Have you ever wanted something so badly, but you were so afraid of failing that you never even tried? Rick Bleiweiss, author, musician, music producer, and much more, is here today to talk about how he’s manifested success throughout his entire life. In the episode Rick reveals how he: -Retired from the music industry at 58. -Left New York City to live in a tiny town in Oregon. -Got hired in his 60’s to work for an audio book publishing company. -Published his first two novels in his 70’s. -How he and his wife have manifested their dreams. Also in today’s episode is Molly’s occasional co-host and sound engineer, David Ben-Porat. Go to www.iamthisage.com for the show transcription
Have you ever wanted something so badly, but you were so afraid of failing that you never even tried? Rick Bleiweiss, author, musician, music producer, and much more, is here today to talk about how he’s manifested success throughout his entire life.
In the episode Rick reveals how he:
Also in today’s episode is Molly’s occasional co-host and sound engineer, David Ben-Porat.
Go to www.iamthisage.com for the show transcription
Rick Bleiweiss Links:
https://www.rickbleiweiss.com/
https://www.instagram.com/rickbleiweissauthor/
Molly's Links:
https://www.instagram.com/mollyatthisage/
David's Links:
https://www.instagram.com/dbplovesyou/?hl=en
How I Made It Through Podcast Links:
Have you ever wanted something, but you were so afraid of failing at. That you never even tried. What if there were a way to guarantee you never failed. Is there something you're thinking about right now that you'd go try.
Welcome to I am this age, the podcast proving you're never too old. It's never too late. So go do that thing. You're always talking about I'm Molly cider, a certified professional life coach storyteller and real life change maker in my forties.
My guest today is a former musician and music producer from New York city who worked with loads of famous musicians only to give that all up to become a novelist in his seventies. He has had a long list of impressive accomplishments, which I'll get to a little later. But the important part is that he has been willing to take risks and try new things throughout his life, manifesting success in almost everything he set out to do.
And he's here today to talk us through how he does it.
He's one of those people you want to just keep around all the time, because he has a way of making you feel like nothing is really that big of a deal and everything is going to be okay.
Before we get started a quick request. If you're enjoying these episodes, please take a minute. Before you move on with your day to share your favorite one with a friend, you think might also enjoy it. It's the easiest way for us to grow and the more we grow, the more we can help you grow. Please also make sure you're subscribed and don't forget to rate and review.
It's a fast and easy way to support us. Okay, without further ado, please enjoy the extraordinary Rick belie wise. Wise.
Hi, I'm Rick Bois. I am, uh, 78 years old, about to be 79. Very soon. I've been a, uh, record producer. I've been a music industry executive. I've been an educator, a speaker. When I was in my sixties, I switched industries and became a publishing executive.
And most recently I have become a, uh, award-winning author. And so that, and I've done a lot of other things in between because I believe life is an adventure and you're never too old to chase your rainbows.
Yes. What a great introduction. Thank you for that.
You're welcome.
That was
end it right.
Yeah, I know we can go now.
Thanks for coming. Rick.
You're welcome. Bye
Thank you so much for coming and talking to us. David, Ben Perrot is here, obviously can hear him.
Hello.
Hello?
Okay. A quick little bit about Rick's long and multifaceted career, because it is quite impressive.
As I mentioned, he started in the music industry in New York city as a musician, a producer, a music marketer, and a music executive.
He wrote about music for newspapers and magazines. He worked with tons of huge artists like Melissa Etheridge, kiss you too. Whitney Houston, Britney Spears, and loads more.
And he's been nominated for multiple Grammy awards. And after all that at age 58, Rick decided to retire from the music industry and from New York city living. And move with his wife to Ashland, Oregon in the middle of nowhere. Y you ask.
My wife was also in, uh, the music industry in New York. She was an executive in record companies as well. And we both looked at the music industry of the early two thousands and late 1990s and realized it wasn't the same industry either of us had been in the majority of our careers.
Big corporations had bought up all the record companies so they were no longer kind of freewheeling and flexible, and instead they were bound by corporate rules and regulations. Then you had Napster come in with all the freeloading and it changed the entire dynamic of music, sales and marketing. And, uh, It just wasn't the same industry anymore.
Uh, we weren't getting the same pleasure out of it, so, uh, we both decided to retire. My wife retired I think a week, uh, a year before me. And so the, here we are, we're in New York. I, I basically, other than three years in Miami and my early college days, had lived in New York my entire life. New York City. My wife had lived there for the last 35 years of her life.
