doing that. But how does that impact the 99%? I even wrote this down. I don't know where it is now. I wrote something down that I think is a very – oh, there it is. Is the important question to answer. answer, it states this, Rip, I put it on a little post-it note. It says, what actions help inspire omnivores to change their eating habits? I think that's what we have to answer. And so it's news stories, according to the data.
[53:24] It's 30-day challenges like Veganuary where people are immersed into something and they get support. I mean, you have this too with your challenges. I mean, the data suggests these are effective.
[53:36] These are even more effective than celebrities because celebrities are never early adopters. They wait to determine what their audience cares about before they take a stand on something.
[53:51] Billboards, obviously, not all that effective. If you don't, have you ever been driving down I-35 rip and you see a billboard and you're like, you know what, I'm going to change my entire worldview, the previous, you know, 55 years or whatever that I've been thinking about this. Yeah, yeah, that billboard just changed that moment, that two seconds on the freeway. It doesn't work that way. It might remind you that you're hungry and you go get that, you know, three for two biscuits at whatever fast food restaurant, but you're not going to change your value system from a billboard, but you might from a book. Books are very impactful. The problem is they don't reach a lot of people, unfortunately. But a news story could reach a lot more people. Documentaries are fairly effective, not as effective as we might think, because a lot of people can tell that documentaries are highly biased. I mean, that's basically the point of documentaries is to share a certain perspective. So everyone knows, for the most part, documentaries are biased and therefore the 99% is a little bit hesitant. Whereas a book could very well be biased as well, but it just comes across as more independently minded or authoritative on a particular subject.
[55:04] So I wish there was one fell swoop, Rip, but there really isn't right now. And it mostly comes down to eventually changing taste, cost, and convenience of food.
[55:17] Yeah. Yeah. Well, speaking of taste, cost, cost, taste, cost and convenience of food, you you have the vegan career and, you know, conscious capitalism for better business. And you have examples like Next Level Burger and Greenert by default. You mentioned Chef AJ. Why? Why a chapter on the vegan career? I mean, I love it, but expand on why that made one. I think this is going to be the chapter that maybe raises the most eyebrows.
[55:52] It was a fun one to write because of, I think, partly my own experience and observations. I failed as an entrepreneur for 20 years, a budding entrepreneur, an attempted entrepreneur, a wannabe or a wannapreneur, I guess they're called.
[56:10] I was a wannapreneur, but I was terrible at it. Rip i'm probably the worst when it comes to entrepreneurship maybe you know what don't feel bad it is not for everyone and that's what i wrote about it i'm maybe the worst you've ever met and the reason for that is because of these three words know thyself know thyself i have no interest.
[56:35] And this is no this is nothing against those who do but i have no interest in you know profits and and profit margins, and all this kind of stuff, and making products, even though I know the strength of the more resources you have, the more good you can do. I'm just not built that way. I give everything away. I mean, you saw me when I was going on tour with all my vegan bodybuilding t-shirts and my self-published books. I just gave it away. I wanted to get the message out there. That is a horrible approach for an entrepreneur trying to build a sustainable business. It does And I've tried for 20 years. I've tried working under various entrepreneurs and I just didn't fit in. I mean, I'm one contract after another after another with companies and it just doesn't work for me because I'm so inclined to just give everything away and introduce products to people who are currently consuming animals. And I know this can displace animals in their diet. And I know how that impacts supply and demand. I know how that impacts shelf space in a store. And the more popular an item is at Costco or Whole Foods or Kroger or Albertsons or the neighborhood store airports.
[57:44] And so, you know, I'm not built for it. And so it was fun for me to write that it's important for people to know that before you decide, say, you know, you're all inspired. I'm going to go out and start my own vegan business or even my own animal sanctuary. Understand that 82% of first time entrepreneurs are going to fail. Right out of the bat, eight out of nine of you, or out of 10, 10 people, eight or nine of you are going to fail. Or out of 100, 82 of you, you're just not going to make it. The odds are dramatically stacked against you. And as it works in any kind of business, within the first year, 10% closed down. The first five years, 50% are gone.
