JM Guthrie 00:37
Alright, everybody, this is a really cool episode of the fuzzy edge podcast where we get to know our friend Joey Q A little bit better, quick intro on him in our relationship is that Joey and his sisters, his family in the Guthrie’s and myself my family and go back 35 something years now, which is just insane. known each other since little kid Elementary School antics to Little League Baseball, high school baseball college, went on to get his master’s at the brand Center at VCU, and has had a pretty incredible and prestigious career in the agency world, particularly over the last decade plus at VaynerMedia, which we can talk a little bit more about. But the cool thing about Joe is that he also has found his way to this MeTotal world through a different path. And wasn’t necessarily at a breaking point like the likes Carrie and I, to a degree but had a health scare around the gout, as he likes to call it, which caused him to really look at drinking differently earlier than the rest of us. And without further ado, I was just excited to hear a little bit more about Joe’s story with his total lifestyle over the last several years. Today on the fuzzy ish podcast. So welcome, Joey Q.

Joe Quattrone 02:03
Thank you jam. And I think when you add the in front of gout, it makes it sound more scary. At least that’s what my wife tells me when I tell her about gout. And you’re supposed to say gout. But I always say the gout and she’s like hell is the gout. Yeah, like Yeah, definitely. I think that just being scared scares you a little bit more. So maybe it just has an effect where I was like, Oh, shit, I don’t want that. Whatever that is, I don’t want to.

JM Guthrie 02:26
Well, what’s interesting is like the Gout goes back for me for lots of years, because the general who we’ve talked about before general Guthrie, he had the Gout he didn’t take it nearly as seriously as you. As I think you’re aware, shellfish is not something that you should eat with the gout. And, you know, order from Outback, us to consist of a lobster tail, and a lobster bisque. Both are shellfish, and he had out so that was definitely not thinking about it quite the same. So Joe, let’s talk a little bit about you. Man, you know, you grew up in a house and rest in humble beginnings, a couple of sisters, some success on the athletic field, some success in the classroom, and have gone to college and got your Masters in this agency world. Just why don’t you just give us a little bit about your life around generally drinking, but also specific to just the world itself from an early age till now?

Joe Quattrone 03:23
Yeah, so I mean, I think what you see typically with this type of stuff, is it that always skips a generation. So my parents didn’t drink at all, because they had a lot of alcoholism around them when they were growing up. So naturally, me and my sisters, as we were growing up, were like, forget about that lifestyle,

JM Guthrie 03:41
we want to get wasted. And yeah, we had plenty of drinks together and early. I mean, yeah,

Joe Quattrone 03:47
I can recall kegs on our street ways to live on Barton Hill, I could remember there being kings down the street in the hills, Jason Marshall stood up when I was as young as 14 years old. So I definitely got introduced to it at a really young age. And it just kind of stuck with me for the better part of 30 years almost, mainly just because I you know, wherever I was, whatever friend circle that was in or whenever you consumed entertainment, or television or movies or music or whatever the case may be. Alcohol was something that always glorified him, something that was, you know, what you did when you were having either, if you’re getting ready to have a fun time to drink alcohol, if you’re stressed to drink alcohol, you’re best off to drink at all if you’re sad to drink alcohol. So that’s just kind of hardwired into our brains. But anyway, in terms of the next succession of my career, you know, I actually went through some depression and an early stage I was super heavy at one point, I was like 300 and something pounds and it was so bad that I decided that was one of the main reasons I didn’t go to college straight in high school. I didn’t know when I didn’t know what I’m gonna be in my mind . Life was a complete mess. I was drinking all the time with smoking pot, I was doing all kinds of bad stuff.

JM Guthrie 05:06
Let me ask you a question before you keep telling me that before your parents didn’t drink, they sort of harbored a more sober metotal lifestyle from an early age you are drinking with me, in a lot of cases, your sisters were, what was their like? What was their reaction? How did they as parents click in with you, when they obviously knew that that was what was going on? And you were struggling? Like, what was the message like at that stage of your life specific to the decisions that you were making?

