Mike, it’s my pleasure, man. I couldn’t say no.

Michael Roesslein:

Yeah. It was really that easy. I was like, “I’m starting to podcast, do you want to be on it?” “Yep.”

Joe Rignola:

Free soul. Yeah. Pretty much anything you ask me to do, I’m just going to say yes to.

Michael Roesslein:

Well, it’s too fun. It’s too much fun. So for those that don’t know, this podcast is produced by Rebel Health Tribe, which is the company we co-founded a lot of years ago now.

Joe Rignola:

I think it was 2014, officially, but we’d started talking, I think, in 2013.

Michael Roesslein:

Okay. Well, we obviously are very studious with our details and our days, or things like that. But yeah, it was a while ago now. We’re looking at seven years ago. And people often wonder how that came about. And I get asked often like advice like, “How did you start this company or this thing.” And I’m like, “I don’t think I’m the one that you need to come to learn how to launch a business.” But it was purely accidental, and I figured it would be really good context for people to know what this is all about to understand where the whole thing came from, and where it started. Because I’m really trying to align this with the original missions that we had at the beginning, which was to help people.

Joe Rignola:

Yeah. [crosstalk 00:01:49].

Michael Roesslein:

And help people get educated in ways that empower them to make decisions that they can be their own healer, their own guide. And that’s really what we’re going to try to do here. And so I figured we could set the record straight. Now we did this once before on the older podcast that is no longer. So this will be the updated, newer, modern, old story-

Joe Rignola:

Sounds good.

Michael Roesslein:

… that we can share.

Joe Rignola:

Somewhere around 2008 I went back to school for health and nutrition, because I was all banged up. And we’ll talk about that in another episode.

Michael Roesslein:

Yeah. Check out Joe’s personal episode, we’ll go through his story and talk about brain zaps.

Joe Rignola:

Yeah. Scary stuff. But once I recovered my own health, I was like, “I really want to help other people do this, feel better, get well.” So I went back to school for health and nutrition, became a functional diagnostic nutrition practitioner, health coach, all that stuff. And I was doing one-on-one coaching for a couple of years. And then I heard of these online events, like summit type things. I’m like, “I want to do one of those. I want to…” Because I’ve always wanted to do a cooking show, so this is my excuse to do a cooking show. And I did something called the Primal Cooking Workshop. And I somehow had all the who is who in paleo world, to say yes.

Basically, they taught me how to cook, and we recorded it all, and we put out this workshop. And that was my first official launch, and that was around the time I stopped doing one-on-one coaching because I’m like, “Okay. I can help one person at a time or I can help 20,000 people at a time.” Because that’s how many people who signed up for that event. And so I did that, and that was it. And then I did a few more launches after that. Some big, some small. I had seen Mike around in a couple of Facebook groups, and we had gotten friendly. We were both FTNs. And I asked you if I could interview you on digestion, and you said yes, and we’re yet to record the interview.

Michael Roesslein:

Yeah. We haven’t done that, and that was eight years ago, but-

Joe Rignola:

Probably won’t ever do that now. But yeah, then you asked me what was it for, and I started telling you about this summit that I wanted to do on digestion. And I guess you could probably take it from there, from your perspective for the video.

Michael Roesslein:

Yeah. I didn’t understand what was going on. I had a similar timeline and trajectory. I got into health stuff around 2008, nine. And got a master’s degree in exercise science, and started being a trainer for a minute, and then hated it. And realized that you can’t beat the hell out of people to make them more healthy. And so-

Joe Rignola:

Yeah. I don’t picture you being a personal trainer. I could never picture you doing that.

Michael Roesslein:

I wasn’t very good at it. I was immediately more interested in the nutrition and the lifestyle stuff than I was in the weights and the training. But initially I went school to work with athletes and I did that for exactly two weeks, and was like, “Nope, this is not what I’m going to do.” And I started working with deconditioned and unhealthier people, and I found that to be way more rewarding. It was more fun for me to help somebody who was in pain be able to walk up the stairs, than it was to help a guy that can already jump this high, jump that high, or something. Because they didn’t want to listen to me anyways, the athletes, so it was like, “What am I doing?” And I went through the CHEK Institute for my nutrition and health stuff, and then found FDN. And I think it was the FDN group.

Joe Rignola:

Yeah.

Michael Roesslein:

I knew you had Wellness Punks, which was your company.

Joe Rignola:

Yeah. That was [crosstalk 00:05:26].

Michael Roesslein:

And I thought that was super cool, because I liked the name. And I had no idea what you were doing, I was just… And I didn’t realize you were that guy until we had the phone call, and then you told me, “Oh, my company Wellness Punks.” And I’m like, “I know those guys.” And you’re like, “Those guys is me.”

Joe Rignola:

It is me. Exactly.

Michael Roesslein:

Yeah. Exactly, me. And you’d asked me to do an interview on stomach acid, and like how it’s always backwards. People think you have too much, but you have too little. And I’m like, “Sure, but why?” And then you started to explain that you were putting together an event, and that you were promoting Sean Croxton, who did all the summits, the big summits then. That you were promoting his thing. And I was like, “What’s promoting? What’s a summit? What’s a list?-

Joe Rignola:

What’s an affiliate?

Michael Roesslein:

… What’s an affiliate?” I didn’t know anything. And then we talked, and then I was all fired up, because I didn’t know this was a thing. I didn’t know what you were doing was a thing that people do. And so I had created a course the previous year and spent nine months of my life on it, and thought if I make this super cool course, lots of people will buy it, and then it’ll be awesome. And instead six people bought it, who were my clients who I made buy it. And then nobody else bought it, because literally nobody knew it existed, and I forgot about that part where people need to know that it exists in order to be able to buy it.

And so I was depressed and just sitting on this thing, and then we had that talk. And I remember I said something to Mira, who was my girlfriend at the time, who’s my wife now, that I was living in Arizona. I said, “Hey, I talked to this guy, and listen to what he does. He makes videos and then sends them to an email list, and then has events, and then doesn’t work with clients one-on-one. And company makes money. I don’t understand anything that’s going on, but it sounds really cool. And I want to learn how to do it.” Because I had just left Illinois where my clients were. My clients were all in person, so I left that. And I was like-

Joe Rignola:

Now what.

Michael Roesslein:

… “Bro.” And I didn’t have income and was like, “How am I going to make money now?” And she said, “Call that guy back, and ask him if he can sell your course, or something like that.” I was like, “Huh, okay.” So that’s when… I don’t know if I messaged you, or emailed, or something was like, “Hey, I have this course, it’s cool. Maybe you could sell it. We could work out a thing.” And you were like, “Sure. Okay, I’ll check it out.” And then a couple days later, you hit me up, and we’re like, “This course is awesome, let’s make a thing.”

Joe Rignola:

Yeah. And we talked on the phone for… I remember we talked on the phone for like two hours about it.

Michael Roesslein:

Yeah.

Joe Rignola:

I’m like, “Let’s take this course and make it much more complicated and much more stressful, and way bigger.”

Michael Roesslein:

Yeah. This is already done, so let’s turn it into something that takes six months to produce. And so we did. We overcomplicated it, turned it into something way more complex, we rebranded it, we created the Rebel Health Tribe company. And then to double over complicate it, we created a summit around it.

Joe Rignola:

Right. That was the thing. And it’s so funny now because we look at the masterclasses and how much value they bring. And then with the brain and nervous system one, it’s almost the same formula just better and more precise. Right. Steve got all the interviews, and then we introduced the Titus’s course. Right.

Michael Roesslein:

Yeah.

Joe Rignola:

We introduced Titus’s course. So it’s a similar format.

Michael Roesslein:

Yeah.

Joe Rignola:

So I was thinking about that the other day, it’s actually really interesting, just that we’re way better at it now.

Michael Roesslein:

Yeah. The content is better, it’s more precise. Like that original is called Primal 90.

Joe Rignola:

Primal 90. Yeah.

Michael Roesslein:

The course itself was-

Joe Rignola:

90 days long.