And so one day she just kind of looked at me and said, well, we could live anywhere we want. Where should we live? And We decided because of family, we'd stay in the US and we knew we didn't want to be in a big city because Christ, we were in New York.
That's the best big city in the world, in my opinion. So why leave?
Right.
And we're in a Barnes and Noble one day and we're looking in the magazine section and there's a magazine, I think it was called Retirement Now or something like that. And on the cover is a picture of this, uh, town called Ashland, Oregon.
And it says The best small town in America. And so we look at each, we read the article and it's got the Oregon Shakespeare Festival. It's got the Oregon, the Ashland Independent Film Festival. It's the home to Southern Oregon University. It's the home to 40 art galleries, a hundred restaurants for a town of 20,000 people.
Literally in the middle of nowhere. A five hour drive from Portland, and a six hour drive from San Francisco with nothing in between. You know, any large consequence. We had never heard of it. So we said, what the heck let's visit it. So we came to Ashland. We fell in love with it, and here we are,
Do you have kids, by the way, did I ask you this?
I have two grown sons and they're, uh, probably older than you.
I don't know about that.
How old are they?
but, um,
I'm 45.
oh, well, they're right in there. Let's see, my, my my oldest son was born in 75 and my youngest in eighties, so they're,
I'm right in between though.
you're right in between them.
you and your wife were heading out to Oregon. You had never been there before. You found it from a magazine, which is amazing.
That's unbelievable.
best little city. Moving from the best big city.
That's such a nineties story right
Um,
You know,
people are like, what's a magazine now?
Yeah, seriously, it really is. Were you scared at all to move across the country?
To leave New York?
Oh, not at all. No. I, first of all, my entire life, new adventures have never scared me. I, they've just always been to me, exciting opportunities and I mean that sincerely, and not just lip service there, but, uh, no, we were just kind of ready. I, uh, you know, life's an adventure and so that was just another part of it.
No, no, no fear at all.
And did you have a plan for what you do once you got there? Or were you just gonna wing it?
Oh no. The plan was we were both retiring, uh, and we did retire. And, uh, my wife pretty much stayed retired. Her name's Deborah. Um, I got really bored with retirement. I am a type A, in fact, a friend of mine from many, many, many, many years is a, uh, psychologist and he does biofeedback. And many years ago he did biofeedback on me and found that I was more relaxed when I was problem solving than when I was trying to relax.
And so that's me. So I got really bored. So I joined. Uh, the board of directors of the Shakespeare Festival, of the Film Festival, I helped the food bank get their building. I joined the president's board of the university and I still found that I wasn't really using all the knowledge that I had built up over my career as an executive and whatever.
And, um, fortunately I was introduced to Blackstone and started to go to work for them. But, um, no, the plan was full retirement.
you said that you went to, you went to work for Blackstone, but did you do, did you begin writing before you met him?
Well, yeah, actually the way it kind of happened was When we moved to Ashland, in the house that we were living in, I became friends with the, my next door neighbor and she was a poet.
And, uh, she found out from me that over the course of my life, I had written, as you said, magazine and newspaper articles and things like that. And she said, I'm in a writing group. Why? Maybe you'd like to, uh, join the group. Uh, we've got memoirists, we've got fictional novelists, we've got poets, we've got all sorts of writers.
I think they'd like you, you'd like them, and maybe it'll stir your creative juices. And so I joined the group and it worked out really well. And so I started writing fiction for the first time in my life. So that was one track that was going on. And I wanna say that was probably started in 2005, somewhere around there.
In 2007, I believe it was a friend of mine and my wife's owns the audio rights to Winnie the Poo. His, uh, his great, his great uncle was JM Barry, who wrote Peter Pan, his family, he's, he's a, an actor, a movie director, and he happens to own it. And he came down here to license the audio rights of Winnie the Poo to Blackstone Audio.
Which was one of these still is one of the leading audiobook companies in America, in the world. And, uh, he stayed with us while he was down here and while he was meeting with Craig Black, who was the founder and owner of Blackstone, he told him about my wife and I and said, Craig, they probably have knowledge from New York that you, corporations that you, none of your people have.
So you probably can, um, Use what they've got. So Craig and, and Deborah and I went to lunch the next week and after lunch he said, you know, I don't exactly know what I'm gonna do with you, but, but Christopher was right. I can use what you both have. So we got hired as consultants and we joined his first board of directors.