Joe Quattrone 05:37
Not a lot of messaging. My parents were the type of people that realized that everyone has to kind of figure it out for themselves or will mean as much so they didn’t want to really pressure me into doing anything I didn’t want to do. They also realized that approach doesn’t necessarily work for people. Because while you know me and my sisters are all very different people, they really got it handed to them. When it came to trying to raise my older sister. She was The Wild One of the group. And there was just no talent. There was no telling her what she could, could and could do. She didn’t care about what she thought about her. She was out doing what she wanted to do, whether or not you were on board or not. I was a little bit more recent dress

JM Guthrie 06:17
a dress sillies sundress, sillies

Joe Quattrone 06:22
bars doing all kinds of stupid shit, I was a little bit more respectful of my parents, I think back in the day, so even though I did a lot of stuff that they wouldn’t necessarily approve of, I made sure to cover my tracks, I also had a very good example of how not to behave, if you wanted to piss them off, and my sister, so as long as I figured out how to be responsible with my consumption, and kind of like covering up my tracks behind me, like when I’d sneak out at night and stuff like that, they’d never really bothered me about it, you know. And then, when I got to the years between high school and college between like 18 and 21, that’s probably when I was at my worst. And it wasn’t it but I funny enough, it wasn’t because of the alcohol, it was just exacerbated by the alcohol. So it was really because of my weight. And my this the struggles that I had mentally with really how I felt members of the opposite sex looked at me, right? Like when you’re that young, and you’ve got hormones raging through your body, all you want to do is find a girlfriend or a member Deus Ex, but I was getting tons of bad feedback on terms of like, you know, every girl I liked, the feedback loop was, they didn’t want to have anything to do with me. And, you know, for a long time, I sat there and I was angry. And I blamed the world, the universe for that. And I thought, well, I am the way I am. But I can’t help the way I am. It’s just kind of how things have gotten and how things have unfolded for me. But I never really wanted to take accountability for it until one day, eventually I just realized like, this is nobody’s going to help me out of this. I’ve got to help myself out of it. So I’ve got to figure it out. I can’t, I can’t sit around being angry at the world, I got to understand that. You know, everybody exercises their own self control, everybody puts themselves into certain situations. And from that moment on, I made what you call probably a pact with myself. I decided to go running every day, I didn’t care how long it was or how far it was, it was literally just the act of doing it a little bit every single day. And the goal was 100 straight days. And so I went 100 days, I actually blew straight past that. And I wound up actually running every day for like 450 straight days. In the process, I wound up losing over 100 pounds in the course of like nine to 12 months. But the great thing about that was that moment, that actual setting of a goal and achieving the goal. But not even just achieving the goal, blowing it out of the water and sticking with it for probably 15 more years. You know, I kept that weight off for a long time until I started having kids. And that was really the starter of my history with setting and achieving goals and what really mapped who I am as a person.

JM Guthrie 09:14
So let’s click into that for a second. Because there are a lot of people, some that are listening to this today, who are challenged with very similar places in their life have a sense of defeat, overwhelmed by some tumble we like weight, or like too many beers so many days in a row or like stepping out of the relationship that they’re in or whatever it is. What would you say to those people about coming to that realization and what ultimately allowed you to stop tumble leading past 300 pounds and say, you know, fuck this. I’m going to commit to running every day and it’s going to make a difference. And then obviously you just shared as that happens, you just want to keep going. And the results manifest. What do you say to the people that are struggling to get going on that path or that direction, whatever it is.

Joe Quattrone 10:13
One of the things that was the hardest for me at first, that I eventually, once I got over, it kind of created a big unlock was at the very beginning of it, I was very consumed with, what would this look like, you know, you got a 300 pound dude, you know, running down the bike paths and trails and glade draft around Lake Otto von like, what are people going to think when they see this big whale like bounce it up and down, and this man moves like, you know, running around the lake. And that insecurity lasted me about two weeks, right? And it only lasted me two weeks, because instead of focusing on what other people thought about me, I started focusing on how amazing I felt after I took a shower, after not running every day. And it became one of those things where the more and more I stopped thinking about the way the world perceives me. And I only wanted to pursue that feeling of self ID self truth. And whenever I have not seen people think I am, I am who I am. That’s all I care about. I don’t care what you say about me, I don’t care what you think when you see me. And so that started to really translate into other aspects of my life as well, for good and for bad. I mean, I remember when I first got out of grad school, and I went to go train in San Francisco years later, I always had this phobia of being around drinking, only when other people are around or going to things like the movies by myself and stuff like that. I always wanted to have a social, you know, you know, group around me when I partook in an entertainment. And then I eventually started breaking those walls down as well. And I think that was pretty good. You know, like, I kept exploring aspects of my individuality. But that also became detrimental at one point with the alcohol. Yeah, but I just became too comfortable with who I was,

