Rich Roll: From Broke At 45 To Building A Multi-Million Dollar Media Empire By Age 55

Rich Roll

It was really rough for quite an extended period of time. We couldn't pay our mortgage; we had cars repossessed. I've told this story before, but it was so bad at one point that we didn't have enough money to pay for our garbage collection, so they took away our bins. We had to put our garbage bags in the back of this beat-up minivan that we had and look for bins behind grocery stores and stuff to throw our garbage. I mean, it was pretty humiliating and, quite frankly, pretty emasculating as someone who's supposed to be the head of the household and taking care of things. I was unable to make sure that my house was in order. So, we went through a really rough time, and it was not clear that we were going to be able to persevere.

Shaan Puri

Okay, so let's give you a little intro here. We have Rich Roll, which is an amazing name, first of all. I'm sure you get that a bunch. I feel like the "Rick Roll" kind of stepped on your corner a little bit. Do you get that? Is that a problem for you?

Rich Roll

A little bit, man. Not a day goes by where I'm not on the receiving end of some kind of BS about that. Yeah.

Shaan Puri

Yeah, exactly. But that is your real name, Rich Roll. That is not like a stage name.

Rich Roll

god given name

Shaan Puri

Okay, wow! My parents are, you know, behind here. You have a very, very interesting story. So, I'm going to give the very layman version of the story. Then, what I want to do is two things: I want to dive in and actually hear from you a little bit more about the interesting bits of that story. Also, we are kind of like a business podcast, and what we'd like to talk about in general is business opportunities.

Rich Roll

sure sounds good

Shaan Puri

Alright, cool. So your story, as far as I know, is as follows: you were coming up on 40 years old. You were not in great shape; you were, I think, 50 pounds overweight, is what you say. You decided to sort of make a change in your life, and now you are very well known as an endurance athlete who has a plant-powered or vegan diet. You have done some amazing things in the competitive endurance field. I think you were named one of the 25 fittest men on the planet by Men's Fitness, which is a pretty dope honor. So that is your claim to fame. Did I get that right?

Rich Roll

Yeah, I think that's fairly accurate. That's probably how I'm best known, although I haven't raced in a number of years. I've sort of graduated, or I'm attempting to kind of graduate, from the limiting parameters of being known as a "vegan endurance athlete." The podcast is a big piece of that, which we can get into, but I would say that's a fair assessment of how most people think of me and my association.

Shaan Puri

And what would be the shift? So if you were known as, like, this guy who went from... I guess the full story is: entertainment lawyer, you know, struggling with drugs and alcohol, getting sober. Then you're overcompensating by eating not so great. Then you have this kind of moment, you know, your "come to Jesus" moment or whatever, where you're like, "Okay, I'm gonna make a change." You make this lifestyle change and become this well-known endurance athlete who's doing it in a way that's atypical. I think you were the first vegan to complete an ultra-endurance event, which is like some crazy 300-mile type of event where you're running, biking, swimming, doing all that good stuff. Now you have businesses that are around this, right? You have a meal planning business, which is kind of like a whole lifestyle and brand and business around this stuff. So going from being known for competing in this, what do you think you want to be known for now? And what do you think is that transition?

Rich Roll

Yeah, it's a great question. I mean, I think that, you know, just kind of filling in the gaps on the story, I do have a history of **alcoholism**. That's a big part of my story—alcoholism and recovery—that predated the kind of next chapter, which was sort of **middle-aged malaise** and reaching another kind of **Rubicon** with how I was living my life. I made a secondary transition into a healthy lifestyle, and that led me into the **ultra-endurance world**. I was able to distinguish myself in that world as a middle-aged athlete, but also as somebody who was doing it **plant-based**. That garnered a fair amount of media attention and put me in a position to do something with it. The first thing that I did was write a book. It came out almost exactly 10 years ago. It was called *Finding Ultra*, and it's essentially a memoir, but it also has aspects of being a bit of a lifestyle guide. That kind of put me on the map in a public way. In the wake of that book coming out, it became about, like, "Okay, that was great. I got, you know, an okay advance for that, but I've got four kids. How am I gonna make a living sort of propagating these ideas or continuing the conversation that that book began?" Because up to that...

Rich Roll

I was still a practicing attorney and so the transition out of the legal world into doing what I do today I would say has been a very inelegant and protracted process I'm not a naturally inclined entrepreneur I was reared in a in a in a much more kind of traditional conservative environment education first get the good job get into the good grad school the whole bit and hence you know became a lawyer which is you know very much a safety seeking type of career so my mindset and my thinking has never been oriented around entrepreneurship whatsoever but I was suddenly found myself in the position where being a lawyer felt untenable given all these experiences that I had and I was given this gift this opportunity to do something different and it really challenged me to upend all of my kind of built in proclivities around safety seeking and kind of doing kind of following this you know path that society smiles upon like even though I went to stanford and was surrounded by entrepreneurship and the explosion of silicon valley for some reason that never rubbed off on me and I and and and now I was in a position of like okay I need to kind of shed the limitations of how I'd live my life to date and really start to think about how to do this differently and because it's not my natural state I sought out mentors and I found one mentor in particular who's been absolutely instrumental in helping me forge this new path his name is greg anzalone and he's ceo of a company out here near where I live called sideshow and sideshow is a pop culture collectibles company they create figurines like limited edition very finely crafted figures from pop culture so from the marvel movies and star wars etcetera everything from life-sized c 3 c c three p o's to darth vaders and thor and the like and he grew that company from a couple artisans in a garage to now a very large enterprise that employs 100 and 100 of people and if you were to go to comic con they have the 2nd biggest booth at comic con 2nd only to marvel and there's a whole subculture of people who are fanatic collectors of what sideshow produces my.