Michael Roesslein:

Yeah. I mean it was like college master’s level amount of… It was hours and hours and hours and hours. When I created it, I literally took everything that I ever taught any of my clients and put it into digital form and videos with slides and whatever. And thought, I’ll just have people learn this first, and then they can pay me for sessions to work with them. Because frankly, I was tired of teaching people the same stuff over and over and over and over and over and over. And they were paying me to do it a lot. So I was like, we could just skip that, and then the sessions with the people could be really personalized, versus teaching them eat organic food, go to bed on time like these things. But in retrospect, the course is too big, it’s overwhelming, there’s tons of content. And then we recorded 30 interviews that we also decided that a 10-day launch event or summit event is not enough work.

Joe Rignola:

We needed to do a whole month of launch.

Michael Roesslein:

We did an entire month where it was one episode per day for a month, which was cool. Nobody ever did that before, and nobody has ever done that again. And there’s probably-

Joe Rignola:

A good why.

Michael Roesslein:

… good reason for that. Because anybody listening to this who has ever been involved in launches, all we did was stretch the stress and work of a launch out four times longer than normal. And it was interesting-

Joe Rignola:

I don’t recommend it.

Michael Roesslein:

… though, because people did get to see more, where in the launch model, normally, it’s a rush or frantic. And we didn’t want to have that. So they used watched one per day. And there was literally one per day, I think it was the entire month of March. And there are some big name people that said yes. We had some big people on that. Like Terry Wahls was on there, Dan Kalish was on there. People at the time who were like the icons of the industry. I remember emailing Terry Wahls and being like, “Oh, man, she’s not going to respond to me.” And then she did, and she wanted to have a phone call. And I called you and I was like, “Dude, I’m going to be talking to Terry Wahls on the phone-

Joe Rignola:

I Remember that.

Michael Roesslein:

… what do I say? How do I do this? Who do I talk-“

Joe Rignola:

She’s a hero. Yeah.

Michael Roesslein:

Yeah. Now I’ve interviewed her a bunch of times, and she’s super nice and really easy to work with. And we get on the phone, and I thought she was going to be grilling me about, “What’s the event? What are you teaching? What…” She wanted to know my story. Where do I come from? What am I doing? Why am I doing this? It was really personal, and I wasn’t prepared for that, and I was caught off guard. And I was like, “Oh, these are people too.”

Joe Rignola:

Yeah. Exactly.

Michael Roesslein:

She’s a people, she’s not this TEDx talk. Because if you don’t know, Terry has a TED talk that got like a zillion views. Because she reversed her own MS, which isn’t something you’re supposed to be able to do. So was big deal, and now she has the Wahls Protocol, and the books, and the studies, the clinical studies, all this stuff. So we did that, and I don’t remember how many people signed up part of that. It was like 30,000, or-

Joe Rignola:

Something like that. I think between 20 and 30,000. But it was big. It was-

Michael Roesslein:

It was big.

Joe Rignola:

We did really well with it, and it launched the company. Let’s keep doing it.

Michael Roesslein:

Yeah. The whole thing is coming from there. And then it was Kiran and MegaSpore, because I had heard about MegaSpore from Chris Kresser, I think. And gave it to me Mira’s mom. I was about done with probiotics. I had tried all the types of probiotics with clients, and it was hit or miss, like a total crapshoot whether or not people got better, or worse, or whatever. And I was like, “Maybe this is just nonsense.” But then he wrote, “There’s this interesting one, and blah, blah, blah.” So I’m like, “All right. That guy is smart, this sounds like good idea. I’ll give it to somebody I know.” And so I gave it to Mira’s mom. And within two weeks her lifelong asthma and allergies, pet asthmas, like pet dander would trigger asthma, and she’d be in the hospital.

She had to have her clients, she’s a therapist, change their clothes before they came to see her if they had pets, because she couldn’t even be around that. And within two weeks, she said that she wasn’t reacting to animals for the first time in her life. Could that be the probiotic? And I was like, “No.” I don’t have any idea how that would be a thing. And she’s like, “Well, can you ask them?” And I’m like, “Who is them?” I’ve tried to contact supplement companies before you get some guy on the phone that’s a salesperson who doesn’t know anything about the products, and they’re like, “Yeah. Here’s the phone number to our chief science guy, just text him.” And I’m like, “Okay.” So I text him, he calls me back, I talked to him for like two hours. And then I called you and was like, “Dude, we have to interview this guy, he just turned everything on its head that I thought I understood about probiotics. Watch this video. They have a video. Do this.” And-

Joe Rignola:

We made Kiran famous.

Michael Roesslein:

Basically. So Kiran if you’re watching this, you’re welcome. No, he actually jokes about that too when I talk to him now, because we still work with him. And he’ll say that it was our webinars and things that blew up Physicians Exclusive, which is now Microbiome Labs. And Kiran, who is now famous. Kiran speaks everywhere.

Joe Rignola:

He’s doing a whole series of videos. Now. He does a five-minute microbiome moment. They’re on Facebook, and Instagram.

Michael Roesslein:

Of course it is.

Joe Rignola:

Yeah. They’re good, they’re really good. It’s cool. It’s branded, and it’s like, “I’m Kiran Krishnan your friendly neighborhood microbiologist.” I’m like, “Yeah. Go Kiran.”

Michael Roesslein:

Yeah. It’s so fun. Now I see him promoted across conferences, and events, and everywhere, and everything. Everywhere he’s keynote. I think I interviewed him as a Primal 90 interview. And then this was a total accident, but that was one of the last ones that aired. Probably because it was one of the last ones we recorded, but it was one of the last ones that aired because we were already recording it when I reached out to him. It was like, “Hey. We’re already doing this thing, but you need to be in it.”

Joe Rignola:

And I think as we were launching, we were still recording episodes, and editing episodes. [crosstalk 00:14:43].

Michael Roesslein:

Yes, I think it was how to not do a thing.

Joe Rignola:

Yeah. It was pretty much-

Michael Roesslein:

It was how we were doing the thing. And writing emails for thing we’d edited at two in the morning the night before for the… Yeah. And his interview was one of the last one. So by the end of that event, we had lots of people signed up. Because people are incrementally signing up through the month, and by the end of the month was the biggest audience. Whoever the last one was, would have the biggest audience. And one of the last ones was him. And then we started getting emails up to wazoo of people wanting to buy MegaSpore, the probiotic that he’d formulated. And I was spending hours a day sending people PayPal invoices, because they only sell to professionals. So I was using my practitioner account.

So I would send somebody an invoice, they’d pay on PayPal, I’d call Whitney, who now is Whitney that you all know who works with us at Rebel Health Tribe. And be like, “Okay. I need these six bottles, they go to these six people. Here’s the address.” And I was doing this all the time. And it finally got out of control because these people would go into Facebook groups for SIBO, or some other type of problem and say, “Hey. I tried this probiotic, I feel better now.” And then we’d get 60 more emails. And then we can’t keep up with this. So the website itself, the first version pretty much existed to allow us to process MegaSpore orders.

Joe Rignola:

Yeah. That was the first Rebel Health Tribe. Yeah. The very first Primal 90 one, I built in some cheap-

Michael Roesslein:

And that was just to access Primal 90.

Joe Rignola:

Just Primal 90. So it was not capable of selling multiple products.

Michael Roesslein:

Not like a shop. No. And so we had that built purely to handle the demand, and then people wanted more. They’re like, “You need to do more interviews with this guy.” Everybody kept emailing me questions to ask him. It was Kiran… We became like the intermediary between Kiran and the world of people who needed to know the things. And so we had him on the webinars, the-

Joe Rignola:

Yeah. We started the microbiome series.

Michael Roesslein:

Where we’re doing them all the time, and then it just blew up from there. But we became like the microbiome people by default on accident. And then a lot of practitioners watched our stuff, because his content was groundbreaking in the industry. And I remember talking to Whitney, when we first were working with them. They had 500 practitioners. And the last time I talked to him, it’s 20,000 now. And so the company that was three people is now 70 people, and they’re international and all over the place. But we did those microbiome series webinars.

Joe Rignola:

[crosstalk 00:17:26].

Michael Roesslein:

But yeah, I remember in the morning of the webinar, there’d be 400 people, and then 700, and then 900. And we weren’t doing that. It was just happening viral, people were sharing the links in the groups, and it was just going on its own.

Joe Rignola:

And that’s really when Rebel Health Tribe really became known for just providing really good content, like really good content. I think that’s something to really be proud of.

Michael Roesslein:

Yeah. It set the bar high for standard of content and what we’re willing to put in front of people.

Joe Rignola:

Yeah. And even working on the new venture for me, it’s just, “How can I provide content that’s going to actually serve people and help people?”

