John Bradshaw - Conversation with Gabriel McClover
John Bradshaw: Gabriel, thanks so much for joining me. I appreciate you being here.
Gabriel McClover: Yeah, my pleasure.
John Bradshaw: A moment ago I said you've dedicated yourself to bettering the lives of others. Quickly, how?
Gabriel McClover: Well, we do that in a number of different ways. Let me back up a little bit. What has made me passionate about health is, you know, when we started understanding about health principles and I started changing my diet and my lifestyle, I saw that I had family members who were dying from diseases that can easily be reversed. And so it really put a passion, well, not only myself, but my wife, to start to create different avenues that we can share the things that we've learned. So we started doing different cooking classes and things in our community and then it just continued to grow. And then I was able to use some different techniques and things I learned from my business background to really start to make a greater impact.
John Bradshaw: Okay, I wanna ask you about entrepreneurialism, what you're doing, I wanna ask you about that business background, how you ended up where you are, what you're seeing, I mean, you do this for a reason, what's the reason? The proof surely is in the pudding, so what's the proof? Let's back up. Tell me a little bit about yourself. Where do you come from and what was life like for you as a young person?
Gabriel McClover: Well, I'm originally from Fort Lauderdale, Florida, and I grew up in a Christian home, and we were very, very competitive 'cause we were all involved in sports.
John Bradshaw: Okay.
Gabriel McClover: My brother played football, he played Division 1 football. He actually played in the NFL for some time.
John Bradshaw: Played in the NFL.
Gabriel McClover: I played Division 1 football up in Buffalo, New York. My younger brother played Division 1 football down in Florida at Florida Atlantic.
John Bradshaw: That's three brothers, all Division 1 football players.
Gabriel McClover: Yeah. And then my sister had a Division 1 scholarship to run track.
John Bradshaw: Have mercy.
Gabriel McClover: So you can imagine a household with four hyperly competitive individuals.
John Bradshaw: Oh, yeah.
Gabriel McClover: And my father was very instrumental in our upbringing, teaching us about hard work, and seeing my mom as well, just hard working individuals. And it really impacted us.
John Bradshaw: What position did you play?
Gabriel McClover: I played wide receiver. So you see my big hands.
John Bradshaw: Oh. Hey, how about that?
Gabriel McClover: I like to catch passes.
John Bradshaw: Division 1 football. The interesting thing about football in America, if you are fortunate enough, and I'll put it that way, to play in college, unless you're one of the point something or other percentage who go to the NFL, it's over after that.
Gabriel McClover: Yeah.
John Bradshaw: It's over, it's college and then goodbye.
Gabriel McClover: It really is.
John Bradshaw: You're 22-years-old or whatever you are, you're full of energy, but you got pickleball to look forward to.
Gabriel McClover: That's right, that's right. And that's, you know, in the NFL, and they say NFL stands for "not for long," right?
John Bradshaw: Yeah.
Gabriel McClover: Because you know that this is just the attrition and the hits and things, it's not gonna last very long.
John Bradshaw: No, no, no. And a team that does so well at the beginning of the season, "What happened to them"? "Well, they got banged up".
Gabriel McClover: Yep.
John Bradshaw: So many injuries.
Gabriel McClover: That's right.
John Bradshaw: I heard some team this season on its fourth quarterback.
Gabriel McClover: That's right.
John Bradshaw: I mean, you have a deep depth chart to be able to function on your fourth quarterback.
Gabriel McClover: No question, no question.
John Bradshaw: When the football days were over, did you miss it?
Gabriel McClover: I missed the environment, the camaraderie, the teamwork, and the games.
John Bradshaw: Yeah.
Gabriel McClover: Practice, training, not so much.
John Bradshaw: Not so much, not so much.
Gabriel McClover: But that part of it was something that I missed. And so when I left college, I got into sales. And so you still had that camaraderie, you still had goals, you still had things. And I had a lot to learn. And so that environment kinda projected over there, mm-hmm.
John Bradshaw: So sales, what do you find yourself doing?
Gabriel McClover: So I did everything. My first sales job was a straight commission job. And I was right outta college. My girlfriend at the time, now my wife, she was pregnant. And so I had to really make a choice on following, you know, my path with football because I got injured my senior year, so there was another route for me to potentially, Canadian football, those things. Or to go directly to the corporate world.
John Bradshaw: Now let me ask you about this, so your brother, it's your older brother?
Gabriel McClover: Yeah, older brother.
John Bradshaw: Yeah, so the NFL wasn't an unknown, foreign world for you. You'd seen it up close.
Gabriel McClover: That's right.
John Bradshaw: Did you like what you see, you say, "I could maybe, I would like to have a crack at that"? Or did you see, mm? How were you about?
Gabriel McClover: Obviously, when you're training and you have these aspirations when you're younger, you wanna have a bite of that apple, to have an opportunity to go to the highest level and to kinda prove yourself. But looking back, I think it was the best thing for me when I got injured, because there was a lot of traps and things that people don't even realize, that when you get into that world that you can be exposed to. And, man, I've seen people get swallowed up. And I'm just, I am very thankful to God that he put me on a different direction, and I went and started learning different principles. That I'm using now, to really further the message of health and to work for God.
— So you feel like you got a good education?
— Yeah.
— You didn't freeze to death up there in Buffalo?
— No, Buffalo, New York is again, we see in recent things, five feet of snow. I went from, think about this, Florida, Fort Lauderdale.
— Yeah, Fort Lauderdale. Beach, sand, the sun.
— Yeah, it's hot all year round,
— All year.
— to Buffalo, New York. Now, when I went on my recruiting visit, it was snowing.
— Oh, it was?
— It was snowing.
— And you went back?
— But what I thought was, you know, so I never, I mean I really didn't travel much, I thought Buffalo, New York, and New York City was like right next to each other.
— Same, yeah, oh, yeah.
— So I went out, get up, I'm like, "When are we going to New York City"? They were like, "Oh, that's like six to eight hours. You gotta go through the Adirondacks, Upstate New York. And then you get to New..." I'm like, and then I'm sitting there out the window and you just looking, and you got homesick and all you see is snow. Five feet of snow, so.
— And you're basically in Canada.
— Yeah, right there.
— It's right there.
— 30 minutes from Niagara Falls.
— Uh-huh, uh-huh.
— Yeah, yeah.
— So you're done with college, you thought about CFL and so forth, got into sales, where were you going? Did you know?
— I had no clue.
— No?
— My thought was I wanted to support my family.
— Sure.
— So that was my goal. I didn't know it was gonna end up with, you know, the career path. Even what I'm doing now, I would've never thought about that because some of the companies I work for, I thought I was gonna retire. You know, I said, "Oh, man, this is perfect. I have the career path, I have, you know, really, a career track. I know where I'm gonna be," but God just suddenly just took me outta that and did a different direction.