JM Guthrie 12:14
let’s think about how, let’s think about what you just said, right? Like, the way that the people that you were interested in having a relationship with were from the opposite sex, or what sort of drove you to have a realization of kind of where you were from a life perspective. And it drove me to think about what are the changes that I can make as a person to try to potentially be more attractive to these people that are having this reaction or response towards me now. And that kind of got you to a point of really trying to sort it out. But it came back to yourself, right? It came back to, what do I need to do for me, in order to feel better and exemplified the human that I want to be both mentally and physically, which is a really hard thing to do, and a really hard thing to do, especially with all of the pressures, and all of the responses, and all of the reaction of society or even those direct individuals that you mentioned. And so I think that’s like the core of what we’re talking about on this show, and something that I want to continue to sort of unravel in the conversations that we’re having, and certainly,

Joe Quattrone 13:24
today, it’s too so but like, couple, but

JM Guthrie 13:27
what the last thing, what I get it once you got going, like it was like, Man, I’m gonna keep going, I’m seeing the reaction, I’m seeing the impact. I’m feeling better, I’m having this shower. What do you say to people that are just having a hard time getting to the point of actually getting going on it? Like, what would you say to them, when they feel like they’re being portrayed a certain way, or being looked at a certain way, or being communicated with a certain way by their friends, their friend, family or even society generally, which makes them feel even more likely to continue down the path that they’re on?

Joe Quattrone 14:06
I would say, allow yourself to be tough on yourself, while not allowing other people’s words to mean anything to you. So let me have some bananas. Most people let other people’s words and feelings towards you in the linen and they let it state and they let it hurt them too much. What I found was, if I focused on what other people thought about me, it enraged me or made me sad. When I focused on my internal monologue telling me that I needed to do better. I said it in a more empathetic, kind Candice way where it was like, I’ll only know who I am in only I know what I’ve been through. So I’m going to be very direct and tough on myself. Because I can tell myself these things in a way where nobody else can really most people will say what they think about me in a very surface level or judgmental fashion, or what’s even more hurtful to somebody that’s, you know, at least go through weight problems is they don’t tell you at all with their mouth, they tell you with their eyes, and they tell you with the wrinkles in the forehead, or the look of disgust, let me show you,

JM Guthrie 15:22
the people with the wrinkles in the forehead, man, you know,

Joe Quattrone 15:26
when somebody looks at you, and you’re 315 pounds, and their forehead goes up, and wrinkles, and they’re aghast almost at the weight, you’re eating your food or whatever, like that stuff, the nonverbals hurt way more than the actual verbal cues do so for me, it was like don’t listen to anybody else. But you do need tough feedback, you need to be tougher on yourself. You need to be direct and cannabis with yourself. But don’t worry about the looks and the stairs, that stuff, zone that out and then just focus on the voice you’ve got going inside. Don’t beat yourself up. But be honest with yourself, you know, like Be honest with yourself. It’s just like, God,

JM Guthrie 16:06
Is it important? Yeah. I mean, is it? So? I agree with that. And there’s certainly lots of aspects of that, that I would say, have manifested for me personally in lots of ways. But is there? But is there a need for the community of people that are going to give you that direct feedback that are going to be honest with you and that are going to say the things to you that you don’t want to hear? Was that important to you? Or was it really just like a Nirvana moment for you, personally, because of all of the pressures and different impacts of these connections, and you know, different sorts of communication both verbally and physically? that got you to that point.

Joe Quattrone 16:50
I think the people, the outside support systems, voices were more appreciated and are more necessary in order to keep going. So once he saw some results, and they motivated you to keep it going, like there was never a sense of like, I’ve arrived that I’ve achieved that here I am, and I’ve done things, he was always, oh my god, like I love discipline. I love how you’ve changed your life around I level. That’s kind of what fed me and fueled me. But at first, it wasn’t really, the bigger thing was I had this mental block that everyone on the outside including people on the inside even family members, friends, were not there necessarily to support me in the way that I needed to be supported. It was a battle and a journey that I had to go through myself. The problem with my addiction to food or my addiction to being lazy, or my addiction to drugs and alcohol had nothing to do with my friends. It was all about me. It should not be right. So I think the thing that I dealt with more, the thing that I was probably the least excited about or most upset about was how much I let myself tell myself that I was a victim, that it was I was a victim of my circumstances, a victim of my surroundings. But you know, and then I realized once I started getting honest with myself, and I started realizing that’s bullshit, there’s no, I’m not a victim. I’m not a victim of my surroundings. If I was, then why aren’t there others? Why is it my little sister 300 pounds? You know? And why is it? Why are my friends up? Like? It’s not? So yeah, I mean, it goes back to like my childhood, I was always a heavyset kid. And I think I let that kind of stuff swirl out of control. Because there were times in which I just let the things that other people say that were close to me mean too much, or occupy too much space in my brain or my heart. And I was bummed out about that.

