In the latest Plant Based On Fire podcast episode, Bryan had the pleasure of chatting with Mike Young, the dynamic force behind aPlantBasedDiet.org. As an advocate for a lifestyle deeply rooted in health, longevity, and environmental sustainability, Mike brings a fresh perspective to masculinity—one intertwined with nature's raw essence.
A digital nomad at heart, Mike's journey into veganism wasn't just a personal transformation; it was the seed that sprouted a global movement aimed at connecting individuals through plant-based living. From his early days as an entrepreneur, navigating a world before the digital age, to establishing azz network that spans from Florida to North Carolina, and even stretching internationally, Mike's story is a testament to the power of passion and perseverance.
With a laugh, Mike shares, "I'm the CFO, the Chief Foodie Officer," highlighting his unique approach to leadership within the plant-based community. His initiatives, like the Health Optimization Cruise, showcase an innovative blend of luxury and education, aiming to align dietary practices with optimal health—all while sailing the high seas.
However, it's not just about the events or the digital community spaces. Mike's vision extends to the land itself, with projects in Ecuador focusing on vegan eco-villages that epitomize sustainable living. Here, amidst the Amazon rainforest, the future of plant-based living is being reimagined, offering a blueprint for a world where our diets and our environment exist in harmonious balance.
Mike's commitment to "sustainable veganism" challenges us to reconsider our definitions of health and masculinity. By embracing the physicality of working with the land, understanding the impact of our food choices, and fostering a community that transcends geographical boundaries, Mike Young is redefining what it means to be truly manly in today's world.
To learn more about Mike's ventures and how you can be part of this plant-based revolution, tune into this inspiring episode of Plant Based on Fire. Whether you're a seasoned vegan or simply curious about embracing a more sustainable lifestyle, Mike's journey is a beacon of innovation, health, and connection with the natural world.
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>Episode’s Transcript
Please understand that a transcription service provided the transcript below. It undoubtedly contains errors that invariably take place in voice transcriptions.
Bryan (00:01.098)
Hey everybody, welcome to Plant Based on Fire, where we talk about plant-based businesses and their inspiring stories for thriving in our industry. I'm your host, Bryan, and joining us today is the famous Mike Young, who every single time I've ever spoken to him, he is always outside enjoying the fresh air, and I am so, so jealous. So welcome to the show, Mike. Appreciate you being here.
Mike Young (00:26.158)
Thanks for having me. Yeah, out in nature. This is it. Nature is something that most people don't experience anymore. They're used to screens indoors, it seems like nowadays.
Bryan (00:35.871)
That's right. So you've got the tripod, I think, set up today and you're hanging out with us outside with the fresh air. I am totally jealous, but you are the founder, owner, and CEO, and chief bottle washer of a plant-based diet and many, many other things. Give us a little bit of background on some of the stuff you've got going on, and then I wanna peel into those things a little bit more.
Mike Young (00:59.802)
Well, thank you for wanting to learn about this. I mean, what we do is just kind of what we can do, what we think is possible. So I am a C-level executive here with the organization. Actually, technically my term is the CFO, the Chief Foodie Officer, okay? That is my term.
Bryan (01:15.301)
I love it.
Mike Young (01:17.03)
And you know, I'm out here in nature because nowadays, you know, digital service is ubiquitous. It's not perfect in many areas, but it's to the point now where you can kind of go anywhere that you have digital service and you can conduct business and live life. So that's what we want to show too. We want to show that digital nomad lifestyle. And we started out in 2014 about just about 10 years ago when I became vegan, because I recognized that at the time I became vegan, there wasn't like I didn't know anybody had
friends, no vegan relatives, nobody I could talk to except some people on the internet. So I figured well why don't we do some local resources for places that we frequent and you know nowadays we've taken those local resources, local events through our organization, plantbasedsite.org and we are doing like worldwide events I'd say now you know with our newest event the Health Optimization Cruise.
Bryan (01:52.93)
That's right.