— Let's zoom forward and then zoom back. So today you run a restaurant.
— That's right.
— Today you help people improve their health.
— That's right.
— Give me another, in your words, what else are you doing in the area of health?
— So we are all also doing what we call a Healthy Taste. Healthy Taste is a plant-based Vegfest. So being that we're in the restaurant industry, and we started our restaurant back in 2016 in Somerville, Georgia. And as we would go out to promote our business, we'll go to these Vegfests. And they're all over the country, they draw tens of thousands of people. And I noticed that their emphasis was primarily on animal rights, activism.
— That's right, sure.
— And I'm at the booth there and I'm like, "Well," I'm telling people, sharing people that the food that we make is not vegan junk food. This food, it actually helps to reverse chronic lifestyle diseases. And people will look at us like, "Oh, I thought veganism was all about animal rights".
— I find it so interesting, I'm a vegan myself. And I find it so interesting when I hear people, what they think, vegans are lunatics, and activistic, and all they want, make you stop wearing leather. And so forth.
— That's right.
— I mean, that's cool if that's what people are into. But that's a very narrow slice of people who are eating
— Very narrow slice.
— on a plant-based diet for the benefit of their health and even their spiritual health.
— That's right.
— So you were coming up against that same thing?
— Yeah, so I was like, I'm at the event, you know, I was like, "You know what? I think we can do this event better, but focus more on the health side of it". So that's where the idea, so the Healthy Taste, we call it Healthy Taste because we want people to see the healthier side of eating plant-based. And that's the other thing that we're doing in the community as well.
— And I've been to one of your events and it was outstanding. And I thought, "Well, this thing can be 1,000 times bigger".
— Oh, yeah.
— And I hope it is.
— Yeah, and, you know, the one that we did, it was started in Knoxville back in 2015, very, very small. And then they started growing. And then what I did, I joined the organization last year with the auspices of expanding. So we started in Chattanooga and it was by faith, you know, we went out and we just like, "Hey, we're gonna do this. We have a mission, this is what we wanna do". And it was just by faith. So really no financial support, no donations, we just kinda bootstrapped it. And the event came and I think the estimates were between four to 5,000 people that came out. We had a kids program, we had almost 800 kids come through there. And now next year when we do it, we plan on it to be a lot bigger. And now we're seeing that not only Chattanooga, you know, we partnered with the YMCA back in October, and we did Healthy Taste Kids. And we did a plant-based cooking school for the kids. We had over 130 something kids register. Now I always say, if anybody, you know, is in church and they teach the little, you know, the cradle roll classes and these classes, you will see that dealing with that many amount of people in a short amount of time can be really, really challenging.
— Ooh, yeah. Oh, yeah.
— But by God's grace, we were able to put a beautiful event together and the YMCA were like, they wanna partner with us in the future as well.
— Look, and who wouldn't? I just read, maybe I didn't grab, what I read was the headline, the number of people with pre-diabetes, young people pre-diabetes, going through the roof.
— That's right.
— This is an absolute crisis.
— That's right.
— And as you know so well, the vast majority of type two diabetes cases don't even need to exist.
— That's right.
— And can be reversed.
— Absolutely.
— So why in the world wouldn't you reverse it if you could?
— A lot of it is education. Right, you know, I remember we've worked with people, 'cause we also do a program through our restaurant called The FITT Challenge, and we've worked with several thousand people over the last, since 2016. And when you start talking to 'em about type two diabetes and they say, "Yeah, I got type two diabetes, this is my blood sugar". And I said, "Well, okay, well, if we follow these principles, we're very confident that your body is designed to heal itself and it will heal itself if those conditions are correct". And they're like, "No, but," you know, they think it's a life sentence, that they're gonna be on insulin and metformin for the rest of their lives.
— Oh, there are physicians
— Oh, yeah.
— who will tell you this is a life sentence. But nothing could be further from the truth. I mean, maybe in a rare case, but type two diabetes generally extraordinarily treatable if you adopt the right principal.
— Oh, absolutely. And the beautiful thing about it is the literature's starting to come out. You're starting to see so much, so many studies. You know, you got T. Colin Campbell, you got Dr. Elson, and you got all these prominent people in there. But you also have other physicians that are starting to say, "You know what? This is real, I cannot deny the results". You know?
— Let's back up again, we'll get to this again later. Let's get back to you. So you're making your way, you're outta school, you got a girlfriend and a baby on the way.
— That's right.
— And you're starting to get involved in sales. But you discovered somewhere along the line that you had a talent here.
— Yes.
— Started to do quite well. Walk me through some of that.
— So naturally introverted, people ask me, you know, and every personality test I take, I'm like 90% introverted, but I'm extroverted when I need to be.
— There you go.
— Right, and so when I started developing, I didn't know I had a talent for it. Most of it was necessity, right, when you're up against it
— Oh, yeah.
— and you need to make something happen, stuff come outta you.
— You'll find talents, you did not know you had.
— Oh, yeah. But then as I started, you know, really started learning some of these principles and learning sales principles and sales principles from a Christian perspective.
— So sales expertise can be learned?
— Oh, oh, yeah, absolutely.
— You don't have to just be born that way?
— Oh, absolutely.
— All right.
— I look at sales as me presenting information, right? You know, I'm a Christian and when I'm studying the Bible with somebody, I'm not trying to convince them to do anything. I think, you know, what I'm doing is presenting information and I'm hoping that you make the right decision.
— Sure, yeah.
— That's all I'm doing. And that's how I look at it when I'm looking at it from a perspective, from health. You know, I just present the information and then from there, I hope people make the right decisions.
— Yeah, so tell me a little bit about your work experience, and some of the environments you've found yourself, and some of the experiences you had.
— Yeah, so I've worked for three Fortune 500 companies in various sales and leadership positions. And I tell people, it's very difficult to be a Christian in some of these environments. You're in a hyper-competitive environment and when you excel, they kinda puff you up, right? And that can be very, very dangerous from a Christian. So I have excelled in every company I've worked for, and what I've learned from these three companies, number one you got, you know, leadership, operations, administrations, and sales. But one thing I noticed from every company I worked for was the number one in its industry, right? And then, and I said, "Man, what is the difference here? Why are you number one and number two"? And I remember one exec, I mean, some of these guys are some of the most brilliant business people I ever worked with, he goes, "When you're number one, you try to do things that are very difficult, that's hard to replicate". And it always stuck with me. And when I started, you know, doing what we do and being a Christian, I say, "You know what? Everything that I do, I want it to be as close to perfection as possible". So, and my goal is to try to reach the ideal that God wants to have in my business. So that means everything elevates, the quality, the marketing, everything comes up, versus me just saying, "Hey, I'm okay being number two, I'm okay being number three". I'm trying to do things with excellence. So that's why when people come and people bring us in, we work with organizations with the FITT Challenge, and one thing they said, "You guys are incredibly professional. Like, I just wanna commend you guys on the professionalism that you guys exhibit because we've worked with other organizations or different ministries and we said the professionalism was way, way down". So you can appreciate that.