[58:25] Right? 15 years, 75% are gone. And after that, it gets worse. Um that is just so people have a realistic approach i mean how many times have you met someone or even felt this way yourself where maybe you watch a documentary you go visit an animal sanctuary and you say man i want to start my own i want to go start my own that is one of the worst things you could do and and i love if even if that little three second quote gets out out there on the internet why what's the context well for starters uh 82 percent are going to fail just off the bat and most people don't know what they're getting themselves into i talked to many uh farm animal sanctuary operators founders uh presidents whatever managers and you're not at an animal sanctuary you're not housing and feeding animals you're raising funds 24 7 seven, you're watching animals die all the time because of natural causes or because of their injuries or conditions that brought them into the farm in the first place.
[59:32] You say goodbye to holidays. You say goodbye to travel. You can't. It's not all doom and gloom. Yes, it's very hard to start a business. You have to have the right temperament. You have to have the right skills, you have talents, the right mentality. You have to be able to hire and fire people. You have to be able to manage people. You have to make difficult decisions. You have to be able to to take loans perhaps or partner with non-vegans and take their capital and use it. And you've got to share responsibilities and all that. But as I wrote about, there's success stories, whether that's Next Level Burger or I guess Chef AJ, who created her own individual entrepreneurship through her using her skills and talents to host a show and put on events and workshops and conferences and write books and all of that stuff.
[1:00:21] You know what? She really did do a great job utilizing all of her skills and her strengths to be an advocate for everything that veganism stands for. What about Happy Cow? Did you talk to the Happy Cow people at all? and that app and what i wrote about them briefly i know eric brent have known him for 10 or 15 years i thought about that but rip there were there were five finalized fully edited chapters they got cut from the book and then you know plus the hundreds of pages that never made it to a finalized chapter there there was more about happy cow there was more about all kinds of, vegan companies and individuals their interviews that never made it into the book, I always thought maybe I would do a second book but you know it's to be determined to see if people like this one first and I I know it's the best book I've ever written by actually by a landslide by a large margins best book I've ever done it's the most thoughtful it's the most meaningful it's the most impactful but the audience is going to determine whether it's worthy of a second book or not and that's not up to me that's up to the market.
[1:01:32] Right. Right. Right. Um, plant-based news. Yeah. Right. That they're, they're an outfit over in the UK that's doing, you know, really, really incredible work. Obviously Vega that our, that our friend Brendan Brazier started a long time ago. I thought that was worthy of mention because they, uh, they reinvented the plant-based sports nutrition category. They, uh, that was back in 2003 and I started working with them in 2005. So I was intimately involved in that. I helped their products launch in the U S and was with them for a decade and they completely transformed grocery store shelves. I mean, they were the number one nutrition product in, you know, in, in like target and CVS and Walgreens of all of whey protein and everything. They, they, they really opened up doors for now. You've got all the, whether it's compliment or sun warrior or gain or plant fusion fight. I mean, I mean, go down the list. They could open those doors. And I think we have to honor that. Much like we do, we honor Nathan Pritikin. We honor Dean Ornish. We honor Caldwell B. Esselstyn Jr. And Dr. T. Colin Campbell. And we honor Brenda Davis and Dr. Michael Clapper and Chef AJ and those who are pioneers in this space.
[1:02:51] And I think it was important to tell that story. And and of course plant-based news is i was with their co-founder robbie lockie three days ago uh and and he actually he just flew back i think to the uk and he he just wrote me this morning that he's loving the book uh i mean he read parts of it but now he like has his own signed copy and can really dive in on a long flight and he says just just loving it and you know that's uh you.
[1:03:17] That's what i what i hoped and uh and and there's and there are some great companies and let me just finish on this topic with this rip the punchline was that and there's some great questions i love the opening of that vegan career chapter which gives you like literally an entire page of questions to answer you know you like like is there really a need for for you to you know create a new product is there how how does it differentiate between what's already on the market how can you use what's the the current success stories on the market to you know predict your own success you know what void do you fill um the punchline is or can you use your skills and talents to join an entity that's already in existence since we know that eight or nine out of ten are going to fail anyway that are brand new startups like don't start your own animal sanctuary go join one that is already thriving and add your talents to that yeah there you go um.
[1:04:14] Yeah. Yeah. Right there. Vegan career. And, uh, I have pink, pinky coal. I just signed a book for her yesterday, like, or two days ago. Um, yeah. And she, she shared a story on Instagram that I posted. She shared that last night. Um, so anyway, rip there's, there's hope for a vegan career. You just have to be very, very specific and deliberate and have the right temperament in order to make it happen.