Rich Roll

Being that greg is a a natural entrepreneur he's been very successful in a number of businesses and he began to mentor me and retrain the way that I was thinking about my life and really helped me create structures around what I was doing and strategies in order to build a foundation upon which we could create a sustainable business that would provide for my family the book was the first piece in that in the wake of the book coming out and in an effort to continue the conversation that that book began I launched the podcast almost 10 years ago so I wasn't a first mover in the podcast space but I definitely was an early adopter and it was a medium that I had fallen in love with as an athlete I'd spent so many hours so much time alone on the bike and running listening to podcasts when it was very difficult to even acquire an episode it was pre iphone so you had to go to your desktop or your laptop and download a series of mp threes and then bounce those mp threes to your ipad and create playlists and I was doing this before anyone else I knew was listening to podcasts and was discovering as we're all discovering now how much value there is in this medium and so with that love and I think a lot of not practice but I was very acclimated to what a good podcast could be because as a listener I'd consumed so much of this media that when I started mine I felt like I was in a situation where I had something to say I knew some interesting people in my life and importantly there wasn't any competition at the time like people were not clamoring to start podcasts in in 2012 I think you know aside from adam carolla and kevin smith and and maybe joe rogan nobody was even monetizing these things so it was less about it being a business proposition and more about an opportunity to continue to build a platform with the trust that at some.

Rich Roll

Something could come out of this that could sustain my family financially and so I started the podcast I immediately was able to rise to the top of the itunes rankings because as I mentioned earlier there was no competition at the time and in the health and fitness and wellness space there really wasn't very much good content at the time so from that I was able to build an audience slowly and gradually over time and did the podcast for a number of years before monetization was even anything to to consider and now of course it's it's you know it's doing incredibly well but again that wasn't really the plan but because the podcast has become and continues to this day to be the tip of the spear in terms of all the things that I do it's been the most profitable not just financially but also in terms of engaging the most number of people around the ideas that that I care about and this has been a very long winded way of getting to the. Of answering your question which is how do you wanna be seen today very early on I I made a decision from actually from the outside of the podcast that I didn't want it to be a podcast about specifically just being plant based or being an athlete I didn't want it to be a triathlon podcast I wanted to cast a wide net which is why I named the podcast after my name because I wasn't sure if I was gonna continue to do it where my interests might find me but I knew that I probably wasn't gonna change my name so I just did the easy thing and named it after myself and it's allowed me the flexibility to move in whatever direction inspires me and so although I would say that the core kind of themes of the podcast are around personal transformation healthy lifestyle eating and of course fitness running you know the sports that that that I care about it's also allowed me to host conversations with just a wide diversity of people who I can continue to grow from in other ways beyond like how I've been traditionally known because for me this is my growth accelerator and I think we're all here on the planet to grow in our various ways and overcome our challenges and so it's given me the opportunity to sit down with people who can help me grow and work through my you know kind of limiters in in in all areas of life and so as a result it's allowed the audience to be very diverse although there are plenty of kind of you know vegans and runners and stuff like that it's really brought in all walks of life and I think has been a a big reason why the podcast has continued to grow and flourish because it's not limited to one specific theme topic or kind of heading

Shaan Puri

And how big is it today? I see on YouTube maybe around 700,000 subscribers for their podcast. I'm not sure what that would be. Is that bigger or smaller than the YouTube stuff? Then the top videos, like you know, David Goggins and Andrew Huberman, those will get like 5 to 10 million views on YouTube, which is great. It's kind of like the perfect storm of overlapping interests, the right guest who already has their own audience, and people searching for their name on YouTube, that sort of thing. So, how big is the content side gotten to now? Give us a sense of that.

Rich Roll

Yeah, so YouTube has been something that we're relatively new to. I think we started filming the podcast in earnest maybe two and a half to three years ago. As you said, we have outlier videos. For example, the initial Huberman podcast I did has around 11 million views. Some of the Goggins interviews have a lot of views, but many of them don't have that many views. So, it's very hit or miss. As you know, YouTube is all about the algorithm. What's great about YouTube is that it's amazing at discovery. It allows people who are not subscribers or those who are not familiar with what you're doing to, by happenstance, stumble onto your content. This allows you to bring them into your universe. However, YouTube is still a very small piece of our content engine. The vast majority of our audience is audio-only, primarily through Apple Podcasts. Spotify is a very tiny slice of our audience. Most of our listeners are on Apple devices or on platforms outside of Spotify and YouTube. I believe in YouTube because even if someone doesn't watch our video, that thumbnail might come across their screen. It almost works as a billboard to enhance visibility of what we're doing. So, we continue to invest and double down on YouTube, although the core of what we're doing is really audio-first. At least now, I'd say it's probably anywhere from 90 to 95% of our audience.

