This is what successful Career ReInvention looks like.
At 54 years old – with a pension on the line – John Anthony Savoca walked away from a 25-year teaching career…and never looked back.
No perfect plan. No guarantees. Just a moment where he said: “I’m done.”
In this episode, John breaks down how he went from burned out teacher to thriving real estate agent, and why the move wasn’t just about money, but freedom, creativity, and control over his life. This one hits on everything people struggle with:
- “Is it too late for me?”
- “What about the money?”
- “What if I fail?”
John lived all of that – and did it anyway. You’ll hear:
- The exact moment he decided to leave (and why he couldn’t go back)
- How he transitioned into a completely new career from scratch
- Why relationships – not cold outreach – became his biggest driver of success
- Why having fun might be the most underrated career advantage
And maybe the most powerful moment:
His advice to anyone stuck in a career they’ve outgrown – burn the bridge and go.
If this conversation resonates with you, visit ReInvention.biz to explore our guided workbook, learn more about us, and start creating what’s next!
**Subscribe to the ReInvention Podcast to stay plugged into fresh ideas, frameworks, and real-world tools for navigating the future of your work and life.
Episode Transcript
John Anthony Savoca: I say, burn the fucking bridge and go forward, make it happen. I couldn’t stay another day. I drove home and I said, I’m not going back, no matter what. And so that drove me
Todd Jason: All right, Chris, my brother, what is going on on reinvention today? What’s on our docket?
Chris Thide: Today we’re meeting with a real life Reinventor with a story I know our audience is gonna really find inspiring.
So I show up at this business networking breakfast where we’ve all gotta give these 45 second spiels about who we are and what we do. And I’m a little nervous, honestly, like these people all seem to know each other and I’m the new guy. I’m here to talk about reinvention, but like everybody in this room is already an entrepreneur, so like, how is this gonna land? Then this guy gets up to tell us about his real estate business and like, somehow in that 45 seconds manages to mention that he used to be a teacher. And I’m like, oh dude, this guy’s a reinventor. And then so after I do my bit, he comes and introduces himself. We hit it off, we talk a little bit more we’ll talk about his story. But first I just wanna say, John Anthony Savoca, welcome to Reinvention man. It’s so great to have you here.
John Anthony Savoca: Thanks so much, Chris. Appreciate it.
Chris Thide: And listen man, we’ll get into your story, and I’m so excited to share this with our audience and I’ll let you tell it from the beginning, but I just want to tell the people who are listening, if you feel like you’re locked into a work situation that’s no longer working for you, I want you to lean in and listen close to this one, because John’s not someone who like had a corporate career and then he switched to consulting on the corporate work he had been doing like, he completely shifted his field. He started from scratch and he is one of our middle aged brothers. So we’re taking on some of your built in narratives and excuses about it’s too late. You don’t have the experience, you need more runway. Like we’re not saying it’s easy, but we are saying it can be done and John is proof. So John, with that man. Let’s start at the beginning. First, let’s talk about your original career and in the context of like, when did you start to think, I might need to make a change.
John Anthony Savoca: So I think like a lot of teachers, I, I was 25 years in. You start to kind of count the years to the end, you know, how long before I can retire. And then, believe it or not, that’s a very, very common conversation in the, in the teaching world. Like every teaching career from the start of it, if you stay more than 20 years, everything changes so drastically. Right. I mean, I was always counting the days till the end, I’d say about after 10 years in or so. But my last year, the year I was going to leave. I knew I had to leave for a couple, two big reasons.
One, I wasn’t happy in the career anymore for a variety of reason. We can get deeper into that, you know, throughout the conversation. but the second big reason is I have an adult son who’s autistic. He aged out of the school program and he’s the kind of kid who’s a, life skills kid. He has staff that comes at eight in the morning. They stay until eight o’clock at night. And since he was gonna be leaving the school program. We were just very uncomfortable with like a day program. It’s a whole different kind of situation, and so we run the program right out of the house, and I knew that if I turn to this particular career, in part, you spend a lot of the time working out of a home office, probably 85% of the time I work outta my home office. And so when dad’s in the next room. You know, they treat your child different.
