Ageless Adventures with Joe Owens
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Cathy:Welcome to late boomers, our podcast guide to creating your third act with style, power, and impact. Hi. I'm Cathy Worthington.
Merry:And I'm Merry Elkins. Join us as we bring you conversations with successful entrepreneurs, entertainers, and people with vision who are making a difference in the world.
Cathy:Everyone has a story, and we'll take you along for the ride on each interview, recounting the journey our guests have taken to get where they are, inspiring you to create your own path to success. Let's get started. Hi. I'm Cathy Worthington. Welcome to the Late Boomers podcast.
Cathy:I'm here with my cohost, Merry Elkins, and boy, do we have someone here with us who's going to give us boomers some great advice about staying younger than our years. Jo Owens, author of Feeling Groovy, a boomer guide to ageless aging.
Merry:And I'm Mary Elkins. Joe has worn so many hats it's mind boggling to keep up with him and all that he's done and still doing. From working in music with rock legends like the Rolling Stones to real estate to his work as a fiction and nonfiction author, filmmaker, and guru of fitness and age aging. Let me say that right. Aging agelessly.
Merry:Welcome, Joe.
Joe Owens:Hi, guys. How are you? Thanks for having me.
Merry:Great to have you.
Cathy:What inspired you to write Feeling Groovy, and what keeps you feeling groovy about life and about yourself?
Joe Owens:Well, I ran out of money. I mean, the Oh. That book had been following me around for a while. In my late fifties, I had a heart thing. My whole life, had had something called SVT, supraventricular tachycardia, and it would make In a situation like this, my heart would just take off to like 160, 180 beats a minute.
Joe Owens:And they say it dangerous, but it made you feel funny, and your knees got a little weak. I had a mild case of it. I mean, had it since I was 14, but I had a mild case of it. Mine would last fifteen, twenty minutes. Some poor people, it lasts for like days.
Joe Owens:Oh. But I had an episode that did last for days, which was very disconcerting, and then when they went to fix it, they used the wrong medicine, and it got scary. I had a great doctor. After I came out of that whole thing, I said, They want me to take medicine. They want me to be cardiologist.
Joe Owens:They want me he said, No, no, no, no. He said, We're going to lift weights. We're going to run. We're going to eat. We're going to sleep.
Joe Owens:We're going to take care of ourselves. So at 60, I started a fitness plan, and started lifting weights, and started doing all that stuff, and now here I am fifteen years later. When I started all that stuff, I thought that would be a cool thing to do, to sort of write about this and kind of write about my journey. So that's where it started. The first title for it was actually Running from God, and that's what my son said.
Joe Owens:Said, You're running from God, aren't you, dad? I said, Oh, yeah, you know. He'll get me eventually, but I'll need to be running to do it. So but, yeah, it it it started the sort of whole genesis for the book was when I started working out, thought, well, I wanna keep track of this and and see where it ends up, and it it's ended up with feeling groovy.
Cathy:So making notes all along the way and and tracking your progress and everything, right?
Joe Owens:And and also what worked and what didn't, because there's a lot of trial and error with that, you know, what you eat, how much you sleep, you know, all those kind of things. The other interesting thing was that when I got closer to the book in the last year or so, I thought, It might be a good idea to ask baby boomers if this is something they care about, The me writing this book and book at that point was a workout guide. It was how many push ups you should do, and that sort of stuff, and a little bit more and diet oriented. And the response I got was amazing, because they said, Nah, not really what we care about. We want to feel like we used to feel.
Joe Owens:And how do you do that? And so I went back and I said, Okay, well I'll throw out these 80 pages. Kind of heartbreaking. But it was a really interesting challenge because it's one thing to say, you have to stay, and you do have to stay strong. I mean, if you're not strong, you injure yourself as you get older, you trip and you fall, those So kind of it is important that you stay strong, and that's why I still lift weights, and it is important that your cardio is good and all those things.
Joe Owens:But how do you feel, Ruby? So that took a little bit of thought, and ultimately what I came up with was in order to feel the way you used to feel, a lot of that was you were relevant. You were in the game. You knew what was going on around you. You knew who the actors You knew who the rock bands were.
Joe Owens:You knew about the new car that came out. You knew all that stuff, and I think there's a tendency as you get older to not. I have a friend who lives in in my neighborhood, and all of his cultural references stop at like 1972. We're still talking about Wagon Train and Burt Reynolds and Anne Margaret.
Cathy:Oh. Yeah. That's very sad. That means he has no millennials in his life to to keep him clued in. And annoying.
Cathy:Or or younger. Gen z. Because now we have to rely on Gen z to clue us into
Joe Owens:Right.
Cathy:Social media and all that. It's very important, Which
Joe Owens:then sort of makes it difficult for you to have a conversation with anybody who is not in your circle, and I think the way you stay on top of things is to talk to people that are younger than you, or that know different things than you do. Mhmm. Right. So that was a big part of feeling groovy. And then, I also said, look, you know, if you're lifting weights and you feel strong, you feel groovy.
Joe Owens:Right. If you're weak, you don't feel groovy. And if you're constantly coming down with colds or your back hurts or whatever, you don't feel groovy. If you do those things physically, if you eat well, sleep well, you're not tired, you work out, you take care of your skin, you know? I mean, I have a skin care routine.
Joe Owens:Who who would have thought?
Cathy:Good. For you.