Shaan Puri

Oh wow, okay. So this podcast is probably very huge then. It's probably getting, I don't know, half a million listeners per episode, something like that.

Rich Roll

Yeah, it's in that range. I mean, as you know, in audio, it's fairly predictable how large the audience is going to be and how many people are going to listen. There's going to be some variation there, but it falls within a tight range. Whereas in YouTube, it's just all over the place because the algorithm gods can smile on you, as they did with Huberman, and it goes wild. That doesn't happen in audio. So, yeah, I mean, you're correct. It's about in that range on average.

Shaan Puri

And so, I have this theory with content. People often ask me, "Okay, how do I do a better podcast? How do I grow my content? How do I grow my audience?" I say, well, they're kind of looking for, you know, "What do I write in my title or thumbnail?" or something like that. There are definitely things that are better or worse, but I would say you're an example of the core fundamentals of what works. Let me outline three things that you provided that make a good story. **Number 1:** You were early to a platform that ended up being big. If you're late to a big platform, it's tough. If you're early to a platform that never gets big, that's also not good. You have to be early to a platform that's big. That is one of the best things you could do to increase your odds of success. You were basically listening to podcasts just when it was RSS, you know, only, or whatever. Maybe even when there were no players or whatever. **Number 2:** You had a niche where you built authority. Initially, it might have been vegan lifestyle or endurance training as a vegan, something like that. The overlap between two hyper-passionate niches—like plant-based lifestyle and athletic performance—created a niche that you could dominate and own. You became the authority there because there just weren't that many people doing it, you know, in general, forget even about podcasting. Now, on top of that...

Rich Roll

In addition to the kind of addiction recovery piece, there is also a core aspect of that as well.

Shaan Puri

And so that's what's going to go next. I think you have an innate understanding that story is what gets people hooked. For example, when you came on, I was kind of describing you with just some labels, like, "Here are some descriptors: you've accomplished this, you're known for that." You brought it back to story. What's a story? A story is some transformation or change. The protagonist, the hero, goes through something. They start one way and change into another. They start thinking one thing and then realize another. They start single and end up happy in love. That's the basis of all stories: some change, some transformation. As I heard you talk about it, whether it was from a risk-averse lawyer to a reluctant entrepreneur who learned to shed that limitation, that's change. From weed eater to plant eater, change. From overweight to endurance athlete, change. I think you're really good at framing change because the fundamental thing people want, more than learning how to swim 100 miles, is that everybody wants to remove some of their limitations and hit that transformation they crave, whatever that is. They could take inspiration and knowledge from your story. The last little element I like that you said is that I think you have what I call the "red pill." You have opinions or beliefs that might run counter to the consensus opinion. In general, vegans have a belief about diet and lifestyle that is counter to mainstream behavior. So when you have that...

Shaan Puri

Of view, that is a different thing. It grabs people's attention and it gets them hooked. The people for whom that resonates, they kind of become attracted to that. So, I don't know. I'm not saying you intentionally architected these things, but just out of your story about how you built this pretty remarkable kind of content franchise, I just wanted to point out some of those elements that I've seen be common elements for people. What do you think are some of those?

Rich Roll

yeah I mean I think that's fairly accurate and astute the only the only one that I would bristle out a little bit is the red pill red pill thing I think it is of course like to be vegan and to be an athlete there is something contrarian about that the only kind of nuance that I would add to that is that I I'm not somebody who's out there seeking to kind of game the system by being contrarian I'm not in yeah I'm not inviting controversy or trying to get into debates with people I share my experience and I'm always very careful and this is something that I've learned in recovery to not be overtly telling people what to do or how to live their lives it's always back to story as you. Out because I think that people learn through stories you could tell people here are the 5 things you need to do or you can have a guest on who says here's the roadmap to achieving x y z and I've just learned for myself and in terms of you know how I've conducted this podcast over the years that although we can intellectualize those answers or those principles we're very remiss in putting them into action unless we can emotionally attach with them and that's where story comes in and I think as content creators we're all storytellers and it is our job to refine our ability to tell a story well and if we can do that and do it in a way that allows us to be relatable and also make the guest relatable such that an emotional attachment not just to the outcome of the story but to the individuals who are participating in that story that creates a level of engagement that actually does that does result in powerful and sustainable change because the mission of the show really is to help activate transformation in the audience member so whether it's going from addiction to recovery or changing your diet or lifestyle habits to go from unfit to fit or to accomplish a hard task all of these are just metaphors analogies or examples of transformation I think everybody's looking for some kind of transformation in their life so it's not about like how do you go out and and do an ultra endurance race that's just one vehicle for transformation it's my personal story and I'm happy to tell it but I'm really about getting to the core tenets of why some people change and others don't and trying to find a means by which I can communicate a path for people to rethink the ceilings on their own limitations and invite a little bit of challenge discipline and and you know kind of goal setting into their own lives so that they can experience some version of the transformation that I've been lucky enough to experience in in my own life and then the final thing that I would.