So those were the two So my objective was to make it through the school year. At that point we were running it outta the house, but, you know, people were meeting at the house. My wife and I were taking turns taking off from work.
It was really, really stressful. She’s a nurse from Northwell. By January, in conjunction with some things going south in, in the school program. And really, when I say going south, it was, I just didn’t have the patience anymore, frankly, with, you know, the whole environment between, a handful of kids, that would be tough. A handful of parents would be tough. And, and lemme just preface this by saying you could have, and this was throughout my teaching career, 25 kids in the class. 23, 24 of them are dreams and their parents are fantastic people. One or two can really make it very difficult along uh administrator, that sort of thing.
And by January there was, you know, one event that just I’d already started selling real estate, I guess in November. January came, there one day I left and I was like, I’m never going back.
And we’re gonna let chips fall where they fall. so that’s what got me, you know, that’s what it was like to leave.
Todd Jason: Quick question, just if you’re open to sharing, like before I ask the second question, how old were you when this is going down? Like, you know, I think you’re mid career, right?
John Anthony Savoca: Great question No I was, I was uh and part of the reason that I was trying to make it until the end of the school year was I, I turned 55 in July at that point I left a lot of money on the table, frankly. ‘Cause I would’ve needed to stay until 60 to get my full pension.
Todd Jason: So mid fifties, you know, had motivation to stay at the current job. You know, my sister’s a teacher. Okay. In New York, in Westchester. So I’m very familiar with the career path. I know the whole deal. And she’s a little bit older than you slash us right now. So she’s also in a situation, not reinventing like you did, but it really feels like you went against the grain in a bunch of ways, but you also had motivation, right?
Like you just were done with the job in certain areas. to the point where you left money on the table, but you also had this other interest. Oh, by the way, you also had your personal situation with your son, right? Like what a beautiful thing. That’s your priority in life, it sounds like, and it should be.
And and you had that motivation as well. But let’s talk about the reinvention itself, right? So it sounds like you went into real estate and that’s what you’re doing now. When did that start to emerge for you as something that was interesting? Was it a side hustle at some point in the past? Like when did real estate start to come into view?
Because this is really where reinvention, is real for people, right? There’s people out there listening to us, John, right, who are, either have a side hustle or thinking about something else or even exploring it or maybe even further down the path where you’re at. And so it helps to understand the story, right? Like why real estate? When did that start? And then there was a tipping point where it became your main thing where it is now. So it’s walk us through that journey of the actual career shift.
John Anthony Savoca: I knew there was gonna be a lot of flexibility in it. I knew that I would be able to work outta the house so that was the start of it I sold my own property for sale by owner five years before I started. I was kind of comfortable with the game. I, I, I had a general idea of what it was. I also wanted to be in an ecosystem of more money, frankly. You know, I was shooting toward being toward the higher end of the market. Uh, and I knew that was an arena where there, there is a lot of money moving around. And one of the biggest things for me, in teaching, there’s a lot of ideas and conversation and gossip about one teacher being better than another.
You know, a teacher may win, teacher of the month, teacher of the year, blah, blah, blah. It’s all subjective bullshit, in my opinion, right? There was no numbers behind it. The thing I loved about being in sales is there is a scoreboard, it is public. You know, you can see how good you are or how good you’re not, and there’s no debating over that.
And so that was a real driving force for me. Just to throw in there, my second year outta 250 guys, I was number four in the whole company. So that was something that was like really inspiring for me, that I knew my effort was going to show up both monetarily and, you know, my colleagues would see it.
Chris Thide: And John a little bit more to, in terms of real estate itself, So you sold your house by owner. Right. That’s, that’s cool. When you did that, were you sort of like seeing inefficiencies or sort of, had you considered talking to a realtor or something, and it didn’t really work out? Like, was that the germ of the idea of hey, I can do this. Is that what happened there?