Joe Owens:I do too.
Merry:Yeah. I
Joe Owens:do. So there you go.
Merry:Yeah. Hello, men out there.
Joe Owens:Exactly. I mean, you know, otherwise, you end up looking at a lizard, especially in the places that I live because I live in places that have lots of sunshine. So I think
Cathy:And you talked about cultural references when Mary and I started this podcast. It was five years ago, almost five. We're almost at five. And we said it to people our age that are like our contemporaries. They said, like, what's a podcast?
Cathy:I don't listen to a pod I don't even know what a podcast is.
Merry:Exactly.
Cathy:And so we've had to, like, try and get people to listen and just how do I listen? I'll send you a link. Just click it and listen to it.
Merry:And then we get, how do I click the link?
Joe Owens:Exactly. And what what's the link? Then the next thing you know, you know, somebody in Kazakhstan is stealing all their money.
Cathy:But Yeah. It's
Joe Owens:know, I I think that that feeling part, but it threw me when, you know, when I heard that people say, look, you know, the exercising is good and and all that kind of stuff, but how do I feel the way I used to feel?
Cathy:Yeah. I'm glad I'm glad you had the right people to ask. You you might not have gotten that answer if you asked the wrong people, so that that steered you toward That's really good.
Merry:Have a son, right? You have a son, right?
Joe Owens:I have a son. He's 30. He's 30 years old. He is my worst critic. It's just Oh, Really?
Joe Owens:Really? That No, that's not going to work. You'd have to or he'll rhyme off in a sentence how I should market the book, like the day I showed up with the finished book. He said, Oh, that's great. You go to social media, you put that, and you do this, and you go there, and you put that, blah, I'm like, Dude, I know it's English because I recognize the words, but I don't recognize that combination of them.
Joe Owens:What in the world are you talking about? Which is a tough part of being an author these days. Back in the day, I was signed to HarperCollins. I had a publisher. I had an agent.
Joe Owens:I finished the book. I handed it to them, and then they told me where to go and do interviews. Now you have to do all of it. Not my favorite part.
Merry:You do. No. Absolutely not. Well, you know, I have to ask you. You mentioned drugs before, and I just kept I've kept thinking about my dad when he was 80.
Merry:He said to me, you know, on good days, I feel I'm 50. And I thought I was really young then, and I thought, that's really old. But it truly it truly isn't. But I have to ask you, with all that you've said, do you believe in the body's ability to heal itself?
Joe Owens:Yes, only. That's what I only believe in. I have a very uncomfortable relationship with pharmaceuticals, because pharmaceuticals don't cure anything. All pharmaceuticals do, and I'm going to caveat this whole thing by saying, Please do not watch this podcast and throw all your medicine away. Right.
Cathy:Please don't do that. No.
Joe Owens:Please don't do that. But to me, pills only mask symptoms. Pills only treat symptoms. They don't cure diseases. Right?
Joe Owens:So there's no pill to cure anything that you have. The guys I love are are the ones who take Lipitor so they can keep eating cheeseburgers. Like, what is wrong with you? What is wrong with you? And that goes like that's a pain medication for me.
Joe Owens:I don't take pain medication, because Mhmm. And I have a lot of military friends, and you know, the Marines say that pain is weakness leaving the body. But if something hurts, it means there's something wrong with it. So if you mask the pain, then you don't know whether or not that thing is still wrong with you. If your back hurts, and you take medicine to stop your back from hurting, how do you know that you're not going to go out and hurt your back worse by picking something up that you shouldn't be picking up?
Cathy:Exactly right. People do.
Joe Owens:People do. It's But I think that people tend to rely on drugs to fix everything for them, when in fact more exercise, more water, better frame of mind, balancing your chakras, getting your kundalini, doing the stuff that your body will heal itself. It really truly will, if you support it, if you help it. Because we've all heard the stories about people's brains rewiring themselves after they have a head injury. You know, there's some remarkable things to do.
Joe Owens:So I'm not a pill guy, I don't do that. I take a lot of supplements and vitamins and things like that in an effort to sort of keep the machine working. But again, you know, if you have a car and you never drive it, I don't care how good of a race car it is, you have to drive it. The same with your body, you have to go for a walk. Know, put down the potato chips, get off the couch, go for a walk, you know, do something, exercise.
Cathy:Oh, you're making me crave potato chips now. Yeah. Know. You shouldn't have mentioned them.
Joe Owens:I love potato chips, and I love Coca Cola too. Are the weekend
Cathy:I I kinda I kinda you do
Merry:you do actually do a little bit of it?
Joe Owens:My so my major problem is that my palate stopped growing at about age 11. So I have no interest in cigars, I have no interest in cigarettes, I have no interest in brown liquor or beer or any I have no interest in any of that, never have. But you give me a cupcake, I'll massacre it. I like cookies, cupcakes, all those kind of things. So that is a and, you know, you guys know sugar.
Joe Owens:It's addictive. It's like heroin.
Merry:Oh, give me a great chocolate chip cookie.
Joe Owens:You bet. And and they're everywhere. I mean, it's like cookies and cookies and is everywhere. Although Uh-huh. I'm a I'm a chocolate snob, so I, you know, I want Hershey bars and things like
Cathy:don't that. Buy it and bring it in your house, it isn't everywhere. It's not in your house.
