Redefining Success: Allan Misner's Journey from Career Triumph to Holistic Health

Transcript

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All right, welcome back to Life-Changing Challenges.

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This is Brad Minus, again your host, and on today on the podcast I have Allan Misner.

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Now Alan, or Coach Alan, is a certified personal trainer with NASM, a precision nutrition master, health coach, a functional aging specialist wellness coach author.

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He's got 634 episodes of his own podcast.

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We'll talk about that and yeah, just overall good guy.

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So welcome to the podcast, alan.

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Thank you for coming.

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Thank you, brad, I appreciate it.

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So I do this with every single one of my guests and basically he'd give us a little origin story.

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So where did you grow up?

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What was the complement of your family going on in your childhood, high school?

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That little bit could give us a little bit of background I was.

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I was a military brat, so I was born into a military family, pretty much the product of divorce.

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The day I was born, my parents split up and so I had stepfathers plural growing up.

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So a lot of moving around, a lot of shaking and, as a result, when you're a military brat, you develop slightly differently than the kids that grew up in just one place with the same people.

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I didn't make deep friendships.

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Very often the few that I did were very deep, but I couldn't count on being in any one place for very long, so I never did until I got to about high school age, and then for me it was really about performance.

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I was an athlete in high school and so that was my performance.

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When I got into college, it was making the grades because my athletic career was over.

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And then it was the army I went into.

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Similar thing I wanted to be the best performer, and then when I started my career again, it was how do I become the best?

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How do I do this better than anybody else does?

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And so for most of my growing up years I was competing.

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Rather, I was competing against somebody else or against myself.

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My whole life was geared around competition and that was good.

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But, yeah, it also brought up a lot of bad as.

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I got older.

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Interesting and I want to get into that.

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I definitely want to get into that.

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Because that's interesting, because basically I coach in this similar fashion with my endurance athletes is you are competing.

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Most of the time.

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You compete against yourself, competing against the clock.

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You just want to be better than you did the last time you ran this distance of race, the last time you race.

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So I'm interested in the negative side of that.

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So we're going to have to get back to that.

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Just can I ask what was you said you're an athlete, what sports were you involved?

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in.

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There was some baseball until I had a falling out with the baseball coach, but football predominantly.

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I also.

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So I was an offensive lineman for the most part in football, but I could play every position on the field.

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I knew every position on the field so the coach knew he could pull me in for any play, put me anywhere and I could run and go with it and that that happened from time to time.

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And then I was a track, I ran the two mile and I did shot put.

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So I'm I'm right in the middle of with the little big little guys and in there with the big guys and never really fit super well with any of them, other than again, once I was put into a situation I was going to do the best I possibly could and I was also on the tennis team.

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So that's what you normally see as an offensive lineman playing tennis.

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But there I am.

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Oh, no More power to you, but I got to tell you as an offensive lineman I would think that tennis is pretty good because of the lateral shuffling, the linear, so you're getting the best of both worlds.

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You're getting good footwork and the whole bandwidth.

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It had to help you somewhere in football.

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Did you find that?

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I was an athlete, that's plain and simple as an offensive lineman.

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No, the running the two mile and track and playing tennis didn't help my football much, because I couldn't put weight on.

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I was moving too much during the off season to really put on any mass, and so, as a result, I was undersized, particularly as I got to my senior year, and so that's why I said my my, basically my athletic career was over because I didn't fit the position.

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Going on to the next level of what you would want in an offensive lineman, I was roughly about 50 pounds too light.

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Understood, yeah, definitely understood.

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So fast forward.

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You got a job.

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Did you go to the military right away, right out of college?

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I did two years.

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I did two years in college.

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I majored in physics because I wanted to be an astronaut.

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So I'm one of those weird people All the dreams you have.

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I wanted to be an astronaut.

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So when I went to college I majored in physics because I was going to be an astronaut.

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But my sophomore year the little thing happened called explosion of the shuttle and they killed a civilian.

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Now everybody's watching and you've probably seen those plumes of smoke in the air.

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When the shuttle blew up, when it was taking off, everybody else was looking at it, thinking, oh wow, look, how big, how that looks.

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I'm thinking they just killed a civilian.

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This program is dead until they find every little piece and figure out how this happened and how it can never happen again.

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So that was my window, my astronaut window just closed.

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So I decided to join the Army myself.

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I majored in infantry.

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So I spent two years basically doing a lot of fitness stuff and learning how to kill people.