Bryan (02:10.082)
That is awesome. He's got, you got your fingers and everything there, but let's, let's go back and unpack that story a little bit. So what inspired you on your journey to go vegan and head down this path? And then what brought you to be like the plant-based entrepreneur and how has your background sort of shaped where you're at today?
Mike Young (02:30.114)
Alright, that's a lot of deep question. Okay, let's definitely have to unpack that. First of all.
Some background about me personally, I've never worked for anyone for more than about two weeks ever and I'm 54 years young So all I ever know I'll have ever known is doing my own thing doing my own business and back in the day since I'm in My 50s, you know, I actually started businesses in the late 70s before I was even 10 I was cutting grass for neighbors doing less. That's that's all you could do I mean all you could do back in the day in the 70s and 80s was you found some need that was local and you went out and physically or
somehow did that work locally? Because there's no computers, there's only typewriters back then, really. I mean, well, the computers came along in the 80s. But they were very, they weren't that great. But when I started out, there was only typewriters. There was only corded phones. There was only answering machine with a tape that usually would break. Okay, that was that credit card business. And advertised, it was the local paper. That was it. There was there was no other
Bryan (03:20.918)
That's right.
Bryan (03:25.058)
Hehehehe
That's right.
Bryan (03:32.406)
That's right.
Mike Young (03:33.07)
unless you're going to distribute flyers. I mean, that was it. You couldn't do anything else. So alright, so that's my bit my background. So then another thing I kind of I recognize now for what
I recognize what it is. I always had a passion for health and learning about not harming yourself. I know that back in the day, you know, my, I had many relatives. Actually, my dad had has seven brothers and sisters. My mom has two brothers. So there was a lot of relatives. I know we always keep up with what's going on and inevitably people would have health problems. Right.
Bryan (04:07.042)
That's right, yep.
Mike Young (04:08.01)
It's like at one point in your life, you get into this chronic disease phase, and it just never gets better. It's like a downward spiral. So I was always saying, well, why did this happen? Why did that happen? And I remember like an early thought of mine was, oh, there's relatives that have hip and knee replacements. Well, why? Why am I next? Like this sounds like this is genetic. If there's relatives with hip and knee replacements, I'm probably next, you know, but then
Bryan (04:30.338)
That's right.
Mike Young (04:30.998)
I just did a little, this is early on research that I discovered, well, no, the number one reason for hip and knee replacements is you way too much. And that's within your control. So yeah, of course, these people had problems, I see what they look like. As long as I can control that, hopefully, I won't have a hip or knee replacement, you know, set up as a surgery in the near future, because I don't think anybody likes to go through surgery. And I
Bryan (04:55.906)
That's right.
Mike Young (04:57.374)
I was always curious, inquisitive, didn't want to have to go through pain if I don't need to. I just like to have fun. So all these things get in the way of having fun. Then we go up to like, I say the early 2000s, starting 2009, I recognized, yes, I was still a health nut. Everyone considered me a health nut up to that point, but I had no specific dietary procedure that I followed. But then I realized in 2009, I'm a vegetarian.
I just never went out and ordered anything with meat. Then I realized, well, hey, I feel better actually. I don't know why, but I do. And then 2014, I started, that was the year that I gave up the dairy. That was the one thing I didn't give up. And between that time, 2009, 2014, was a big research time, I'd say, my free time about getting information on the internet. Because during that time, 2009, 2014, a lot of new information was coming out on the internet, which is still relatively new.
Bryan (05:52.898)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Mike Young (05:55.182)
And there was a lot of high quality information and it helped me to make that decision. So there you go. And then I realized, like I said earlier, I didn't have any friends or any family. Well, why don't I start up an organization? It's never been about making money. We're volunteers, but it's about bringing people together. Like in communities online that we frequent, which happens to be Florida. Lots of stuff in Florida, Southwest Florida, Cali Gainesville in the villages. I'm in the villages right now talking to you in front of this lake. And I...