JM Guthrie 18:41
So this gets super deep. And I know we’re talking about you today. So this will probably be continued. But lots of conversations that I’ve been having recently with people in my life personally and professionally, where they’re having challenges or are in the midst of adversity, or have a really dark place in their heart specific to some topic. What you just said, ends up being what we focus on, which is, no one can tell you how you need to change or act or behave or whatever it is. In order to make you feel better. Ultimately, you have to do what makes you feel better. And you have to find the right path to replace where the things that you’re doing going for a run every day that was going to be 100 days turns into 500 days. 100 pounds gone, is ultimately what allows you to find better clarity and better comfort and better love for yourself. Nobody can help you to that point. That has to be something that comes from you. And I think we’re challenged as people as humans, as dads as spouses, as friends, as family as colleagues, to encourage others to find that is Well, which is a lot of what we’re talking about here on me total is that like, we want to be selfless. And we want to be empathetic, both good and bad for those around us. But in order to do that, or in order to FurReal, connect with other people, you have to have that level of comfort with yourself, and it starts directly with you and what’s in your heart. And so I appreciate you sharing that in the way that you did. Let’s transition and come back to that, because I do think that’s like, the crux or core of what we’re trying to talk about here. And want to find an ability for people to feel comfortable to talk about their same challenges with us. But

Joe Quattrone 20:38
yeah, so one more point. So like, I’ve kind of transitioned this mentality, or this, you know, kind of way of working into all facets of my life. So, you know, same thing people always say, like, you know, when it comes to their career, and the kinds of jobs they want to the kind of money they want to make, and all that kind of stuff, they choose the directions and the pathways that they have, based on artificial kind of constructs that have been built for society, right. So like, the reason why a lot of people struggle with their careers and how to make it in a chosen profession, is because they’re not actually asking themselves what they want. They’re not pursuing things that they actually care about. They’re pursuing things that other people have told them to care about, right and pursue, they’re pursuing amounts of money, or a house, or a status, or a certain type of wife, or somebody that can give you a certain family size. What I’ve done with my life effectively, is I’ve figured out a way to zone out all the noise, focus on what I care about, and let all of those other things follow me, right. So I tell people, often I mentor tons of kids in my industry, and I tell them, I have never done it, I’ve never made a single decision because of money. I do think that I want to do it, and I do really well when money follows me around. And so I did the same thing with my weight loss journey. I didn’t go out making the decision to lose 100 pounds, when I made the decision to run every day. And because I ran every day I lost 100 pounds. Right? It’s a lifestyle shift. It’s a mentality shift, right? It’s a little tiny wriggle right? But you have to at least have that first springboard of motivation inside of yourself. Right? It’s the same, you’ve probably coached some people or mentor to people, how much is driving you insane? When you just beat your head against the wall, you give all the great advice, and they still don’t do it because they don’t want it.