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That was my job title and I was with the Ranger unit.

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So again, some of the most competitive athletic people in the military and I was in that group.

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I know if I re-upped they probably would have sent me to Ranger School.

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But I didn't go Ranger.

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But I went through two years of that.

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Basically it was to raise money for college and when I went back I decided to major in accounting.

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Had never had an accounting class.

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All I really knew was it wasn't what I would have been doing for two years and it was totally different and I was going to make a go of it.

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It turned out I was really good at accounting who knew?

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And it turned out to be a really good move for me.

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So I got a master's degree in accounting, passed the CPA exam and started working in the field.

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I had a 25-year career working in audit field and was really good at my job, and so I made vice president before I was 39 in a Fortune 500 company and was C-suite on the board meetings and doing all the things that I thought we were supposed to do, and I was very successful.

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But the problem was I wasn't successful anywhere else.

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I had toxic relationships, I had very poor health, I was way overweight and almost no fitness level at all.

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I had toxic relationships, I had very poor health, I was way overweight and almost no fitness level at all.

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All I was really doing was just working and I was really good at it, but 16 to 20 hour days every day, six days a week, it just and traveling as much as I did, because I at that point in my career I was traveling about 90%.

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And for anyone that hasn't done traveling and doesn't understand what those percentages means, it means I was home about one weekend per month, and that's it.

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So a lot of traveling, a lot of time in hotels, a lot of time in hotel bars, eating whatever the bar food was, just wasn't taking care of myself, and it became clear to me at that point that I needed to do something.

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So I made a decision.

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I was going to fix myself.

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I took a vacation which I hadn't done in three years.

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I bought the timeshare just because I knew if I bought it I would show up.

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So that was kind of the first step in my change.

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Model was make yourself do the things that you're supposed to do.

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But I still went through eight years of not really accomplishing anything except increasing my income.

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I wasn't any healthier, I wasn't any more fit, I wasn't any better off.

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I was still that terrible guy that I didn't like anymore, and so that was where I found myself.

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And then it really all hit a cusp.

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My daughter was 20 and she had she'd just she'd just gotten her level one CrossFit coach cert and she was doing these CrossFit competitions and these mud runs.

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We were talking on the phone and I know this is a Southern thing, but she said, daddy, I want you to come watch me do this competition.

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And it was like a punch in the gut.

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I'm not supposed to be watching my daughter do things.

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I'm supposed to be a participant, I'm not a spectator.

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I got outside of myself of why I wanted to do these things and why I wanted to be healthier and why I wanted to be more fit.

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And so that was the first kick and I just sat back and asked myself why am I not able to do this?

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I've done all these other hard things.

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Why am I not able to fix my health and fitness?

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And then it occurred to me Every other time I'd been successful, every other time I'd had something great happen in my life.

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I had always committed to it, I was always 100% in.

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There was no failure, there was no way out.

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There was in doing the work to get what I wanted.

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And I had not done that yet, so I made the commitment to take care of myself and get myself to a point where I could be a participant in the things my daughter was doing and not just a spectator.

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So was that before or after the beach trip?

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That was after.

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The beach trip was when I was 39.

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And that's when I first realized that I had a fundamental problem, that I was not healthy, I was not fit.

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The relationships that I was in at that point in time were just not what they needed to be.

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I had a toxic relationship with a girlfriend.

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I had not really great relationship with my family and excuse my language, but I'm sitting on the beach and I basically thought you're a fat bastard, my language, but I'm sitting on the beach and I basically thought you're a fat bastard.

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I didn't even like myself.

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And why would anyone else like me?

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And so it was really that moment that I started, but I still wasn't doing the things.

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I still wasn't changing my behaviors, my lifestyle.

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I'd have a little bit of success and then I would fall back.

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And I'd have a little bit more success and I'd fall back, and the core of it was I really wasn't playing to my strengths.

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I was basically, I would say, trying at it.

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I wasn't really doing it.

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And so that was where the fundamental change came, eight years later, with the gut kick from my daughter.

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She didn't know it was a gut kick.

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She just was inviting me to come watch her do a CrossFit competition and of course, yes, I did go watch her do the CrossFit competition, but it was a kick in the teeth for me to realize I am not the man I want to be.

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My daughter is right where I was at her age an athlete pushing herself doing really well and I wasn't.

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And and I'm like I've got to get back, not necessarily back to my 20s, but back to a point where I can feel comfortable and confident that I'm going to live a good, long, healthy life and I'm going to be involved with my family and I'm going to be able to help my family, versus the other way around.