Joe Owens:And and that's what I do. Yeah. Yeah. Although there's a trick. There's a little trick.
Joe Owens:I buy semi sweet chocolate chips, the Ghirardelli semi sweet chocolate chips, and I put them in the freezer. When I
Cathy:want That's what I do.
Joe Owens:Well, when I want some chocolate, I'll eat one or two of them, because you
Cathy:know One or two, you don't eat the whole Yeah.
Joe Owens:I don't. I eat one or two of them. Your what I found out about cravings for me anyway, and I don't know, but some other people have said, yeah, you're right. When you want potato chips, you don't want a bag of potato chips. You want some potato chips.
Joe Owens:Two or three. You want the grease, you want the salt. So I can eat a couple of potato chips. I can eat a couple because I just want that taste on my tongue. So that was that was sort of the discipline.
Joe Owens:Was like, okay.
Cathy:Can Way way more.
Merry:Way more disciplined.
Cathy:Most people cannot eat two potato chips because they're made with ingredients that make them addictive, so That's you right. Keep eating Give us some keys to living longer, and talk about some strategies for physical and mental wellness.
Joe Owens:So my mom in 1960 had open heart surgery, and she was one of the earliest people in the country to have open heart surgery. Yeah, 1960. She was I think 33 when she had it. I have to do the numbers. In any event, they told her that if she did not have the surgery, she'd be dead in six months.
Joe Owens:If she had the surgery, she could live another two years. Two years came and went, five years came and went, ten years came and went, twenty years came and went, once she had surgery- Well, it worked just fine, but what was interesting about it was that she said to the doctors and nurses and everything, I'll outlive all of you. So every year, there was a nurse who was a candy striper when she first had the surgery, would send her a Christmas card saying Merry Christmas, and these are the people in the team that died. Oh. Seriously.
Joe Owens:In 1990 That's August, she got a Christmas card that said, The last member of your surgical team died. February 5, the next year, thirty nine years to the day of her surgery, she died. She called me when she got the Christmas card, and she said, I outlived all of them. I told you so.
Cathy:And it was like permission for her to die, though. That was And
Joe Owens:she had a goal. So but but she used this people would say, you know, how have you done this? How have you lived thirty nine years when they gave you six months to live? And she said, Keep reading. I'm like, I don't like the alternative.
Joe Owens:And so she was always very positive. She was also very, very funny, had great sarcastic sense of humor. But that was sort of in me from the get, you know, like from when I was a little kid. And so my I think if you stay positive, every morning is a gift. There's a reason why they call it present, and so you get a gift every day.
Joe Owens:You should be up. You should be happy. You should find things to do. I sort of get it down to people and to passion and to purpose. You have to have things that you love, you have to have lots of friends, and you have to have some reason to keep going.
Joe Owens:So if you've got those three things in your life, great. Fine. You know, you have setbacks. You have setbacks. You know, if you want to know about about setbacks and read a book.
Joe Owens:You know, the hero is one way, then it's another way, then he has to change, then bad things happen, then good things happen, and in the end, he wins, and he gets the girl, and he gets the money, or he gets, you know, whatever. And you're you're the author of your own book, so don't quit the book halfway through. Absolutely. So I mean, I think Yeah. I think that's it.
Joe Owens:And, you know, plus take care of yourself. I mean, you know, I Yeah. Absolutely. I never smoked, Barely, you know, barely drank. Like I said, I was more interested in cupcakes.
Joe Owens:I worry about how much I weigh. I worry about how I look. I care about that stuff. I think that's if you always have a goal. And also, I I think the best advice I can give is you need a really long to do list, because you can't die until you've done everything on your to do list.
Joe Owens:So just keep
Merry:Oh, adding see, things to keep making it longer. Yeah.
Joe Owens:Keep making your to do list longer, you'll live forever.
Merry:I love that. That's great. I think I'll start it today.
Cathy:So that's why all the people in history haven't been living forever. They didn't have that list. Well, I'm just teasing you.
Joe Owens:No. They didn't. They haven't. If if Alexander the Great had had a longer list Maybe he is. Conquer.
Joe Owens:Conquer. Conquer. He didn't. He was
Merry:Yeah. He should have come out west.
Joe Owens:Okay. To more countries.
Merry:Yeah. So you mentioned this a little bit earlier, but how would you advise baby boomers to reframe aging?
Joe Owens:I think, and this sounds goofy, forget about it.
Merry:Forget about it.
Joe Owens:Forget about it. Just
Cathy:Forget about it. It's
Joe Owens:a calendar. It's a clock. What's funny is that most most people think I'm younger than than I am, because I I do care about you know, I'm I'm like baseball hats, sunglasses, you know, and a couple of people have said, you don't walk like an old man. I don't know what that means, but you know, you bounce in your step and all that. What's what's funny is that I'll be out doing something at a park or a dog park or whatever, and some guy will bend over to pick up the ball to throw for his dog, and he'll like grunt or make some kind of noise or something, and I'll kind of laugh.
Joe Owens:I said, Yeah. Said, Oh, man, when you're my age I said, Really? How old are you? He's 62.
Merry:You tell him how old you are?
Joe Owens:Well, usually say I have ties older than you, but yeah, then I tell them how old I am. They're Dude, I'm 75. Oh, you don't look 75 yet, and I don't feel 75 either, but I don't think about being 75. I don't wake up in the morning and go, Oh, I'm 75, so there's only certain things I can do. I'm 75, so I better not lift weights.