[1:04:37] Let's talk about reaching the right audience. Uh, you have a whole chapter on reaching the right audience, whether it's young, whether it's black, whether different demographics? What would you like to say about that? Yeah. First, I'd like to say that you are not your audience. It's a quote I got from Tobias Lienart from his book that's in like 10 languages. It's something about creating a vegan world, something like that. Sorry, Tobias, for getting the exact name misplaced, although I do have the book sitting around here somewhere. But understand that you are not your audience. It is important because sometimes we say, you know what? Hey, this worked for me. Come on, Rip. I was inspired by black and white videos back in the late 1900s to stop contributing to animal experimentation.
[1:05:26] That's not going to work for everybody. Just because it worked on you, it's not going to work for most people. And that's where we have to listen. We have to observe. We have to understand the statistics, the data, the demographics, and the evidence. So I spell it out in the book. I'll give a few spoilers here.
[1:05:46] Who buys most food for a family? Uh, the man, women, women are buying 80% of groceries for a household. Most of us know that. Um, but that should be top of mind. Uh, women make 70 to 80% of the meals they buy over 80%. And then they prepare over 70% of the meals for an entire household. And, and, and that is something we have to pay attention to that women are so much more likely to be a compassionate. And I, And I make some kind of attempted humor in the book about some sort of perhaps biological flaw that men have where we just love hunting, killing, grilling, sizzling dead carcasses. I don't know what it is about us, Rip, but we like doing that. But women are more likely to be compassionate.
[1:06:40] They're more likely to be caring. They're more likely to be those that make the meals for their families and to be purchasing the foods. And therefore, we should aim a lot of our efforts towards reaching women. And who are the most likely groups to change their worldview? Well, they're kind of two groups as far as age demographics. They're young people, like when I was in high school or those in college, who are just discovering who you are and what your value system is, what you care about, what kind of legacy you want to leave in the world or indelible mark you want to have on those around you. Young, inquisitive, teenage and college age students are a great demographic to reach. That's why Vegan Outreach spent all those years distributing information, literature on college campuses and providing vegan foods on college campuses. It's why Earthling Ed and myself and many others have spent years touring college campuses, having philosophical conversations or enlightening discussions with those who are open. It's also.
[1:07:46] And I think you know this well, it's also an older demographic who says, you know what, I need to change the course of the trajectory of my health for the remaining 20 years or whatever that I've got. I've had a lifelong habit of eating animals. And now all of a sudden, I've got the health issues. I've got the obesity. I've got the diabetes. I've got heart disease. I've got clogging of arteries. I have hypertension. I have all of these things. things and and now i'm looking to change my diet so i can fill in the blank and it gets overused but so i can you know play with my grandkids or so i can you know enjoy my golden years or i can enjoy retirement a little bit more i can feel more comfortable when i travel at maybe a lower body weight or whatever the case is i just want to have more energy i don't want to be.
[1:08:39] Stuck in this body that is hard to to move or that where i feel sick, And so, yeah, there's women are going to be most likely to become vegan or open to these ideas, younger people in their teens and 20s, typically, and then an older audience, 60s, 70s, 80s, perhaps. And then, as you mentioned, the black community in the United States, African-American community is the fastest growing vegan community, fastest growing demographic in the country. And why is that?
[1:09:42] Movement for a long time. And that's just the way it's been. We're not pointing fingers or anything like that. We're just saying it's for the most part, it's a lot of white men as far as the doctors and influencers and entrepreneurs and people that demographic. And then there's kind of the white, maybe female hippie movement from the 60s, 70s, 80s, popularizing this vegetarian lifestyle, these vegan ideals. deals. And so there wasn't a lot of representation in the black community. Sure. There was Dick, uh, uh, Dick Gregory. Um, there, there were, uh, Jim Morris, uh, uh, there were, uh, you know, more contemporary Tracy McWhorter who's been doing this for decades. Um, Brian Terry, uh, you know, John Sally, all these people, a lot of rap and hip hop artists. I mentioned a bunch of them in the book, but for the most part, it's been smaller representation. But now when you look at.