— Is it hard really to raise your game and be more professional rather than less professional?
— Oh, it's not hard at all.
— Yeah.
— Man, it doesn't always take a lot to raise your game.
— Just to raise it up. And that's the separation of organizations that are successful and not successful. Doing that little bit more, just a little bit more to bring the professionalism up, and it goes a long way. And we see that 'cause, you know, with our FITT Challenge, and I know we're gonna talk about this a bit more, FITT Challenge, we deal with a lot of people who are wealthy. You know, we have done deliveries to homes that are, you know, it's a compound right here in this area. And you come in there with a paper bag that's got a stain on it and things like this. And, "Hey, this is your delicious plant-based food here," and the presentation's not there. Even when my wife makes her meals, it's just beautifully put together and it looks aesthetically pleasing, and people eat it and they're just like, they compliment, "Wow, that food looks amazing. The presentation, everything is in nicely".
— And it's not snobbery, it's human nature.
— That's right.
— It's human nature.
— That's right.
— You cared enough about me to bring something that I'm not gonna look sideways at.
— That's right.
— You know, you obviously care enough about you to do something that reaches a certain stand.
— No question about it.
— Yeah, yeah.
— No question about it. And that's the key. And I think what we do in our organizations is, you know, with Healthy Tastes, and all these things kinda, they all combine, they all pretty much, they coexist together. But we make sure that professionalism is at a point. And guess what? You try your best and then you sit back and you say, "Okay, how can we be better? We're not satisfied". You know, we were in Arizona and we did this homeless dinner. And I was talking to some young people and they were really excited for what we did. And I said, "That's great". I said, "But guess what? People are still hungry today. Like right now, as we're talking, the same people we fed yesterday is hungry. So what am I telling you is, turn the page". Right, we turn the page, we learn, we take those principles, the things that we did well, let's improve upon it and let's continue to move forward and not worry about what we did in the past, but continue to press forward.
— You were experiencing success in the business world.
— Yes. Yes.
— Big companies. You realistically could have looked forward to a long life
— Oh, yeah.
— of great success in the business world. Would've been nothing wrong with that. Nothing wrong with that.
— Nothing wrong with that.
— Unless, of course, you perceived it was harming you spiritually, in which case you'd do this or that. But Daniel managed to survive.
— That's right.
— Joseph, they both survived in some pretty challenging environments. But you looked at this thing and you could have said, "Hey, God has blessed me here. Let's just ride the train and do well and use our influence," that'd be perfectly fine. But you didn't do that.
— No.
— Tell me why not?
— Well.
— Or tell me how and why not?
— Well, I can tell you why I looked at that and, you know, I was gonna take over a $52 million sales organization, literally, and I became, you know, a Christian, an Adventist Christian specifically. And I realized and I started looking at my family, and I said, "You know what? I'm not spending as much time as I need to," and I have six children, right? So now I have six. And I'm looking at this, I'm like, "I need to really put my energy into what's important, which is our family. Which is our family".
— If you'd put your energy into what someone might describe as providing for your family, not a thing anyone could say against it. You could held your head up high, but one day, God is gonna say, "Where's your flock, your little flock that I've given you"?
— And that's what he, that...
— Maybe you could pull it off, but, man, that's hard.
— Yeah.
— Real successful people spend a lot of time away. Real successful people gotta dedicate themselves to doing what they're doing.
— That's right.
— I'm not saying it's impossible. I'm not criticizing anybody who would've chosen a different route, but clearly you looked at what you perceived was best for your family.
— That's right. And that was the key. I saw I spent hours and hours on the road. I'm on the phone, I'm saying goodnight. And I'm like, "I'm missing all of these experiences". You know, they're only young a certain amount of time. You know, my oldest is 16, I mean.
— No, no,
— You got a year and a half.
— your oldest is gone.
— Yeah. Now she's gonna go to college.
— College.
— And now life is there, you know?
— That's it.
— And you're like, "What was more important"?
— Oh, man.
— "For me to go and be incredibly successful in the business world or to spend more time on our family"? And what I've learned is when God decided, you know, as we prayerfully made that decision, God didn't take those talents and just throw 'em to the side. He says, "I'm gonna take those talents and I'm gonna use 'em in a different way".
— Thank you for mentioning that. I was about to say that very same thing. You're at the place now where you say, "How many more Thanksgivings do we have with our oldest daughter"?
— Yeah.
— Maybe two.
— Yeah.
— And maybe more.
— Maybe more, but realistically...
— Maybe two. And then you go, "As a family, how many"? So that time is so, so, so limited. But as you said, thank God, you didn't jettison all that he taught you, you said God said, "Hang on to that. I got maybe even bigger plans".
— Oh, yeah.
John Bradshaw: "Maybe even bigger plans". All right, we're gonna talk about some of those plans in just a moment with Gabriel McClover. I'm John Bradshaw. I'm glad you're here for our conversation brought to you by "It Is Written".
John Bradshaw: Welcome back to "Conversations" brought to you by "It Is Written". My guest is Gabriel McClover, successful in business and he's shifted, following the leading of God, now, still successful, doing something a little different and oriented around the message of good health. So let's talk about your transition from business into a health focus, using your energies in a different way for the betterment of people. How big a step of faith was that? Or were you like, "Yeah, we got this"?
Gabriel McClover: No, it was definitely a step of faith. We were in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, and me and my family got together and we were praying. We said, "Lord, we desire to spend more time together as a family," and we wanted to get out of the city and get more into a rural area. So we were praying and the Lord, and we just got so tired of looking at all of these real estate sites, and we just started praying, "Lord, just send us where you need us". And within six months, we landed in Somerville, Georgia. And then from there, I had a passion for agriculture. I wanted to figure out a way to be self-sustainable in the country, growing my own food. So I went to an agricultural conference, and which I'm now on the board of that conference, that agricultural conference, and started to really understand growing food. So we just started growing all of this food. And then we were doing cooking classes and things in the community, like...
John Bradshaw: Hey, hey, hold on, hold on, hold on, before you get too far ahead here, do you have any background with gardening?
Gabriel McClover: No, absolutely not.
John Bradshaw: So you went from stop to go, from whoa to go.
Gabriel McClover: Oh, let me tell you.
John Bradshaw: Suddenly overnight, you're growing your own food, you're out in the garden with your boots on.
Gabriel McClover: Yeah, and I remember, you know, I'm training the tomatoes. And I'm like, "Lord, why didn't you pull me outta corporate America a long time ago"? Because I was really enjoying what I was doing.
John Bradshaw: Oh, you were, yeah.