Michael Roesslein:

But a novel concept.

Joe Rignola:

Yeah. It’s weird for our industry. Of course I don’t want to throw anyone under the bus. But obviously, a lot of people, their first concern is, how much money can I make?

Michael Roesslein:

How many people can I get to buy this? How much money can I make?

Joe Rignola:

Yep. What’s the email list worth? That’s the thought. What’s the EPL of my email list, which is earnings per lead. It never felt good to think like that, or be in an environment where that was the thought pattern. Because those people are people. That’s community of people that are looking for help, and to take advantage of that or betray that trust that they put in you, it’s gross. There’s some really good people in the industry too, but then there’s not. And that’s just like any industry, I guess.

Michael Roesslein:

I think that it’s like every industry. For a while, I thought this one was excessively like that. And then I’m in another industry now that is the same.

Joe Rignola:

Yeah.

Michael Roesslein:

So it’s the same. And it’s the names that are the biggest in the industries are not the ones that are necessarily the best at what they do.

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It’s like you got to search and find the people that are the real deal. And we just kept with that. I mean we did the microbiome series webinars. And then we had some other ideas that we tried to do webinar series. Some worked, some didn’t work very well.

Joe Rignola:

It was the baby series-

Michael Roesslein:

The baby series boomed.

Joe Rignola:

… that didn’t work.

Michael Roesslein:

That we only did that because you were having a baby, and then we thought, “Oh, the whole audience will want to learn about babies now.”

Joe Rignola:

Of course.

Michael Roesslein:

And then later we did a survey of what topics are you most interested in, so that we can be-

Joe Rignola:

That was the last.

Michael Roesslein:

And babies got 2%, and we’re like, “Oh, no wonder nobody watched this.” So we also learned like… You obviously knew way more about marketing and digital marketing and stuff. I knew zero. I was starting at literal zero when we started. But we learned a lot over the years of, this doesn’t work, this works. Do this. They like this. They don’t like this. Running events in a certain format. And then we created the weekend masterclass with the microbiome one a few years ago, and it was like, professional weekend conference meets online summit, meets course, because they are presentations that are taught not interviews. And so it’s a hybrid model that I still haven’t seen anybody else really do. And they still do really well, because the summit model of the week to 10 days, to two weeks type of thing, there are so many of them, and it’s exhausting, and it’s overwhelming. And we just say, “Here, it’s going to be this weekend, it’s going to be all day, both days, you can watch whenever you want, it’s going to be loaded, check it out.”

Joe Rignola:

Yeah. I think the big difference is, people get excited about a summit. A lot of it is still good information [crosstalk 00:21:46].

Michael Roesslein:

Yeah.

Joe Rignola:

A lot of them are good. It’s good info, but nine days, 10 days, you can’t block out 2 or 3, 4 hours a day for that long a period of time. And so I think when they realized they could just schedule Saturday, Sunday, this is what I’m doing. And it works.

Michael Roesslein:

It’s like an immersive dive. And if they’re not interested across the full spectrum, there’s at least four or five presentations that they’ll be able to catch that they like. And so we’ve gotten a lot of good feedback on it. The presenters like doing it, because they get to teach. So a lot of the presentations are things that are usually taught to professionals. It’s things that they teach at medical conferences. Like Kiran used one that he then later taught to doctors at medical conferences. They enjoy that. I think the same type of interviews that they do a lot are less exciting to them. And it’s for some of them. And so it’s fun. And we’ve left a lot of money on the table too over the years, because we don’t promote random everything all the time. If you’ve been with us for a while, you don’t get seven emails a week from us sharing this thing, and this thing, and this thing, and this thing because, well, that sucks.

Joe Rignola:

Yeah. [crosstalk 00:22:55].

Michael Roesslein:

And I don’t want to get those emails, so I also don’t want to send them.

Joe Rignola:

And there’s not that many events that are that good.

Michael Roesslein:

No.

Joe Rignola:

There’s enough. But if you’re promoting seven days a week, at some point you’re going to promote something that’s not really up to par. It’s not going to be-

Michael Roesslein:

Yeah, it’s impossible. There’s just not the volume of stuff to share. So I say no to a lot of things. And some people get pissed about it, and then that rubs them the wrong way. And then I’ve had people come to me and be like, “No, you have a reputation that you’re difficult to deal with.” And I was like, “I don’t know who told you that, but if the content you make is good, we’re actually really easy to deal with. If you want me to promote something that I don’t think is good, then I’m just not going to deal with you at all, so I guess that would be difficult.” But I can’t say I was offended. And what it’s really become is there’s still a bunch of people in the Facebook group that were part of that Primal 90 launch.

Joe Rignola:

Yeah. And that group is like one of the best health groups out there.

Michael Roesslein:

Yeah. If you’re not in our Facebook group, check it out. It’s just Rebel Health Tribe on Facebook. It’s active, it’s engaged. Most of it isn’t even me. I’m not the one leading it or running it. The members are posting, the community is posting. They post questions, they answer each other’s questions. There’s a lot of practitioners in there. A ton of support, and supportive. And there’s a bunch of people who are friends from our group that met in our group that are friends and support each other and have helped each other. They’ll post pictures like, “Hey, I met so and so at the whatever.” Back, remember when you could hang out with other-

Joe Rignola:

Yeah. Imagine that.

Michael Roesslein:

And like I talked about before we went on air, there’s a couple that I’ve actually brought into other projects that I’m doing to help work. I’ve hired people’s daughters. It’s a community of people that I really value who I now know these people really well. I mean we’ve known them for six, seven years. And it’s really unique. I’m in other Facebook groups and I haven’t encountered that level of support. And there’s not bitching, and fighting, and infighting, and arguments, and all that type of drama. Probably because I have a short trigger finger with that.

Joe Rignola:

Of course. Yeah. More shorter than mine, actually.

Michael Roesslein:

But it’s just not the type of people that in there. Yeah. It’s just like, “Oh, cool, you’re banned.”

Joe Rignola:

Gone. I am probably a bit more diplomatic. And I had the reputation for being able to handle difficult people, and turn them into customers.

Michael Roesslein:

Or your emails. Yeah. We would get emails of some-

Joe Rignola:

It’s so fun.

Michael Roesslein:

There’s angry people in this world who like to be angry, and who are just angry and complainy. And we would get those emails, because anyone who runs a business online gets-

Joe Rignola:

Is going to get those.

Michael Roesslein:

… those emails. And I would just send them to Joe, because I am not well suited to respond to those emails. I could do better at it now. But back then, I was not well suited for that at all. And by the time Joe is done with them, they would have bought two things on the website, attended all our webinars, be posting in the Facebook group, and sharing our business on their page. So what’s the strategy? Just to validate their frustration?

Joe Rignola:

Yeah. Honestly, it’s just being empathetic. Because it’s Sallypants69@yahoo.com, and she doesn’t know me, I don’t know her. And the other thing is a lot… People are struggling. People are [crosstalk 00:26:12].

Michael Roesslein:

Yeah.

Joe Rignola:

If they’re in our community, they’re either struggling or they have struggled. A lot of that manifests is frustration.

Michael Roesslein:

Yeah. I totally get it now. Emails have been removed from my hands. But I did it for a little while, and I can do it now. But it’s taken me a lot of training and work to be able to get to where I am now dealing with that kind of thing without getting defensive, or just-

Joe Rignola:

Taking it personally.

Michael Roesslein:

… ignoring it completely, or taking it personally. Yeah. Because I’ve learned that too. Mira is a ER nurse, my wife, and she comes home with these stories from work that my first reaction is rage, because people are so mean to them. And hit them, throw things at them, swear at them, say things to them that are not appropriate, like all this stuff.

Joe Rignola:

And it’s your wife.

Michael Roesslein:

And it’s my wife. Yeah. But in general, but that’s that person’s worst day of their life. If you’re in the ER, things aren’t going well for you. And so some people are going to express that fear in rage, and anger, and lashing out, and whatever. So that’s really helped me to have that perspective on it too. Like you said, the people in our community are either suffering or have suffered, or somebody in their life is suffering or something. It also doesn’t happen very much. But yeah, you had an uncanny knack for turning the angriest people into our raving-

Joe Rignola:

Fans.