[1:10:33] The most popular vegan festivals in the world, or at least in America, many of them are put on by people of color. The vegan street fairs and big vegan parties and festivals. You look at some of the popular names, Tabitha Brown and Pinky Cole and others. Now, for the black community, they're saying, oh, there's people I can identify with a little bit more. They know my struggle. They know my lifestyle. They know my background. Will Tucker talked about that. there's even an event called black veg fest uh veg fest are historically very white uh that's just the nature of the demographics of our community in the united states but there's even one called a black veg fest and and will describe this in this conversation with me of just, being on stage and just looking out at the audience and just understanding that like that's a demographic that knows his struggle that knows his struggle to find his place in the vegan movement where he's a little bit of an outsider just because of his race or because of the color of his skin or because he has not historically had lots of representation.
[1:11:40] And to realize that those people could now be inspired by him, it was powerful. Like, I loved it. I loved it. And Pinky Cole said the same thing. It's representation. It's making veganism cool and hip and accessible and far-reaching and inclusive to a different demographic who was often left out. And John Sally talked about how everybody, you know, his grandparents, you know, growing up in the South and everybody had gardens back then. It was very common for for black Americans to be raising their own food and and be gardeners and and cultivating and creating their own plant based crops and, you know, collard greens and I don't know, beets and all these other greens. It was very common. It was very popular. And now we're just kind of getting back to our roots, so to speak. And the black vegan community is on the rise, largely because of representation, because of influential people in the movement who are entrepreneurs or musicians or artists or authors or television hosts or people who reach a wide audience. And it welcomes other people who can just identify them, identify with them a little bit easier just based on their cultural heritage and their background and their and even how they feel in their own skin with someone who looks like them.
[1:13:05] Representation can I don't think can be overlooked. I think it's very important. And so that's that's part of what's growing the vegan community within the black community. And I think it's a beautiful thing. And it's so exciting to see these very successful entrepreneurs like Pinky Cole and Tabitha Brown as just two standout people that I wrote about in the book that are really taking veganism into the next stratosphere. And it's lovely to see.
[1:13:35] Let's um let's wrap this up with the last chapter which i is so great you talk about don't let you know the perfection be the enemy of the good and choose your hard which i love choose your hard right because it's so true so like maybe for starters i think i think i think everybody knows you know what don't let perfect be the enemy of the good you know a lot of times that can set us up for failure, especially when it comes to eating this way, right? And if you cheat, it's like, oh, I can't do it. I'm going to throw in the towel, right?
[1:14:13] But what do you mean when you say that in regards to being an impactful vegan? What I mean by that, Rip, is that for years, and I'm actually talking, and I'm kind of embarrassed to admit, it was probably a couple of decades or more, I was obsessed with being the perfect vegan. I went through times where...
[1:14:32] I couldn't eat at a restaurant like Chipotle or a place that makes burritos. If the person wearing gloves had just touched some cheese or something else that was touching my food, I wouldn't eat it. Even if I had to pay for it, I'd give it to someone else.
[1:14:47] I couldn't sit in a car that had leather seats. I was just too uncomfortable doing so. So I would be difficult at a lot of restaurants if there was cross-contamination, which does not refer to any additional animal suffering. It's just my own personal bias or kind of being grossed out by it, which then made veganism look difficult and challenging for those around me. I even remember people getting frustrated with me as I'm asking the staff all these questions. And not that you shouldn't ask those questions, but I just I had so many barriers that didn't actually shine veganism in this very bright light. It made it look very difficult and challenging. And all the while, Rip, I thought I was making this incredible difference. I wasn't making any difference whatsoever because slight cross-contamination or slight, you know, using a leather basketball at a recreation hall or at a gym. I'm not buying it. I'm not paying for it. Just like when I'm renting a car, I'm one of thousands of people who sit in that car. I'm not creating more supply and demand for leather interiors, if that's what it is, or whatever the objection is.
[1:16:05] I have this entire, entire section about it where, again, I try to bring some humor back into it in that particular section about don't sweat the small stuff.
[1:16:16] It's the big picture stuff that matters. don't sweat the small stuff if your pillows have feathers in them at a, certain hotel like you don't need to haul your pillow from home with you um you know don't get a stiff neck about it you know i had a lot of those kind of like puns and i think it's kind of funny i had a lot of funny ones in there but that's what i mean that sometimes we and also it's not sustainable you're more likely to burn out you're more likely to be part of that recidivism group of you know i don't even want to mention the percentage it's higher than we'd like of people who leave veganism because uh it's too difficult to be perfect all the time and have a perfect reputation and have everything just be as absolute, blissful, and perfect as possible. We don't live in that kind of world. There's cruelty all around us, from the cars we drive and the bugs we smash into, to the transportation and the damage it does to the environment, to growing of crops on large scale that harvest and grind up a bunch of animals in the process.
