Living Life On Your Own Terms: How Rick Seymour Found And Maintained His Passion For 47 Years

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It is often challenging to maintain interest, let alone a passion, for what we are doing for nearly half a century. Yet, that is exactly what Rick Seymour has done. He has been helping people improve their health through individualized nutrition plans for 47 years and reports feeling even more passionate about his business than he did when he started! It was not an easy journey though. Finding the right fit involved exploring many different options and transitioning out of corporate America took years of hard work and sacrifice. Learn more about Rick’s inspiring journey as he bares it all in this conversation with Stephen Jaye. --- Listen to the podcast here Living Life On Your Own Terms: How Rick Seymour Found And Maintained His Passion For 47 Years One thing I talk about quite a bit is this idea of living by the script. By the script, what I'm talking about is the standard expectations that we have almost unwritten in our culture now. Every culture has them. In this culture, this manifest says something along the lines of go to school, get good grades, get a good job, gradually move up the ladder, have 2.3 kids. I'm not here to throw shade on anyone that is living according to the script. If you're happy with it, I'm happy for you. One of my goals is to open people up to other possibilities. I want to introduce my guest, Rick Seymour, who began living in a semi-retired state at the age of 38. Rick, welcome to the show. Thanks, Stephen. I’m delighted to be with you. Thank you so much. Your journey is going from something that was way more by the script in the sense that you were working a standard corporate job to what you're doing now, which is a state of semi-retirement or working at your own discretion. Describe the overall process. "If somebody is forward thinking enough that they have a growth mindset, they realize that by working on themselves they can accomplish things they weren't able to do in the past. All of a sudden things change dramatically." When I went to school at CU, I had a Major in Applied Mathematics and Physics because it was easy for me. When I got out of school, it's like, “What do you do with that if you want to stay in Colorado?” In those days, there are only two significant corporations to work for that could utilize that talent. That was Martin Marietta, which is now Lockheed Martin, and Ball Brothers. Martin Marietta was very involved in the space program. I came into it early. I'm literally a recovering rocket scientist. I started right at the end of the last Apollo mission and worked on our first space station, which was Skylab. Several years ago, we put a lander on Mars for the first time with less technology than you have in your cell phone. I worked on the early shuttle programs. As interesting and exciting as the work was, the bureaucracy, office politics, all of it made me a little crazy. Maintain A Passion: Until you're able to have that perspective about what it is you're doing and how you put yourself out there, it doesn't matter how good you are at what you do, you're not going to be very successful at it. Being a contractor to NASA, with another layer of politics and bureaucracy on top of us, it was a stifling atmosphere to work in. I got to the place where I didn't want to have to put up with all of that. You have to get a little beat up in the corporate world before being an entrepreneur and being on your own makes sense. I got to the point where I was tired of working for people I wouldn't hire. When you add to that, all of the stuff that goes with large corporations, I wanted out. I wouldn't even eat lunch in the company cafeteria because I was afraid somebody would talk to me. You'd know what to do with that. I couldn't figure a way out but knew that I wanted out and kept striving to make that happen. I knew I wanted the freedom of being in my own business. I wanted the flexibility with a good enough income to enjoy the time freedom.