We have big communities there, we have big community in Raleigh, North Carolina, Rale Hill, the Triangle, and also D.C., Northern Virginia, those areas. Those are our local communities because I go in between those areas. So we have lots of...
stuff online where we can bring people together and we have events in these areas too. That's another thing we do. And of course the crown jewel now is the health optimization crews that kind of brings everything together but we still have events running locally in these areas I described.
Bryan (06:53.386)
That is awesome. And so you, you go through this discovery phase and stuff. And so you've created a plant based diet.org. And so help me unpack that. What do we find on the website? What is, what is the goal of having the website and the communities and stuff, you know, help me get into that onion a little bit deeper.
Mike Young (07:14.894)
Okay, there's a lot here, a lot to describe. I would recommend if anyone wants to learn about our organization, just go to it. That's why we named it the same thing as our website, a plantbaseddiet.org. So let's start off with the basic stuff I talked about. The communities. We started back in the day, about 10 years ago. We started up vegan groups online, which we used a Facebook platform.
Southwest Florida, in Ocala Gainesville, the villages, Raleigh and the DC metropolitan area of Northern Virginia. So those groups are our biggest group. If you go down and look at, we call like for instance one you'll see called veganswfl.org. That's veganswfl.org. When you type that in, you go straight to our group on Facebook. Okay, so we gave it an URL. That group is our biggest. It has I think about 6,000 people in that group.
and the other ones have multiple thousands of people in them as well. And they're focused specifically on veganism. Now back in the day, our first event, which took about a year and a half to plan from late 2015 to January 2017 was the Southwest Florida VegFest because we had the biggest audience in that area. So we figured why don't we make a VegFest? That's like those are super popular events. They're not so much anymore, but that's because most people were never exposed to veganism or plant-based
lifestyle and foods. That's changed though because 10 years ago you couldn't find like the meats, cheeses, ice creams, milks, all plant-based in every grocery store. But right, I mean that's been a massive change over the last 10 years. So
Bryan (08:44.354)
That's right.
Mike Young (08:51.074)
We were doing festivals at one point that ended about this time last year. We stopped our festivals this time last year to recognize a few things, which I'll get into. But let me first tell you that we were doing about 14 festivals a year. That's how many we were doing in the last year that we did and the year before that. So we did like almost 30 festivals in the last two years of us doing those festivals.
And we were doing them in all those areas I described, that we have local groups, because we could bring it all together and make an annual event for that. But here's what we discovered. We always want, as I said, I'm always about health, but I don't want the animals to get hurt at all either. So we're 100% vegan organization. You'll see that when you navigate to our website, plantbaseddiet.org. First thing you see when you scroll down, we're 100% vegan. But...
we need to take care of our health. So we developed during the course of these festivals, our own health food standard. That also can be found on our website. It's called Healthy Vegan Food. All right, and if you go to heal you go straight to that page on our website, and it describes what it is. And I can tell you what it is now. Back in the day, it used to be just no added oil, because 10 years ago, that was like...
the worst thing you could think of. But now there's been a lot more knowledge. We're constantly learning as an organization. So here's what it is now. It's, of course, no animal products, has to have plant fiber in the prepared food because they're certified on a per dish basis. Then you have to have no alcohol involved with that because that's a group one carcinogen. And the fiber thing.
is because 95% of humans alive don't get enough fiber on a daily basis, according to Harvard University. So we've already, just between alcohol as a group on carcinogen and not getting enough fiber, we've cured that and of course no animal products, you're not getting the animal protein that causes cancer, according to T. Colin Campbell of the China study. So just those cities alone is huge. And then of course we say no added oil because oil has no fiber, no water, and almost all nutrition is removed.
Mike Young (10:55.522)
Salt, salt for most people is a mined mineral, it's not a plant. Why don't you just get your sodium from the plants? Most people get way too much sodium, so you say no added salt and then no refined sugar. That's defined by the T. Colin Campbell Center for Nutrition Studies, which means they can use, if you want, and we do, we encourage, you say you can use dates, maple syrup, or agave, okay, but nothing else. And that's our standard. And what we tried to do is we tried to say, all right, we're making these festivals. We want to introduce people to veganism, but we don't want to hurt them.