[1:17:22] To our food choices or even animal byproducts that are in things like car tires or common things that we have. It's very difficult. I had a quote that didn't make it. It made it to like four rounds or through four different editors, then it finally got taken out. But I had a quote The Jains tried this for millennia. It doesn't work. I actually spoke at a Jain conference. They're a nonviolent religious group that's even known for wearing a mesh wiring over their mouth that they don't accidentally inhale a fly or a bug.
[1:17:54] And they stare at every single square centimeter on the sidewalks. They don't step on anything. thing. It's this obsessive compulsive disorder. I'm not saying that about their religion. I'm saying that about our human behavior, that it doesn't change the outcome in any measurable way to be obsessed with perfection. And in fact, it means we're more likely to lead to burnout and to even leaving veganism behind and living an easier lifestyle. Dr. Clapper had some beautiful quotes in the book about that, about people just tire. These are his words. They just tire of being the odd one out. They just tire of being ridiculed. Every family gathering is a hassle. They just get fatigued and burned out. And I'm even talking the way that Dr. Clapper describes it. He has that way of drawing it out. It's so difficult. And they just decide to leave veganism behind. If all you had to do was say, you know what, I'm doing the best that I can. I care a whole lot. And I'm trying to be mindful. But if there's a sliver, a sliver of cheese that ended up on my otherwise completely plant-based burrito. It's not the end of the world. It's okay. It's even okay to eat that sliver by accident or if it's right there because it doesn't equate to any additional animal suffering. It just happened to be there and not sweat the small stuff and focus on the stuff that makes the biggest difference around you, which is ultimately what being an impactful vegan is all about.
[1:19:22] Yeah. Yeah. Um, what about choosing your heart? Yeah. Yeah. I learned this actually, uh, it's a, it's a popular quote, but I learned it for the first time from Leif Arneson, the CEO and co founder of the vegan gym. And I worked with them for, for seven months and, and, and, and had a good time and learned a lot. And it's this popular quote that says there's lots of choose your hard scenarios like marriage is hard. Divorce is hard. Choose your heart. Right. Um, uh, not being, not being very fit is hard. Being fit is hard. Choose your heart. Um, there there's, there's so many, you know, working for yourself, uh, is hard working for someone else is hard. Choose your hard there are so many of these choose your hard scenarios that one way is hard and so is the other and you just have to recognize that the road is difficult you know animal liberation is hard and doing nothing is also hard because of what you have to absorb in your own self-reflection of that you're contributing to something perhaps uh bad by not doing something um yet the pursuit of animal liberation is also very, very hard and painful, but are you just going to sit on the fence or you'd do something about it?
[1:20:46] And that's hard. You know, being, trust me, I've been there more times than I'd like. Being broke is hard. Being financially responsible is also hard. Choose your hard. And I chose to not be fiscally or financially responsible. It was too difficult for me to wrap my head around it. And I had to deal with the hard reality of being broke and not having resources.
[1:21:15] And so that really resonated with me, this whole choose your hard message. And man, Rip, writing a book is hard, but not telling the story is also hard. And so I chose to do it, even though it's long nights, long days right here in this basement, just sitting down here by myself, just trying to get through it. But every day, every day we have the opportunity to choose our hard. We take one path instead of the other. And every day we have that privilege and that opportunity. And the road is difficult. The road is long. It's winding. It's full of speed bumps, like you admitted in your 23 years of creating food products and building a business and managing people. It's a windy, bumpy road. And many people who came before us have worked to pave that road, to lessen those bumps, to make it a little bit more passable. And we have the opportunity to do the same right now. We can say, you know what? This matters to me.
[1:22:24] I care about this. I know my why. I know the impact that I can have on the lives of others. I know I have some gifts. I know I have some talents.
