Chasing Financial Freedom
Chasing Financial Freedom
Ep 287 | How You Can Unlock Health and Business Success with 5 Carnivore Lifestyle Strategies
Can adopting a carnivore diet revolutionize your health and business acumen? On this episode of Chasing Financial Freedom, we sit down with Andres Richa, an engineer who transformed into an entrepreneur, to discuss his enthralling journey from the structured engineering world to the creative realm of podcasting and e-commerce. Andres unveils the story behind his podcast "Think Richa" and his e-commerce brand, Metal and Hide, where he passionately promotes animal-based, chemical-free products. We explore his strategic decision to relocate to Colombia, driven by its advantageous manufacturing scene and cost of living, which offered him the perfect runway to nurture his growing business. Additionally, Andres shares his experience sourcing premium leather in Argentina and the substantial benefits of near-shoring.
Get ready to challenge everything you know about modern health and nutrition as we tackle the misinformation surrounding dietary guidelines. Andres makes a compelling case linking poor dietary habits to the rise of diseases like dementia and Parkinson's, urging listeners to embrace critical thinking and individual research. We also delve into his entrepreneurial endeavors, from crafting high-quality leather belts to expanding his product line to include wallets, card holders, and potentially luxurious alpaca sweaters and socks sourced from South America. Join us to discover how aligning business ventures with personal values and health goals can lead to personal and professional success and why you should subscribe to our newsletter for future updates and product releases.
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Hey guys, Ryan Ament from Chasing Financial Freedom podcast. Hope you guys are having a great day. Today on the podcast we have Andres Rica and Andres is the engineer. I like this little, the slogan engineer your reality, live at your edge, and you know how we talk about living at your edge, but also living outside your comfort zone. Sir, welcome to the show.
Speaker 2:Thank you so much. I'm excited to have a great conversation today.
Speaker 1:You're more than welcome. So I know it's been a while since we chatted, but before we get into what you're, doing.
Speaker 2:Can you give the listeners a little bit about your background? Yeah, like you said, my name is Andres Richa and I'm an engineer by trade. I worked as an engineer for a few years. I've lived a little bit all over the country in the US, originally from Texas, but went over to California to do graduate school and then, after working in industry for a few years, I was just realizing I wasn't quite fulfilling that itch, that sort of entrepreneurial itch, and I decided to venture off on my own, and that's how I ended up creating my own podcast, think Richer. Play on words there with Think Richer podcast. Think Richa, play on words there with Think Richer.
Speaker 2:And now I'm building up a e-commerce brand called Metal and Hide. That is all about focusing on animal based and getting away from any microplastics in this whole trend. I'm building up an e-commerce brand called Metal and Hide. It's all about using materials, products that are metal, like heavy metal free and just more natural products that combine better with the human body. I'm big into the carnivore diet and all this, so I was just looking for products that didn't leach chemicals. People are becoming more aware of the fact that even the clothes that you wear have certain chemicals in them that can leach into your body, and that's the purpose of the brand.
Speaker 2:I, six months ago, decided to move down here to sort of give myself some space and some time to build up this brand, work on my podcast. I was here for about four months last year it's actually been more than six months. I was here for about four months and then spent a few months recently in Argentina, because they have a big leather industry down there, and now I'm back here in Colombia for manufacturing reasons and yeah, so I'm just excited. Hopefully we can launch our first product, my first product, in about a month or so is the goal and yeah, so just kicking forward but definitely excited for that.
Speaker 1:So you picked Columbia because of the manufacturing, or is there? Other reasons for that too.
Speaker 2:No, definitely for the manufacturing. So they actually, since when I first started this I was, I had a knack for making things with my hands and that sort of thing, so I was a little bit conscious of, like, how things are made when it comes to leather items. Our first product is going to be a belt, cause it's quite simple to make. But moving forward, I was thinking of, like satchels and other, because it's all products for guys. I was aware that there's a, I would say, bustling, growing manufacturing scene here in Bogota and Colombia. Or I'm in Medellin at the moment, but, yeah, over there in Bogota, I'm heading there at the end of this week and yeah, just location wise, it was like I don't know if you've heard of this idea of a near shoring. Obviously that's more for Mexico, but Colombia, for me, just felt more comfortable. My family's from Central America. It just made more sense for me and I just I've been here before and I was just I loved it and it was. It's an amazing country and they were very welcoming to foreigners and things like that. Yeah, I was excited to come down here.