We don't want to hurt people. So we said, if you're a vendor, if you're a food vendor, we had many food vendors at every festival that we did, just bring some of this one dish of the healthy vegan food and we're gonna give you extra promotions, we're gonna talk about you on the stage, we're gonna do everything we can to make you the best food vendor ever. But I'll tell you, it didn't work. The reality is these food vendors know what people's taste buds want, and that's what they prefer because that's what they make the most money off of. And we discovered that
Even though we tried and tried and tried, we could not change that dynamic. So we have to fortunately say, we're going to go for these festivals now and anything we do and everything we do, every event that we do, healthy vegan food or better, because we can still do better than that. We can say fully organic. That's not required for healthy vegan food. Okay. Other things. So we're not doing those anymore. We're doing the health optimization crews. But let me tell you what we're doing at the local level. And we've been doing about four.
ago, we developed another type of event called plants to table. All right, it's like your farm to table only it's the best farm to table ever because no animals are hurt. And you're getting healthy vegan food or better. And actually it is better at the plants table because we only work with earths. So most of the plants coming for these meals are from that farm, which is fully organic. And then we do totally gluten free as well. So one, one time deal to go one time plants to table.
Bryan (12:38.539)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Mike Young (12:51.558)
annual events, you know, it's a little bit pricier because we give our updates of what we're doing. And it's a fun, you know, it's a fundraiser for our nonprofit. So we do that in Northern Virginia, and we do that in Florida in Southwest Florida. So that's a fun event. And then another other events that we also tried to do at the local level are like what we did this past weekend, I was telling you, I got this tripod set up here because we recorded our health optimization crews event that we did at a local restaurant, wherever we can work
We won't do any events over the last few years now, unless it's healthy vegan food. And that is a different paradigm than restaurants are in right now. Totally different paradigm. Because like when I say you can't oil or salt, you know what that means? Especially if we talk about an Indian restaurant, which is where we had our event, that means they have to make their own sauces for us for the event. Because all their sauces have oil and salt in them. And so it's a big ask. You can imagine if we're gonna make them do all these procedures in a different way, it's a big ask, but we believe this is the future.
the future where you don't hurt yourself. You know, so we have been doing special events both in Florida and in North Carolina. We have actually an Ethiopian event that we do twice a year in Raleigh area, which is a buffet of all healthy vegan food, Ethiopian by Mom and Pop Ethiopian place. And then we do events in Northern Virginia as well. So lots of, I love to eat. I mean, I can't really go out to eat, we're doing a special event.
Bryan (14:11.478)
That's awesome.
Hehehehehehe
Bryan (14:18.374)
And I've got so many little quick follow ups for you because I'm over in Charlotte. So whenever you're up in North Carolina, we just need to grab dinner together and I'll show you some of my favorites in town here. But what is the, gosh, I just lost the question. But it was really around like, how do you take this to the next level and...
differentiate yourself from some of the other groups and stuff that I see emerging. Like I do see plant-based future growing brighter, so we are getting some competition in different things. So how do you sort of differentiate some of the stuff you've got going on from some of the others that are out there? Or how do you collaborate with some of the others out there?
Mike Young (14:53.416)
Yes.
Mike Young (15:01.514)
Well, we'll collaborate with anyone that wants to. We're very forward thinking, knowing it does scare people. I will tell you that. Okay, you have to be very ready. So like, if I'm gonna say, hey, we're not working with a restaurant unless they're doing the food to this healthy vegan food standard, which I just described, which is a very difficult ask. Okay, so we only get the most open-minded individuals. And now how do we make ourselves different? Well, right now we're only healthy vegan food and better. Okay.
Bryan (15:07.874)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Mike Young (15:28.846)
We've also coined a new term, which you are one of the first to hear. The first people that heard it was this past Sunday when we did our Indian food event, but we've coined a term called sustainable veganism. All right? Now, sustainable veganism, I don't have the exact wording in front of me, but the gist of it is that you want to practice veganism in a manner that as far as practicable and possible, like the Watson definition, you don't harm your health. Okay? Because if you...