Joe Owens:Oh, I'm 75. You put those kind of restrictions on yourself, I'm this, so I can't do that, Uh-uh. And I've always had a I think it's partly my authority issues. You know, anytime somebody like, if you wanted me to do something, my mom knew this. If she wanted me to do something, tell me not to do it.
Joe Owens:You know? Don't you don't you rake that yard.
Merry:Reverse psychology.
Joe Owens:Don't you
Cathy:rake that yard.
Joe Owens:Don't you dare rake those leaves. But I think that the the best advice that I can give people is two things. Number one, don't restrict yourself based on the fact that you think you're old, or you think you're sick, or you think you're, you know, whatever. And the other thing is you're dead a long time, so get like live every minute because you have plenty like, I see people lay, like, sleeping in the middle of the day. Dude, you got plenty of time to sleep when the lights go out for the last time.
Joe Owens:Plenty of time. So, I mean, if you kind of keep those two things in mind, don't restrict yourself and remember, at some point, you're going to cross over to see all those dogs you had when they were alive. So, yes. Yeah. So that's You that's your dogs.
Joe Owens:Well, that's the only reason I want to go, you know, to the other side, because I want to see my dogs. Although, like my grandfather, he used to say, don't want to go to heaven. I don't I won't know anybody. I kind of I kind of feel the same way. But no, think the best advice is don't restrict yourself.
Joe Owens:Like, just go ahead. Don't don't think about I'm this age, so I can't do that, and just remember that while you're going, go. While you're here, enjoy every minute of it, because at some point your ride is over. So, you know, that.
Merry:It's a ride.
Joe Owens:It is. Yeah. But it's a ticket ride. It's a real good Disney ride. You know?
Joe Owens:It's it's a lot of fun. You guys remember Hunter S. Thompson, the fear and loathing in Las Vegas, and murder okay. All those rage So Hunter Thompson said that the point of life is not to arrive at the grave in this pristine body, really sort of well taken care of, you know, everything real nice. It's to kind of slide sideways on a motorcycle drunk, you know, in a cloud of dust and craziness with, you know, wow.
Joe Owens:What a wild ride. That was that was great. That's kind of the point. It you know, you're live life with it.
Merry:With a perfect body.
Joe Owens:With a well, if if you wanna keep going, then you gotta Yeah. Be of pain. You know? I can
Cathy:Well, on that note, what's the right kind of exercise to stay ageless?
Joe Owens:So keeping you should keep your abilities in mind when you exercise, because I I exercise pretty much the same as I did when I started at around age 60. And I had worked out before that, but you know, at 60 I started paying attention. Yeah. You do lighter weights with more reps. So you have to remember what lifting weights is all about.
Joe Owens:The whole point of lifting weights is you're pushing your muscles to do something. You get these sort of minute microscopic muscle tears when you lift weights, and then your your body rebuilds that muscle. So it fixes the tears, and so you get more muscle. That's the reason why, you know, the muscles get bigger and the muscles get, you know, hard and stuff like that. So but you need to keep in mind that my son, for example, can deadlift like two seventy five pounds.
Joe Owens:Wow. And he's not a big but he's not a big time weight lifter. I mean, he's healthy, but he can deadlift like two seventy five pounds. Doing that kind of lifting now for me or for anybody, 60, can have consequences. But if do 20 repetitions of a 20 pound weight instead of five repetitions of a 50 pound weight, you're better.
Joe Owens:So I think you tailor your workouts for those things that your body wants to do. So more repetitions with lighter weight, because all you want to really do now is tone. I'm never going to look like Arnold Schwarzenegger, but I do want to keep my muscles toned.
Cathy:And you probably don't want to look like that.
Joe Owens:It's I don't think so.
Cathy:You have to kill yourself to do it. It would be terrible.
Joe Owens:And you have to take a lot of steroids.
Cathy:Yeah. Oh, yeah. Yeah. But what about meditation and quieting the mind?
Joe Owens:Really, really important. You know, I mentioned earlier when I chatted, I mentioned chakras and things like that. And it could be anything. I mean, as you can tell, I'm a little bit quick, and I'm not the best meditator to sort of sit quietly in a room, plus the fact that the minute I sit on the floor, the dogs are all over me. Right.
Joe Owens:Know that, Hey, dad's on the floor. It must be playtime. But I can get into a meditative groove on a treadmill. I can get into a meditative groove when I'm running. I run outside.
Joe Owens:Not really the treadmill guy when I run, because I like bunnies and squirrels and trees and things like that, and I like that feeling of doing but you can get into the so anything that you can do repetitively, you can get yourself into sort of a meditative groove. But sometimes it's just turn off the stereo, turn off the TV, turn off the phone, and just sit with your own thoughts for five minutes. And people very, very seldom do that these days. Breathe. And some of them believe it's got to sit.
Joe Owens:And breathe. I learned how to do that deep breath, you push your belly out when you inhale like babies breathe. Babies naturally breathe the way we're supposed to. They don't inflate their lungs when they inhale, they push out their belly when they inhale, is sort of yoga breathing is what you should do. Or just read a book.
Joe Owens:Don't listen to the book, Don't read it on a tablet. Get paper, and sit down, and read the books. Anything, you say, just things to quiet your mind and calm yourself down and slow your heart rate.