Speaker 2:And then the reason I went to Argentina is just looking for better quality leather. People know this. But obviously the Argentina is like a pretty livestock based. A lot of their exports is based on livestock and yeah, I was just trying to source better leather there to import to Colombia and then manufacture here and then send up to the US, and so partially it was proximity, partially just because I wanted to be in Colombia for a while, and there's a million advantages to doing something like that. Right, the nice thing of being down here is like it's so much cheaper to live that you give yourself much more time and you can be a lot more relaxed and maybe less stressed, I would say or at least that's been my experience to give yourself a runway to build up your company and there's a lot of benefits. And I'm not the only one that's doing this. Half of Medellin is filled with Americans that are just working remotely, to be honest, just tech jobs and things like that.
Speaker 1:What got you into the space and wanting to start the business? Was there something personal that started all this journey?
Speaker 2:Are you asking specifically e-commerce, like why did I decide to go that route?
Speaker 1:or E-commerce, not really, but more of the carnivore and being able to be all natural and so forth. Typically, I'm all about carnivore cause. I'll do some dry fasting here and there, but people typically say I'm enough, I get tired. I gained like 35, 40 pounds as I started my businesses and was just out of shape and fat and just said I had to find a way to get better and that was the best way that I could. But it also for now being on it almost two years makes me feel so much younger. I'm 50 and I've got plenty of energy. I sleep well. It's just changed my life. I was fat, overweight, high blood pressure and I was never on medication, but all that's been taken away. I feel great.
Speaker 2:Yeah, honestly, I think it's that. Your story is one that I've heard time and time again and it's becoming more prevalent. You'll hear it on social media and things like that. But me and my health journey started probably 10 years ago. My brother and I had some stomach issues and I had some pretty bad acne and things like that, and so I was just looking for solutions and it was a rabbit hole. The more you read about this stuff, the more you realize how bad the US food pyramid is and it's completely way off and it's not even very based on science. And you start reading about the China study in the 70s or 80s, whenever it was, and, like I said, it's a rabbit hole.
Speaker 2:Then I didn't start carnivore until three, four years ago maybe, and I'm not 100% carnivore. I'd say I'm like a keto carnivore and I've dialed in my diet to what works for me. I always tell people to not get too stuck on something, but I do find that carnivore, especially if you have like pretty bad autoimmune diseases and things like that. It's nice because people find every excuse to not get on a diet and I hate using the word diet because it's just a lifestyle for me at this point, but I think it just gets rid of every other possibility. And then you can start adding in things one at a time to see what works for you. And hey, maybe you'll be like Michaela Peterson, that just you know meat and salt and water for the rest of your life, because that was how severe her issues were. That's Jordan Peterson's daughter, if people don't know who that is.
Speaker 2:But yeah, you just become more aware of these things and then you realize, hey, there's chemicals. What are you washing your clothes with? What are you cleaning the surfaces in your house with? What are you coming into contact with? And there's, just, you can get a little bit overwhelmed and so I don't want to. That's always a negative, right, there's a balance in things always. But yeah, I'm just a person that's conscious of all those things. And there is a movement at the moment of not just carnivore, it's hiding to, you know, a little bit of a counterculture thing, where people are like wanting to homestead and getting back to their roots and realizing like, hey, the traditional, you go to college and then you have this job that you may or may not like, and then you have the white picket fence and I'm not against that if that's what you want but, like some people are looking for something different and there's this cultural movement and I'm just trying to join in on that and help how I can. What's funny?
Speaker 1:is. I did a lot of research on carnivore and a few other items that are tied to it. I mean, I'm with you, it's not a diet, it's a lifestyle. But what I wanted to say is we did not have a lot of these problems until and I don't know if you know this, but seed oils were introduced after World War II to basically, in part of World War II, to preserve food, and that just started the process, and then it's gone downhill from there, fact that a lot of people don't talk about. Back in the 50s, 40s, 50s and probably 60s, maybe even 70s, mcdonald's used to fry their French fries in ghee, which is pure animal fat. It's a butter product, byproduct, and tallow no.