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So what was your first step?

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So you're 47.

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You just got done watching this thing, watching your daughter compete in CrossFit and you figured out that hey, I need to make a commitment.

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What is your?

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first step.

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I made the commitment and then what I did is I signed up for a Warrior Dash and got some folks together and we all did.

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I know Warrior Dash if you're not familiar with it basically a 5k race.

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It's in the mud, so it's not like running on the street.

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It's a little bit hard, a little bit harder than that and there's some obstacles now.

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But the cool thing about a warrior dash is it's a very friendly mud run.

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People are helping each other.

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So if there's a part of it that you can't do, there are other people there to help you complete this race.

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So it's just a really fun time.

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I was not in the shape to really be able to do it on my own, so it was good that I had a little bit of help from complete strangers during this race.

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I didn't do it with my daughter, she did it with her friend and did it much faster than I would have, but I did finish it, and so then I did the stupid thing.

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I called my daughter and I said hey, why don't we do a tough mudder Now?

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A tough mudder is 12 to 13 miles of mud run, much more difficult, a lot less friendly and a lot harder obstacles.

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So people will help you on a tough mudder, but it's not like what I had on a Warrior Dash Almost everybody acts like they're on the same team.

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On this one, there's a little bit more of in for yourself get your race done, and so there's a little bit more of in for yourself get your race done, and so there's a little less of that.

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And the Spartan is even a little bit tighter, where if you can't do an obstacle, they expect you to do 10 burpees.

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The Tough Mudder was a tough one.

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I was running it with my daughter, so it wasn't like I had a team, but I did not want to slow her down, and at the time we signed up for it around March.

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The one I signed up for was around Tampa, so be it.

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And I bought our plane tickets, bought our tickets to the event, and I realized that I needed to lose a significant amount of weight.

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I needed to improve my strength, particularly my grip strength, and I needed to do that in about eight months.

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And so that was the fire that I lit under my butt to be in the gym every day, to be eating the foods that I needed to eat, to not be drinking the alcohol that I had been drinking and to get myself in some form of shape to be able to do this, and the change was quite phenomenal.

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I managed to lose 66 pounds of fat.

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I put on 11 pounds of muscle.

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Now I was still traveling and doing everything else that I had been doing, so I couldn't hire a coach.

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I really couldn't hire anybody.

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I was looking around for resources At the time.

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Nobody was talking about fitness over 40.

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If there was a book, it was about stretching, but the most strenuous thing they figured people over the age of 40 needed to do was stretch.

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And there were no podcasts and there were no online coaches.

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I found online coaches for bodybuilding prep for a show like doing your poses.

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I found some for powerlifters, but there was no one doing online personal training.

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So I couldn't even hire a coach.

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So I was like, how am I going to do this and figure myself out?

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And that's why I signed up and did NASM for the certified personal trainer and then I said, okay, my movement patterns are all wonk, so now I also want to do the corrective exercise specialty.

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And I did that.

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And then I'm like, okay, I need to do something with my nutrition.

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Here's the fitness nutrition certification.

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So I did that, and so the first certifications that I went through were just so I could coach myself.

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I had no intention of ever becoming a wellness coach.

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This was just what do I need to know If I had a coach?

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What would my coach tell me?

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And so I became my own coach, and I did this, and so we signed up for the race.

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And then November came along and we did the race and I finished with my daughter Didn't slow her down a bit we crossed the finish line holding hands.

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It was a wonderful event.

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I'll remember it for the rest of my life.

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And, as you might imagine, when you post a picture of yourself and you've lost 66 pounds in about eight months, people start to ask questions, and so I had one of my friends asking about it.

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I said, look, it's not rocket science, but it does take effort and discipline.

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And but that's not discipline that you have to have, it's discipline that you can get from someone else.

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So I'm willing to coach you If your wife will come along for the ride and I can record our coaching sessions as a part of the new podcast I'm launching.

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And so Idea like the way that you could get content that way.

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That's fantastic.

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And so I did.

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I coached them for 10 weeks and each week when I had my calls with them, that was content for the podcast.

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And John, over 10 weeks, lost 39 pounds.

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His wife lost 28 and she couldn't even work out.

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Her back was, her back went out.

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She wasn't even able to get out of bed for much of it.

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But with what I was coaching them in the nutrition space and then what movement that they could do, they both managed to lose a considerable amount of weight.