Merry:I love that.
Cathy:I believe in that. I'm a meditator. I meditate right when I wake up. I just prop up the pillows and sit up and do it first.
Merry:Yeah. I do it too.
Joe Owens:I do it too. All day, I think.
Merry:It is. And I do it in the morning, but I'm like you. I can't sit still. I'm always, like, moving, always raring to go, and when can I get outside? And so it it it takes more effort to quiet yourself than it does if you're a very calm person.
Cathy:But Oh, I think It sets the tone for the day. It makes you feel better and more together and, you know, then yeah. It's it's a great way to start the day.
Joe Owens:I think meditation though sometimes gets a bad rap in the sense that people have an expectation that you have to be sitting quietly to do it, you can do that, or I mean, when you're when you're on a bicycle out riding on a trail someplace in the woods, you're it's insane. But but I tell people, and and this is something that I tell older people when they ride bicycles, and it makes me crazy. Do not ride a bicycle with AirPods in your ears or headphones on your head, because you can't hear what's going on around you.
Cathy:That's right.
Joe Owens:Yeah. If you're out there listening to Metallica at full volume pedaling like crazy, you're to get hit by a truck.
Merry:That's right.
Cathy:That's for the treadmill.
Joe Owens:Yeah. That's for the treadmill. That's when some place where you're not in jeopardy. But if you run like, I I like to ride out in the, you know, in the woods and things like that on a on a trail bike, but you take the take the headphones out and just ride through it, it's kinda you hear the birds, and you hear sort of what's going on around you, and that's as meditative, I think, an experience as you can have. Yeah.
Joe Owens:The
Cathy:other thing I think the other thing I think people beat themselves up because they say, well, my mind doesn't get quiet when I sit quietly. Of course, your mind doesn't get quiet. It's just going all over the place, but that's fine. That's what you do for twenty minutes. It doesn't matter what you're thinking about.
Cathy:You just can bring it back to your breathing and just keep meditating.
Joe Owens:A guy once told me a great meditative trick, and because of that, I think because all of us, you know, I'm going to meditate now. I have to pay the bills. I have to do the laundry. The car's got to go in the down, the dentist on tooth. You know?
Joe Owens:All of all of a sudden, your mind, Yeah. Instead of instead of sorting suddenly becoming Gandhi, you know, it it just becomes that to do list we talked about. This guy said, Okay, so here's how you meditate, and I do this when I actually sit down to sort of quietly balance chakras and do that kind of cool stuff. He said, Just close your eyes and visualize a ball sitting on a table. He said, And then lift the ball with your mind.
Joe Owens:Just raise it up, throw it a little bit, and then stop, and then turn the ball around to your right with your mind, turn the ball around with your left, make the ball go to the left, and it's remarkable, the focus that you get.
Cathy:So nice.
Joe Owens:Like It really is cool. Yeah. It's great, and it really is you get because you're doing a task, you're doing something, you have to work at it, but you know? And you just visualize the ball, and then and it works like a charm. And all that other stuff
Merry:you were talking, I just did it, and I felt this calm come over me. It's amazing.
Joe Owens:The distractions don't distract you. Like, your your mind because you cannot multitask. Like, people say they multitask. It's impossible. You can't do it.
Joe Owens:You can change really quickly, but you cannot actually multitask. But I find that when I'm doing that with the ball, it's very, very peaceful. I can't think of because anything the fear is that the minute you think of something else, you're going to drop the ball. Yeah. As as soon as something else comes in, the ball goes plunk back down to the table.
Joe Owens:It's like, okay. Pick it up again. I
Merry:want I'd like to shift gears a bit and go to something really loud, because I'm kind of a fan, a music fan. And I know that you worked with the Stones and Paul Simon and Bruce Springsteen among many. And I'd love to hear stories about them, and I'm sure our audience would, when you were working in the music business, and maybe something else that might surprise us.
Joe Owens:Well, you can tell that from the Rolling Stones that old age doesn't really have to hold you back.
Merry:That's right. Well, I heard Mick Jagger runs, like, five miles a day.
Joe Owens:Yeah. He does. I mean, know
Cathy:Yeah.
Joe Owens:Mick Mick is a is a is a wonder. He's a guy's a national treasure. I I started in the music business and sort of promoting records and and, know, taking I was the guy that took the records around to the radio stations. I was like a teenager. I mean, I was out doing this, and I, you know, took the records around the radio station, asked them to play them, and then that morphed into working right after college.
Joe Owens:And when I got out of college, I was going to be a writer. That was it. I was going to write full time. That was that. But I loved music, and I always played in bands and did things like that, and I got an offer from a record company to come and work for them, and I couldn't turn it down.
Joe Owens:Record So company, and right out of the box, I'm working with KISS and Donna Summer and the Village People and all these big groups. When I say with work with, I was taking the records to the radio stations to get played, and then when the band would come into town to perform a concert, I'd be the guy who would meet them at the airport, take them around to the radio stations to do the interviews, and then hang around to sound and all that kind of stuff. What that turned into, as I went through that for years and years and managing some bands, but I was always one on one with the artists. Then I got into the concert promotion business, working with a concert promoter, so I was always once again the guy who met with the bands, did the press conferences, took them around to do the interviews. Then I get into the corporate sponsorship business, so I became the bridge between corporate America and rock and roll, and I did $400,000,000 worth of those deals.