Gabriel McClover: I was enjoying the gardening, and I had no clue what I was doing, right? I played football in college. I wore a suit every day for 10 years. And all of a sudden, I'm out in a rural in the country, I don't know how to do anything. I could tell you stories of stupid things I did in the country.
— Oh, yeah?
— You'll just be cracking up. But, and then I just enjoyed it so much. And at that time, we were doing a lot of health ministries in the community. Like, I mean, people didn't even know who we were, but we were like, we were doing reversing diabetes seminars because the passion was there. 'Cause as we started learning these things and started applying it to my life, 'cause I went plant-based, like cold turkey. Like, I watched a documentary. I was right in the middle of my corporate experience and I watched and I just immediately said, I told my wife, "They're trying to kill me". It's like, "What do you mean"? I'm like, "This food," I'm like, "I need to..." And I ate rice and beans for two and a half years. I didn't even know, like, the stuff we serve in our restaurant, I had no clue existed. And then over time, my wife, she looked at me and she's like, 'cause she saw I was losing weight. And then my mind cleared up and then I was able to, I call it a recall button, so in my sales presentations, I'm sitting there and I used to have to take meticulous notes just to remember what happened. But then when I started changing my diet, I can literally replay the whole conversation in my mind. So it was a huge spike in the amount of success I had because I changed my diet.
— That's really interesting.
— And I had no clue about the health implementations of it. I was doing it mainly for, "Wait a minute, I just don't wanna eat that. I'm gonna eat something that I feel is safe". But then over time, I started learning about more of a plant-based diet. I started studying our bodies and how it works, and how if we work with our bodies, that healing can take place. And then we started teaching those things. And then my wife would do these amazing cooking classes. They would taste the food and they were like, "This is vegan, this is plant-based"? And then they're like, "You should open a restaurant". And now mind you, we're like, never had any restaurant. I sold a restaurant, sold high-end hotels. I did a lotta things, but I never ran a restaurant. And then the opportunity came in town. There was a family that owned a health food store and they said, "Do you wanna work with us to open a restaurant"? Now, at that time, I was like, "Yeah, let's do it". Right, I'm like, "Let's do it". And the overhead was so low,
— Ah, that sort of thing.
— I'm like, "I can make mistakes for, you know, three years and be okay". It was only like 500 bucks a month
— All right.
— to run a restaurant, and it was already a preexisting restaurant. So not a lot of this upfront cost that now, when you have to build out a restaurant. So that's how we got into the restaurant business and...
— You were aware when you did, that the failure rate for restaurants is through the roof?
— Yes, that's right.
— But you said, "Okay, we can do this".
— Now mind you, we're in a little small town, 4,000 population.
— But you do what kind of restaurant, this is a plant-based restaurant?
— This is a plant-based restaurant.
— Come on. If you told me you're doing a plant-based restaurant in San Francisco, Santa Cruz, Monterey, even New York City, even Atlanta,
— Yeah.
— but a little redneck town. I mean, I'm making an assumption there, but a little redneck town, 4,000 people.
— Yeah, making potatoes. Yeah, and, you know, they thought when we opened up, they literally thought we served grass on a plate.
— Oh, yeah?
— And people say, "Why would you do that? That's foolish".
— Why would you do that?
— And I said, this is our answer there, I said, "Sometimes God takes the foolish things to confound the wise. We saw it was God's providence for us to do this". And I can tell you, if it wasn't for the experience that I had in the business side, we would've failed. And so I do business coaching. I try to tell, because that information, those fundamental of leadership, operation, administration, and sales is so fundamental to the success of a business. And if you don't have a good under, you may have a great recipe. You may have food that tastes good, but if you're not marketing, if people don't know where you're at, if you're not counting the money, if you don't have operations, you don't have all these things in place, you can fail very, very quickly. Not only in a restaurant, but any industry.
— Yeah.
— So.
— I'm really happy to hear that you're able to go to a small town, an unlikely town with an unlikely clientele and make a success because you're not just selling food, but you're showing people a better way of life.
— That's right.
— And ultimately helping people to see Jesus through new eyes.
— That's right.
— And so, two things, if you can do it there, then it can be done in other places.
— Oh, yeah.
— But secondly, I mean, any turkey can open a restaurant, but not anyone can run a business. And so I think, I'm hearing almost a cautionary word.
— Oh, yeah.
— If you're gonna do it, you gotta know what you're doing.
— You gotta know what you're doing.
— I don't think that means you need to be Warren Buffett, or Bill Gates, or some titan of industry, but you gotta have a head on your shoulders and understand there are certain principles you need to follow.
— No question about it.
— Now, that's important.
— It can be a ministry, but we have to be profitable, right?
— Answer me this, years ago I was shocked as I spoke to a guy I'd met who was running a health food restaurant, if I mentioned the brand name, many people would recognize, "Oh, yeah, we remember those". He said, "We're closing the restaurant". I said, "What are you closing the restaurant for"? He said, "We're closing the restaurant because we want to do ministry".
— Interesting.
— Yeah. It was so consuming, took up so much time, it was so suffocating.
— Oh, yeah.
— I mean the reason he did it in the first place was to share Jesus. And now he said, "We're doing this and we're not sharing Jesus. Now we don't have time to share Jesus".
— Whoo.
— How do you avoid that trap? I don't fault anyone here, but how do you avoid that?
— So, we fell into that trap. Right, so we went in there and we were trying to compete with different, you know, restaurants that are out there. And then I started looking at it, I'm like, "Wait a minute, we can't compete with them". And they're like, "What do you mean"? Because the busiest day in a restaurant is Friday night and we happen to be Seven-Day Adventists, so we close Friday night to Saturday. So that's the busiest time in a restaurant. So I'm like, "We can't compete with that". So we have to have a different model. So what I understood from a business perspective and in a successful restaurant, you need to control food costs and you need to control labor. So, and then I started doing market research in our area and I saw that everybody in our town needed to go to a lifestyle center, but, one, they couldn't afford it. Now a lifestyle center is places like Wildwood and, you know, several thousand dollars to go to these places. Now in our town, we're right below the poverty line. So people can't afford to go there, even though they need it. And most people, if they could afford it, they can't take off two weeks or a week to go and get detox. So I said, "Wait a minute, there's a problem in the market, 'cause what entrepreneurs are, they're problem solvers". And I said, "How can we take what we do and then create a solution"? So that's when we created what we call now the FITT Challenge. It stands for...
— Yeah, tell me about this.
— So FITT Challenge, it stands for Food Inspiring Total Transformation. So we use food as an entering wedge in people's life to inhibit total transformation. So people think, "Oh, it's just food". But, no, we also deal with the physical, mental, and the spiritual through that program.
— But you're telling that 300-pound lady, who's all her life eaten the food that people living just below the poverty line eat,
— That's right.