Rich Roll

Out, you kind of launched into this question with a little treatise about, you know, titles and how you position your content on the internet to try to game it for success. Of course, there are kind of tenets and rules around, like, if you want a lot of people to click, you say it this way or you have this crazy thumbnail. I'm not saying we're immune from experimenting with that, but I think the core principle that I would like to communicate to you and your audience is that, in my opinion, over the long arc of time, quality is what wins. So, I try to opt out of a lot of these trends of the moment and just focus on creating the most powerful, the best content with the best guests that I can find. I kind of put it out there and trust that it will find the audience that it needs to find. Now, that's perhaps a little bit of a Luddite approach to this, and it certainly isn't going to create viral moments. But as somebody who's been doing this for a very long time and has kind of seen and weathered all the changes in media that seem to take place with even greater rapidity, what are the things that you can control? You can play around with titles and all of that, but honestly, it's like how good are you at what you're doing? I think when you place your focus on just creating the best content possible, that's the long-term strategy that I've sort of adhered to and believe in. As a result, it's taken me a long time. I didn't come out of the gate swinging; I didn't have a New York Times bestseller. It's been kind of a very plodding path of just slowly, brick by brick, building something that is sustainable over time and meaningful.

Shaan Puri

You said you talked about storytelling, and I get this question a lot because we tell a lot of stories. I think now we're pretty good at it, but I definitely was not a storyteller growing up. I was the quiet kid in my group of friends. In my house, my sister was the one who would tell the stories. If something happened to me and we wanted to share it at a party, it would be like, "Let your sister tell it; it'll be good." So, I was definitely not a storyteller, kind of like naturally. But I've tried to get better at it because I think it's a really powerful tool. You talked about the same thing: if you'd like to convey information, inspire people, or educate people, you're going to want this tool in your tool belt called storytelling. You know, work on that craft because it will help you. Can you teach me a little bit about storytelling? Tell me some things that you've learned—either how you learned it or what you learned. Help us be better storytellers in a couple of minutes here. What are some things that come to mind?

Hubspot

yeah that's a great that's a great question I mean I I think storytelling is a skill like I'm a naturally you know quiet person myself I didn't grow up telling crazy stories around the campfire you know and and regaling my friends or anything like that I really learned I I think my kind of education around storytelling began as somebody who who has attended 1,000 if not tens of thousands of aa meetings and being somebody who who had the privilege to bear witness to people get up in front of groups large and small and really bare their soul and and tell their personal story warts and all of you know the hardships that they've endured and how they got better and kind of arrived at the life that that they enjoy today and that requires courage and it requires most importantly vulnerability like if you've been to neaa meetings and you see people up and they get up and they tell the most horrific stories about the things that they have done things that would provoke a shame response in any normal human being and they laugh it off and you realize like how powerful that is to be so confident in yourself that you can share this tale of something that you did and it holds no power over you I think that is a powerful kernel of transformation for other people when they hear that but to the vulnerability piece what it taught me was the courage to be vulnerable myself so that I could get up in front of groups and tell my story with that level of of of honesty and vulnerability and also to notice that when you do that you create trust and connectivity in the person that you're speaking to like if you're willing to get up and tell them this crazy thing that you did as an opener it gives the other person permission to do the same and that exchange then becomes one that is much more intimate than the typical conversation that we're going to have so that's a key piece like I always try to lead with vulnerability and the second thing being that that you know everybody has their version of joseph campbell's hero's journey like we're all on our own hero's journey of some sort and to really kind of study and understand the principles of what makes a great story helps you extract it out of the person that you're speaking with and also helps you learn how to figure out what that is in your own story and that just comes with practice so listen if I'm sitting across from you know a a doctor and they wanna talk to me about the microbiome maybe that's not a hero's journey story but maybe how they got interested in that is you know I'm always trying to find some version mini or macro that I can tell that will you know create engagement in for myself and and also for the person that's listening but I've also had the privilege of and these are some of my favorite episodes where I'm sitting down with somebody who you know was really broken in a certain way and then rebuilt their life and became something else entirely and that's a great kind of template for doing a full blown joseph campbell you know arc of the hero and I think those stories are powerful because when somebody can see that type of transformation and somebody who had it way worse than they have it it raises the the you know their their own belief in in in themselves and I think you know to really specifically answer your question it's just a practice like I've been doing this for 10 years like I I would be horrified to go back and listen to some of my first episodes so you know I've learned in real time in a public sphere but just like anything else like you have to practice it and figure out also what works for you it's not oh I'm gonna follow this person did it and they were successful so I'm gonna do it that way it's like what speaks to you what is natural and authentic to who you are and I think the more that you can bring your own intuition and sensibility and honesty into whatever it is that you're trying to share with the world that's gonna be the the demarcation that will distinguish you from others I can't find this client info have you heard of hubspot hubspot is a crm platform so it shares its data across every application every team can stay aligned no out of sync spreadsheets or dueling databases hubspot grow better

Shaan Puri

Who do you think are great storytellers? Are there any people or books that you learn from? Or where you look at it and you sort of have picked up things from them? Sure.