Michael Roesslein:

… fans. Yeah. And it was impressive. I think I even sent you to a few other of our friends who have similar businesses to-

Joe Rignola:

Add value.

Michael Roesslein:

… help them with difficult contact emails.

Joe Rignola:

I’ve gotten in contact [crosstalk 00:27:44]. You’ve tagged me in quite a few posts [crosstalk 00:27:47].

Michael Roesslein:

Yeah.

Joe Rignola:

It’s always fun.

Michael Roesslein:

“Hey, do you want to answer this?” But yeah, then we’ve met so many cool people that are in the industry too, that have become friends. I lived in San Diego for five years and would meet Steph at the farmers’ market because we connected with her with Rebel Health Tribe stuff and-

Joe Rignola:

Yeah. There are cool people in the industry. I don’t want to paint the picture like-

Michael Roesslein:

Yeah. For sure.

Joe Rignola:

[crosstalk 00:28:08]… backstabbing and narcissists.

Michael Roesslein:

No different than any other industry, whatever industry you’re in, it’s the same.

Joe Rignola:

Yeah. Exactly.

Michael Roesslein:

To the listeners, there’s the people that are really in things for the right reasons, and there’s incredible people too. And that’s who I tend to work with. So if you see somebody on our masterclasses, that’s how we think about them.

Joe Rignola:

Exactly. And the other thing I’ll say is, when certain people reach a level of success in this space, I think there’s a tendency to have an idea of who they are. And I’ve certainly been guilty of judging people just based on the fact that they were successful. And had to deal with a lot with my own struggles and relationship with finances, and things like that. But I’d see someone-

Michael Roesslein:

Same.

Joe Rignola:

… really successful, and be like, “They must be an asshole.” [crosstalk 00:29:00].

Michael Roesslein:

Yeah.

Joe Rignola:

And then you meet the person, oh, actually, this person is pretty cool.

Michael Roesslein:

Yeah. I think the top person that would fit that category for me is either Dan Kalish, or Datis Kharrazian, or Christine Schaffner. They’re all really nice.

Joe Rignola:

Super cool people.

Michael Roesslein:

Christine is so nice. But when I first met Datis, it was at the wences. Yeah. We promoted a thyroid thing for them. Then we got invited, I went to the thing in Boulder. And I go to sit at the table and he walks in and I recognize him. He’s the only one in the room wearing a suit too. And he walks in and sits down next to me and I’m like, “That’s Dr. Datis Kharrazian. I read his books, that guy super smart. What do I say to him?”

Joe Rignola:

You were more intimidated than anything. I totally get that.

Michael Roesslein:

Yeah. I was more intimidated than anything. But I thought he might just blow me off, or not necessarily be an asshole just like, I’m some dude in a tie dyed T-shirts sitting at a table next to him, while he’s like, “Why am I at this thing?” And that’s what I was projecting. That he was thinking that. And he was super nice, super warm, super friendly. We went out to dinner that night. He picked up the check for the table and disappeared and we couldn’t find him, and we’re like, “Where is Datis?” He was just sitting outside watching live music, a guy in the street playing music.

And then he’s always said yes to anything I’ve asked him to do. He’s always come on are masterclasses. His presentations are always incredible, and the most watched. And people come to watch him specifically. And he’s super accessible. He’s really friendly. He’s really easy to work with. So I have no idea where things are going to go from here. I mean we’ve done the three masterclasses. And now if you’re a audience member with Rebel Health Tribe, if you’re part of the community, you notice that Joe is back, and is writing the emails. So-

Joe Rignola:

You’re busy, so…

Michael Roesslein:

I have a new platform and a new thing that I’m launching. We’ll talk about that when we talk about my journey similar to yours in some ways.

Joe Rignola:

Well, let’s just say it’s going to be big, and also can help a lot of people.

Michael Roesslein:

Yeah. I hope it does. And right now I’m in it, so I can’t see. What I’m in right now launch wise, and time wise, and moving pieces wise, and whatever, if you’d throw in something like that at us six years ago, or whenever we were doing the Primal 90 launch, our brains would have just exploded, and we would disintegrated into… Now granted, there’s way more than two people working on it. But if you had told me then that I’d be working on something like that ever, I would have freaked out and been like, “I don’t know how to do 95% of that. I don’t know what I’m doing.” But one thing I’ve learned, and I think this applies across the industry, is that we learn things on the fly.

Joe Rignola:

That’s the only… That’s really the best way.

Michael Roesslein:

Yeah. I don’t know how to do what I’m doing, so I’ll just learn to do it. And then you’re like, “Oh, that’s not the way to do that.” Now I know how to not do that. And now I know how to not do a bunch of things.

Joe Rignola:

Exactly. Same here. I think people get paralyzed with that fear of failure, and paralyzed by, “I don’t know how to do it, so I’m not even going to try.” And it’s just stops a lot of people from following through. I mean the thing that you’re working on is truly something I’ve never seen before. And honestly, I’m proud of you for going at it, and I know it’s going to help a ton of people.

Michael Roesslein:

Thanks, man. I appreciate that.

Joe Rignola:

It’s really amazing. But imagine if you let your fear stop you, and-

Michael Roesslein:

And it almost has. It almost has several times when things would get… There’d be a new big problem that I don’t know how to solve, and it’s like, “Okay. Now we got to stop again.” And it’s like, “Is this the end? Is this the thing that’s going to stop it from going?” And it never is. And at the beginning when I laid out all the stuff we needed to do for it, I said to Mira in passing, I was like, “I’m going to have so many roles with this, and have so much responsibilities of doing things that I’ve never done before that I don’t know how to do, that I’m pretty terrified.” And she said, “But you’re really good at doing stuff you don’t know how to do.” And I was like, “You know what, I am, so I’m just going to wing it.” And then you realize the more complex of projects you take on in this type of world, you realize that everyone else is winging it.

Joe Rignola:

Exactly.

Michael Roesslein:

Nobody knows what they’re doing. There’s the few people that sort of. But for the most part-

Joe Rignola:

Yeah. There are definitely a few.

Michael Roesslein:

… they’re doing a thing right now that’s too big for them.

Joe Rignola:

I think that’s happiness, is that constant growth. If you’re not doing something that’s pushing the boundaries… I mean maybe that’s just me, but for me if I’m not doing something that’s pushing my boundaries and cause me to grow-

Michael Roesslein:

Pretty boring.

Joe Rignola:

Pretty boring. Yeah.

Michael Roesslein:

Yeah. It’s pretty boring. And even Rebel Health Tribe, we started with Primal 90 and MegaSpore, and some microbiome webinars. And now there’s hundreds of hours of video content, there’s multiple webinars series, there’s these three master classes that we’ve done, and there’s a fourth one going to come probably this fall that we’re going to do. And there’s… We did the film series production with Human Longevity Project. And there’s a lot. The scope of what’s happened in the last six or seven years is a lot. And then what we’re building with Inara is, the content that I’ve been corralling to get published on the first version of the website that’s going to go live, is going to be somewhere in the ballpark of like 150,000 words.

Joe Rignola:

Jesus.

Michael Roesslein:

I don’t know how many words are on the Rebel Health Tribe blog. It’s probably more than 150,000, but-

Joe Rignola:

But that’s six years.

Michael Roesslein:

… that’s six years of content. And we’re producing that in a month and a half. And the scope and the scale of it is frightening, but I don’t look at it that way.

Joe Rignola:

You can’t think about it. Yeah.

Michael Roesslein:

No.

Joe Rignola:

I think that has been the key to the success that I’ve had, is that I’ve tried not to look at the big picture, or not dwell on the big picture.

Michael Roesslein:

You glance at it, and then be-

Joe Rignola:

Yeah. Exactly.

Michael Roesslein:

… like, “Okay. We need to do this small thing.”

Joe Rignola:

Exactly.

Michael Roesslein:

The next small thing, that’s all I’m focused on now. Is like this is the next thing that has to happen, so I’m going to do this thing. And it’s just fun.

Joe Rignola:

I’m glad you’re learning to embrace the chaos and the stress.

Michael Roesslein:

I would have been a mess right now, then. We’re laughing about the Primal 90 launch right now, but both of us almost ended up in the hospital. Neither of us were sleeping, one of us at all times was in like a full blown panic. And then it would draw the other one into the panic, and then we were just feeding off each other’s panic.

Joe Rignola:

Not good.