JM Guthrie 22:41
Where they’re, I don’t know if their influence from the outside is too strong. Or yeah, I mean, especially generate if you look at generationally, and there’s all kinds of data around this. Or you ask a Gen Z, or this new Alfa generation, what they want to be famous or rich. And then the next question is, well, how are you and they have no idea, then they’re being influenced by all of these noises, both directly and indirectly, since there’s all this channel of information all of the time. And the reality is, that’s not worth how you get there. And life is too short not to be happy. Right, there’s too, these days go by fast. And if you’re not happy, then what was the point? And so I mean, even Gary, who you work so closely with always talks about, start with what you’re passionate about, and the rest will come. I think that’s like such an important in such an important sort of theme of what we’re talking about, even today with your story is start with what makes you happy. So if making you happy is moving towards not being 300 pounds, and going for a run, that’s 10 minutes this day, and maybe an hour or 100 days from now is the path to get there great. Because eventually you’re going to be 100 pounds lighter. And start with a story about how it starts with us. And then we can be better humans for those around us and hopefully start to exemplify a world of better good and kindness and empathy for one another, and call it total. And maybe it turns into a really big thing we don’t know. But here we are talking about it, trying to find time, in our busy days to have these kinds of conversations. Because we know it matters. And we know there’s lots of people out there that are lost the way that we were for so long. And now we found some place to put this passion towards and have the support of our brothers. They are the people that are on this show, brothers and sisters. That’s something and so, you know, and I appreciate the ability to have these conversations because it has so much meaning and we don’t have any idea if it’s going to make us rich and famous don’t really care. It’s a responsibility because this is something that has made a big difference in our own lives. And we’ve started to discover that it has made a big difference in some other people’s lives. But ultimately He doesn’t go anywhere without the commitment of yourself to yourself and to your best self and to the person that you want to be outside of Illinois. So let’s pivot real quickly to your meat. What we’re defining as your meat total walk rates and you get into your career. You have an enormous amount of success. You’re early in what was called the Flog scene back then, with, with Gary, you know, riding around and whatever that SUV was with, like a camcorder getting passed around and stuff. Like I remember that. And that was like, not that. I mean, it was a long time ago, but not that long ago. Think that like stadiums.

Joe Quattrone 25:38
Eight years ago, I thought something like that. It was funny, but like 15 is when it’s Yeah,

JM Guthrie 25:42
but now the dude getting on like live Instagram with 1000s of people jumping right on to hear what he has to say it is like beach house, and he’s talking about some stadium that’s gonna be full with people that want to talk about their different crazy, NF Ts are marketing or media or social or just their content. That’s pretty fucking crazy man. And you are a big part of that. So that I mean, for me as an observer. That’s a neat aspect of your story that I’m sure we can talk some more about. But it was also centered around beer. I mean, Anheuser Busch or embed was a big part of your guys’ business. And obviously, your walk with alcohol took a pretty significant detour at some point within that process. Let’s talk about that. Let’s talk about sort of how that all came about. But also just how kind of interesting it was in dynamic in the sense that your customer was the greatest or largest American beer company on the fucking planet.

Joe Quattrone 26:38
Yeah, that was wild Ryan. I started with Gary in 2014. And right away, Anheuser Busch was one of the first clients like my job coming in was to grow portfolios within his universe, like make big, huge multimillion dollar portfolios out of these opportunities. And that was probably the best example of me doing that. So I mean, I’ve worked on

JM Guthrie 27:00
that, right, like just, you know, start a conversation and make a gazillion Dollar Portfolio relationship. So yeah,

Joe Quattrone 27:08
I worked outside of alcohol. I worked on Mike Johnson and a few other things, but really, I made my bones within the AB in that space and took that from one brand. And we were shocked that it was the first brand relationship. We had those hallways and like, we were doing like, like three or $400,000 a year on that brand. But then within two and a half years, you know, my account ballooned up into like 15 brands, we were running digital AOR for pretty much every brand inside of Avi walls that were like the big national or global brands like Budweiser and Bud Light. Stella Michelob Natty, you name it in the portfolio. We’ve touched

JM Guthrie 27:50
by the way there’s a Stella 00 now, and it’s delicious. Yeah, holiday.

Joe Quattrone 27:57
So yeah, I was pretty integral in the build out of the teams that worked on that on a lot of that work that went out the door. Part of my influence, a lot of what we were doing there was it was an inner a weird era of social media where, you know, Facebook had dropped organic reach down to 1%, it was pretty much pay to play. So a lot of agencies had to get into paid media in order to see some results. And so we were a company that didn’t really do a ton of that when I got there. But over the course of I’d say, the five or six years that I managed that account, the way I got my team motivated and inspired to work on that business was by committing to the mobile phone and saying we’re going to be the best in the world at designing videos for this device. And the best in the world that distributed videos to those devices is based on a lot of anecdotal, you know, insight that I was getting for like Mary Meeker reports, just like looking at the market and seeing what was going to work. But we rose to prominence, we did a lot of really great viral work. We made a big name for ourselves in that era. But as you can imagine, you know, there’s not a more high profile portfolio out there the world of advertising, you know, the baby like Nike and stuff like but when you like sat back and you watched movies about advertising when you were a kid, it was like accounts like Budweiser and Bud Light selling in like, yeah, Coco, Nike and all these different brands. So I was operating at that level of my career, which was, you know, it’s a blessing and a curse. It’s a blessing in the sense that like, Man, I would never get back those years like, but the perspective that I’ve got on like, what it’s like to operate a brand at those levels and the sheer humanity involved in making those things happen. It’s now this is knowledge that I have that I can apply towards

JM Guthrie 29:44
something all the time, I can’t teach experience to good or bad.