And then Deborah fully retired and about a year later, two years later, I went on staff as head of new business development, which I still do now. And I did that while I was somewhere in my mid sixties, I guess it was.
Wow, that's crazy. I mean, it's awesome. It's awesome. Crazy.
It's both
okay. Rick had never written fiction before and yet he jumped right into writing a novel. How.
There are two, there are probably three types of writers, but there are two main types of writers, panthers and platters. Okay. Platters sit there and plot everything out beforehand, and they probably got like sticky notes on a wall somewhere with ideas and, and sequencing.
And then panthers are literally that. They are writers who fly by the seat of their pants and plan nothing. Well, I am a pantser and. So what happened was this story just appeared in my brain, which is how songs used to appear when I was writing songs. I can't explain the creative process other than they're there.
And my job is to either as a songwriter on a guitar or a piano, remember the song and, you know, capture it. Or as a writer to sit at a keyboard at a computer and capture what I'm seeing playing out like a movie in my brain. And it was fiction that I, fictional short story, that started playing out. So I went with it.
How long did it take you to realize that you might be good at it?
Well I, I've gotta tell you that cause I had done writing. Over the course of my life, but it was non-fiction. And I had chapters in non-fiction anthologies on new age music. And I actually had one on in a book called More Kisses about, uh, your experience with your, your first kiss, um, you know, and stuff like that.
And I wrote newspaper columns and magazine articles. I knew I had a talent and in fact when I was in college, I went, I was at NYU in film school and so I was writing, uh, scripts for my student films, if you will. And, uh, one of them came to the attention of the head of the, uh, NYU English department and he arranged to get me an offer of a Fulbright Scholarship in writing, which I, which I turned down because it was in Australia and I didn't wanna leave the United States at that time, uh, for family reasons.
And so, I kind of knew I could write, but I didn't know if I could write fiction.
Turns out you can.
Tell me what your approach to trying something new, especially like being in this new position in the publishing world, what is your approach? Um, like what's your thought process? How do you get yourself through it?
Uh, well, I, I gotta go back to what I said earlier. It's an adventure, you know, I mean, I have always chased the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow my entire life. Sometimes for companies I was working for and sometimes as an entrepreneur myself, but I always, always found that the chase was even more exciting than whether I found the pot of gold or not.
Cuz I've had disasters financially in my life. But I loved getting to that point. They just didn't work out. And then, like with some of the recordings that I've done, you know, they worked out really well. So really the, the thought process with going to Blackstone was, wow, this is gonna be cool. This is gonna be fun.
I'm gonna get to use a lot of the knowledge I have built up. I'm gonna get to be around a whole new set of people. And in an industry that is similar to, but different from the music industry. So the skills were translatable rather than being totally foreign. And I never ever have let age be a factor whether I was young.
I never thought I was too young for anything. And as a senior, I've never thought I was too old for anything. So it was just a natural, let's try something new here.
I just turned 40 last year. And I get intimidated and sometimes I think part of my, like imposter syndrome or like my fear of failure that keeps me mo growing at a slower pace than I'd like to, in my mind
is like kind of the apprehension of like,
let me cut in here for a minute and get to David's point. Sometimes as we get older, it feels like the world is changing faster than we can keep up. And sometimes we start to feel so overwhelmed and intimidated by those changes. So much so that we get stuck. We doubt ourselves and we tell ourselves stories like we're too old to start that new career, or we're too old to be on Tik TOK, for example.
Do you ever have any of those feelings of doubt?
Well, I, I, I think the key is that, uh, I, the words that you uttered have never come outta my mouth. I have never feared failure. I, I always felt that if you try something new, and I, and this is both personally and professionally in business, if you try something new, there is always the chance that it will not succeed.
That just comes with the territory of trying something new or change. And so if you fear that you're gonna fail, it may paralyze you to never even try to start. And so I just never, it's never crossed my mind that I was ever gonna fail at something. Everything I always went into, I thought was going to be a home run and was gonna succeed.
And when it didn't, my attitude was, okay, next it wasn't, oh my God, what have I done? Or what happened? I would evaluate what happened and examine it to see if there's anything I could learn from failure. But it's never, ever bothered me, stopped me, or, you know, I, I write books now and I get good reviews and I get bad reviews and some of the bad reviews written by trolls, it's pretty obvious.