Michael Roesslein:

And we were both balls of anxiety like non-stop. And it would be like, “I’m having a pretty calm day.” And then I’ll talk to Joe and he’s freaking out, man. And I’m like, “Oh, shit, here we go.” And then two days later, it’s reversed. I’m freaking out, and he’s trying to work on something. And we both have come a long way and done a lot of work since then. And now I’m looking at, right now I’m still running Rebel Health Tribe, and then we’re doing that. And I’m in two full time professional trainings right now as well to shift my career to a different kind of work. And any one of those four things is quite a bit to be doing, and all four is absurd. It’s totally crazy what I’m juggling right now.

And I’m sleeping fine. I’m not having panic attacks or breakdowns. And I think it is that shift from… And this goes for people working on their health too. Like the next small thing. Make the next small change. Focus on the now. All of these stories that we create about, “Oh my god, there’s these 72,000 moving pieces in this project that could go wrong.” None of them are going wrong right now. And we create these… Because we both have this gift, I’ll call it of hyper vigilance. We can see everything that can go wrong in a situation.

Joe Rignola:

Yeah. I think I’ve gotten a lot better with that. I think we both have. I tell myself, “There’s nothing going on right now. There’s a lot that could go wrong, but there’s also a lot that can go right.” So anything that you can project into the future, you’re just making up a story.

Michael Roesslein:

And none of that is real or happening, or-

Joe Rignola:

None of it is real. So I’m always-

Michael Roesslein:

And 99% of it won’t happen.

Joe Rignola:

Ever.

Michael Roesslein:

Yeah.

Joe Rignola:

So if I’m going to make up a story, well, why don’t I just make up a story that’s actually going to be beneficial? Why don’t I make up a story that’s going to be the highest and best outcome? At least I’m energetically pointed in the right direction that way, instead of catastrophizing everything.

Michael Roesslein:

Yeah. But we’re wired, that’s a skill to learn.

Joe Rignola:

Of course.

Michael Roesslein:

We’re wired as being to scan for danger, and to find the things that could go wrong, to be prepared for whatever. Because that we needed to do that for a really long time, and now we don’t.

Joe Rignola:

We have no saber-toothed tiger now. [crosstalk 00:37:35].

Michael Roesslein:

None. And we apply. Although it might be more interesting out there at this point if there were. And so I still have that, that doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo. This could go wrong, this is going to go wrong, this person is going to say no to this thing. They’re going to back out. And it still is there all the time, and then I can actively be like, “That may happen. And if it does, that’s fine, and then I’ll figure it out.” Or that’s probably not going to happen. Because I would play out 97 different scenarios for that one thing, one of them may happen, all likelihood I miss the thing that actually is the thing that happens in my scan.

And so the amount of energy it takes to do that is exhausting, and then you’re not doing the little thing you’re supposed to be doing right now because you’re freaked out about that thing over there, and you’re bringing that into this little thing. And so I’ve really learned to not do that, and not get overwhelmed by the amount of things, and deal with something that’s gone wrong while it’s actively going wrong.

Joe Rignola:

Mm-hmm (affirmative). And that’s all you can do. It’s exhausting and it’s paralyzing. I actually did an interview for a fatigue summit a few weeks ago. And that was one of the things I talked about. Fear can show up as fatigue because it’s not just fight or flight-

Michael Roesslein:

Yeah. Freeze.

Joe Rignola:

… it’s fight, flight or freeze. And that freeze, I know what that’s like. I know what it’s like not to want to get out of bed because, I’m just afraid everything is going to go wrong, so I’m just going to stay in bed. But just stay in bed-

Michael Roesslein:

Which makes everything go wrong.

Joe Rignola:

Everything.

Michael Roesslein:

Yeah. And freeze was mine too. And now I’ve learned a lot about polyvagal, and the freeze response, and that the freeze is a deeply ingrained response that you can’t override. It’s not like you’re being lazy, your system shuts down. And you’re going to do this now because you’re about to be eaten by a bear. Because freeze is what happens when you can’t get away, and you can’t fight. That’s the deepest level of shutdown in the system. And that’s procrastination, that’s staying in bed, that’s literally freeze. Like when we were at the height of the launch of the movie, there were afternoons where I’d be so freaked out and panicked that I would literally just go sit on the couch and be like just…

Joe Rignola:

That was an interesting thing because we had literally the most opposite experience with that film launched. I remember there was a moment I was home, I had the laptop open, I had someone on Skype and I had someone on my phone, and everything was breaking at the same time. And it was completely nuts. And it was like everything seemed to be going wrong at the same time. I finally got through putting that fire out, I shut my laptop. And Rissell looks at me and she goes, “You love this?” And I’m like, “Yeah, I kind of do.” It was something about that experience or where I was at that point where I just felt like I can handle it.

Michael Roesslein:

I do not feel like that.

Joe Rignola:

It was the first time we did a launch that I didn’t actually get sick. Actually the first launch that I did that Primal Cooking Workshop, I’d launched that from the hospital.

Michael Roesslein:

Yeah. You were in the hospital, I remember that.

Joe Rignola:

I had an emergency appendectomy.

Michael Roesslein:

During a launch. Anybody who has ever done launches will just laugh when they hear that because shit like that happens all the time.

Joe Rignola:

Exactly. And I think, actually, when we did Primal 90, I ended up with pneumonia.

Michael Roesslein:

Yeah, you were sick.

Joe Rignola:

I was sick for that too. So I always got sick. And now I realize I was literally making myself sick.

Michael Roesslein:

Yeah. And I was a mess. That was my first, with Primal 90 I had no experience in launches, and so every little thing I thought was the biggest catastrophe ever, because everything wasn’t going perfect. And you’re like, “No. Everything is going to go sideways.”

Joe Rignola:

Of course.

Michael Roesslein:

Am like, “How do you do this? Why is this happening like this?” Yeah. How do you-

Joe Rignola:

And I probably didn’t tell you some of the stuff that went wrong at the time.

Michael Roesslein:

No. Because I didn’t even know what was going on. I didn’t know how to fix most of it. I didn’t know. Now I’m involved when the things go sideways. But we have an awesome team too though. We were two guys doing a thing that was huge. I have a team of, I think there’s 12 people now. So-

Joe Rignola:

That’s awesome.

Michael Roesslein:

… that helps a lot. And I’ve also learned what not to have myself doing.

Joe Rignola:

It’s a good skill.

Michael Roesslein:

The things that I don’t do well with, I don’t do them anymore. And I have to trust the people that are doing them, but I don’t do them. And they like to do them. There’s things you like to do that I don’t like to do. There’s things that everybody likes to do that other people don’t like to do. And I’m starting to really start to just stick to the things I like to do as much as possible. And then at least not do the things I really don’t like doing.

Joe Rignola:

Well, That’s the thing. If you don’t like to do it, you’re not going to be particularly good at it. But there are things that you’re not good at, and you don’t like to do, you should definitely stay away from those.

Michael Roesslein:

Yeah. Definitely don’t spend your time doing those things, because it just sucks my life out. I’m just like, “Yeah. Why am I doing this.” But now I’m finding myself more in roles where I want to be, doing what I want to do. With a team and an organization that I feel good about. And you’ve got your new project that you’re doing, which is allowing you to produce shows, which is Joe’s favorite thing in the world to do.

Joe Rignola:

Exactly.

Michael Roesslein:

So do you want to share a little about that?

Joe Rignola:

Sure. If I could travel freely right now, then I’d be doing all these interviews in person. But as it is, I’m doing them on Zoom. I’m doing a show called WellConnected.tv, that’s the website. Hopefully again, once this airs that that will be live too, because it’s still a work in progress. So I’m doing a bunch of interviews, there’s 25 interviews for season one. But instead of just putting out the interviews as straight hour long interviews, I’m editing them together into episodes. So similar to like a docu series that you’ve seen. Hopefully a little bit more compelling, a little bit more interesting, a little bit more valuable. And I hope people get something out of it. But those will be free on WellConnected.tv for people to watch anytime they want.

Michael Roesslein:

And season one is microbiome, right?

Joe Rignola:

Season one is all gut health and microbiome. So Kiran, of course is in that.

Michael Roesslein:

Oh, yeah, go check out Kiran over there.

Joe Rignola:

Of course, yeah. So he’s in it a lot.

Michael Roesslein:

Good.