John Anthony Savoca: So one of the things that really pushed me in the direction was I saw the transition happening, with social media and the degree to which homes were being marketed, with higher production video and that sort of thing. And I had some experience in front of a camera with a little YouTube channel that I used to run. And I was inspired by two realtors. One of ’em was a woman named Shannon Gillette. She is a realtor out in, uh, Las Vegas. And another guy, Brad McCallum, who is a realtor up in Canada, and they were both doing it differently than anyone I had seen. They both had really big business teams of realtors working for them. And instead of just taking, you know, definitely not just photographs. Or just doing like a very general run through with nobody talking or narrating. They were doing really highly produced video and I thought, I could do it. You know, I, I felt really confident I could do that from the start, which I was able to do. So that’s what pushed me there. I was thinking initially, you know, that would be my competitive edge here in the Long Island market because there’s very few people, doing it. Now, that has since changed a bit. I’m still doing the super highly produced videos and I stand out because of it. But that wasn’t quite enough to separate myself from, you know, other realtors. Although it did help. So, that was a big piece of it.
Todd Jason: I wanna jump in on that for a minute because, you know, when we talk about reinvention and successful reinvention, and I love when we get Chris, these like real life reinventors. ’cause what I always see, and I know you’re laughing and probably thinking the same thing as me, is that, and John, like we have like tenets of reinvention.
Things that we recommend on this podcast for people to do, right? Like in order to be successful in their reinvention. That’s the purpose of what we’re doing here, right? To motivate people and to open their eyes, that they can do it, they can make the shift just like you did. And one of those tenets is clarity.
Okay, well what is it that you wanna do? And you clearly had an experience of selling your own house that got you excited, you want to make more money. You had your story about that. You had clarity. Building new skills, like is another one. Like how do you actually get the skills that you need to reinvent yourself?
Okay. And you’ve, you’ve touched on some of that, but one of the specifics in terms of building new skills that we talk about is finding others out there who’ve done it, getting models of people. And you did it so uniquely, you found these realtors up, I think you said in Canada, right? That we’re doing these high-end videos and you thought to yourself, wow, they’re doing great. They’re really successful at what I wanna do. No one’s doing that in my market. Right. Let me go ahead and take that approach. Right. I don’t know if you were cognizant about how smart that was, but like that’s what we’re talking about, boom, that is like exactly the creative thinking that is necessary that most people that we work with, John, who are inside a corporate, they come to these very like, boxy way of looking at things like the vision is very limited, but what you’ve done and what all successful Reinventors do is they, they breathe and they open up and they look at a larger spectrum of the market.
You know, and they find something that resonates with them just like you did. And then they take it and make it their own. ’cause we’re all borrowing ideas, you know, there’s nothing absolutely new. And I love that man. I wanna honor that part to it, because this is a teaching moment for people listening to our podcast.
Like, you can do anything and there’s people out there that are massively successful doing the thing that you wanna do, and you can learn from them. And guess what? Those people aren’t better than you. They’re just not, they just figured it out and they’re doing it. So I think that’s a big part of how you found success.
John Anthony Savoca: Todd. Yeah, appreciate that, seeing those models, feeling like I could replicate it was definitely a big piece of it right up front for sure.
Chris Thide: I’ll add onto what Todd was saying. Right. And by the way, Todd, yes, we talked over each other almost before, because I was gonna say the same thing that you were saying, cause I heard it, right. But also John you had done some YouTube, maybe you had a channel right, beforehand. And you know, you were also, you were an educator for 25 years, right. It all comes across. Like I’ve seen, I watched some of your social stuff you’re tapping into your experience, your ability, you were always standing in front of an audience and communicating to an audience. You had your YouTube channel, you saw this model out there. You know, you recombined that together. ‘Cause that’s another theme we talk about is a lot of people, you know, you’re 45 or 50, you’re at this point in your career and you’re like, well, I’ve been doing this thing. I gotta keep doing this thing. But you have so much experience that you can tap into and repurpose.