Bryan (15:40.82)
Okay.
Mike Young (15:57.346)
don't practice veganism in that way, you are harming your health, and you're not gonna be able to help the animals as much. Okay? So that's a difference between us. We're only doing sustainable vegan events going forward, or anything actually, it's got to be sustainable, because if you're constantly harming your health, that's not sustainable. You know? I know that people don't generally think about it in that manner, but it's true. Another thing I want to mention too, is that we're in some much higher level events, okay? The...
Bryan (16:22.21)
That's right.
Mike Young (16:27.766)
The health optimization cruise is not our highest level event, but let me tell you about that first. That event has practicing board certified lifestyle medicine physicians providing continuous education during that. And I say, I would emphasize practicing because I think that the dispute on what you need to do to optimize your health or to not harm yourself. However, getting people to do it is the real issue. Okay. So we need practicing physicians.
Bryan (16:32.799)
Okay?
Mike Young (16:57.522)
We need practicing physicians that are in the field doing the work so they can report back and explain to us what the real problems are. These physicians and other medical professionals are on our ship. And then in addition to that, we convinced one cruise line celebrity, all right? Only one. And if you want to learn more about this, go to heal is our food level. But
Heal is the event webpage on our website. But we only got celebrity to be able to agree that they will only serve us healthy vegan food, only. So we have our own private dining area, we have multiple courses, four courses, lunches and dinners. They never repeat a course the whole week. And it was, I'm gonna say, it was an amazing experience. I was like, look, all this information you're hearing from the board certified practicing physicians,
Bryan (17:44.738)
That's awesome.
Mike Young (17:53.69)
matches up with the food. Okay, because the ever matches up. That's the problem. So you want to try to do this, but yeah, go have lunch. And yeah, it doesn't really meet what we just said. But you know, I mean, that's not gonna work. That's not
Bryan (17:55.935)
Yeah.
Well done.
Bryan (18:06.93)
It's true, right? I mean, how many of us have seen and been at the restaurant when the only option is pasta with oversteamed vegetables and then they smother it in oil or something on you anyway? So yeah, so well done. That's awesome.
Mike Young (18:17.634)
That's right.
Mike Young (18:21.862)
So that's our health optimization crews. Then we've got other level stuff. We've got projects that we're working on here in Florida, North Carolina and Virginia, which are yet to even be discussed. However, we have projects in Ecuador. Okay, you know where that is? Where the equator is basically. It's a country that borders the equator, north and south. So we have a stand over there in vegan eco villages that are zero waste.
that are permaculture, that are better than organic. When I say better than organic, I mean totally chemical free. That's what we want. We want people to grow their completely chemical free. And we have a project there. We built a house, a tiny house called La Casa Mas Alta. If you want to learn about that, go to lacasamasalta.org. All this is also on our website. But when you go to lacasamasalta.org, it's the Airbnb listing. You can see the house. You can rent it for less than $40 a day. It's inside of this community called Terra Fruitas.
To us, that is like, you've heard of the Blue Zones probably, right? Okay. Damn, Buechner, the five places around the world. We're actually a blue organization. They say live to a hundred. We say live to 150. Okay. I put, I put this book out too, about a year and a half ago. It's on our website. Go to L I V E T O one five zero.org. I think that if you get into a community like Tara Furtis in Ecuador, that's the next level because Blue Zones are historical, right? They're reflecting back on how people did stuff before.
Bryan (19:20.554)
Yeah.
Mike Young (19:46.05)
communications were easy and cheap and before transportation was even possible for different foods and before the internet, right? I mean, they just did a lot of things right without having anything to back them up. But nowadays we can do our research, we can connect with like minds all around the world, we can gather in a place that we think is most conducive to growing food all year round with constant temperatures. You don't need heat, air conditioning. They have 12 hours of sunlight every single day. It's in the Amazon rainforest.
So you don't need to water your plants. What could be better? So we think these are the new blue zones, these types of communities.
Bryan (20:18.562)
That's right.