Joe Rignola:

There’s some people that are in it that most people haven’t heard of, which I’m really excited about, because they deserved to be known. And so I’m hopefully kind of have exposed some people for being as awesome as they are. So it’ll be fun. It’ll be fun.

Michael Roesslein:

Yeah. And you guys remember Health Tribe will find out about it when it goes live, so you might have already gotten emails on that, or we’ll be sure to notify you when that’s going on. When you have a subject that is something that I actually know a lot of things about, I’d be happy to come on there and chat. I don’t think I need to be a guest on your microbiome season because all it would be doing is sending people to Kiran’s webinars.

Joe Rignola:

Yeah. Anytime I talk about microbiome or gut health stuff, I’m basically just regurgitating things I’ve learned from Kiran.

Michael Roesslein:

Yeah. To be like the interviewer. Yeah. My knowledge, 99% of it comes from him, and then I just repeat the things I’ve heard like parrot. And then people are like, “Wow, you know a lot about this.” I’m like, “I’m good at memorizing things Kiran says.”

Joe Rignola:

Exactly. Well, at-

Michael Roesslein:

Of course we had so many hours with him.

Joe Rignola:

Season two is going to be more mental and emotional health-

Michael Roesslein:

Oh, cool.

Joe Rignola:

… just because I think that’s an underserved thing.

Michael Roesslein:

But you can go shopping for guests on our platform.

Joe Rignola:

Oh, yeah. No, absolutely.

Michael Roesslein:

I’ve got some pretty solid connections over there now.

Joe Rignola:

Yeah. I know.

Michael Roesslein:

I just think that that’s something that’s not talked about enough, and that’s why I’m excited about it in order to. So I think that’s really going to help a lot of people. That’s going to be our master class this fall too.

Joe Rignola:

Oh, nice. Helpful.

Michael Roesslein:

Is going to be on deeper healing work. Because it’s the elephant in the room when it comes to functional medicine right now. And now it’s the elephant everyone is talking about like, “Oh, shit, there’s an elephant in this room.” Because for a while, it was totally ignored. I’ve watched the functional medicine world go from that stuff, we mean like trauma, emotional suppression, spiritual disconnect. That whole world of things that’s separate from physical disease to, this might be connected to, this is probably connected to, oh, this needs to be addressed where people don’t get better. And this makes people sick but I don’t know what to do about it. And that’s where functional medicine is right now. So trauma is a buzzword. Those kinds of things are buzzwords in the functional medicine space, but they don’t really know that’s where it’s at.

Joe Rignola:

It’s so funny, back when I was seeing clients one-on-one, I’d always have a client every now and then who was doing quote unquote, everything right. Eating the all right food, getting good sleep, getting, everything right, and they weren’t getting better, or they weren’t losing weight, or whatever it is they wanted. And then I talked a little bit more with them, and turns out they did have some childhood trauma, something happened. And-

Michael Roesslein:

Or they are in abusive relationship, or some neglectful situation, or a job they hated with a passion or…

Joe Rignola:

Exactly. So I referred them to someone who is more equipped to deal with that than I was. And they-

Michael Roesslein:

That’s more than most practitioners do.

Joe Rignola:

Yeah. Well, I mean once they’ve dealt with it, lo and behold they get relief from their symptoms, they lose the weight, and they feel better. So yeah, I went through the similar trajectory where it was like, “Yeah. I could have something to do with it to. Yeah. This is probably the root cause of all of it.”

Michael Roesslein:

Yeah. Everything even down to compliance issues.

Joe Rignola:

Yeah. Of course.

Michael Roesslein:

Like I can’t stick to a diet, I don’t take my supplements, I don’t whatever. There’s always a reason. There’s always a reason that that’s true. And not to vilify it, or you’re doing something wrong or bad, but let’s explore why that is. I’ve been in Gabor’s training for six months now, Dr. Gabor Maté, who I’m going to interview him in the next year, I’m making it so. Because he’s somebody I’ve wanted to interview for a really long time, and now I actually have access. So one mistake we often make in that world is vilifying that. People will be like, “I suck, or this part of me sucks, or there’s this bad me that wants to eat the cheeseburgers or the McDonald’s, or whatever. I have these habits, or the addictions, or the whatever.”

And there’s the good me who wants to be healthy, and eat the healthy things, and then there’s the bad me who makes me do all these things. And working in his program has really helped me shift that there is no bad you. And that the reason that you have trouble doing the certain things, or that you do the things you don’t want to do, or whatever it is, is because at some point that’s serving you, that’s helping you. It’s either like a soothing, or a coping, or a numbing, or a protection from something. And until that something is processed in some way, that’s always going to be there, and it’s always going to be an uphill thing, and there’s always going to be this thing.

And these parts of you, nobody likes to be told that they suck. It doesn’t work well. I don’t know if you’ve tried conflict resolution with people outside of yourself. But being like, “You’re shitty.” Is usually not the best approach if you want people to harmonize in some sort of way. And so it’s really shifted my perspective on a lot of these things that there are… And like Dick Schwartz, who is the founder of IFS, Internal Family Systems therapy, which is all based on parts like that. His thing, their tagline, is there’s no bad parts. And that even addicts who are shooting up every day, there’s a reason that that part does that. And then it was protect the team from the pain of the thing that it’s masking. I think people often get intimidated or nervous to get into that kind of work, because they feel guilt, or shame, or something.

Joe Rignola:

I think part of it also is when you’re dealing with past trauma, they think they have to relive that trauma so they avoid that, of course. Of course you would avoid that, why wouldn’t you. But it’s not necessarily the case. You don’t necessarily have to relive that.

Michael Roesslein:

Yeah. There’s a lot of ways to work with that stuff that doesn’t involve that. And some that involves it zero. Nervous system type stuff involves it zero. You don’t have to talk about anything. So yeah, it’s fun. And that’s where I’m shifting, and I want to… I’m not going to turn Rebel Health Tribe into that entirely, because it’s still going to be functional medicine, and nutrition, and that type of stuff. But I want to integrate more of that into this platform because without it, it’s not whole, it’s not-

Joe Rignola:

100%.

Michael Roesslein:

… complete. And everyone in this industry loves to use the word holistic.

Joe Rignola:

Yeah. But if you’re including that-

Michael Roesslein:

Holistic doesn’t just mean diet, and supplements, and exercise, and whatever. There’s this whole other world of your psycho, spiritual, emotional, even energetic. We had a presentation on the neuro masterclass on human biofield sciences from a PhD from UCSD, and a lot of science is starting to catch up with a lot of this stuff. I love the alternative medicine that’s been around for 4,000 years while pharmaceutical medicine has been around for 100. But now that’s science, and I’ll put that in quotes, is starting to catch up with these things, more people in our culture are like, “Yeah. Cool. Let’s do that.”

Joe Rignola:

It totally makes sense.

Michael Roesslein:

Because, oh, that’s legit, because the guy from the university with the white guy told me this was a thing.

Joe Rignola:

Yep. And that’s great.

Michael Roesslein:

Yeah. Good.

Joe Rignola:

We’ll take it.

Michael Roesslein:

Yeah. We’ll take it, and I’ll try to find them and stick them on the platform so that you can hear from them, so that it opens these doors, because some people need that in order to be able to open up to trying new things. So yeah, we’ve both gone down the hippy weirdo route in the last six years, and it’s-

Joe Rignola:

I got my crystals and my incense, and my [crosstalk 00:51:12].

Michael Roesslein:

I see that.

Joe Rignola:

… behind me.

Michael Roesslein:

Yeah. I see the salt lamp and some of the art, and I’ve got stuff [crosstalk 00:51:17] on there. And it’s just, it’s part of it, it can’t be ignored. And before, I think we’ve both tried to help with our own anxiety or our panic, or those type of states that we were in during those lunches. I was eating healthy food then. I was doing the things. I was taking the supplement that’s supposed to make you calm down. And I was taking seven of them.

Joe Rignola:

Then it’s like, “What’s wrong with me? Why-“

Michael Roesslein:

Yeah. Why doesn’t this work for me?

Joe Rignola:

I’m doing all the right things.

Michael Roesslein:

I’m too messed up. And when I went through my really dark depression period a few years ago, I was eating healthy food, I was taking supplements, I was exercising, and I still ended up almost killing myself. And that’s what led me to this kind of work is because that stuff wasn’t enough for me and broke me to a point where it’s like, “Okay. I’m willing to jump off this cliff.” But the goal is to help people-

Joe Rignola:

Before they [crosstalk 00:52:10].