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So I knew I was onto something like okay, I know how to train people over 40.

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And so I went ahead and launched my podcast.

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I launched my training and I started training people on the side.

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I still had the corporate job, so I was still doing that.

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But one of the things that happened around that time was just the recognition that I needed to be making all of my decisions differently going forward, that I shouldn't just factor in how much money is this going to make me if I take this job or move to this place.

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It was what is this going to mean to me long-term from a health and wellness perspective?

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And so there was a point in time when I said, okay, I'm not going to set my alarm to wake up in the morning.

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I'm going to go to bed early enough so that I get a good night's sleep every night, and I found that was about 830.

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So if I go to bed by 830, I will wake up sometime between 530 and 630 in the morning, just depending on how many sleep cycles my body needs.

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I measured it for a good long time to see what was going on, what my sleep cycles were.

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They're almost exactly 90 minutes, and so I haven't.

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Unless I have to get up for an early morning flight, I don't set an alarm, I just get up.

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When I know I've had enough sleep, I get up If I haven't.

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If I need another sleep cycle, I stay in bed, and I've done that every day for at least the last eight years or so.

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And then I've done a lot of other things we'll talk about in a minute.

00:18:30.630 --> 00:18:33.935
Yeah, so that's interesting that you mentioned sleep, because I know that people take it for granted.

00:18:33.935 --> 00:18:34.476
I know I take it for granted.

00:18:34.476 --> 00:18:40.621
I seem to feel my best between six and a half to seven hours of sleep.

00:18:40.621 --> 00:18:55.163
Anything if I get seven and a half hours, I might internally feel good, but externally I feel like I'm dragging, and that might be, that might be just for habit, but I see what you're saying.

00:18:55.163 --> 00:18:58.390
But yet I do set an alarm and the whole bit as well.

00:18:58.390 --> 00:18:59.156
So that just might be it.

00:18:59.156 --> 00:19:02.344
But it's interesting that you say about sleep.

00:19:02.344 --> 00:19:04.517
So let me just step back real quick.

00:19:04.517 --> 00:19:15.708
So before you decided to hit your alarm or before you decided to stop using your alarm, how did you sleep, how did you find that you were sleeping and how many hours?

00:19:17.016 --> 00:19:18.999
A lot of times I didn't think I needed that much sleep.

00:19:18.999 --> 00:19:24.807
I was working longer days, so you know, every hour I'm asleep when I'm home is an hour.

00:19:24.807 --> 00:19:26.809
I felt like I was losing of my personal time.

00:19:26.809 --> 00:20:00.535
Okay, and so if you're working, if you're working a 16 hour day and you sleep eight hours gone, no-transcript.

00:20:00.535 --> 00:20:13.465
And I, and it was, and what I found was I can get by on four cycles, okay, but I do a little better at five cycles and occasionally I need six.

00:20:13.465 --> 00:20:18.806
But there have been times I've slept 14 to 16 hours.

00:20:18.806 --> 00:20:21.162
I just went to sleep and I didn't wake up.

00:20:24.261 --> 00:20:25.285
I can't even imagine.

00:20:25.285 --> 00:20:27.241
I know I did it when I was a teenager.

00:20:27.722 --> 00:20:27.844
Yeah.

00:20:28.816 --> 00:20:29.901
But that's incredible.

00:20:29.901 --> 00:20:32.160
So what was your?

00:20:32.160 --> 00:20:33.021
What was the difference in?

00:20:33.021 --> 00:20:34.164
Let's start with mood.

00:20:34.164 --> 00:20:34.806
Let's start with me.

00:20:34.806 --> 00:21:18.474
Yeah, I think the difference was in mood, when you decided that you're not setting an alarm anymore no-transcript.

00:21:18.515 --> 00:21:22.967
Deep sleep and you're now in light sleep and this is the best time for you to be awake.

00:21:22.967 --> 00:21:30.278
You've completed the cycle and those sleep cycles are really important for brain health, for mood, for energy, for all of it.

00:21:30.278 --> 00:21:31.961
It's how your hormones regulate.

00:21:31.961 --> 00:21:38.144
It's really the magic of setting your body up for success is making sure that you're getting good sleep.

00:21:39.635 --> 00:21:44.500
So basically you're saying ditch the POMO Straight fear of missing out.

00:21:44.894 --> 00:21:46.942
Because, you just knit the nail on the head for me.