Unfortunately they're out there. But some of them are legitimate people who just don't bond with what I've written. That could stop me. I could say, oh my God, but I, I look at the bad reviews. Fortunately, there are way fewer of them, but I look at them and I go, what can I learn from them? And then I never read 'em again.
I mean, okay, I saw it once. I took away what I could that might be helpful. If there was nothing helpful, I go, damn wish there was. And on to the next, I, I just, I, I think the peeling of the onion, if you will, is just just the belief and is life's exciting and sometimes there'll be failure, and that's part of the territory.
Everything you are saying right now is stuff that I talk about a lot here. Um, but it's stuff that like I have studied and worked on, um, for years I'm only sort of arriving in, in this understanding now in my forties and the fact that like you were just always sort of naturally of this belief that like I'm always saying like, life is my learning journey and I'm just gathering information.
And the fact that you like understood that for your like entire career is really, really admirable and incredible. Um,
not just career
right. Your entire, entire life.
Well, well, I'll, I'll, I'll add another, uh, layer to it as well. And that is one of the things that I did, and this came, started right with my very first band that I, I created, and it went through my business career, not just my, uh, creative career, if you will. I always tried to surround myself with people who were better than me.
I'm not saying I wasn't good. I was, I was a good guitarist, good bass player. I could write songs. I was a good producer, you know, I mean, I was a really good executive, but I always tried to hire and surround myself with the best people I could, and as opposed to being afraid that they were going to. Take my job, if you will.
I always knew they would elevate anything and everything I was involved in. So I just don't, the greatest fear I had was being able to provide a roof over, you know, my family's head and making sure I was earning enough to do that. That was really my greatest fear. What I did day to day, uh, was never fearful to me.
Yeah.
That was my next question. Were there any times where you felt a little bit of peril from that? where maybe you had done a couple of endeavors that didn't end up panning out and, and, ever have a freak out moment?
I, I would have to say that I, I, I can only remember that happening twice in my life, and it happened in two record companies. It, it did never, it never happened in any Entrepreneurial venture that I did by myself, but I overstay my welcome in one record company. And, and when I say overstay my, my welcome, I had a falling out with my boss.
I, I, I thought he was wrong and I wouldn't do something that he asked me to do. And for two years, he basically ran the department without me, if you will. I worked on all my acts, but it was like I was persona and on grata. I really should have quit when he asked me to do what I didn't think was ethical.
Um, but I didn't. And again, it came down to needing to feed my family. And then a second time I was just in a situation where I did not enjoy the people I was working with. And I probably stayed there a little too long as well, but it was a shorter period. But you know, Each step of what I did took me to the next step.
And maybe if I had left earlier, I wouldn't be who I am and where I am today. So I'm not gonna look back and say, would've, should, or could have. It's, it's what it is.
Yeah,
Yeah, I, I believe that. That's
I believe that too.
Um,
Yeah.
Oh, and by the way, I will also tell you I do meditate and, uh, my wife and I studied with a man named, uh, Dr. Joe Dispenza. I don't know if you're familiar with him. And we do manifesting, in fact, I manifested the success of my first novel. Uh, I've also done past life regression hypnosis.
Loved that too. And it's sort of like I'm not very religious, but I'm very spiritual. And so I really believe in the quantum dimensions and I believe in the spiritual plane. And I draw on that in my life.
Okay. Let's get into that.
But actually, before we get into that, I'd like to share with you another great little podcast. I think you might enjoy.
What really happens to us when we die, there is growing evidence that suggests we never really die, but that our eternal souls take a journey from this earthly plane to the afterlife over and over again. Join me, Kristin Taylor. Host of how I made it through as I interview psychic mediums and those who have had near death experiences as they share insights about why we are here and what we can expect when we transition to the afterlife.
you started writing novels and at 77, which was last year, you published your first one. It's called please correct me if I say this wrong. Pinon, Pyon.
pinon.
Pinon, scorpion, and the barbershop detectives. It was a number one seller in Amazon, in Barnes and Noble, and then the second one in that same series was just released in February, which is called Murder in Hackford.
Tell us about this manifestation.
well, the manifestation was that I, I I started manifesting what success I would have with that first Scorpion book which is, kind of a classic whodunit set in 1910 England featuring this new scorpion who's kind of this police inspector that's kind of a cross between Poro and Holmes, but his own man and his own right.