Rich Roll

I mean, I think Malcolm Gladwell is a master storyteller. We had the privilege of having him in here a couple of weeks ago, and I mean, nobody can tell a story like that guy. He can take people off the street and in five minutes, you know, figure out something absolutely fascinating about them that will become an episode of *Revisionist History*. I mean, I think he has a talent that we can all aspire to, but probably can't reach. I think he's fantastic at it. I think Adam Grant is a phenomenal storyteller. I mean, some of the authors that are working in social psychology right now are pretty great at storytelling, but those would be the two that come to mind.

Shaan Puri

And you, I'm going to read a quote from your story, and I want you to basically take me there and then tell me where you came from. Here's the quote: "We had four kids. We were so broke at one point. Not long after my book came out, we had nothing to go on. We ended up going to Kauai and living in yurts, thinking we may never come back to LA and we were going to lose our house." So, what was that like? And then how did you get from there to here?

Rich Roll

Yeah, man, that was rough. It was very disorienting because I had the opportunity to write this book. As I mentioned earlier, I received a decent advance for a first-time author, but for kids' books, the way that publishing advances work is they dole it out in increments over a good deal of time. Then, with taxes and agent cuts, it turns out to not be that much. So, when the book came out, we were shoestringing to pay our bills. A big theme in the book is this idea that when your heart is true, the universe will conspire to support you. It's something I believe in; it's a principle I've seen come into play in many people's lives that I know. I believed it was happening in my own life and would continue to happen. When the book came out, I decided I wasn't going to renew my bar membership. I wanted to step into this new thing, and I didn't know what kind of opportunities were going to come, but I needed to be 100% available for them. I was trusting that my heart was true and that something was going to happen. We were going to figure this out. But, you know, I was running a household with a relatively high overhead at the time—four kids, a mortgage. The problem with that equation is there's no timeline on it. My edict has borne out to be true over time, ten years later, but it was really rough for quite an extended period.

Rich Roll

Of time we couldn't pay our mortgage we had cars repossessed I've told this story before but it was so bad at one. That you know we didn't have enough money to pay for our our our garbage collection so they took away our bins we had to put our our garbage bags in the back of this beat up minivan that we had and look for you know kind of bins like behind the grocery stores and stuff to like throw our garbage I mean it was pretty humiliating and quite frankly pretty emasculating as somebody who's supposed to be you know head of household and taking care of shit like I was unable to make sure that my house was in order and so we went through a really rough. Of time and it was not clear that we were gonna be able to kind of persevere we did get an opportunity a friend of mine who's a high net worth individual had a property on the north shore of kauai he was trying to figure out how to turn it into some kind of community space and he had read my book and had been inspired and he said why don't you come out and help me figure out like what I can do to transform this property into something more meaningful than where I live and I don't know why he thought that I would be somebody well suited for that job it's not like I have any kind of experience in that but essentially you know in retrospect looking back like he threw my family a lifeline and so yes we moved to the north shore of kauai it was a operating mango farm at the at the at the time and the the kind of woofers who were working the farm were living in these yurts behind the main sort of dwelling at the on the property and we moved into these yurts with these young kids who were working the land and spent a couple months where I was trying to help this individual figure out what to do with his property but mainly he was paying me such that we could pay our bills and when we went to kauai we thought there's no way we're gonna save our house we haven't been able to pay our mortgage in so long like it's just not possible we may just be here and this is where we're gonna live and after a couple months you know of living out there I started to get a creative itch like I had written this book and I was trying to get some energy going around like these ideas that were important to me and I was feeling a little bit of ivan island fever and disconnected and stuff so that's when the impetus to start the podcast happened like I needed to do something creative for myself and and you know I'll always look back on that experience quite romantically because it was it created the perfect storm of events to create this thing that has now you know been successful beyond my wildest imagination

Shaan Puri

And so, let's break down the business side of things. You have the content, which is, like you said, the tip of the spear—the top of the funnel. This is where people discover you, start to like you, begin to trust you, and eventually love you. They say, "Oh wow, this is content that could really help me." But then you have these really interesting businesses. For example, you have the meal planning business, like meals.retroll.com or something similar. You have a meal planning business where you charge, I don't know, $100 a year or something like that. You help people go plant-based in a way that's going to work for them. Then you have this thing called the Epic 5 Challenge, which is, I don't know, five Ironman triathlons or something like that in five days. What is the exact thing for Epic 5?

Rich Roll

Yeah, so just to be clear, I don't have any financial involvement in that race. One of the things I did as an athlete was this thing called Epic 5, where Jason Lester and I did 5 Iron Distance triathlons on 5 Hawaiian islands. The idea was to do it in 5 days. It took us a little bit longer, but in the wake of that experience, it's become an annual event that I'm not affiliated with professionally.

Shaan Puri

But I've heard my story being a partner there. Alright, so basically, it's mostly the media company and then it's the meal planning business. Talk to us about how you kind of... you mentioned your mentor friend who helped you structure this, set this up, and figure out how to actually build a thriving lifestyle. Going from living in the yurt on the mango farm to actualizing this idea, what is that business? What's the business brain part of you? How would you explain that to the next person who maybe doesn't have that mentor? Maybe they see what you do, but can you explain it here? There might be some people in our audience who can take that blueprint or that idea and say, "Okay, I'm in a totally different vertical. I have some differences, but I can learn from how he's architected this business."