Bryan (20:22.942)
I love it. And I think I have finally met my match cause you've got just as much going on in your life as I do in mine. And I have to say, well done, cause we will try to recap all of the cool websites that you've mentioned in our show notes below. So check those out on that front. I want to bring it back around to like, this is sort of the business podcast where we're trying to pour in some advice for entrepreneurs. I think you've already dumped in quite a few tips and tricks on that front.
But what's the one most important tip that you would give plant-based entrepreneurs that are just getting started right now that you look back on and say, well, I wish I didn't make that mistake. Or I wish I did this first. Like what's that one thing that you would pour into them as they're starting on their journeys.
Mike Young (21:08.318)
I think I go back to that word sustainability. Now I don't, I'll use it in a different way than sustainable veganism as I described. I'm talking about sustainable business venture, financially. I think that is key, all right? I see too many people getting into the space that they have a lot of ideas and what they're doing is not financially sustainable.
I mean, losing money. I mean, we're just volunteers with our organization. I have other income sources, thankfully. But we recognize that we have to have our organization be sustainable, meaning we're not losing money on events. We're not depending on massive donations to keep us afloat. Okay, our events all break even, some make a little bit of have a little excess of some lose a little bit, but they break even overall. If something's a big loser, it's gone, we have to get rid of it.
And the other thing is, since we are operating with many of our initiatives at an extremely high level, at least I believe we are, and if we're not, reach out to me, connect with me, tell me what we can do better. The best we can, and still making these things sustainable, but at the same time, whenever you get...
Bryan (22:13.034)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Mike Young (22:21.398)
uh... more and more close to the pinnacle of health or whatever or anything your audience shrinks right? it just shrinks down you have such a it's like a pyramid, it's like our logo
Bryan (22:29.084)
Yeah.
Mike Young (22:37.194)
Your audience is so small. So like, for instance, I mean, everything takes more time. That's the thing. To be sustainable, it takes way much more time than you think. And let's have some amazing idea that just explodes. But I can't.
claim to be able to give that kind of insider wisdom. All I know is a lot of hard work over time. So if you look at what we did, we started off with the lower level events, the veg-fets that were just vegan. They didn't have any other requirements although we tried to incentivize healthier foods. And then we realized.
couldn't do that, okay, now's the time for us to take that leap. We've been developing our email list, we've been developing our online social medias, our audience has been growing, our YouTube channel is much bigger. So now's the time that even though most people won't go with us, enough will go with us that event is sustainable financial. And we did that with the health optimization crews who weren't sure we're taking a risk. Nobody's ever done an event like that on a big cruise line. And
Bryan (23:28.578)
That's right.
Mike Young (23:37.626)
you know, I wasn't sure if anyone was gonna want to go. But I felt like this is why I'm in it, right? I don't want people to hurt themselves. I want people to at some point, this is the future, everyone will live like this. But for right now, we're able to do this. But again, let's talk about the timeframe. It took 10 years to get to this point. So don't think you can all of a sudden just even if someone hands you a stack of cash,
Bryan (23:51.682)
That's right.
Mike Young (24:04.642)
go and make it work, I've seen too many of these entities fail. Even with giant investors and things like that, they're not sustainable financially.
Bryan (24:13.727)
Yeah, yeah.
I think you, you said it very, very well. I mean, it just takes that dedication and persistence. And I think that's where a plant based entrepreneur knows this is the right choice for them, you know, for many, many levels, besides the financial side. So stick with it, stay strong on that front and you will find your path wiggle through that, uh, on that front. So you hit us with a bunch of really cool stuff. I, I hope that every, like, are you familiar with 11 Madison in New York city, like the big vegan, right? So like, I'm not sure how much oil and stuff.
Mike Young (24:40.906)
Yes.
Bryan (24:44.772)
stuff they use and whatnot. But the bottom line is like, I hope everybody can eat like 11 Madison on a nice vegan diet, um, uh, on that front. And that's, I think that's the biggest thing is we have to, we have to teach people that you can eat awesome, amazing food. You don't need the oil, you don't need the sugars and added things, and it can taste amazing. And just, you know, your taste buds adapt on that front, but hit us with like, what does 2024 and 2025 look like? You've got the website, you've got the cruise, uh,
Mike Young (24:50.882)
Yeah.