Michael Roesslein:

… go off that cliff before it’s to avoid a monster. It’s to do it earlier. Just with health issues. You want to start making health changes with diet and things like that before, you have advanced stage cardiovascular disease, it’s the same thing. So yeah, it’s just interesting because we’ve gone on parallel walks down that. And I think both of us now looking at us then are just like, “Man, those guys are a mess.” But it’s where-

Joe Rignola:

But we love them.

Michael Roesslein:

… we were. Yeah, for sure. Because now we can laugh about it, and it’s silly, and it’s funny, and it’s like, “Oh, it’s okay, buddy, you’re going to be fine. You’re going to make it through that, just don’t freak out too much.” It’d be more like poking like, “Look how freaked out they are.” But we had to go through that.

Joe Rignola:

Had to.

Michael Roesslein:

That had to go through that to learn. And so now it’s just about sharing what’s learned to help others not have to make the same…

Joe Rignola:

It’s really interesting to look back at some of those. Even exiting the previous company, which was somewhat traumatic as well, and I went through pretty deep depression coming out of that. But looking at that whole process with such gratitude. I wouldn’t be doing what I’m doing now, if I didn’t go through that. And now I can look back at all different stages of my life, all the different horrible things that I’ve gone through, which really isn’t that horrible, but it’s all relative, right?

Michael Roesslein:

Yeah.

Joe Rignola:

But looking back at that with gratitude. And if I can look back at gratitude, then is it possible to have gratitude for something that you’re going through in the present moment?

Michael Roesslein:

It’s harder.

Joe Rignola:

Super hard, but-

Michael Roesslein:

Yeah. I mean I see it too. And Mira and I have been through some hellacious periods of really, really scary shit, and really awful stuff the last few years. And the third time, the last one that was the longest and the worst, I knew… These are autoimmune flares for people that are listening that turn our life upside down. She’s in tons of pain, everything goes to hell. And the last time, I’d already been through two of them, we’d already been through two of them. And there were these huge shifts that came about that I knew, but I still struggled when we were in the thick of it till somebody would say something like that to me, and I would want to hoke slam them.

Joe Rignola:

Of course.

Michael Roesslein:

“Oh, look for the message, or the meaning, or the lesson.” And I’m like, “Fuck you. I just want this to stop. I’ll look at the lesson later, right now it needs to stop, it’s too much.” And so if you do get overwhelmed, it’s okay. It’s hard. The harder the situation is, the harder it is to-

Joe Rignola:

[crosstalk 00:55:00].

Michael Roesslein:

… be like, “Oh, something great is going to come out of this.”

Joe Rignola:

Yeah. That’s sucks. No one wants to hear that.

Michael Roesslein:

No one wants to hear that, but that’s why we’re doing this season. We’re doing it with these healing journeys because I want people to know that the people they learn from now who have been through all these things, you’re seeing them at their best. You’re seeing them post catastrophe, post lessons learned, ability to look back at it with perspective, and with the lessons, and with the growth and everything and being like, “Oh, yeah, I know that this happened.” But I promise, if you talk to those people while they were in it, they wouldn’t sound quite like that. And they wouldn’t have the same perspective, so I just want to keep that in mind that…

And we’ll talk about that when we do your episode about your story too, like what it was like when you knew were at your worst state. If somebody had been like, “Well, because this is happening, you’re going to get really into health, and then you’re going to start a health company, and you’re going to help all these people, and you’re going to make a movie, and then you’re going to create a TV show and all of this.” You’d have been like, “Cool. Great. I don’t want to feel like this right now.”

Joe Rignola:

Yeah. I would just like my [inaudible 00:56:04].

Michael Roesslein:

Yeah. Can you stop my head from vibrating? So I get it. And that’s the practice though, that’s the skill. Now I’d like to think the next time, I hope there’s not a next time, but the next time that I’ll be able to bring even more awareness into that situation. Because then you’re able to exist in that situation in a healthier way.

Joe Rignola:

It doesn’t mean it doesn’t suck. [crosstalk 00:56:31].

Michael Roesslein:

Yeah. I’m not talking about bypassing. What’s that meme with the dog where it’s all on fire, and it says, “This is fine.”

Joe Rignola:

Yes. Exactly.

Michael Roesslein:

Have you seen it? No, it’s not that. Still put out the fire, but do it in a way that you’re not running around like a chicken with your head cut off. And it’s possible to maintain some level of presence and awareness around the chaos that’s happening, or the fear and saying like, “Oh, I’m really afraid right now.”

Joe Rignola:

Yeah, that’s [crosstalk 00:57:03].

Michael Roesslein:

Like even that. Like, “I’m really afraid right now. I feel tightness in my chest. My body is reacting to the fear.”

Joe Rignola:

That you’re reacting to fear. Maybe even changing the language a little bit from I am afraid to I’m experiencing-

Michael Roesslein:

Yeah. A lot of fear.

Joe Rignola:

Just to create that separation, that little bit of separation might be helpful, right?

Michael Roesslein:

Yeah. I worked with a guy during the height of the last panic months with Mira, where the whole day during the day would be spent trying to try various things to get her out of enough pain so that she could go to work at three o’clock in the afternoon. And then I would schedule sessions with this guy, Danny, who is from my luminous training at three. She would go out the door to work, and then I would call this guy. And I would have been wired and panicked all day, and I would walk into it in a wired and panicked situation. And he specializes in somatic meditation and somatic awareness. Bringing awareness into the body out of the head. And by the end of that hour, I had trouble because then I would do my whole work day in the afternoon and the evening after she left for work. And I would have to get from panic mess ball of stress-

Joe Rignola:

To productive [crosstalk 00:58:17].

Michael Roesslein:

… to being able to focus and do things that weren’t researching her health to try to fix that. And the difficulty would be that I’d be so relaxed, that doing the work would be a challenge. And it’s because he would bring me out of here, and bring me into there, and find places in my body that weren’t panicked, and bring my awareness into those places. And it would like-

Joe Rignola:

Everything else would soften.

Michael Roesslein:

Yeah. And it was magic. And so now I still talk to Danny, and I always thank him still, “That you are with me in my worst.” And it’s huge. But that was like, “Man, I need to learn how to do this.” And now, I’m learning how to do that. And I wouldn’t have had to learn how to do that, if I wasn’t a panicked ball of mess, if that whole thing wouldn’t have been happening.

Joe Rignola:

Exactly.

Michael Roesslein:

So, yeah.

Joe Rignola:

And it’s so much more. You would give anything for that to be happening to you instead of your wife.

Michael Roesslein:

Yeah, all the time.

Joe Rignola:

[crosstalk 00:59:05].

Michael Roesslein:

Yeah. 100% of the time, because I’m the terrible person who deserves the things to happen to me, and she’s the good person who should not be in pain and have that. She was the straight A student who never got in trouble, I was the one getting kicked out of school and dealing with police. So there’s all these stories that we tell ourselves like, “Yeah. This should be me, I’d rather be the one in pain.” And it was just resistance. It just ultimately came down to it, is I had intense resistance to every moment of our life. And that resistance exists here though, that’s in the head, that doesn’t exist, and the body has no idea about that. So-

Joe Rignola:

Of course.

Michael Roesslein:

But yeah, so we could talk about this forever. But interesting angle that this episode took, which I’m sure-

Joe Rignola:

Not to our surprise.

Michael Roesslein:

… we both expected. Yeah. But that’s where the platform came from, was an accident. And then exploded on accident with Kiran’s webinar, and MegaSpore, and microbiome. And then we just followed what it was we were interested in, and some of those things-

Joe Rignola:

I don’t know-

Michael Roesslein:

… you guys were also interested in. Not accident, but chance.

Joe Rignola:

Yeah. I think we just did the right thing.

Michael Roesslein:

It was following like, “Oh, this seems like a decent idea. Let’s do this. This seems like a good idea, let’s do this.” And some of them were really good ideas that worked really well, and then some of them were not-

Joe Rignola:

Were not.

Michael Roesslein:

… really that good ideas. And then you don’t know about those things, because they aren’t any more. But the consistent theme though, is that we always said yes to the things.

Joe Rignola:

That’s huge.