00:21:46.942 --> 00:21:50.324
What you went through back then is what I'm going through now.

00:21:50.324 --> 00:21:54.582
I definitely feel that I feel like, hey, I want to get up.

00:21:54.582 --> 00:21:57.983
I get up at four every single morning, without clockwork.

00:21:57.983 --> 00:22:00.882
With light clockwork, even my body will wake up before the alarm.

00:22:00.882 --> 00:22:19.630
It like races the alarm, and so I'm up at four, and it's mostly because of that and yeah, don't get me wrong I am out getting my workout on between five and 530 without hesitation, and that's the reason Well, it's a starting of the reason of why I started that, but I'm also the same exact way.

00:22:19.630 --> 00:22:20.270
Is that hey?

00:22:20.375 --> 00:22:21.641
I'm only got so many hours in a day.

00:22:21.641 --> 00:22:23.814
Sleeping is like non-productive.

00:22:25.419 --> 00:22:26.703
I've changed my opinion of it.

00:22:26.703 --> 00:22:38.137
Yeah, I've changed my opinion of it because I feel good getting good sleep, and so my energy level the next day, what I'm capable of doing the next day, I get more done.

00:22:38.137 --> 00:22:49.601
And for me, if I'm fatigued and tired and I didn't get a good night's sleep, my performance on everything, my performance in the gym, my performance in my work it all is reflected there.

00:22:49.601 --> 00:22:59.845
I've come to fall in love with sleep, and it's one of my favorite things to do with my spare time is to get good sleep excellent and that's great.

00:22:59.964 --> 00:23:00.826
That's great advice.

00:23:00.826 --> 00:23:02.969
All right, so you ran the.

00:23:02.969 --> 00:23:04.250
You ran the tough mutter.

00:23:04.250 --> 00:23:10.336
I've done one of my stretch on the sheet myself, so I know exactly where you're going with that, and that was a good experience that kept you going.

00:23:10.336 --> 00:23:11.356
What was next?

00:23:11.356 --> 00:23:13.097
Okay?

00:23:13.498 --> 00:23:17.161
I got married, my relationships were improving Again.

00:23:17.161 --> 00:23:26.266
I was now that I was nicer to myself, because we all have that voice and that voice is mean.

00:23:26.266 --> 00:23:40.684
I called mine the fat bastard and he was a mean one, and so it was like, okay, I have, I've done a lot, that's good, but I've got other things to do, and so part of it was fixing my relationships.

00:23:40.684 --> 00:23:43.826
And so I broke up with a girlfriend.

00:23:43.826 --> 00:23:52.084
That was a very toxic relationship and I had gone from one toxic relationship to the next and I told myself I'm not doing that anymore.

00:23:52.084 --> 00:24:01.747
I'm going to find the right person, and then that's going to be where I go with this Eliminating toxic relationships maybe the hardest thing for someone to do.

00:24:02.375 --> 00:24:05.002
I think I did one more, one more thing that was a little harder.

00:24:05.002 --> 00:24:06.906
But yeah, I just ended those relationships.

00:24:06.906 --> 00:24:09.765
I said I'm done with them and I'm not going to do this anymore.

00:24:09.765 --> 00:24:21.744
And as soon as I started looking out for myself and I wasn't interested in looking for the next relationship I found one, and so I had say I've been single for 17 years.

00:24:21.744 --> 00:24:27.728
I hadn't been in a super, super committed relationship other than, yeah, living with a girl or there's that.

00:24:28.055 --> 00:24:30.923
But those relationships were just putrid.

00:24:30.923 --> 00:24:33.700
They were terrible, and so I wasn't.

00:24:33.700 --> 00:24:35.444
I didn't get anything from them.

00:24:35.444 --> 00:24:40.988
That was what was the worst part of it was they were so one-sided and I didn't care.

00:24:40.988 --> 00:24:44.220
I was working so much, I was doing so much, I didn't care.

00:24:44.220 --> 00:24:57.320
And that's the worst way to be when you're in a relationship that you can literally just say I don't actually care anymore, and so I ended them, and I just decided I'm not chasing people that need to be chased, and so I ended them, and I just decided I'm not chasing people that need to be chased, and so I stopped.

00:24:57.320 --> 00:25:00.488
And that again put me in the right place to find the right person.

00:25:00.488 --> 00:25:02.381
So that changed.

00:25:02.381 --> 00:25:06.561
And then, yeah, I got married and again working my career, doing my thing.