[1:22:36] I know if I deploy those gifts and talents and skills in the right way, that I can save lives, human and non-human animal alike. And I have the opportunity every day that I wake up to choose my heart. The 1,440 minutes I have every day, I'm going to dedicate some of those to making hard decisions that are going to benefit the lives of others. And that's what I'm committed to doing. And that's ultimately what being an impactful vegan is, is answering that call. Where there's billions of lives at stake, there's very real suffering outside, just outside the borders of the comforts that we live in right now. Just outside the comforts of our own lifestyle, there's an untold amount of suffering that's happening that's out of sight and out of mind. I'm just asking people to bring that into your consciousness, bring that into your awareness and to let that linger and marinate in your heart and in your mind and have that be your fuel to determine what actions you take for others and let that motivate and inspire you to do something and the impact of vegan shows you how to do the best things to help others.
[1:23:58] Yeah. Thank you for that, Robert. Um, in keeping with your big magnanimous heart.
[1:24:07] With every sale of a book, you're going to be giving a vegan meal to a hungry child in a developing world.
[1:24:17] Why, why'd you decide to do it? I, I love it, but why did you decide to do that? Yeah, I met Paul Rodney Turner, the founder of Food for Life Global, which is now Food Yoga International, I believe. They just changed their name like literally a few weeks ago. But it was Food for Life Global for 40 years. So I'll refer to it as that as it's mentioned in the book. And what they do is Paul co-founded it more than 40 years ago. He's also a guy, big heart, big desire to help others. And what they do is they provide grants to people and organizations and groups in 65 developing countries and provide them the financial resources to create plant-based meals that are in that cuisine that's native to that area of the world. If it's in Kenya, it'll be different. If it's in Colombia, it'd be different. If it's in India versus Morocco and all down the line. And so they're able, through these grants that are typically anywhere from only $500 to $20,000, because of, as I mentioned earlier, how far the US dollar stretches in these developing parts of the world, they can create entire vegan meals, hearty vegan meals for starving children who might otherwise not eat that day. They can create that meal for less than 50 cents per meal. They already, I mean, this is just astounding. They provide $1 million.
[1:25:45] Vegan meals per day. And they've already dispensed something like 8.7 billion plant-based meals over the last 40 years to those who are hungry in the developing world. And so it's a way to help animals. It's a way to help humans. It's a way to help believe in something positive and provide aid for those who need it. And it's something that I'm committed to doing, even as someone who doesn't have a lot of my own money. I set aside the proceeds from this book, The Impactful Vegan, to contribute to actually five organizations, which makes the book itself a form of utility and a form of effective vegan altruism in and of itself. And Food for Life Global is just one of those organizations. The rest are listed in the conclusion of the book until you find out where I've decided after all this work on this book and learning from all these different people where I've decided to allocate the proceeds of the book to go in the most impactful way. But thank you for asking about my relationship with Future Life Global and why I care about doing that. The Impactful Vegan. Oh, there she blows right here. I'm going to show it as soon as that thing. Well, that's going to be up there for a while. There you are.
[1:27:06] Impactful Vegan, how you can save more lives and make the biggest difference for animals and the planet. Robert Sheik. Robert, thank you so much for joining me on the PlantStrong podcast. Everybody, find it in your heart to be the most impactful vegan that you can be. You got nothing to lose and everything to gain. And Robert, thanks for giving us the roadmap. Thank you, Rip. I appreciate the opportunity, the platform, and I want to thank you for everything that you do. You are an impactful vegan with your actions, with your words, with your connections, with your audience, and with your platform like this where you invite people like me to come on and talk about this topic. So I'm grateful for you, and I thank you for all you do for others. All right Robert cheeke give me a virtual fist bump on the way out plan strong my man boom all right see you down the road.
[1:28:09] Robert's heart and authenticity shine through robert has supported this movement for over three decades so let's do our part and support him in his latest book release lease, it's one way that we can all become more impactful vegans. The Impactful Vegan comes out June 25th, and I'll be sure to put a link in the show notes on how you can order. Thanks as always for listening and sharing this and all of our episodes of the Plan Strong Podcast. I am so grateful for your support, time, and positive feedback. Stay impactful, and of course, always, Always, always keep it PlantStrong. See you next week. The PlantStrong podcast team includes Carrie Barrett, Laurie Kortowich, and Ami Mackey. If you like what you hear, do us a favor and share the show with your friends and loved ones. You can always leave a five-star rating and review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. And while you're there, make sure to hit that follow button so that you never miss an episode. As always, this and every episode is dedicated to my parents, Dr. Caldwell B. Esselstyn, Jr. and Anne Crile Esselstyn. Thanks so much for listening. Thank you.