— but you're telling her, "Hey, lady, we're gonna intervene in your life to bring about total transformation".
— That's right.
— Does she want that?
— You know, that's where sales comes in. Right?
— Okay.
— So that's what...
— And does she understand that?
— That's where sales comes in, right?
— All right.
— So I understand from the sales prop is, you know, you have somebody who is in need of your product, right? But now you have to present information for them to make that transition.
— Yeah, and they've gotta understand that they need that product.
— They need it, right? So I may think they need it, but you gotta help them understand that they need it. So how do you make people change what they've been doing their whole life? You make it very real. You talk about, you know, number one, you give them hope, right? So like, "Hey, I have diabetes, type two diabetes, my blood sugar's getting outta control, having all these other different, I'm losing my eyesight, my foot". And I said, "You know," and then I look at 'em and I said, "You do know that that can be overcome"? And they're like, "What do you mean"? So now I got their attention. And then I go through a sales process. I do health consultations. I didn't realize it, I had some people working with us and they're like, "Every time somebody comes in your office to do a health consultation, they end up signing up for the program. What in the world are you telling these people"? And I'm like, and I'm like, "What am I saying"? So I started to write things, but it was the same process that I had taught six-figure sales rep.
— So you didn't even know,
— I didn't even know it.
— you weren't even aware, it wasn't, you weren't...
— It was so natural for me.
— So you didn't have the six points, if I get 'em to point number five, I got 'em?
— No.
— You're sharing with them.
— I was just sharing with them, and I didn't realize the things that I was teaching that I taught in the corporate world, six-figure sales reps, that I was actually applying to a health consultation. So my close ratio was like 95%. Because, "Everybody, if you're sick and I have a solution, you know, there's no reason why you shouldn't do the program". And we saw a tremendous amount of success. But that was me sitting down with some 2,000 something people that we've worked with, I sat down with every last one of 'em, I did health consultations with every last one of these people. And this was one thing I always say, I said, "What is your why"? And I'll sit back and, "What do you mean"? I say, "Why are you doing the program? Why are you even interested? Why are we sitting here"? "Well, 'cause I wanna lose some weight". And I said, "Well, all due respect, that's not good enough". And they're looking like, "What do you mean"? I said, "What happens if you lose those five, six pounds? What's gonna keep you on track"? And they started thinking, they were like, and I will never forget this one lady. And I usually have fun with people and we're going back and forth. And this one lady, she was an older lady, and she's just like, "Oh, well, you know, I just wanna lose some weight". And then all of a sudden she got serious and her tears started coming down now, and she goes, "Well, she goes, "I know, I have a good one". She goes, "My granddaughter". And she started crying. "My granddaughter wants me to live 'till I'm 100-years-old". And she just started crying uncontrollably. And I'm like, "That's your why".
— That's it.
— So I'm like, "When you go through our 10-day challenge," 'cause we start off with a two-day juice detox that we deliver to their home or business daily. We deliver all through Northwest Georgia, and we deliver to your home or business. So we make it very easy, you don't have to go anywhere. We're gonna fit the FITT Challenge into your life.
— Nice.
— And I said, "You drink an incredible amount of coffee and a lot of sugar," I said, "You're gonna go through detox, full disclosure, two-day juice. We're gonna help you through these juices, but I'm gonna let you know, you're gonna have some withdrawals". But I said, "But now you get to weigh in the balance, do I wanna be there when my granddaughter walks down the aisle? Or do I wanna eat this Snicker bar?
— I remember
— And that makes it real for people,
— a well-known figure who went through a real major and noticeable health transformation. I believe I remember him saying he wanted to walk his daughter down the aisle, you know?
— Ah.
— That'll get you.
— Yes, that'll get you.
— Yeah, and, you know, when you get to my age and you got friends who are dropping dead of heart attacks,
— It's real.
— from my childhood.
— Yeah.
— This kid, what's he doing dying of a heart attack? Well. A guy I went to high school with, he's driving up the hillside talking to his daughter on the phone. "Daddy, daddy, daddy"? Has a heart attack while he's on the phone.
— Mercy.
— Oh, yeah. The guy was in his 40s, had a heart attack and died on the phone with his daughter. No criticism, who knows why, but listen, man, we know why.
— Yeah.
— And that's the why.
— And that reminds me of a story, somebody was going through our 10-day challenge, our FITT Challenge, really excited about working with this guy. He comes to the restaurant, we do a health consultation, he's really excited. And he goes, "I'm ready to do it". He goes, "But I wanna wait a few weeks because I'm going on a trip. I wanna eat, I really wanna indulge". And I'm like, and his daughter was like, "Come on, Dad". And I was really excited to work with these guys. So the kickoff meeting happens. We bring everybody into the restaurant, we do this kickoff meeting. So we had a lot of people in the room and we're doing this meeting, but I was really looking forward to working with this family. So I sent him a text and say, "Hey, if you're here, don't worry, just come in and we'll catch up on everything". And then as I'm going through, and on my presentation, I had a slide that said, "Prevention is better than cure".
— Oh, yeah.
— And then my phone just vibrates, I looked at my phone and it was the daughter. She goes, "We won't be able to make it. My dad just had a massive heart attack and we're rushing him to the hospital".
— Mm.
— So that strikes me, that hit me so hard because, like, we could've helped, like, I'm not saying it would've changed anything, but we know the body would heal itself if you give it the right conditions. And what we were gonna do, we were gonna, and I don't know if it would've did anything, but to knowing that, you know, so I tell people, don't delay.
— Don't delay.
— Don't delay. We have one life. And I remember we were at this convention, we worked with this guy, he has this big building site, supply companies, helped him lose like, you know, 20, 30, 40 pounds. One of his workers reversed his diabetes. So he's like, "Man, I just believe what you're doing. I'm doing this tool convention, I want you to set up a booth". I'm like, "I don't have any tools," right? He goes, "Just come and tell people about it". And I'm sitting there and this guy comes up and he was a Christian guy and he gets there.
— You're exhibiting at a building supply convention.
— A building supply store about health.
— All right, okay.
— And he was like, he comes up, and he goes, "Oh, what are you selling here"? I said, "I'm doing God's plan in health. That's what I'm selling". And he's like, "What is that"? And I started telling him, he goes, "Meh," and he just started going off. "I don't wanna, you know, eat with this. And think what, it doesn't matter what happens, you're gonna die at any time". He just was going off on me. And I said, "You're a Christian". He goes, "So what do you say to that"? Just like that. And I said, "Are you a Christian, right"? And he goes, "I am". I said, "What does the Bible say"? And I said, "Let's give it Ecclesiastes 7:17". And we started reading, and I said, "What does this last sentence says? It says, 'Why shouldest thou die before thy time?'" And I said, "God may have called you to reach somebody when you're in your 80s but your lifestyle choices put you in the grave at 60". And then there's a thing in sales, you say just, you know, be silent. And just be quiet.