Rich Roll

Sure, so first of all, that mentor then became my business partner, and that's a key piece in all of this. Without him, I probably would have never gotten out of the gate. He's been my business partner ever since, and it's an amazing relationship. What he brought to the equation was not only a sense of possibility but, like I said earlier, structure. That structure has always been grounded in real business fundamentals, being patient, and growing only incrementally. We haven't gotten too excited about new stuff or taken on too much. It's been a slow growth curve, but in retrospect, I think we've made really good decisions about how we've invested our time and energy. Yes, it's now a very diversified business that is fundamentally media-oriented, but we have a lot of different verticals. The podcast is the tip of the spear, as I mentioned earlier. It's the thing that drives everything else, and it's also the thing that generates the most income. The meal planner does very well for us. I love that it's a low-cost entry to something I think can be really transformational in terms of people changing their habits around food. So that's an integral piece in all of this. Then there's the book. I mentioned "Finding Ultra," but we also have three cookbooks: "The Plant Power Way," "The Plant Power Way: Italia," and then my wife wrote a book called "This Cheese is Nuts," which is about how to make plant-based cheese. So we have the publishing end, and she's gone off house...

Shaan Puri

Cookbooks... a good business? I feel like I've heard that cookbooks could be a good... like, books in general may not be, but cookbooks specifically might actually be a good business. What can you teach us about that? Because you don't run into too many people who have done this.

Rich Roll

Cookbooks are a very good business. It's hit or miss, but if you hit, they can be massive. They're difficult to put together because beyond just the written words on the page, there's photography and recipe testing, and all of that. So there's a lot that goes into creating a great cookbook. But they're great businesses, and a big reason for that is that if you do hit it, they're perennial sellers. They'll sell year after year after year.

Shaan Puri

And how does that work? So, a hit means what? You get picked up with like a brick-and-mortar distribution, or is it mostly direct to consumer? Like, what is a hit? What does it look like when you get a hit?

Rich Roll

I think it it depends on what your goals and motivations are so our cookbooks we've done with a major publisher avery which is part of random house and we got really nice advances for those books and those books continue to sell and and do well for us they weren't they're not they weren't neither of them were were new york times bestsellers or anything like that but the real mark of success I think in publishing is whether or not you create something that is perennial so finding ultra for example we just hit the decade mark on that and it continues to sell more and more every single year so even though it wasn't huge out of the gate it continues to find audiences and then it becomes you know just a a revenue stream for you for you quarter after quarter so those are the those books but now we have we have 2 other books that we've self published called voicing change which are coffee table versions of the podcast with excerpts from our favorite guests with amazing photography and essays contributed by myself and some of the guests that really act like keepsakes or marketing tools for the podcast like it's a it's a it's a collectible item these books our motivation or our definition of success for these books is very different from the other books because they're not intended to go out and sell to make the new york times bestseller list they have a very specific audience in mind and the fact that we created them in house means that it's a different revenue model as well so we don't need to sell as many of them to do well and I'm really proud of those books we're gonna do another one this year and create a box set and also when we work with brands which is a big piece of of our business as well it's great to be able to send them the book and show them that we're executing on a quality level that I think no one else is doing in the podcast space which helps distinguish us from you know the zillions of other podcasts that are out there because it's very crowded right now and sends the message that you know we're we're trying to elevate a certain you know we're we're all of our content is very elevated and that you know we're we're operating from a very professional perspective in everything that we're doing so that's the books and then we have sorry go ahead

Shaan Puri

I'm on the books... One second. So, I'm fascinated by the books thing. I think it's really cool. I think it's a really cool art. My wife is vegan, and we have maybe, I don't know, 10 to 15 really hot cookbooks. She loves them. It's like a coffee table book and a cookbook at the same time. It's got to have that premium sort of finish and photography. It's very aspirational. As a guy who barely knows how to use a frying pan and, you know, I eat like a college kid sometimes, I see this and it was so different for me. So, I started getting curious about this cookbook she was buying. Who are these people behind this? Now, are those perennials just because you have a growing audience? It's like your audience grows every year, and it's like 1% of your audience buys your stuff. You are the sales as well as the content creator, and that's why they keep climbing. Or is it kind of independent in a way? Obviously, that contributes, but is there a separate engine that lets those continue to grow? Or is it just your main engine of like, "My podcast grows, therefore 1% of people will go buy the cookbook every year?"

Rich Roll

Yeah, I think it's a little bit of both. I mean, with *Finding Ultra*, which is a memoir, I think the continued sales of that book are really due to the growing platform that we've created here. The cookbooks are a little bit different. It's, of course, in part because of the platform, and we use the platform to occasionally promote the books. But I think in tandem with that, we've seen a real mainstreaming of the plant-based lifestyle in a way that didn't exist back in 2012 or 2014. More and more people are interested in this lifestyle and diet, which means that those cookbooks retain relevancy.