And I, I and I started manifesting Well in advance, uh, I manifested getting offers for the book. I manifested what would happen to the book. And what happened was that, uh, most I would, I'd love to say all, but not everything, but virtually everything came true. Um, I got an agent, the agent got offers from multiple publishers for the book.
When the book came out, it immediately won an award. It was named the Buzz Book of the Year by the Pacific Northwest Bookseller Association. Like you said, it went to number one in Amazon in five categories. It, it was a Barnes Noble pick, an Amazon editor's pick. It was a publisher's weekly pick at, um,
Amazing.
you know, it, it's gotten tremendous response and is doing very nicely.
It's still selling. In fact, we, uh, we just put together and are publishing, uh, putting out for free a, uh, parent and teacher guide to it, because all of a sudden we're finding 15 and 16 year olds are finding this and going, wow, I love this and that. Nothing pleases me more than that. So all of this I manifested and it, it just, uh, it happened.
And the only thing that I manifested that did not happen is I saw myself on the Stephen Colbert show talking about it. And that did not happen, but yet exactly, you never know.
Um, okay, but so when you say manifest, what does that mean to you? What does that look like? What's the process?
Well, I, I kind of follow the process that the dispenser lays out. Uh, it, it's not enough just to believe that it's going to happen. You have to live like it's already happening. So even before this book got sold, I was telling everybody it's going to be sold. I'm going to get multiple offers on it. I bought, my wife and I bought some things that we might not have bought if we didn't think that we'd have some extra income coming in.
And I'm not crying poverty, but you know, I'm just saying still in awe, uh, some extravagance is, if you will. I was convinced, I just was living convinced that this event, what I was doing already was happening and some other dimension, and it was going to translate to happening in our plane.
Wow.
I hope this doesn't sound too woo-hoo. Strange, but it is what I believe.
No.
it's been around, like, there's also like the Abraham Esther Hicks kind of stuff. You
although dispense can sometimes be a controversial
character, I, I, he, he's very like, well known in that field, you know, I, I'm a hundred percent on board with it.
yeah, I, I, I'm really interested in the idea of manifestation and I don't know a lot about it, but a, but I do know a little bit about it. a lot of it, I think to me, or, or my understanding is, you know, not just like believing that you're already in it and you have it and that it, and that, you know, all these things are going to happen and you're already, but also like, there's so much like.
Self-worth involved, like that you're worthy of the thing, that you're fully worthy of the thing. So that you're making those decisions based on like, no, no, no. I'm, I'm worthy, like you're stepping into your worth. I'm worthy of this thing, and so therefore I can make all these decisions and I can buy these extra things because I know that I'm, it's going to happen because I know that I'm worthy that it's going to happen.
Like there's so much self-worth around. Do you, is that your understanding or what do you think of that?
I think that is true for some people, but I would say that that did not play in for me at all. I've, I've never used the term self-worth or thought of it in, in, in terms of myself. no, the, the, the way I did the manifesting was basically mostly with the dispensa, uh, meditations, and they would have manifestation elements to them.
So while you're meditating, you're manifesting what you want to happen, you're drawing it. And then when you stop, you are living a life as though that's gonna happen. And so there's no, no doubted, doubted, if you will. And so that's kind of what I did. I don't know. I've never, never thought I wasn't worthy of something.
So maybe it's a false sense of pride, but I, I, or maybe pride's not the right word, but, uh, I've just never had questions about worthiness.
Did your, were your parents, what was your relationship like with your parents? Because it seems like you've had this sort of feeling your whole life. Like you were always like this, like calm, collected, like, this is my learning journey. I'm supposed to be here, and also if I fail, no worries. I don't have that.
I'm very much like, It's a lot of work for me to, to um, to step into my worth and to believe that.
well, I, I'll tell you a little bit about my parents because you're right. It, it absolutely started with my parents. My, one of the things both of my parents had was they were both right brain, left brain balanced, and I know that I inherited that because I couldn't be doing the creative stuff I'm doing and be equally good at being an executive and not have a left brain, right brain going on.
My dad was an inventor. He owned, uh, he, uh, had over 900 patents, I believe. But he was also an artist. He drew, um, he read a book every single night of his life, literally. And he was a scientist. He worked with Albert Einstein and, and other leading scientists.
Um, I'm sorry, can we just take a moment, Albert Einstein? I can't even what that is incredible. I'm speechless. Let's keep going.