— Oh, yeah.
— Let it marinate a little bit. And he sat there for a few minutes and he's like, "Fine, I'll do the program. Fine, fine, fine," just like that, "Fine, I'll do it, you got me"
— There you go.
— And I said, "I didn't get you". I said, "The Word of God got you". So, and we've seen that over and over again, right?
— So you started the FITT Challenge in a unlikely place.
— Yeah.
— And you've seen it really take off, what's the impact you're seeing? We'll just take a few seconds now and come back after the break. What's the impact that you're seeing in your local community? And I know you could answer this from a variety of angles.
— Oh, yeah, I mean, if you look at our grocery store, you know, the grocery store's totally transformed. It was a food desert, you know, and we have a local grocery store there. We went there, it was literally no any type of organic, no plant-based stuff there. And all of a sudden, we started seeing more and more. And then one of our customers that works with us, she went to the manager and she's like, "Why you got all this plant-based food"? And she goes, "There's some guy doing this. There's this restaurant in town doing all these cooking classes". And these people come in there and they're demanding that we order this stuff.
John Bradshaw: How about that?
Gabriel McClover: So we have to order it. And so that's why we're seeing, that's the biggest change that we've been seeing.
John Bradshaw: Hey, now that's a big deal. What you're seeing is you set out to do something and you are materially impacting your society.
Gabriel McClover: That's right.
John Bradshaw: Your community.
Gabriel McClover: That's right.
John Bradshaw: You know, when that's happening, when the supermarket is changing and you didn't go petition them, but there's a ground swell, we need better food.
Gabriel McClover: That's right.
John Bradshaw: Yeah, that's outstanding. Okay, there's more, there's more. We'll get to it, too, we'll get to it in a moment. I'm encouraged by this. Very exciting to hear what's taking place. This is "Conversations". I'll be back with more with Gabriel McClover in just a moment. "Conversations," as you know, is brought to you by "It Is written".
John Bradshaw: Welcome back to "Conversations" brought to you by "It Is Written". My guest is Gabriel McClover. Gabriel, you've started the FITT Challenge.
Gabriel McClover: Yes.
John Bradshaw: You've mentioned a restaurant in a town that you said that was a food desert.
Gabriel McClover: That's right.
John Bradshaw: How's the restaurant going?
Gabriel McClover: Restaurant is going well, you know, and the main thing, well, we just had what we call a once in a 500 year flood that happened in our town. So we know that when things happening, you know, good things are happening, sometimes trials may come. But when it happened, it was a testament to even our community. You know, we saw our community members rally and wanna see us reopen. And we had people come out, we had this work bee came out and cleaned the restaurant out. So we see the positive impact that we had on the restaurant and what we've seen, like, COVID-19 was something that was very difficult on restaurants, right?
— Oh, yeah.
— And...
— So you operated during that, of course, you did.
— Oh, yeah. So COVID happened and beginning of the year, here comes March, and they're saying that you have to shut down. And the world was shutting down. And we were like, "Lord, we got rent, we have our mortgage. Like, what's gonna happen here"? And we just like, "Okay Lord, this is your work and we're just gonna put our hands up and see what happens". So the FITT Challenge side actually exploded because one of the things that they allowed during the lockdown was food delivery. And so when restaurants was trying to figure out a food delivery model, we'd been doing it for three years. So we were able to be ahead of the game. And during that time, and we started traveling the country, we went to 22 states during COVID, doing in-home cooking classes.
— Fantastic.
— We were doing Bible studies and we would come in there, we'd say, "Hey, you know, we have this food delivery, you know, what's the best way to deal with COVID? Let's talk about boosting our immune system".
— Come on now.
— "Let's talk about preparing our body to deal with any type of virus really, not only COVID". And they're like, "Really"? And so we came with the message, "Hey, you're gonna do all these Uber Eats and DoorDash and all these different things, and they're gonna bring you junk food that's gonna lower your immune system. How about you order from us, where now we're gonna help boost your immune system so when you do go to that store, your immune system's gonna be strong". And we just started, we went all over the country and people were excited. And so we'll come in and we'll say, "Hey, part of our module for our FITT Challenge is an in-home cooking class. Would you like us to do an in-home cooking class? We can wear a mask, we can social distance". They were like, "Come on in". And we had some of the most powerful opportunities to witness the people during that time. So we just praise the Lord 'cause He saw it before we can never imagine, you know?
— I'm so glad to hear you say that because God's biblical health message is a message all about strengthening your immune system.
— That's right.
— And I'm not trying to say that it's the only thing a person should do about COVID.
— That's right.
— You've figured that out yourself, I'm not here to tell you what to do. But the very least we ought to be doing
— That's right.
— is taking care of our health. COVID was a message to everybody. You have one immune system, you better take care of that thing.
— No question.
— And put yourself on the best possible place to fight illness.
— No question.
— So at this restaurant in a little, I call it a redneck town. And I mean
— Yeah, little town.
— no disrespect by that,
— Yeah.
— John: like you said, a typical old Southern,
— That's right.
— A little old Southern town. What do you serve?
— So we do...
— What's on the menu?
— So the beautiful thing is we actually, the food that we grow, we produce in our restaurant. So again, food costs, right? So if you're growing your own food, if I got a cucumber that they come like crazy in your garden, and I can able to juice it and add a carrot and an apple, and I'm selling that for $8 for a juice, our profitability went up tremendously because we grow our own food. So we do do a lot of, we do juices, we do smoothies. And my wife also does dishes that meet people where they're at. So we'll have like a, you know, some type of burger, and we have some type of cheese steak, but we also have other dishes that lend more towards healthy food. Like, most time you go to a vegan restaurant, you have what I call vegan junk food. You get your sandwich, you get your burger, you get you some fries, you get you some nuggets. But my wife does vegetable lasagna. She does, you know, different spaghetti and meatballs. That's probably one of the most popular things that she does, and everything is plant-based. And our meatballs are made from chia seeds.
— Right, so they taste amazing. So people go through our 10-day challenge and they're getting the same food, and they're like, "These meatballs are amazing, this is not real meat"? And then all of a sudden, they're losing weight 'cause they don't realize that for every meatball, there's probably like eight grams of fiber in 'em. So their fiber is going up, which is one of the main things to do to reverse diabetes. They're getting their fiber up and the food tastes amazing. Like, I remember the first 10-day challenge we ever did, and this is a quick story. First 10-day challenge, we had so many trials during that program. Like, there was a point, we couldn't even make purchases, our cards weren't working. Air conditioning broke in the restaurant. Somebody on the 10-day challenge daughter literally went missing during the program. We're praying, like, every single day. The guy who comes, he was gonna fix the air condition, and we're like praying, now this is July and humid, in Northwest Georgia, it was humid. And he puts his car in park and then as soon as he put his car in park, it was like a boom. And all the power on our side of the street went out. And we were like, "Oh," we literally were crying, "We gotta pray". And we were on our knees, we prayed and then we were like, we did the program. We're like, "We're never," and then the results were amazing. People losing weight, their diabetes were being reversed. We saw people's cholesterol drop. And after they left, we were like, "We're never doing that again, it was too much. It was draining, it was draining". We're like, "We're never doing that again". But then the newspaper found out what we were doing, they interviewed some of the participants and then, so in the headline of "Summerville News," "Veggie Diet A Success, Restaurant Puts People on a Plant-Based Diet". And he started putting all the results. So the phone started ringing.