00:25:06.561 --> 00:25:12.661
Everything was clicking, things were starting to look better, but I still had this very stressful job.

00:25:14.726 --> 00:25:17.900
Right, okay, so you're still an accountant at this point.

00:25:18.382 --> 00:25:21.483
Yes, I say accountant, but let me explain what my job was.

00:25:21.483 --> 00:25:30.823
I was internal audit, and so an internal auditor works inside of a company to make sure that the people in the company are doing the things they're supposed to do.

00:25:30.823 --> 00:25:41.644
Also, if someone does something they're not supposed to do, ie take money, I do the investigations, so that's interrogations and all that kind of stuff.

00:25:41.644 --> 00:25:44.613
So, but I have a reputation.

00:25:44.613 --> 00:25:49.680
I had a reputation at the company of being the guy everybody hated the most.

00:25:49.680 --> 00:25:55.386
I was the most hated man in the company and it wasn't even close.

00:25:55.386 --> 00:26:04.763
Literally everybody in the company hated me, and one being the most hated person in the company.

00:26:04.763 --> 00:26:10.941
And then also the fact that if I miss something, I would be the one to get blamed.

00:26:10.941 --> 00:26:16.843
So if somebody did something they weren't supposed to do, it would come up in a board meeting.

00:26:16.843 --> 00:26:19.782
Hey Alan, why didn't you catch this?

00:26:19.782 --> 00:26:26.688
So there's only one other person in the company I think that had more responsibility for the company than me, and that's the CEO.

00:26:26.688 --> 00:26:31.967
If anything went wrong, it was going to come down to me and it could end my career.

00:26:31.967 --> 00:26:37.705
So that was my everyday, everyday existence was nobody liking me, no one wanting me around.

00:26:37.705 --> 00:26:39.402
I'm doing the fraud investigations.

00:26:39.402 --> 00:26:45.442
And then there's this little thing on top of it of working for a corporation that seemed to really enjoy layoffs.

00:26:45.442 --> 00:27:03.548
So every year, right around Thanksgiving, I would get word that I needed to let a few people go, and I had to figure out how to let them know the first week of December that they would no longer be employed with the company as of the last week of December every year.

00:27:03.548 --> 00:27:10.326
For three years In fact, I was so stressed out at one point I put my name on the list and was told I couldn't be on the list.

00:27:10.326 --> 00:27:14.060
But the next year I did that.

00:27:14.060 --> 00:27:18.750
And then the next year rolled around and they decided to just go ahead and outsource the whole department.

00:27:18.750 --> 00:27:29.970
Now I had already started stepping out the door because I was doing the online coaching and I was enjoying that so much more than my day job.

00:27:29.970 --> 00:27:31.821
I had a five-year plan.

00:27:31.821 --> 00:27:34.301
The problem was we were only two years into it.

00:27:34.301 --> 00:27:40.548
Five-year plan the problem was we were only two years into it when they told me in September that my job was coming to an end and I needed to let everybody go.

00:27:40.567 --> 00:27:42.516
I went home and told my wife what was going on.

00:27:42.516 --> 00:27:46.041
I said, oh, and I'm not going back to corporate.

00:27:46.041 --> 00:27:48.086
I hate those people.

00:27:48.086 --> 00:27:58.200
I do not want to be sitting in a boardroom where we're talking about headcount, we're talking about span of control, when I know this is not just three people.

00:27:58.200 --> 00:28:01.430
This guy, his kids got drug problems.

00:28:01.430 --> 00:28:04.779
This woman we gave her a promotion in February so she just bought a house.

00:28:04.779 --> 00:28:10.884
And here's another woman that's having problems with her kids, custody problems with her kids and I know these people personally.

00:28:10.884 --> 00:28:15.201
I have to then go in and tell them it's not you, it's the company it's got to let three people go.

00:28:15.201 --> 00:28:18.086
And so it was extremely stressful those years.

00:28:18.086 --> 00:28:32.248
And then again I told them again, making the decision what is best for me, not my career, not some goal of what I want to be when I grow up, just like really what is the best decision for my well-being?

00:28:32.248 --> 00:28:34.980
And it was not to go back to corporate.

00:28:34.980 --> 00:28:42.332
So I said I'm going to make a go of this, I'm going to make a go of being a full-time coach and see where it takes me.

00:28:42.653 --> 00:28:44.218
And it's taken me to a lot of places.