My mother, um, was a singer on the radio and then later in life she became a professor at NYU and then opened her own school for remedial learners.
So. They were really achievers, if you will, but also softened, if you will, by the arts, you know, in, in addition. And they introduced me early on. To a what? To everything, to literature, to theater, to music. And, and they, when they introduced me to music, they introduced me to everything from Opera, Django Reinhardt, to the Weavers.
It wasn't Pat Boon and Doris Day who were, you know, like the hit singers of the era. And my parents, you know, when I told them I wanted to, you know, I heard rock and roll, and when I wanted told 'em I wanted to be a rock and roll, which I knew right away they could have rebelled, and said, well, no, that, what kind of a life is that for?
You know, you, you're from this learned family, you know, you're a bright kid. What do you wanna do with Ro? And they never said any of that. They just bought me guitars, bought me amps supported me wholeheartedly, and told me what I told both of my sons. If you follow your passion and make it your vocation, it's not gonna seem like as much work as it is fun.
Okay, so quick catch-up rick has now published two books and I'm guessing he's working on a third. He's also written a book about how to be a good leader in business. And he made a video game to accompany his mystery bucks, which you can find on Google and apple.
I must say that I. Love technology, embraced it immediately. I studied programming just on my own, and I learned how to program both in Doss and machine language.
I worked in the NYU computer lab back in the early 1960s when they were programming computers by plugging wires into, uh, transfer boards or whatever they're called. Um, I programmed the first, uh, advertising database for bmg uh, distribution. I brought fax machines into Polygram when there were no faxes at the time.
I've just always embraced technology. I've loved it. The reason I embraced it is I love it. I, I, you know, so it, it just kind of comes naturally to me. I, I take advantage of it, and I am on TikTok.
See
yes.
Hi again, it's me. I remember the book Tuesdays with Morrie, the late 1990s memoir about the author interviewing his former teacher before he died of ALS. Yeah. You know, the one, well, Maury wrote his own book, which sat in a drawer for years after he died until his son and his wife rediscovered the book, edited it and published it just last month. It's called the wisdom of Maury. And it turns out that Blackstone and particularly Rick are the ones responsible for publishing it.
It also happens that the advice Maury gives is a very fitting for this show.
The wisdom of Morrie is morrie's own words, MA's own thoughts, and it's his advice on how to age joyfully, gracefully, happily. And, and I think it's a, an absolutely phenomenal roadmap for anyone, especially seniors, but anyone almost at any age of it. It's just filled with great life advice and you know, that, that anyone at any age can use to, to make your life happier, more graceful, more enjoyable, and especially for seniors.
That's awesome. I can't wait to read it. I loved Tuesdays with Mor.
Well, I, I think it's the perfect companion, quite honestly.
as a person that's not so much a senior yet, but I talk with my mom a a lot. And is that, um, age aging gracefully? Is that, is that a complex thing? Um, I don't know if I have a question completely formed.
But,
But here I am. Let me help, David. Again, I think what he was trying to ask Rick was, does he struggle with getting older? What does that struggle look like? And what does he do about it?
I have friends who dwell on aging. You know, it, it's sort of like they're, they're rushing the end of their life in a way because they can't kind of let go of, I'm getting older, I'm closer to the end than I am to the beginning. I other friends which I'm more in the, certainly the, the, uh, camp of is, uh, agent's part of life, you know, and it's like, uh, I did certain things in my thirties.
I did certain things in my fifties. Now I'm doing certain things in my seventies, and hopefully I'll be doing things in my nineties and maybe my hundreds. So it, it kind of, it, it varies person by person. But I do think there are a lot of people in our society who are concerned about aging and. You know, we, we, we are a, a society that is more geared towards younger people than older people.
So, uh, you know, I, I don't know that, yeah, ageism certainly does exist, but not, not universally. Um, so you just have to kind of go with what's not ageism.
Mm-hmm.
I I wanna chime in here because I the last two episodes that I've put out were both very focused around this idea of ageism, especially this last one that just came out yesterday, um, with Ashton Applewhite. She's the author of a book called This Chair Rocks, A Manifesto Against Ageism. And we talk with her and with, with David from the last episode about like, things like aging gracefully and how that is actually an, essentially an ageist idea. First of all, if you're aging, you are succeeding because what is the alternative? The alternative is that you're dead. Um, and and also the idea that like there's a different way to, there's a better way to age than other ways that like the person who's, running marathon marathons in their nineties is somehow aging more successfully than the person who's in the wheelchair.