Joe Quattrone 29:51
So that makes a lot of sense to me. But as you can imagine, you know, a brim or a holding company like ABN Bev 300 DOT 1000 people worldwide, they’re in every major city in the world. They’ve also got super high standards, they’ve also got a lot of agencies in the mix. It’s very stressful, it’s very pressure packed. And plus a lot of competition is happening. And they find a way, it just happened to want to make sure that you understand their product and like their product, you know, you’re consuming their product, when appropriate at certain dinners and stuff like that. So yeah, it just got to the point where it was around me all the time, we had beer fringes on our floor, we every time we went out to take clients to dinner, which was multiple times a week, we were consuming beer. And it was playing right into my natural inclinations, because of all the alcohol tree that exists out there. I was almost always considered for the beer tree, I don’t really have an affinity for wine or liquor. So yeah, it was just because it was too much, you know, coming at me at a very stressful time in my life. Meanwhile, me and my wife are pumping out kids. So we’ve got two kids by this point in the later parts of last decade. We gotta get a number for him first, which is coming in. Yeah,

JM Guthrie 31:12
I understand number fours coming in August, so wins number five coming. I I know what number is coming.

Joe Quattrone 31:17
It’s probably gonna be pretty and before Fletcher 44 yesterday, so I don’t have any more years to be pretty good. These things give out. But yeah,

JM Guthrie 31:27
I didn’t hear you say never though. So let’s put a pin in that could be a fit.

Joe Quattrone 31:33
So alcohol just became too big of a problem. Like, my kids were too young. I didn’t like being drunk around them. I didn’t like being hungover around them. I didn’t like being intoxicated around my co-workers or my clients, and it just was happening too much. So I was already kind of predisposed at that point. And say, this is like 2018 2019, like before I moved to LA, where I was looking for reasons to get out of it. And, I went to the doctor in June to have a physical and the doctor said, you don’t have the gout. But if your uric acid levels continue to creep up, you’re gonna get into a point where you’re going to have gout, and it’s probably going to be a problem for the rest of your life, you’re going to have to be on medication, all that kind of stuff. So I highly recommend you don’t consume as much yeast as you do. So after that advice, I just quit cold turkey and didn’t hold back. That was, I want to say, I didn’t really, I didn’t really like to memorialize the date, because it didn’t seem like an alcoholism thing. It didn’t seem like this thing that was going to leave, I don’t even know if I was gonna quit for the rest of my life. I just did . I quit cold turkey because I thought I had to. And it was something around June 9, or June 18, or something like that of 2018. And the rest is history. Once I got over like one or two years, I’d stopped even having a desire for it anymore. I still partake in the non alcoholic stuff. But really just because I like to be social, I like to have something in my breasts, not because I crave it, or that’s my beginning. And that’s the very, I wouldn’t say it was like an abrupt thing that happened, because it was building up ahead of steam for a while, like I had been thinking about getting out of drinking for a while. And to the point that we were discussing earlier, I was never gonna make that jump until I wanted it for myself. And at that point, when I wanted it for myself, I didn’t want it that bad before that or so I would have quit earlier.

JM Guthrie 33:32
Yeah, no, it makes total sense.

Joe Quattrone 33:37
And we’ve cut to that part of the show where we are going to get into today’s news and notes of what’s going on in the meat total landscape. So jam, I pulled up an article today. It’s coming from our lovely neighbors in the north of Canada, restaurants and bars, for the biggest alcohol tax jump in 40 years. And so the sub header goes on to say Canada’s restaurant industry is bracing for the biggest jump in the country’s alcohol excise duty in more than 40 years, spring warnings the tax site could force the bars and restaurants to go out of business. So you know, we’re not necessarily seeing this exact same thing happen in the US. But it wouldn’t shock me if we start to see this make its way down here to the United States. We’re obviously going into a weird economy right now. We’ve been trying to land this recession or a soft recession. Very softly. We’ve all lived very minute rate hikes over the past 12 months. But what do we think here? So like, my personal thoughts are great, let’s keep going because you know, the more and more I keep researching about alcohol and it’s tremendous, negative side effects on humans, the more I feel like we should just keep raising this thing to Cavett keep, you know, quelling the demand for it. What are your thoughts?