— Come on.
— He's like, "When you gonna do your next program"? And I was like, "Uh, we're probably not gonna do that again". My wife's like, it was too soon. And then the Lord sent our neighbor, our neighbor comes in the restaurant and she goes, "I didn't know vegetables can do that". She goes, "I have diaper diverticulitis and I can't even go and sit in church without running to the bathroom". She goes, "Can you help me"? And I was like, "Well, you know, we're thinking about it, you know"? And she goes, "Well, I'm just letting you know," and these are her exact words, "if I don't find a solution for this, I just want to die". And I was like, I looked at my wife and I'm like, "We gotta do the program again".
— Gotta do it.
— And so we've been doing programs every single month, except for Christmas. I always say nobody wanna be healthy when Santa Claus is in town. But in January, that's when everything starts to kick up. So this is our busiest time of the year.
— Fantastic, you're encouraged by what you're seeing?
— I am.
— Yeah?
— By God's grace, we're pressing on the move.
— Yeah, so you got the restaurant, FITT Challenge, tell me about this meal delivery thing.
— So the meal delivery is part of the FITT Challenge. So we deliver two meals a day, lunch and dinner, we make recommendations for breakfast. Everybody who goes through our FITT Challenge gets assigned their own personal health coach, which is virtual health coaches. And these are coaches that have been through a lot of, you know, they understand lifestyle principles. It's like Wildwood, we'll have coaches from there, and from all over the world, we got coaches in France. And they'll connect
— Fantastic.
— with people, personal experience. So they'll have their whole health consultation, the coach is holding them accountable. And one of the things that I think that makes our program this more successful, is the coaching aspect of it. Because I tell people, I said, "Listen, when you're younger, you have accountability to your parents, right"?
— Yeah, right.
— "Now you're an adult, you can pretty much do whatever you want. If you wanna go and get three gallons of ice cream and sit and eat it, you can do that". But to have that level of accountability, knowing that I'm gonna have a call with the coach here in an hour and they're gonna ask me, "Did I exercise"? That level of accountability helps people be more successful.
— No question about it. You know, a program without accountability, man, you can anticipate that the success level's gonna plunge.
— Oh, no question.
— Because ain't nobody holding your feet to the fire.
— That's right.
— You know, or providing that encouragement that you need. So the person who gets on board with the FITT Challenge, you're delivering food, you said you delivered kinda far.
— Yeah, so.
— Not just across the street.
— Yeah, so
— You deliver at a good distance.
— within our restaurant, we deliver within an hour radius from our restaurant here in Northwest Georgia. So we'll partner with organizations, different churches, they will bring us in and say, "Hey, we have a problem in our community with health and we like your program. Can you actually do that program over here"? And so that's what we do a lot of. We say, "Okay, if we can find a commercial environment," and a lotta churches have a commercial kitchen. So we come there, we come with our licenses and our insurance, and we're able to make the meals. We bring a team out to deliver the meals, and we do in-home cooking, and we get church members involved. Which is the key.
— Yeah, yeah, yeah.
— So we get church members involved with delivering food, doing in-home cooking classes. And we train them and they go in and be involved. And it's very popular.
— So you're delivering me food, I open the box, what's in it?
— So we have lunch and dinner. So the lunch is depending on what day it is.
— Sure, sure, sure, sure.
— So we start off with, our diet is pretty specific, we meet people where they're at. We don't wanna give them an impression of plant-based food that it's not, you know?
— Yeah, yeah, I don't want you sending me a celery stick and a carrot stick and a leaf.
— That's what I tell people, "I could put you on salad for 10 days. I'm sure you'll lose weight and you'll feel better. But soon as that 10 days is over, you're running trying to get some food". So it's meals that, so you get vegetable lasagna, you get spaghetti and meatballs. My wife does a Thai curry dish. She does, I mean,
— Oo-er, well, hold on a minute.
— a vegetable Thai curry.
— You're helping me to lose weight
— with spring rolls.
— and get healthy, and you're sending me a Thai curry with spring rolls?
— With spring rolls in it. And it's like...
— Hold on, hold on, everybody wanna get in on that.
— That's what I'm saying.
— Who does not want to get healthy eating Thai curry and spring rolls?
— That's the key to the program.
— Man.
— My wife's, Lord has really blessed her to make plant-based food taste incredible.
— That's wonderful.
— And that's the secret, I told my wife, I was like, "I can sell it, but if the food don't taste good, they're not coming back". I don't care what restaurant you have,
— Yeah, that's correct.
— if the food don't taste good, nobody's coming back.
— That's right.
— But people are, they're so, I mean, and they look at all these simple ingredients that my wife's, like, "How did you make that from that"?
— Oh, yeah.
— Come to the cooking class.
— Oh, yeah.
— And so we do a community cooking class during that 10-day period. And then we invite the whole community out. It's free, bring the whole community out, we do a cooking class. And then we still do an individual cooking class with the participants. But the group cooking class is a, I call it a commercial 'cause I'm a salesperson. They gotta say, "It Always Be Closing," ABC. So they come, and we're like, "Hey, this is a," we do a presentation where it's like, "Hey, we do the FITT Challenge. Anybody in here is going through the FITT Challenge would like to give a testimony"? And usually it's around day seven. In day seven, everybody's feeling amazing. I mean, everything. So they're like, "Oh, man, this food is great, and da, da, da, da. If you guys are interested in signing up for the program, come see me". And we get a good, what do you call it? Conversion rate from our cooking classes. But people need to see it, right, and they need to taste it. And they said, "That tastes good, I saw it. I'm seeing people and I can do this. And I want this experience in my life".
— So eating, I hate to put it this way, but eating God's way in a way that really looks after you and it feeds you and grows you and helps you to get well and healthy, I mean, it can be done.
— Oh, yeah. and my wife likes to specialize it. 'Cause you gotta think about it, people are from all places on the planet, especially in the United States.
— Oh, yeah.
— We were in Houston, Texas, and Houston, Texas, is like a melting pot.
— Melting pot.
— And so my wife would actually create dishes that are specific to people's culture.
— Oh, yeah.
— So think about it, if I'm Indian, if I'm Indian cuisine,
— Oh, yeah.