Shaan Puri

Have you launched any businesses or products that have just flopped? Like, the version of the cookbook that you were excited about? You even maybe liked the product, and it just didn't work? Or have you been pretty high hit rate with what you guys have launched outside, like in additional products?

Rich Roll

Yeah, I mean, I think early on in this process, we launched a couple of supplements, like a protein powder. I thought maybe nutraceuticals might be something that I would be interested in doing. However, I quickly lost interest in that. It was modestly successful, but I realized that it was a very crowded marketplace. There were people who were doing really good work in that area, and I was more interested in the media. If I was not at the plants, like at the manufacturing location overseeing all of this and really being detail-oriented around it, there was too much risk of shenanigans. I was not in control of the manufacturing process, and there's a lot of weird stuff that goes on in that world when you're licensing these labs to create something for you. It felt like my risk exposure was too high, and I just realized I didn't want to pursue it unless I was going to go all in on that. It didn't make sense, so we abandoned that. We have other products; you know, we sell some swag and some t-shirts and things like that on the website. They don't do fantastic, but it's nice to have them there. So, you know, not everything is a huge smash success, but sometimes some of these smaller verticals still make sense nonetheless.

Shaan Puri

Right in your... if you were doing a pie chart, is it like these meal planning and the cookbooks and all that stuff? That's cool. But like, in reality, if we drew the pie chart, is it like podcasts? Or, you know, the media side with the sponsors is 90% of it anyways? Or is it fairly like Denver side beyond that?

Rich Roll

I would say the podcast is maybe... I don't know, I should do a pie chart so I know this better, but it's probably around 80 to 85% of it. The other revenue generators are public speaking, which is growing a lot, so we do quite well there. The podcast model is an advertising model, so that money comes from sponsors. I also have relationships with a handful of sponsors outside of the podcast context, where I'm represented as an athlete, for example, with Solomon. So that's another way that we grow the business that isn't necessarily directly related to the podcast itself. Then we have retreats. We do these... COVID really sidelined this part of our business, but we're getting back to it next spring. My wife and I take groups of people to a location in Italy and have a week-long experience with food, meditation, running, and such stuff like that.

Shaan Puri

when we have guests on the pod I find that they typically fall into 2 buckets and both I admire there's what I'll call the kind of like expected bucket like on a business oriented podcast which is person comes on they have a product or a story so far that's like exciting and momentum and you know what's admirable about them is their you know ambition they basically they they never stop dreaming bigger and they see you know no limits and they are chasing that that sort of limitless vision where you you walk away from the podcast and you feel like oh man I've been thinking small right and that's a great feeling it's not a negative feeling it's oh wow the the the pie is even bigger than I could have imagined the possibilities are different than than what I had been kind of come to accept an example would be buddies with the founder of calm and I remember even very early on when that app it's a meditation app and now it's very very big it's probably a you know 1 to $3,000,000,000 company but they early on when they could they could barely get an investor to to give them a check it was like just a couple guys in their apartment there was there really wasn't much to to going for it even back then I remember michael talking about like we're gonna have an island someday like a calm island like you know like coachella like festivals right but instead of craziness like instead of rowdy we're gonna be selling calm as a festival and we're gonna do it on our own island and it's gonna be like disney world for calm and like we're gonna build a nike level brand and he was talking about that back then and you know when he said it back then he seemed a little nuts and now you know he says it now and he's a visionary but he's been saying the same thing for like 10 years and so that's an example of the high ambition path that I admire and the other one is the person who's you know sort like high contentness and they're like well I really love what we're doing I don't know if we'll do more haven't really thought about it maybe we will but you know here are my principles and you know they're they're admirable in how grounded they are and that they have found you know some version of enough for them and they are not like you know trying to take over the world which part of that spectrum do you lean more towards when it comes to business

Rich Roll

yeah that's a great question I I I lean more towards the latter but maybe not all the way on that side I mean I'm certainly not the guy who's dreaming about islands and private jets and things like that people ask me all the time like what's the vision like what you know where do you see yourself in 5 years and I always feel weird or guilty because I don't have a good answer for that and I and I realized like oh it's just because I don't I don't really think that way like I'm focused on how I can be better today than I was yesterday I'm focused on how to enhance the quality of what I'm sharing with the world and I'm focused on trying to be grateful and content with what I have and not be jealous or envious of what other people who have more than me have because that's just a dangerous place for me as a recovering alcoholic and just as a human being so I am competitive like I'm not averse to looking at the rankings on apple podcasts and getting you know frustrated because somebody's ahead of me who I don't think is deserving of it like you know I can be incredibly petty that way but but honestly like for the most part like I'm I'm just so grateful to be in the position that I'm in and I'm not doing this to get to another place like if this is all that it is like it's been a pretty fucking good ride and I'm stoked to be able to wake up every day and come in and talk to amazing people and if I can continue to do this and that's again like all that it is like that's a damn good run right now there are you know creative things that I want to express and they're not about chasing money they're more like you know just inspirations that I have like oh it would be cool to do this or can I carve out enough bandwidth so that I can explore this other thing that that is interesting to me right now so it's much more of kind of an artist path of of of following my gut and what gets me excited rather than here's a new business because I I think we could ease we could have easily complicated what we're doing right now and created a network and you know started you know having other people create podcasts and and you know building an entity that we could sell to spotify or something like that but that's not really where my heart is or or where my head is so I don't know if that answers your question but that's how I think about it