And that's unfair. So anyway, just wanted to point that out just because it's so top of mind cuz I've been having these conversations a lot lately and I'll be having
an another interview with someone this afternoon
I, I, I'd like to res, I'd like to respond to that because I don't disagree with what you said, but where I do disagree is stress that. It. It's not a matter of whether someone that's running a marathon in their nineties is aging more gracefully than somebody who's doing nothing and sitting at home in their seventies.
It's their stress level. That to me, is the aging gracefully part. Are you stressing about your age? Is it consuming you? Is it affecting your life that you can't do things cause of your age? That to me, is aging gracefully when you get rid of all of that,
Yeah. Yeah. I love
staring at the, the, the hour, like the sand at the, the final minutes of the hourglass. You're like, are you gonna play the game or are you gonna watch the sand go down?
That's a really, really good point. Thank you for pointing that out. I love that. And you know, there's so much there too that we could talk about this for hours, but you know, I think a lot of that stress too does come from like society telling us that we're supposed to be stressed about aging, which is really unfortunate.
So it's like changing the narrative and talking more about this and having this conversation is really important
Yep.
Yeah.
Um, okay. What other tidbits of wisdom can you share with us as, as, um, as we're, as we're navigating making changes and trying new things as we age, if anything? I feel like you're like a a wealth of wisdom.
Well, uh, there were certain things that I kind of believe and some of them go fit into nice, neat little sayings and other things don't. But, um, one of the ones that I, I want to, uh, tell you is, are you familiar with the, um, the show, grace and Frankie? With, uh, Jane Fonda and Lily Tomlin.
Mm-hmm.
I, I, I loved that show and watched it kind of religiously.
And there was a character on the show named Mary Elizabeth. She was one of their friends. And now I grant you what I'm about to tell you was written by the writers of the show, but it w it was spoken by Mary Elizabeth in one of the, if not the last episodes of the show. And it just struck me as so Apropo that I, I literally had to write it down cause I wanted to remember it.
And what Mary Elizabeth said was, you are always going to be disappointed if all you remember are your failures. So that, that's
mic
that. Yeah, I mean, that, that's one of the things I just Absolutely. And, and you know, in that regard, I, I never dwell on my failures if I'm gonna remember anything. I'm trying to remember my successes.
I wanna smile, in, in memory not, not frown or stress. Betty Friedan, great quote from Betty Aging is not lost youth, but a sta new stage of opportunity and strength. You know, I mean, it is, and like Michael Jackson and not Jackson, Michael Jordan said, I can accept failure. Everyone fails at something.
What I can't accept is not trying,
Yes,
you know, and it's thing, it's things like that, you know, it's sort of like, when I was 77 and the first book came out, I could have said, I'm 77. Why would I still chase rainbows? You know, I'm too old and if I did, nothing would've happened. So it's really mental attitude of saying to yourself, I'm not too old.
And saying to yourself something new is an adventure, not scary. And it, no matter what age you are, it's, look, there are certain things you can't do. I can't fly a plane. You're, I mean, well, I probably could if it was a private plane and I took lessons, but I'm not gonna be an astronaut. Okay? I know there are things I can't do, but I kind of look at it with the exception of those things that, that I can't do for some physical or reason like that.
I kind of believe anything's fair game. So let me do the things that interest me that I wanna pursue.
Mm-hmm.
I love that. Thank you
Now. Now the other thing is, you know, there are a lot of, uh, a lot of examples of, uh, of people who started things later in life. Y you may know this, but maybe all your listeners don't viewers, but like Grandma Moses didn't start painting till she was 77 years old.
Uh, Frank McCort, who wrote Angela's Ashes started writing at 65. Um, Colonel Sanders didn't franchise until he was in his sixties. And the name that I will throw from the past that you both may be too young to remember, but I don't know her name is Clara Peller. Clara Peller was, was an actress, and her first ever gig was at the age of 81.
Oh Wow,
and her gig was, she was in a Wendy's commercial, and her big line was, where's the
the beef?
And that was Cla Appella, and it was 81 when she got that gig, which was her first ever acting assignment. A, a guy named Harry Bernstein wrote a book called The Invisible Wall, which was a hit book, and it was his first hit book, and it was at age 96.