Joe Owens:So the Rolling Stones and Budweiser and Paul Simon and American Express and, and, and then got hired by those companies to be the one who went out and got them events, know, tours to sponsor and things like that. But I was always working directly with the bands, and Bruce Springsteen, just as as regular guy, as you can imagine, Rolling Stones, great guys But again, I wasn't their friend, and and, you know, we didn't like hang out or go to parties at their house or anything. It was business, but I was working one on one, and and got Oh,
Cathy:to business know to them.
Joe Owens:Yeah. Nick was a consummate businessman. Keith was just a real good mate to hang out with, and he would just, you know, sit down and and talk about stuff. Steve Tyler from Aerosmith, he would run the mezzanine at a concert venue after the soundtrack. He would do laps around the sort of mezzanine level of the concert hall, know, when we were playing like the big, know, the big stadiums and things like that, and he used to like to get somebody to run with him.
Joe Owens:So I did a tour with the band, and so I ran some laps, and he'd run like 9,000 laps, you know, and it was like a long run. So there'd constantly be people kind of, you know, jumping in to run three laps with him, then they'd go off and do something else. But That's that's great. Always great. And rock stars take care of themselves, because touring is brutal.
Joe Owens:Touring is an absolutely horrible, difficult thing to do, because you're constantly in that groove. You're up in the morning. You're on an airplane. You're flying someplace off the plane. You're dehydrated on the airplane.
Joe Owens:The food is irregular at best, so they really have to pay attention. When you you read those stories about the concert writer that has very specific stuff in the dressing room, well, it's not because they're being prima donnas, it's because the food that's around them needs to not be like M and M's and and, you know, cupcakes.
Cathy:I don't know. There were a few writers where people said M and M's, but no brown ones and stuff like that. You heard of those.
Joe Owens:That was Van Halen. Yeah. And and they did that to did that to goof on people. It was it was fun. But they did Yeah.
Joe Owens:You know, they did pay attention to what they ate. The the Rolling Stones were funny because you go into Mick's dressing room, and there'd be tea and incense and a vaporizer and a yoga mat and soft music, and you'd go into Keith's dressing room, and there'd be six cartons of Marlboros and 12 bottles of Jack Daniel's. Oh, jeez. You know? Yeah.
Cathy:But know. They're both still here. He's outlived everybody else.
Joe Owens:But what what's the joke that the millennials have to worry about what kind of world they're going to leave for Keith Richards? Oh,
Cathy:god. That's great. I love that.
Joe Owens:That I loved working in that business. I I worked for a concert company, which is how I actually ended up working with all these bands, because it was a company that was across Canada. So I was in Toronto, but I was somehow involved in all these things, and when the bands came to Toronto, I was the guy who spent time with them, then my team worked across the country. Then the guy who owned that company started something they called three sixty five Degree Tours, which was he would buy all of the rights from the band, the T shirt rights, the concert rights, the broadcast rights, everything, and he'd give them in advance. He'd give the Rolling Stones $50,000,000 like a check.
Joe Owens:Here's $50,000,000, and then it would be our job to recover all that money through various revenue streams. So that was U2, and that was David Bowie, and that was Paul Simon, that was the Rolling Stones. But what I found in the main, you hear all these stories about rock bands are self destructive, crazy people who do nothing but drugs all the time. That's a percentage of them, and it's probably the same percentage as the general population, but most of these people know it's their job, if they mess up, they're not going to eat. So if you want to have a long career And so much of this sort of rock and roll lifestyle thing was overblown.
Joe Owens:It was just pure. Of
Cathy:all those times, what do you think was the most fun that you had with somebody or one of the groups?
Joe Owens:Right. I played golf with Alice Cooper.
Cathy:Oh. I've heard that he I heard he loves that.
Joe Owens:Great golfer.
Merry:Great golfer. Heard that too.
Joe Owens:Yeah. Charlie Daniels. Charlie Daniels band. I played golf with Charlie Daniels.
Cathy:Oh, I love him.
Joe Owens:Bruce Springsteen, we had a big party for Bruce Springsteen after his concert, and Bruce was sort of South Jersey. And when I was that sort of teenager, early twenties, I was in that area as well, and I was also playing in bands. And it turned out that Springsteen and I had a couple of friends in common, so we actually sat there for like twenty minutes and had a conversation about the old days playing in bars in Jersey, which was cool. Phil Collins was just an introduced Phil Collins to Cher. Was working on the Billboard Music Awards, Phil had never met Cher.
Joe Owens:Cher was big, and Cher was wearing high heeled stuff like that, and Phil was not big. And so I came up, and he was like a little kid. I mean, was like introducing a five year old to Santa Claus. He was just a huge fan. I knew him and the Genesis guys pretty well, because I knew the manager pretty well.
Joe Owens:So I brought him up, and I said, stand back, and here's here's Cher way up here, and here's, you know, Phil down here. But but generally, rock stars are very nice people when they feel safe. Like when you're backstage or or you're behind the curtain with them, they can sort of drop all of it, and they feel safe, and the security's there, and so they're not afraid. They're just afraid. They're afraid of the photographers.
Joe Owens:They're afraid of, you know, crazy people. Yeah. And you know,
Cathy:And they found you extremely approachable and all that, so that's why they could open up with you. That's great.