JM Guthrie 35:00
Yeah, I don’t know, do we? I guess my initial thought is Canada trying to quell the recession or they tried to deter people from drinking. Right. And so I think a lot of this kind of starts there. I think we’ve seen that with tobacco in the US in a similar sort of time in history where there was a new emphasis or a renewed emphasis on the health aspects or negative health aspects of tobacco. So yeah, I mean, I think I’m all for doing things like this to both quell the economy, as well as potentially deter people from drinking, I think I struggle with the fact that they know that people are addicted, and they’re probably going to keep buying it. And so that, you know, that’s why I kind of go back to maybe this is a gap filled on taxes versus really taking a stand against alcohol. And you can see that with sports gambling here, do people really want to support sports gambling, at a government level? Probably not, right. But they love how much money they’re taking every time somebody makes a wager on their app. So

Joe Quattrone 36:10
Whatever, this is gonna have a disproportionate impact on the people that can’t afford it to be raised more than it will for the people that can afford it to be raised. So, you know, you mentioned addiction. And when countries or when municipalities, regions, states, whatever go through tough economic times, it’s not the people that can afford it that are being squeezed here, the people that can’t afford it are the ones that are the most addicted to it, and the ones that can least afford the tax net tax like, so there is a little bit of that humanity aspect to it. But at the end of the day, I don’t know, I feel like there’s something that needs to be done. Like, I think the research on alcohol that’s coming out recently, in my mind, and my opinion, you know, focus group of one is way harsher. Then we all knew back in those days. I feel like it’s more like the information that eventually came out of society around how bad nicotine or tobacco was, right? Like you didn’t know for a long time, then you kind of had an idea. And then eventually, it was like, No, this is awful for you. You know, it’s not doing anybody any favors. I think we’re at that point now where, you know, for a long time, there was conflicting information where, hey, maybe having a glass or two of wine a day isn’t the worst thing in the world for your heart. It’s like olive oil. It turns out that may not be true at all. It may just be that all calls. But

JM Guthrie 37:34
yeah, no, I feel that. And like, the reality in my mind is, it’s almost like they’re forced to be more transparent. Because even 20 years ago, when a couple of glasses of wine might be good for you, there was no access to the data or information for just the layman to find out like, is that true? It’s just okay, that’s what’s being put in front of us. And it kind of goes back to like the very early days of marketing, where it was like, here’s this sign that tells you what to do. And that’s kind of all the information you get. Whereas now, you can find whatever information that you want. Some of its real, some of its artificial, some of its data driven, some of its influence driven. And so I feel like in a lot of different ways, and especially in this place around alcohol, generally, the entire industry, the entire government is having to figure out how best to sort of deliver this news or this information of all of this stuff that they’ve known for a really long time, in a way that it lands a little softer than the reality that 70% of deaths probably have some connection to alcohol, which is something that you can find in a lot of places now. And so I think, you know, it’s just as much about the access to information and the access to the information that you want to find in here today versus even five years ago, 10 years ago, certainly 30 years ago.

Joe Quattrone 38:56
Good. Great. Let’s move on to a new topic. We’re going to introduce a new segment today and see how the listeners like it, it let’s go. It’s called the meat total entertainment page. As you know, every day by that hour, it seems a new celebrity is coming out as being, you know, launching into this metotal lifestyle, some might call it silver, some might call it silver plus we call it total. But anyway, every day, every hour, new celebrities are coming out putting the bottle down. And in this segment, we will analyze those people we want to celebrate them and we want to clap it up for them. And we want to, you know, describe their journey as they go into an alcohol free lifestyle. And today, we hear that Demi Lovato’s sister Madison De La Garza 21 opens up about her sobriety journey. And she’s saying that she feels Bri, apparently the De La Garza Lovato clan, might be connected with somebody that was on Desperate Housewives back then that might have been their mom. So it’s Celebrity Family out in Hollywood. Debbie herself has struggled with alcohol and addiction for years, but has become clean. So, you know, specifically Demi’s Little Sister Madison starts talking about how alcohol and substances had become her best friend. And she needed to figure out a way to live life without the substances. So it was having a tremendous impact on relationships with people in her family. And she wasn’t going to change that. So, you know, kudos for somebody at the age of 21. To really realize this and be self aware enough to understand that you can’t just pull this off for another 1520 years and figure it out down the road. Like if you’re, if you’re feeling this way, if you’re getting anxiety, and you feel you actually do the A B testing to see what your life is like, with and without, and it’s telling you things like, I feel free now in the world seems lighter and more colorful. It seems like that’s the clear indication that you’re going down the right path that they choose to be total. But when you think about Madison’s journey at 255 days in,