Shaan Puri

You know, one thing that I always like to talk to different guests about is that you live in a different world than I do. Therefore, you see different things, problems, opportunities, and trends that I might not be seeing because I'm focused on other things. So, I'm curious. You can take it in either direction. You can either discuss a trend. For example, maybe in 2012, you might have said, "You know what? There's a really passionate community around this plant-based lifestyle, and I think this is going to get bigger. More people are going to wander this way." So, it's either a trend you notice, like a group of people who really care about something, or there's a movement happening that you find very interesting, like ultra marathons, whatever it is. The second option is to identify a gap you see. Our audience is heavily composed of entrepreneurs and wantrepreneurs—people who live to solve problems. I like to bring their attention to problems worth solving or things that are missing from different parts of the world, rather than, you know, the ten-thousandth to-do list app or whatever you could go build. So, taking it in either direction, what comes to mind when I say, "What trends and movements have you been noticing?" or "What gaps or opportunities do you see in your world?"

Rich Roll

yeah I mean I think I to answer that question my head naturally goes to 2 polarities young people and people that are getting older so I'm a little bit older than you so my interest is gonna be around areas of of longevity and meaning in a way that maybe you know you you're not in a position to really have to entertain in a meaningful way yet and then with young people it's equally about meaning so what I see happening right now on a macro level is a whole generation of young people who are coming up into a world and thinking about their professional trajectory in the context of meaning in a way that was not really part of the thought process of my generation being gen x they don't wanna just find the best job that's gonna pay them the most they wanna plug in to the thing that feels like it's making a difference in the world in a positive way and I think that's really cool it's easy to make fun of gen z and you know a lot of the kind of tropes around you know the where young people are at right now but I'm very inspired by that sensibility because it was lacking in you know kind of my my you know the the on you we of the gen x which was to not what was cool was to not care about anything and to be cynical and so you know I'm very refreshed by that focus that I see in so many young people and I and I think on the other extreme with people that are you know more in my age bracket who have kind of been in the professional world done whatever they're gonna do and are are realizing to some degree or or not like how happy am I how much meaning has this path that I chose for myself given me and whether or not I stay in this path or find something new how can I bring more meaning into my lived experience both professionally and and and socially for the decades to follow and I see shared dna between that young cohort and that older cohort and what I make of that is this groundswell of interest in happiness contentment and the the pillars of what it means to pursue a life that will not just sustain you but really allow you to feel authentically expressed in in who you are

Shaan Puri

I like that. If you were to consider a question like, "If you were 21 again today, what would you do?" it's more about how you would act on that. So, you observe this behavioral mindset shift in both the older generation and the younger generation. What do you do with that? How would you approach acting on that insight? What is the Rich Roll approach to this?

Rich Roll

as a young person

Shaan Puri

yeah if you as a person with time on there

Rich Roll

yeah

Shaan Puri

Let's say it doesn't matter how old you are. As a person, if you didn't have like a thousand things to do and you weren't already committed to XYZ job or project, so you had some freedom and you were interested in that observation, what would you do to act on it? How would you approach it?

Rich Roll

yeah I mean I think with with young people one thing I always tell young people is to invest in experience and and opt out of the pressures of the rat race to plug right into some kind of career trajectory because there's an undue expectation with young people that they're supposed to know who they are and what they wanna do with their lives at an age when their brains are are are barely formed and you know I think it's important for young people to go out and have as many experiences as possible before they make a certain particular choice about how they wanna live their life because how can you make that choice until you've been exposed to a lot of different things until you've traveled and spent time with all different kinds of people for the older people I think it's about reprogramming you like if you've been on a certain path and trajectory for a very long time we become very calcified around who we think we are and we have to free ourselves from that narrative or that story and begin to build the muscle of connecting with our intuition and starting to bring expression to the things that that I think innately bring us joy that perhaps we've we've kind of repressed or or put in the rearview mirror because we haven't had the time or the energy or the money or whatever to indulge them and on the subject of indulgence to just abuse people of the idea that it is an indulgence or that it is selfish so you know the the the the path I think for that person is to really start paying attention to themselves to what gets them excited to things that you know they just find themselves naturally in inclined towards and to start to you know water that garden or feed that energy because I think in doing that it kind of leads you on a path towards some form of expression that will ultimately you know bring meaning and and greater fulfillment into your life

Shaan Puri

Well, I think that's a good place to close it. Rich, thanks for coming on, man. I really appreciate it. Give people a shout-out about where they should find you or subscribe to the podcast. Where do you want to direct people if they want more?

Rich Roll

Yeah, sure! Thanks for having me. It's just **richroll.com**. That’s my website where you can find everything: the **Rich Roll Podcast**, which is available wherever you listen to podcasts, and the **YouTube channel** at **richroll.com**. Those would be the places where you can learn all about me.

Shaan Puri

awesome thanks so much

Rich Roll

cool thank you really appreciate talking to you that was super fun