Speaker 2:Oh tallow.
Speaker 1:Yeah, they're tallow. But until a gentleman sued him because he said he got he had a heart attack and had to have double or triple bypass surgery because of it because he ate them so frequently they stopped doing it. So now, when you go buy their French fries, what are you cleaning your house with? There's so many things you can go down. You just have to figure out what works and what doesn't work for your lifestyle.
Speaker 2:Yeah, definitely. I think I forget what McDonald's uses now. It's definitely a seed oil. I'm assuming it's canola. If I remember correctly, it's canola oil. I mean, if you see the process of how these seed oils are made, it's just completely something that would not be possible 300 years ago, and I think even this morning I was just reading how something like what is it like rat poison or not rat poison? But this product that you can spread around your house to help if you have a rat infestation, or something.
Speaker 2:It's 70% cottonseed oil and the way that it functions is lowering their fertility rate, and so then that sort of brings up the next topic of how this is affecting male and men's testosterone. It affects both female and male, right, but I think one of the big topics that's being talked about right now is the declining rates of male testosterone. These are things that you want to be aware of. If you see the level of testosterone that is supposedly adequate for your age, I think it's like 300. I forget, there's a weird measurement there, yeah, and so I think the average is like 300. And then what people used to have was around a thousand. I think you want to shoot for 900, 800, I think 700 even would be good.
Speaker 2:I've heard some people that are like dialing in their testosterone a thousand something and you can try and optimize that. I think it's nor here nor there. Maybe they go to that extreme, but yeah, it's definitely. My point is that there's definitely a a problem nowadays and you can go down the rabbit hole also like conspiratorial. Are they doing this on purpose? And I've talked about that a little bit on my brand page. But yeah, I don't know if you want to go down that at the moment.
Speaker 1:I think I mean with anything is it's just educating yourself and making sure that you do the research. Everybody can say there's conspiracy theories and I agree we could go down that rabbit hole. There's conspiracy theories and I agree we could go down that rabbit hole, but I think the one thing that, at least here in the States and correct me if I'm wrong is we tend to listen to the voices that are the loudest and then take it as almost gospel instead of actually doing homework. Because, like right now you said it earlier the food pyramid in the United States is so backwards At the top of the list is grains and sugar. Backwards at the top of the list is grains and sugar, and it's like the two worst things you can eat for your body diabetes and obesity and everything else in between and people are following that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I just posted something about how dementia has, within some circles, been called type three diabetes and dementia and Parkinson's and those sort of neurodegenerative diseases. You know, the rate of those has just gone through the roof. And I heard there's this guy I like that's called Jack Cruz and he's a neurosurgeon. He called them neolithic diseases and I love the word, I love the description because it really is something that didn't exist pre-1900s, maybe with smaller rates, and people still ate sugar before 1900. Really refined sugars and that started with the sugar trade in the 1600s or something like that Don't quote me on that, but in that time. And so it's not like it never existed before. But also it's not very measurable in the last hundred years, as in many things has just spiked crazy. Yeah.
Speaker 1:That's where I was alluding back into the forties, fifties and sixties. You didn't hear about individuals having any type of heart blockages, heart attacks, any type of heart related health issues, and all that started coming out after seed oils were created. And when you think about how seed oils are made and then we're consuming them and then oh, by the way, the soda that people drink unfortunately has a by-product of petroleum which has been outlawed in every first world country other than the United States. It's like when you're drinking Mountain Dew, there is a and I can't remember the exact name. It has this long drawn out name and I'll have to go find it. But when you do the research, it's literally a petroleum, it's actually oil-based, and then they break it down to petroleum, almost a fuel that goes in your Mountain Dew.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I believe it. And at the core of all this if we wanted to set aside health, I think and this is often a frustration that I have, just in general is I feel like sometimes people don't. They don't like try to find the root cause of things. Right, there's always a different side of the coin and you're being fed all this information, especially now that social media and people really need to do their own research. Just to give a non-food related example is when I first came down here to Medellin, everyone was telling me like are you sure? This is crazy, colombia is unsafe, things like that.