JM Guthrie 41:15
yeah, I mean, this is cool, right? Like, and I actually think, more at a macro level, the neat thing is, there is such an acceptance of even talking about this now. So I think going back to some stuff that we’ve talked about previously, around just the way that you can find information or the way that things are promoted, or the way that you consume content. I think it was, especially for people in the spotlight, it was not the cool thing to say, I don’t drink, or it was not the cool thing to say that I have found a different lifestyle is a different power, a different meaning, putting the bottle down. And I think what this section of our show or what this promo of our show, or however we want to say this j of annual the segment of our show really exemplifies is that there are enough people that are saying this on almost a daily, hourly basis, that we can have a conversation about it. So certainly kudos to Madison. Kudos to the media for allowing this type of content to make it to our eyes and ears. And certainly, you know, a big part of where we’re trying to go here on the fuzzy ish podcast. I think one of the things I wanted to wrap up on or the question that I would ask is, if you think about when that happened, and you started to scale back drinking, or really stopped drinking altogether, and the conversations that you had with people about why that was and certainly there was the health reasoning. So that gave you kind of an out. Now that you have this story, and the conversations that we’re having around this movement, how has that shifted? Right? So when you get asked that question now, how do you find that? How do you find the response different today in 2023, than it was in 2018? Or whatever year that was?

Joe Quattrone 43:09
I find that I mean, so nobody really likes it. I never felt like people were disparaging me for not drinking when I first stopped drinking, but there were a lot of people that I think were confused. They were they were just like, why would you ever want to stop drinking? You know, flick? It just never dawned on them? That would be something that somebody would do. You know, I think it’s probably you’re a victim of your own surroundings, right? You think about me, I’m, I work for one of the biggest and best marketing companies in the world. And we’re around clients, and it’s super high end, high performing marketing, and you’re in big cities, and you got young people and that’s to do you know, like, there’s no, you’re not hanging out with a bunch of people that don’t drink. That’s people drink, you go to meetings, you drink afterwards, you get stressed out, we drink afterwards. So I think if I was in a different environment, maybe it would have been different. But in my particular unique instance, they didn’t really get mad at me. I wasn’t like a buzzkill to them, but they were confused. They didn’t know why I would stop drinking today, five years later, there’s just so much more information out there about and so many more people who have gone on this walk and been about that neato lifestyle that I think I’m starting to become part of the majority of folks this morning I was back then which was for sure part of the minority of people that look like me and you know, look like my peer group. So it’s especially now that I’m in my 40s and a lot of people that I converse with, you know, in a social setting, outside of like my direct team members who are obviously quite younger than me but peer wise and like just friendship wise friends in my neighborhood. Friends dating back to when I was in high school or college like even if you don’t quit drinking alcohol like it Truly, a lot of people really taper off when they get older. Like, I think it’s just, it’s natural. They’re just not going out as much as they used to just, it’s a lifestyle thing that you just can’t keep up. And not only is it not healthy, it’s expensive, and it’s ridiculous. Yeah. You know, like, it’s hard to keep up that lifestyle. So, yeah, now, it doesn’t feel like I’m doing anything to be intentional, it’d be special. I’m just living my life. The only thing that I’m going to be intentional and try to do something great for other people is this podcast, and hopefully, all the good that comes from this will be something that I can, you know, feel really great about for the rest of my life.

JM Guthrie 45:39
Yeah, no, I love that. I think that’s a good way to close. I think one of the themes that I heard and I want to make sure that we highlight is there is a world that’s more accepting of this topic, and this willingness to take a look at alcohol consumption generally, and to call it whatever you want, which is a movement in the right direction, and certainly I think is going to be beneficial to society as a whole. And if we can be some part of that or some small contributor to that message into that community. We’ve done our job and certainly I think we’ve achieved what we’ve set out to do here. So Joe, I appreciate you sharing a happy day after your birthday. Much love from this DC area down to Tennessee, and we’ll be in touch.