— and they use the different spices and things like that,
— Oh, yeah.
— and I'm giving you a lentil loaf with no salt, no nothing. And I'm saying, "Hey, this is gonna help you reverse your diabetes".
— Nah.
— So now I'm not only gonna try and change your diet, but I'm also trying to change your culture as well.
— Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
— So if I'm able to give you meals that you're used to, that your culture is, you know, hey, and they're able to see a result, it makes 'em be more, it makes them stick to it.
— I don't know if you know this, but in Heaven, Indians will be in charge of food prep.
— Oh!
— Did you know that?
— I did not know that.
— No, it's in the Bible.
— Wow.
— Yeah. Okay, I'm kidding, so don't take it seriously. Ooh, Indian food. No, you're right though. You've gotta take it, Ethiopian food.
— Yeah.
— Oof.
— I've had it and I was like, "This is a different type, it's a different type of good".
— It's so good.
— Like everyone is a different type of good.
— It's so good.
— Yeah.
— Oh, yeah. So you're mailing this food out, you're delivering this food to people.
— We deliver it to them. Like, we go and deliver daily to their home and their business.
— And so, another big plus there is there's a personal touch, you're establishing relationships.
— That's right. So people ask me, it's like, "Hey, you know, you can just put that stuff in, you can freeze it and ship it"? But I'm like, "That's not what we're trying to do. We're trying to build relationships up". So when I go like that lumber company that I did, I delivered meals to him every single day. And every single day I'm like, "How was it? How you feeling"? And I remember I told him, I said, "Hey, this thing is scaling". And I said, "I wanna get your opinion as a business person". I said, "This thing is scaling. We have a lot of demand for this FITT Challenge". And he goes, "Gabe, whatever you do, do not lose the personal touch". He says, "Because you know about my family. You know about me. You know, and that's the key to your program that separates it". So, yes, it's more difficult. Like I said, if you wanna be the top in the industry, you gotta do something difficult.
— That's right.
— So, yes, our margins are smaller because we're delivering daily, but that's not our ultimate goal. Our ultimate goal is building relationships for the Kingdom. And as we interact with these people, they're are asking us for prayer, for Bible studies. You know, I can't tell you how many people, even though we've dealt with people who are atheist, agnostic, don't have no Christian background, but yet at the end of the program, we respect them during the program. And at the end of the program, I remember one guy, he was like, "Gabe, I can't, I don't know how you do it". He goes, "Man, I took this program. I feel great, my blood pressure down, but, like, this world is like so, oh, I can't, I turn on the TV," and this was like right during the political season, right? And everything, he goes, "I just can't, I get anxiety every time I turn the TV on". He said, "How do you do it"? And I said, "Since you asked". And then I started doing, "God removes kings and sets up kings, I don't worry about this, only thing, you know". And he just was like, "Wow". And this was an atheist guy who didn't believe there was any God. But he asked me, and now we're the best friend. Every program he comes, he's the front row, right in the front row. And he still considers himself atheist even though he's reading the Bible. But I just praise the Lord for the amount of influence the Lord has allowed us to have.
— You're a businessman, a salesperson, an entrepreneur. You're a Christian.
— Yes.
— You're all about good health.
— Yeah.
— As you looked into the future, you did not anticipate you getting to wherever you are right now and plateauing. You looked into the future and you saw what?
— I see what we're, you know, you said plateauing, so we're at like, "Okay, how can we grow? How can we spread"?
— That's it. And what does that look like?
— And so that's what that, the Healthy Taste gives us an avenue to do that. So what we wanna do, like, we're gonna be up in Michigan this year, and we're gonna run four FITT Challenges up in Rochester, Detroit, Michigan area. And we're gonna do four FITT Challenges and we're gonna do a Healthy Taste.
— Nice.
— So we're working with the church there, and we're gonna look at it, and it's a church plant. And we're gonna see the impact of what this looks like from a different perspective. Because as we do our program, we see that people wanna study the Bible with us. Like, 70% of the people say, "Hey, listen, I've seen the impact". And we're very respectful, we just sprinkle a little Bible and we pull back out. We don't throw up on people. And they're just like, "You said something in the survey". I said, "Would you like to learn more about health through the Bible"? And people say, "Yes". And we're able to study with these people. And it's a blessing. So I see that our goal for Healthy Taste is to have one of these events in every major city in the United States. And then with that, we're gonna come with the FITT Challenge. And what we're doing is we're trying to actually create a network where we can actually plant restaurants in cities, working with schools and organizations. We're working with Wildwood Health Institute. They're gonna be helping us with the project in Detroit. So we're really excited about the scalability of this. Because, again, if COVID locks the world down again, one thing that people need to do,
— Oh, yeah.
— They need to eat.
— They need to eat.
— And so that's what we wanna do.
— And at a time where people are concerned about their health, they're open to the idea of thinking about good health.
— That's right, that's right, that's right. So really excited.
— Fantastic, man. It seems to me the sky's the limit.
— Yes.
— Yeah, yeah. And God is undoubtedly with you on this.
— Yeah.
— And it's a blessing.
— Yeah.
— If you had a chance to say to one person, or to say to one person one thing, this is an unfair question, but if there was an opportunity to say one thing, this might not be the only one thing. But if there was something, you see this is a quick encounter, you're gonna leave somebody with a gem, some encouragement about their health, what would it be?
— Simply about your health, I know that from a mental standpoint, health really starts there. So what I tell people, I ask people legacy. I said, "What is, your life, when you die, what do you want people to say about you"? I said, and I'd like to say, "Average lifespan in the United States, 78 years old. How old are you? So if you have, say, 20 years left, how do you wanna be remembered"? I said, "People are still being talked about because they made an impact on this world. Let's make an impact on this world. And in order to do that, we need to be in good health. Even as our soul... God says, 'I wish above all things, I may be in health.' I mean, 'Be in health even as your soul prospers.' God wants us to be healthy in order for us to reach our full potential". So that's really my message when I talk to, especially males, I let them know about their legacy, how long you wanna be here for, and how we can use your health and be able to extend your years, so that you can make a greater impact.
— Outstanding, how does somebody get in touch with you?
— So you can reach me at, you can go to healthytaste.net.
— Here we go.
— And my cell phone number's there. If you wanna email me at [email protected]. Or if you wanna reach us at the restaurant, it's at [email protected]. And we do travel, we go to different cities. And we're really excited about what the Lord has placed in our possession.
— Hope to see you at that restaurant sometime soon.
— Yes.
— Wish you every success. God bless you, thank you for what you're doing.
— Thank you.
— Outstanding. And thank you for joining us, this has been a lot of fun. Hope you're encouraged and that you'll move forward knowing that God can make a difference in you or through you. I'm John Bradshaw, my guest has been Gabriel McClover. This has been our conversation brought to you by "It Is Written".