00:28:44.218 --> 00:29:04.026
We had a beautiful house on the beach in Pensacola and every year, rolling around from June to November, is this thing called hurricane season, whenever a hurricane manages to get into the Gulf of Mexico, particularly around the September timeframe, it's nothing good.

00:29:04.026 --> 00:29:06.298
Nothing good is going to come of that at all.

00:29:06.298 --> 00:29:08.384
Especially in Pensacola Beach.

00:29:08.384 --> 00:29:12.840
We had this beautiful house and we were paying buku dollars to own it.

00:29:12.840 --> 00:29:23.508
My wife and I were sitting there one night and we just decided, hey, we could move to the Caribbean, lower our costs and live a lot more frugally with a lot less stress.

00:29:23.508 --> 00:29:32.045
And so we started exploring places to go, and one of the places I recommended was Ocas del Toro.

00:29:32.045 --> 00:29:45.183
It's an archipelago off the coast of Panama and it's a Caribbean island that does not get hurricanes which has got to be a lot better than where you were right.

00:29:45.284 --> 00:29:48.451
Yes, not worry about the hurricanes right.

00:29:48.952 --> 00:29:53.643
We put the house on the market and we sold our all our stuff and so that other big dream.

00:29:53.643 --> 00:29:58.829
Everybody says I'm just going to sell everything and just live in a shack on a caribbean island.

00:29:58.829 --> 00:30:03.980
We did that standing and so you know I've always been a person, though.

00:30:04.021 --> 00:30:04.702
I've always been a person.

00:30:04.702 --> 00:30:07.351
So you look all the way back to I wanted to to be an astronaut.

00:30:07.351 --> 00:30:09.011
So what did I major in in college?

00:30:09.011 --> 00:30:11.113
Physics, of all things.

00:30:11.113 --> 00:30:18.817
Because I, when I have a dream of something, I never really tell myself I can't do it, it's always just how can I do it?

00:30:18.817 --> 00:30:21.798
And obviously the shuttle blowing up I couldn't.

00:30:21.798 --> 00:30:25.260
I couldn't make that happen any faster than fix that.

00:30:25.260 --> 00:30:31.845
So I did know my window was probably lost, but I just pivoted and this was no different.

00:30:31.845 --> 00:30:37.028
I lost my job and I really didn't have the income to afford that big house on the beach.

00:30:43.692 --> 00:30:48.843
So I pivoted and did another thing that we all talk about, which is sell all your stuff and move to the Caribbean, and you actually did it versus the rest of us that are just.

00:30:48.843 --> 00:30:49.744
It's just a pipe dream.

00:30:49.744 --> 00:30:53.798
That's amazing, right, no, and that's amazing.

00:30:53.798 --> 00:30:55.777
So you started coaching online.

00:30:55.777 --> 00:31:02.856
How did you start getting more clients, enough to where you could basically live and not have to worry about anything else?

00:31:02.856 --> 00:31:06.651
How did you end up gathering more and more of clients?

00:31:08.094 --> 00:31:10.278
The podcast is really the driver of all that.

00:31:10.278 --> 00:31:12.182
That's how people typically meet me.

00:31:12.931 --> 00:31:25.243
Another thing I did do right after I lost that job was started outlining and I wrote a book called the wellness roadmap, and so that was an award-winning book that you can get anywhere you buy books.

00:31:25.243 --> 00:31:27.116
I'm very proud of that book.

00:31:27.116 --> 00:31:28.392
I worked really hard on it.

00:31:28.392 --> 00:31:30.857
Published that in November of 2008.

00:31:30.857 --> 00:31:39.343
I did the audio for the audio book, which you would expect from a podcaster.

00:31:39.343 --> 00:31:45.414
I thought it would be weird if they're used to listening to my podcast and then all of a sudden it's somebody else's voice on my book.

00:31:45.414 --> 00:31:48.442
So that was a new experience recording myself reading a book.

00:31:48.442 --> 00:31:50.674
But I did it and I feel good about it.

00:31:50.674 --> 00:31:52.057
So that went out.

00:31:52.057 --> 00:31:53.883
That's drawn people into my sphere.

00:31:53.883 --> 00:31:56.377
The podcast obviously draws a lot of people in.

00:31:56.900 --> 00:32:13.872
From all that, I've built up a Facebook group and some other things and so really just have tried to create an ecosphere of where people over the age of 40 can find what they need, dig through all the muck and have someone there to help them, help guide them.

00:32:13.872 --> 00:32:15.756
So things I didn't have.