Speaker 2:And then I get down here and there's a bunch of other American digital nomads down here and they're all like, yeah, I would never go back, like I can save so much more money, I can live so much more of an abundant lifestyle, more free, with much more freedom. And at the end, I would say that you have to be careful when you say freedom. Right, obviously they have more freedom here because they have there's economically more well set than other people, but obviously there's other things that are not so free here. But yeah, you just need.
Speaker 2:I feel like there's a lack of that and some people are waking up to it. Where you can, life is a video game, right, like you just need to let go of certain preconceived notions. There's a book that I always refer to and I read it in Spanish, so I'm forgetting the name in English the Four Agreements, and there's just societal agreements that you need to let go of and create your own opinion on things, and I feel like that's a path to maturity, like when you realize that you need to make your own decision and find your own path, and more and more people are waking up to that, I feel. And so, then, that that's all intertwined, intermingled into this movement that's happening in the US and abroad.
Speaker 1:I love it. So how did you come up with the concept? I know that you somewhat talked about at the top of the show, but the next piece is why start with a belt? Is there any type of significance with that?
Speaker 2:First of all, I knew I wanted to do some leather products because, as far as manufacturing goes, I knew I had the eye for had done it by hand before. Obviously, manufacturing and doing something by hand, something more artisanal, is like a little bit different. But the easiest product basically to make with when it comes to leather, I would say, is the belt. You would think that, but then scaling it is at a certain level of quality assurance has been a little bit more difficult than I thought, but yeah, as far as manufacturing, it's one of the simpler things to do. So that's where I've picked your battles and find something that you can easily build up, and so then tackle things one step at a time and move, keep on moving forward. And yeah, I think, just in general also, I saw a lack or need for it, because whether you're shopping at target or whether you're going to hermes or something super fancy, I just saw a lack of a heavy duty belt and then something simple, but I just couldn't find it in the market.
Speaker 2:Sometimes we have a need to think that we need to build this super complicated thing and that it needs to be super futuristic and oh, my product needs to have ai somehow it's like how can I really distill it down? Make something very simple to where? Because there's a million skills that I'm trying to learn at the same time. So I was like, okay, manufacturing is going to be a skill. Marketing digital marketing is going to have to be a skill, because I'm an engineer and I can design a building.
Speaker 2:Beyond that, my skills were limited. So I was like, okay, let me make it as simple as possible to succeed. Once I have reached a certain level with this business, my hope is to be able to sell it and then use that to fund my next idea, which I already have in mind because I come up with new ideas every day, but typical, I would say, entrepreneurial bad habit of always having a million ideas and maybe not so sticking to one of them. This is something I've noticed as well, and some people they quit too early. So then my yeah, like I said, my thing is something that's simple that I can get going to, then move on to the next thing and really just not tell myself any stories of oh, it's not a cool business, or it's not this or it's not. I'm not like having a startup in Silicon Valley and I lived in Silicon Valley, and it's not all it's touted to be, so yeah.
Speaker 1:That's cool. So, as we wrap up here, how quickly will your website be available and how quickly could people buy from you?
Speaker 2:I think within the next month I should be having my first run of belts. Right now the website is live. You can sign up to my newsletter. Follow me on Instagram metalandhydecom Metal, just at metalandhyde, and, yeah, keep up with what I'm doing there. The website is just at the moment. I have my sort of signup website going and then it redirects you to my main Shopify website. I've decided to go through the Amazon process as well, BA, so that should be up shortly.
Speaker 1:I will most likely launch on Shopify first, but yeah, so that's where I'm hoping it should be within the next month is the goal, and then are there going to be other products that you're going to sell after you get the belt out. Correct, yeah.
Speaker 2:Like I said, the goal is just staying in that animal based world, right? So after I got the belt going, I definitely have like wallets and card holders that I want to do also made out of leather, and then eventually I would like to do some sort of maybe sweaters that are made of like alpaca, socks, keeping within the animal based theme and all South American products again too. That's just something that I have that I hold near and dear to my heart, my family's from Central America. I just want to I genuinely believe in South America and in Latin America rather and, yeah, I just want to be part of the growth that I see that's coming down here.
Speaker 1:I will make sure I link those in the show notes so people can get a hold of you but also subscribe to your newsletter and go from there. But, sir, thank you very much for coming on. Love what you're doing. I love your passion about it, but then also you're doing your homework to figure out what works for you. Thank you so much.