So, you know, it's sort of like
You never
just, you never know. Exactly. You never know.
And, and,
life.
and like I said, don't fear rejection. Don't fear negativity. Just believe in yourself and plow on.
It's interesting you say that. I, I just, even the dwelling on the failures, I think, like for me, what I realized later is that I, I dwelled on the, or there was a lot of like, fear of rejection and things like that. And I think that's why I didn't lean, even when you were talking about hanging around people that are always better than you.
Like, I think I didn't do that for a while, or I shied away, even though sometimes they invited me into the crowd, I still sometimes was like scared, and I decided that I can't live that way any longer. And I'm hoping that, like you said, like it's not too late. Like I, even though I do feel.
Oh, it's not too late.
No, it's never, but you know, in some ways, like I think every decade you fear like a midlife crisis, you know?
And, uh, but then somebody that's older than you says, relax, you know, so,
Yeah. Yeah.
So, uh, so when I, uh, when I left the music industry before I moved here to Ashland, I decided to try my hand at acting.
Interesting.
um, I had, uh, when I was much younger, I had been in some summer stock theater and I was in a TV movie. And, uh, but, you know, it was always just accidental, if you will, you will.
But when I, uh, when I left the music industry, I said, well, what's another adventure I could try? So I had a professional, uh, headshot taken, and I went and auditioned for a talent agent in New York, and I ended up unfortunately getting gigs is extra. Never a, um, a main gig. But I, I was an extra in Sex in the City and a Billy Baldwin, uh, uh, pilot.
And I was supposed to be in the Sopranos, but I was on vacation when they were taping it. So I never got, I I wanted to be, I was gonna be on the Deus with Tony at a wedding. It would've been cool.
I thought you were gonna say, but they wanted me to play the part in the body bag, so,
Also would've been cool.
turned it down?
Oh, that's awesome. That's so awesome.
We've done it. We've arrived. It's here that Rick reintroduces himself without using descriptors like writer or husband, because as we all know, we are not our successes, failures or titles.
I'm Rick Bly Weiss. I'm 78 years old. I am a risk taker. I am a mentor. I am multifaceted. I am kind. I am caring, and I am spiritual.
Is there anything else that you're working on that you wanna mention? And where can people find you?
Sure absolutely. First of all, people can find me@rickblyweis.com, my website, or you can Google me and you'll find out a lot about me. Um, and what am I working on? Well, let's see. In addition to, uh, the two Scorpion books, uh, I have a Bless you. I have a short story featuring a contemporary character named Walker.
Not related to any other walker of any other Western or anything like that. And it's, uh, there's a series of anthologies called Murder, music, and Mystery. And, uh, their mystery anthologies centered around the theme of a bestselling album. So the first one was Hotel California, and I have a story in there featuring Walker.
Uh, the second one, which is coming out, I think this July, is Thriller and I have a Walker story in that there'll be a back in black next year, and then about out of hell the year after that. And so I'm, I'm doing those as, as well. I'm, like you said, I'm writing a book on caring leadership based on my years as an executive in two industries.
And my experiences, the peppered with behind the scenes anecdotes, you know, of well-known celebrities that illustrate some of the points that I raise. I'm writing the third Scorpion book. I'm writing my memoir, but I'm kind of, that's like. The last in line of everything I'm working on. And then I started writing another book, and my agent said, I think this would be a even better screenplay than a book.
There we go.
Finally, in the movies.
said so. Okay. And I'd never written a screenplay other than, like I said, for the student films, which, you know, that's, that was, you know, decades ago and, and not quite the same. So I have now started writing a screenplay, and I'm about halfway through it. It's for the ba lack of a better way to describe it.
It's, imagine the Movie Home Alone meets the best exotic marigold hotel.
Oh, great fun. I can't wait.
I like Rick so much. and while I'm green with envy over his self-confidence, I'm also pink with gratitude that he came on the show to talk all about mindset and manifesting. He's got some great stories and his writing ain't bad. Either side note, his character names and descriptions and his books and short stories are amazing.
You'll find all of Rick's links in the show notes. If you like what we talk about on the show and you want more content more often, or just a place to interact with me. Go follow me on Instagram at Molly at this age. Thank you to David Ben Porat. Brought for sound engineering and co-hosting.
Dan Devin for the music David Harper for the artwork I am. This age is produced by jellyfish industries. I'm your host, Molly cider. We will catch you all next time.