Bryan (25:15.135)
The cruise is later this year, right? Or is it?
Mike Young (25:17.622)
Well, the cruise already happened in January for the first time. It took us a year to develop that event. So we're going to do it here too. Yeah. Okay. So what are we working on? First of all, you just gave me an idea. I need to talk to 11 Madison, get them to go all healthy vegan food.
Bryan (25:20.922)
Okay. Yeah.
Bryan (25:31.794)
Yes, absolutely. I'll be there with you. Let's go have dinner in New York.
Mike Young (25:36.886)
Yeah, and of course, that'd be awesome. And let me also mention that healthy vegan food designations open to any food entity, just go to healthy vegan food.info you can sign up there. What's going on for us? We're improving the crews, we learned so much from this first year, like a year and a half in development, we did the event, we want to at least double or triple everything, we want to double or triple the talks, double or triple the attendance, and just have it and better. Okay, here's another thing we didn't talk about this.
Because we always we have this list in our minds of what we want to do, you know, and people that people are willing to do it like celebrities willing to do this for the food for us and health optimization crews. But in what they already promised to do and they did, they delivered on it. In 2025, we're going to have if people want a cooked multi-course menu and a raw, raw vegan multi-course. If you want it, you can be fully raw on our crews.
Bryan (26:10.975)
Yeah.
Mike Young (26:36.138)
Okay, I don't know how much, but that's a whole other thing. Because like when we talk about Ecuador, most people living in those communities not required, there are some cooked food, but most people are raw. Some people are fruitarian. For many fruitarians, but my neighbors over there, two neighbors are fully fruitarian, 100%. And they grow almost all their fruit, tropical fruit in their backyard. Okay, like they're...
Bryan (26:37.02)
Awesome.
Bryan (26:57.602)
That's awesome. Yep.
Mike Young (26:59.618)
So we're going to be focusing more on those super high level stuff that most people don't even know exists in 2020.
Bryan (27:06.626)
That's right. Well, that is awesome, Mike. We really appreciate you coming on here. What else can we do as a community to help you? And what are the best ways to get in touch?
Mike Young (27:17.922)
All right, well for me, all of our contact information is at a plantbaseddiet.org. And if someone's out there watching, feel free to text me. You can text me on my mobile phone, 240-205-0417. That's the quickest way to get a response out of me. But like any help from the public, I'd say this is a grassroots movement. Even what we're doing is fully grassroots.
Bryan (27:38.977)
Yes.
Mike Young (27:39.434)
find any giant sponsors up above to just dump money on us, you know? So if you feel like you want to contribute to our 501C3, which is of course IRS approved for the last nine years, since 2015, all that information is on our website. Not only money, which you can use for a specific initiative. If you have a dream of an initiative, but you don't have the contacts or the know-how to put it together, we can do it in your name.
We're happy to do that. Also property, we're developing properties. It's very slow, but in Florida, North Carolina, and Virginia, where we are gonna have special communities somewhat similar to, at least that's the vision, what's happening in Ecuador here in the United States. It's much harder. Ecuador is so much easier. But again, anyone with property, like real estate, real property, land, whatnot, that is a huge help to us. It would help us to accelerate everything that we're doing.
Bryan (28:33.986)
That is awesome, Mike. It's been a pleasure to hang out with you and we wish you lots of luck on your future successes with all the many, many things you've got going on. And I look forward to trying to join you on one of these cruises sometime soon. So that...
Mike Young (28:46.122)
I'm going to meet up with Carolina. I'm going to send you the information for our next event, which is in April. Maybe we can meet up.
Bryan (28:51.11)
I love it. Let's do it. Let's do it. Well, that's all the time we have for this episode of Plant Based on Fire. Thanks again so much, Mike, for joining us and sharing your insights and experiences with us and our community. Until next time, everybody, keep that fire burning.