Michael Roesslein:

Yeah. Like, “Oh, that’s idea, let’s do that.” “Okay. How are we going to do that?” “I don’t know. Let’s do it.”

Joe Rignola:

And figure it out as we go.

Michael Roesslein:

And we figured it out as we go. And so if you’re paused on something right now, because you don’t know how to do it, just-

Joe Rignola:

The only way to do it is to do it.

Michael Roesslein:

… to do it. Yeah. Just do it. And then you’ll learn how to do it, and then people will come to you and think that you’re some sort of genius at doing it, and then you’ll tell them a funny story like this one.

Joe Rignola:

Yeah. Exactly.

Michael Roesslein:

Because there is no super clean cookie cutter path to get from this thing to that thing. There’s no, at least that I’m aware of. I don’t-

Joe Rignola:

No. I always talked to… Because I do some coaching now. I do some business slash life coaching. But it’s always someone who is in a job that they can’t stand, and they don’t know how to get to where they want to go. And I always equate it to a drawbridge. So drawbridge is open, you’re standing on the side that you don’t want to be on the other side of the drawbridge is the life that you want, something you’re passionate about that you want to figure out a way to make money out. And it’s like, well, you just have to try to get the drawbridge to close as much as you can, but it never closes all the way, or at least very rarely. So at some point, you do have to jump.

Michael Roesslein:

Yeah. And bring that thing a little closer to you and free up a little more time to work on it, and whatever. And then yeah, you just have to jump.

Joe Rignola:

Yep.

Michael Roesslein:

If you fall in the water, you get out and then you climb back up, and then you-

Joe Rignola:

Do it again.

Michael Roesslein:

… do it again.

Joe Rignola:

Keep doing it.

Michael Roesslein:

Yeah. And do it better than you did at the time before. I usually only make the same mistake four or five times, and then I’m like, “Oh, wait, burn, that’s hot-

Joe Rignola:

That’s about right.

Michael Roesslein:

… don’t touch that.” Yeah. So you probably learned faster than I do. And then the people listening to this, most of them probably make adjustments faster than I do. So you can do it. And if that’s a health thing, or if it’s a business thing, or if it’s a whatever. When you were a kid, you thought adults had everything figured out.

Joe Rignola:

[crosstalk 01:02:26].

Michael Roesslein:

You thought like they all have their shit together, and then you’re an adult. Adult, I’ll put in quotes. Nobody knows what the hell they’re doing, everyone is winging it. Just literally everyone is completely winging it. And kids look at us now like, “Oh, that’s an adult, they know what they’re doing.” Wrong, I am just a bigger, older looking you who is winging different things than you are.

Joe Rignola:

Yeah. I just figured out more stuff along the way because I’m further down the path. Some days, it’s baby steps. I hate this idea of the self-help guru, “Massive action.”

Michael Roesslein:

I had one client ever in my life. You know you give them all these… At least, probably at the beginning when you first started coaching people you’d give them like, “Do these 106 things?”

Joe Rignola:

Yeah.

Michael Roesslein:

I had one client ever, throw out all their food, or give it away or whatever, replenish all their food with new food, organic food. Start cooking all their food, go on walks, do meditations, do this. Did everything from day one. One person ever, and stuck to it, and did it. That’s not… And then now, it’s probably even unhealthy because they had to have some sort of unhealthy obsession, OCD to even be able to do that.

Joe Rignola:

To be sustainable. Yeah. If you could just move forward, just move forward, just keep moving forward a little bit, little by little.

Michael Roesslein:

Mm-hmm (affirmative). Yeah. And then you’ll be like, “Oh, shit, I used to be way over there, and now we’re here, and now the thing is closer.” So yeah, cool. Good pep talk.

Joe Rignola:

It was good. Yeah. Good [crosstalk 01:03:53].

Michael Roesslein:

Yeah. Awesome. Well, thanks. No, that’s all. Yeah. It sounds like some wise thing, it’s just what we’ve stumbled through-

Joe Rignola:

[crosstalk 01:04:00]

Michael Roesslein:

… to do it. Yeah.

Joe Rignola:

Yeah. That’s it.

Michael Roesslein:

Cool. Well, thanks for having this chat.

Joe Rignola:

Of course.

Michael Roesslein:

We’re going to connect again soon to record yours about your story.

Joe Rignola:

I’m sure it’ll get even more weird. [crosstalk 01:04:10].

Michael Roesslein:

Yeah. Because then it’s going to get more weird because then we can talk details about how these things happen.

Joe Rignola:

I can’t wait.

Michael Roesslein:

Yeah. We will need like a glass of wine or something for that.

Joe Rignola:

For those listening you may not be ready.

Michael Roesslein:

Yeah. We’ll put a disclaimer at the beginning of it. So cool. Well, it’s always fun to connect, man. It’s been super fun to build this thing together, and I’m glad to have you back involved in some capacity because it’s-

Joe Rignola:

I’m happy to be back. It’s so funny, I feel like when I write the emails that people are reading, I get away with being myself. Especially, I just wrote a couple of emails on cannabis and CBD, and I was just like, “Man, it’s just fun.” It’s just fun to be myself, and try to be funny and try to be authentic.

Michael Roesslein:

I saw those. It was funny. And you need you to teach me how to use the strike through in the CRM.

Joe Rignola:

I will teach you how to do that.

Michael Roesslein:

Yeah. I saw that I was so jealous because I don’t know how to do that. But cool. All right, well talk about that. Yeah. And that’ll be uncensored, so-

Joe Rignola:

Cool.

Michael Roesslein:

… as much as you want it to be.

Joe Rignola:

I’m an open book, let’s go.

Michael Roesslein:

Yeah. I’ve decided that I don’t have anything left on, the don’t talk about this list.

Joe Rignola:

Same.

Michael Roesslein:

So I’m just going to throw it out there. And I used to be ashamed of some of it, or… Not ashamed of it, because there’s all these like, I call them white knights in this industry. Who grew up with the organic food, and the great this and that, and they were college athletes, and they’ve never had a drink, and they’ve always been ripped, and they’re always healthy, and all these… Okay. Well, I’m not that. And so when I started to be in rooms with Datis, it was people like that, or these conversations in this industry. I hid where I came from, or what I did. I didn’t openly talk about how I used to get super drunk all the time, or party, or I got arrested, or I used to get in trouble in school, or my grades weren’t good, or…

All these kind of things, or that I spent 10 years in the service industry, which doesn’t have a super high level of prestige. Like bartenders are not looked at as like, “Oh, they’re a bartender.” So I was always ashamed of a lot of these things that I struggled with depression, or anxiety, or whatever. And now, it’s the realness of that is the strength.

Joe Rignola:

It’s totally the strength because people can relate to that. But it’s just so much more fun to not have that guard up. It’s so much more relaxing and easy to have conversations.

Michael Roesslein:

I just stopped it as a whole, completely. And now there’s no more supposed to.

Joe Rignola:

Yep. There’s no more shoulds.

Michael Roesslein:

No. Should is the worst word in the English language, I think.

Joe Rignola:

I think. Right.

Michael Roesslein:

So yeah, we’ll do that.

Joe Rignola:

Cool.

Michael Roesslein:

So you can skip to that one if you want, because they’ll all be published when you listen to this. It’s a few episodes down the road. So look for Joe’s name again on the thing. If you want it back to back it with this one, and just double team it, just go to that one right now.

Joe Rignola:

I’m sure it’ll be an interesting continuation. It’s going to get weird.

Michael Roesslein:

Yeah. It doesn’t exist yet in this moment in time, but time isn’t real, so it exists where you are, so go listen to it over there.

Joe Rignola:

Time is not real.

Michael Roesslein:

All right. Cool. Thanks a lot, man. I will talk-

Joe Rignola:

Thanks, Mike.

Michael Roesslein:

… to you then, now, soon.

Joe Rignola:

Perfect. I don’t know what that means, but sounds good.

Michael Roesslein:

And this brings us to the end of today’s journey. Head on over to RebelHealthTribe.com\kit to grab a free download of our loaded quick start guide. It contains dozens of our favorite tips, suggestions, recommendations, and tools to help you along your healing journey. If you’re on Facebook, come join our Rebel Health Tribe group over there. And finally, if you like the show, please subscribe, leave us a review, and share with your friends. Thanks for joining us. We’ll see you again soon.