00:32:15.756 --> 00:32:20.172
I didn't have a coach because I couldn't go to the gym and have a coach.

00:32:20.172 --> 00:32:24.020
I'm now making myself available to be that person.

00:32:24.020 --> 00:32:27.880
There were no podcasts on health and fitness for people over 40.

00:32:27.880 --> 00:32:33.557
It was just assumed you do the same thing everyone over 20 does, or you don't do anything at all but stretch.

00:32:33.557 --> 00:32:35.517
But no, I was the first one to do that too.

00:32:35.517 --> 00:32:41.843
So here we are, over eight years later and, as you said, 634 episodes in.

00:32:41.843 --> 00:32:58.363
But what I'm really proud about with the podcast is that every guest that I have on my podcast almost every one of them has written a book, and I don't just invite them on and ask three questions for everybody, or ask them the questions they want to be asked.

00:32:58.363 --> 00:32:59.674
I read their book.

00:32:59.674 --> 00:33:07.058
So over the course of that eight years, I've probably read over 400 health and fitness books.

00:33:07.058 --> 00:33:11.141
Yep, so I see a lot of things.

00:33:11.201 --> 00:33:18.199
The strings through all of them, why someone would think carnivore is a better diet, why someone would think a vegan diet is a better diet.

00:33:18.199 --> 00:33:22.662
The reality is that the reason their diet is the best diet is because it's whole food.

00:33:22.662 --> 00:33:26.634
We'll even tell you that it's a whole food, plant-based diet.

00:33:26.634 --> 00:33:31.330
Yeah, okay, but you're arguing that theirs is terrible because it's not whole food.

00:33:31.330 --> 00:33:34.157
And if theirs is whole food, wouldn't it be just as good as yours?

00:33:34.157 --> 00:33:56.662
And so I can have those conversations now, because I see those common threads and that's what I'm here to do is to help people get through all that muck, realize what certain things they're doing, and when something new comes out, I'll find the experts and I'll have the right conversations so they can know okay, is this a zyptic thing for me?

00:33:56.662 --> 00:33:58.993
What's it doing and how is it doing it?

00:33:58.993 --> 00:34:02.320
Oh crap, nobody actually really knows, but it does.

00:34:03.242 --> 00:34:06.893
But if you don't care how you're losing weight, then yeah, by all means.

00:34:06.893 --> 00:34:10.389
If they're not telling you how to change that, you have to change your lifestyle.

00:34:10.389 --> 00:34:12.577
They're just saying, yeah, take this drug and you'll lose weight.

00:34:12.577 --> 00:34:13.751
And that's what you think you're doing.

00:34:13.751 --> 00:34:17.579
I'm I feel bad for you because there's no magic bullet.

00:34:17.579 --> 00:34:18.909
You still have to do the work.

00:34:18.909 --> 00:34:20.771
It was just a helper.

00:34:20.771 --> 00:34:24.275
Can't just do it and then think everything's going to be fine.

00:34:24.275 --> 00:34:25.896
You've got to change the lifestyle too.

00:34:25.896 --> 00:34:42.769
So I'm here to help people work their way through that stuff, and that's what the podcast is about, that's what the book was about and just helping people get the right mindset so that they know, when they sit down to do this stuff, that they're not alone.

00:34:42.769 --> 00:34:48.173
Other people have been on this and they can learn from them, and so I try to help them do that.

00:34:50.639 --> 00:34:52.385
Excellent, and that is a.

00:34:52.385 --> 00:34:54.369
That's a perfect way to segue into.

00:34:54.369 --> 00:34:58.599
Let's call it lessons learned, takeaways, whatever you want to call it.

00:34:58.599 --> 00:35:00.791
I usually use takeaways in the show notes, so we'll see that.

00:35:00.791 --> 00:35:02.675
So you first started.

00:35:02.675 --> 00:35:06.563
Your biggest thing was number one was commitment, right?

00:35:08.231 --> 00:35:09.233
Yes, yes.

00:35:09.974 --> 00:35:12.420
So commitment is where you take your why?

00:35:12.420 --> 00:35:14.304
A deep, emotional why.

00:35:14.304 --> 00:35:20.021
That was my relationship with my daughter and how I saw my life going forward.

00:35:20.021 --> 00:35:21.695

Redefining Success: Allan Misner's Journey from Career Triumph to Holistic Health

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How Allan Misner Transformed His Life and Now Helps Others Do the Same