Joe Owens:I was the I was the money in the promo guy, so they knew that I was the guy who was gonna get them on the radio, and I was the guy who was gonna get them a couple of million bucks from Budweiser. And the funniest thing, though, is that people ask me about pictures. You must have a lot of great pictures. I don't have any pictures. I have two pictures.
Joe Owens:I have a picture of me with Tom Jones, and I have a picture of me with the Pointer I don't have any other pictures. The reason I don't have any other pictures, especially on the concert promotion side, is that the minute I became a fan, I couldn't be the business person anymore. Yeah. So I would have broken down that relationship that we had as sort of business professionals, but I would always get the sponsored vice president to get his picture taken, or the radio station guy. I always make sure that those people got those souvenir pictures.
Joe Owens:If I had to prove that I had that career by pictures, I'd No. I can't do that. I don't have any evidence.
Cathy:Tell us what key lessons you learned about life and success from being in the music world, and how can business entrepreneurs apply rock star thinking to their careers to help them stand out?
Joe Owens:Okay. I'm gonna do something silly right now, but I'll be right back. Okay? One one second. I'm gonna go in the magic closet.
Joe Owens:Okay. Funny you should ask. New book.
Cathy:New book.
Joe Owens:Rockstar Real Estate Agent. Real Estate Agent.
Cathy:Oh, good.
Joe Owens:Right? Yeah. The the idea for real estate agents or anybody in any kind of business, the reason why rock stars are successful, the reason why musicians are successful, Dolly Parton, Rolling Stones, Metallica, whoever, they find a niche. They find a thing that is unique to them. They perfect that niche, and they attract people, and they take care of those people, and they take care of that niche, and they protect it, and they don't they don't veer into another lane.
Joe Owens:Establish who they are, They develop develop a reputation for that. The the real estate agent book just basically says, look, guys, real estate agents always say everybody is my customer. Everybody who can buy a house is my customer. That's not true. And the lady who wrote the foreword for the book specializes in mid century modern.
Joe Owens:So if you specialize in mid century modern, you specialize in beachfront homes, you specialize whatever, and that goes for anything. If you do podcasts about about baby boomers, if you do podcasts about bowling. And you guys would have no following, you'd have no reputation if this week it was baby boomers, and next week it's bowling, and next week it's cooking, and next week it's fishing, because people wouldn't seek you out for that information about that specific thing. So I think anybody in business, you find something, and also that thing that resonates, that thing that you love. The girl who does mid century modern houses loves mid century modern houses.
Joe Owens:So So that's her the thing that I learned from all those years in that business is find that thing that resonates with you, and be as good at it as you can. Stay in your lane. Just whatever that is, stay in your lane, and make that And you can have a lifelong career, because people who jump from career to career to career, they're in their sixties, and they're still trying to find customers, and they're still out there to lead generate, and it's crazy. If they had done something in their thirties and stayed with it, they would know everybody in the business, and business would come to them. So I think if there's if there's one thing that I learned in my 100 years of life is that Oh, why?
Joe Owens:Something and and in in my world, the thing that I found was that I'm good at telling stories. So whether it's writing books, or whether it's going to Budweiser and telling them the story of how sponsoring the Rolling Stones tour is going to sell them boatloads of beer. So I was as a salesperson, I was always couching my sales pitches in stories. Instead of giving them statistics and numbers and things like that, I would always be starting out my my sales pitches. What?
Joe Owens:Imagine. The lights go down. The music plays a little bit, the band comes on stage, the lights come on and everybody you know? And and when you tell the story that way to the product manager selling Budweiser beer, he's experiencing what his sponsorship is going to be Yeah. Not getting a statistical analysis of, you know, what the return is gonna be on his investment.
Joe Owens:I love that. Find your passion, and and just live it and perfect it, and and that's what rock stars do. That's how they become famous. That's great. That's great.
Joe Owens:You've seen when they've gone off track. I mean, U2 did Zoropa, and it was a terrible album, and their fans stuck with them. Or who in who in the world thought it was a good idea for Aerosmith to rap? Yeah. Right.
Joe Owens:Right. Yeah. You would never you would never confuse Bruce Springsteen with Metallica, and you'd never confuse Metallica with Justin Bieber, and you'd never confuse Dolly Parton with Lady Gaga. You know exactly who they are, and and when I just said those names, you can hear their music in your head. So find something you're good at, develop a reputation, and you'll be you'll be having a good time.
Cathy:So what advice would you give marrying me.
Merry:Yeah. Right. Yeah. So what advice would you give to someone entering the music and film business about managing their mental and physical wellness? It's a very high stress environment.
Joe Owens:It really is. I could run and get another book if you want.
Merry:That's okay. Tell us. Tell us.
Joe Owens:No. Just talk. I did a book last year called Madhouse.
Cathy:Because we're mostly audio. I mean, I know we could we could
Joe Owens:see each
Merry:other, but
Joe Owens:I I did a book last year called Madhouse, and it was, again, for real estate agents, and it's basically about the the mental health struggles that people in in business and in life go through. It was a bit of sort of self help of, know, there's loneliness and isolation and and anxiety and all those things that we all go through. It it really goes it really goes back when you're when you're working music, and and movies now for me, I wrote movies for a long time, and I wrote books for a long time, but I'm now getting into the producer side of and producers basically raise money. That's basically the job is is, you know, raising money for films to be made. And so I'm doing something new, which is which is fun, but I think authenticity is the key there.
Joe Owens:Think you I think you have to really take a minute, sit down, who am I? What do I care about? How do I present myself? And and really figure out who you are, and then be that person through thick and thin. Because the music business is full of people that are always playing a part, whether they're actors or whether they're business people.
Joe Owens:They're always changing being a chameleon. They're changing to fit in, and that gets old for people sometimes when they don't know who you're going to be the next time they talk to you on the phone. And if you're constantly trying to say the things that you think they want to hear, you don't really develop a reputation for standing for anything. And I think anybody who is going to be in those businesses in particular, you need to be authentic. You need to you need to figure out, who am I?
Joe Owens:What am I doing? And so they get the same version of you every time you show up, and and people respect you.
Merry:Yeah. We'll talk a little bit about reinvention, if you don't mind. I just am curious about reinventing yourself, because what would you advise somebody who wants to be looking to make a change in their lives, whether they're old or young?
Joe Owens:The key to that, I think, again, is what I just said. You're not you're not reinventing yourself. I think the the key to the reinvention thing is all you're doing is learning a new set of information. That's all it is. I have been the same person doing the same thing for my entire adult life, and whether it was promoting records, whether it was working in video games, whether it was working in real estate, whether it was, you know, working in sports.
Joe Owens:I mean, I worked in in minor league baseball for, ten years. Whether it's writing books, you know, whatever it is, I've always been the same guy, and all I've done is replaced a a body of knowledge about music with a body of knowledge about video games, with a body of knowledge about sports. But all the things that I've gotten involved in, I never sold photocopiers. You know? Like, I I never got involved with something that I I didn't like.
Joe Owens:So I always made sure that I like baseball. I like video games. I like music. I like movies. I like writing.
Joe Owens:So I think if you're going to reinvent yourself, find something that ignites your passion. Find something that maybe some of the it goes back to passion, purpose, and people. Find something where you can you can continue to work with some of the people that you've developed. Like, lots of my music business people came with me to video games. Lots of my video game people came with me to sports, because they were marketing people, they were press people, they were, you know, relationships with television stations, radio stations, all that.
Joe Owens:So I was just showing up with another story about another new thing, saying, okay, well I'm not doing music anymore. Now I'm doing video games, but it's entertainment, and you're an entertainment editor in a newspaper, so let's do that. And then I go back to my entertainment editor at the newspaper and say, give me the sports guy or girl. Who's the sports person I should talk to at the newspaper? So you you get those people around you, and you mind those people, and and you sort of keep those relationships going.
Joe Owens:And all you're doing is it's like wearing a blue jacket, then a black jacket, then a green jacket. All you're doing is changing clothes.
Merry:Yeah. Sounds sounds
Cathy:What would what would you like our late boomers podcast audience to have as a great takeaway today?
Joe Owens:I think the the title of the book is Feeling Groovy, and I think what I would like everybody who is looking and listening at this is just take a breath and take a beat. Realize what a wonderful gift it is for you to be wherever you are in life. Just enjoy it. Quit worrying about stuff. Mark Twain said that people spend most of their time worrying about things that never happen.
Joe Owens:One of the things that came up when I talked to boomers about this book and everything is that, Well, know, why should we exercise? I'm going to wake up tomorrow morning and have some terrible disease, or I'm going to this, or I'm going to fall down. Don't do that. Don't do that. Enjoy your life for as long as the ride continues, and then be able to sort of leave it with a smile on your face and a bunch of people who will miss you when you're gone, but will tell stories about you.
Joe Owens:Native Americans have a phrase they use when somebody passes on. They say they've become legend. And I think it's great. I think you just, know, wanna do things that, you know, people will think fondly of you after you're gone and and tell stories about you and hopefully embellish the story so that suddenly you're Superman.
Merry:I love that. You, Joe. That's great. We all are a legend to ourselves, and hopefully, the people that we love will pass it on. Thank Well, our guest today on Late Boomers has been Joe Owens, who is a true Renaissance man.
Merry:He's a storyteller, a musician, and film maven, and a man who knows how to enjoy life. You can reach out to Joe via his website, joe owens books dot com. Is that right, Joe?
Joe Owens:That's right. And joeowensbooks@gmail.com is the email I'd love to hear from people.
Cathy:Oh, that'd great. Yeah. Please tell tell your friends, our listeners I'm talking to now, tell your friends about our late boomers podcast and visit our new website, lateboomers.us. It's us, where you can easily see all our episodes and find an interview that resonates with you. Join us next week.
Cathy:We'll be talking with another exciting guest. We're on Instagram at I am Kathy Worthington and at I am Mary Elkins and at Late Boomers. Please subscribe to our YouTube channel as well. We do appreciate our listeners, and thank you to Joe Owens today.
Joe Owens:Yes. Thank you. It was a lot of fun.
Merry:It was great fun. Thank you.
Cathy:Thank you for joining us on late boomers, the podcast that is your guide to creating a third act with style, power, and impact. Please visit our website and get in touch with us at lateboomers.us. If you would like to listen to or download other episodes of late boomers, go to ewnpodcastnetwork.com.
Merry:This podcast is also available on Spotify, Spotify, Apple Podcast, and most other major podcast sites. We hope you make use of the wisdom you've gained here and that you enjoy a successful third act with your own style, power, and impact.