Like for you personally, John, were you cognizant of that? Like did you have this feeling of oh God, I’m starting all the way over from scratch? Or was it really maybe just more like optimistic and energetically recombining what you had done? Like how’d you feel about it when you started?
John Anthony Savoca: I was very optimistic and I was very energetic, and I did actually borrow money from my house to float the boat a bit. ‘Cause I kind of thought to myself, all right, I gotta get to, the October or so with the cash that I had and so I borrowed some money just to make myself feel a little bit more confident. So I wasn’t stressing out, you know, about the fact that I didn’t have money coming in from day one. But I did feel very confident that my, my presentation skills as a teacher were going to transfer, to this business because there is a lot of that. The Long Island market is very different from the rest of the country.
You do spend a lot of time, you know, teaching buyers and sellers what to expect. Right now I’m focusing on people who have been in their houses at least 25 years. Right. And, uh, I’m holding, little events where they’ll come and I’ll talk to them about the downsizing process, the sales piece of it, the estate planning piece of it. Bring in an estate planner, we bring in a downsizer, we bring in estate sales specialist. So that is just like teaching, frankly. You know, you’re getting in front of a room of people and you’re educating them. You’re not asking for a sale, or anything like that. So that was very much like teaching.
You know what I, I didn’t know specifically that’s how I would use my teaching skills, frankly. But I, you know, look, teachers can do a lot of things. There’s no doubt about it. If more teachers left teaching and used those skills in other arenas, I’m certain they would make significantly more money, that’s for sure.
Yeah. So That’s kind of how I thought about it. I felt pretty confident about the skills I was bringing out to the market.
Todd Jason: Yeah. And I gotta say like, again, you’re mimicking some of the things that we talk about in reinvention. there’s two things there, the first was you did a financial plan, you know, and you mapped out your money in a way where you saw what your runway was. By the way, John, we have a workbook, okay.
Like on our website, you know, you know, reinvention.biz that we help people in a seven day process do a lot of the things that we’re talking about here. And one of those days, is a focus on financial planning. Like how much money do I actually have? Where am I spending money, and how much runway do I have to reinvent myself?
It was such an important piece and you did that really naturally. But I wanna talk about what you said before, which was, like you become the number four salesperson out of, of a large group, right? And so I think a lot of your natural abilities and your training as a teacher, I, I do think it, it translates.
So your reinvention while sounding very different, oh, going from a teacher to somebody that’s selling real estate sounds maybe dramatic. There’s probably a lot of, crossover in terms of your skills that you use smartly. But I’m curious, like what you’re seeing out there in terms of your success, in this new career, how much would you say it relates to your relationships and your relationship building with other people? It sounds like it’s a lot of it, but I wanna get your take on it. Versus the more transactional, I’m a salesperson, I just need to hit numbers and like reach out to a lot of people.
What are you finding, you know, in terms of your new success, in terms of the relationship versus transaction piece of what you do? How do you hold that?
John Anthony Savoca: The relationship piece is paramount. So when I first started, looking into how somebody should start to do business, the coaching was, get on the phone, cold call, all of the traditional ways that you might drum up business, but we are going through like a historical time here on Long Island with our lack of inventory frankly. and it was just, there were no leads to call, frankly. And if you’re not aware of that, here on Long Island, what makes a, market, a, a seller’s market is the amount of inventory that we have. Long Island has two months worth of inventory, meaning that if nothing else came to the market within two months, there’d be nothing left, Right.
So there’s almost nobody to call. And who would you call? You’d call people that were trying to sell their houses by themselves. You would call people that had expired listings. Well, there’s no listings expired. The only listings that are expiring are the people that are grossly overpricing their house.
So I had to lean into the relationship piece. So I joined a networking group And uh, somebody gave me some really good advice. They said, Johnny, if you’re gonna join that group, get one of the speaking roles, try to get on that leadership committee, which I did because every week you get to talk, you stand up more. And it’s also a long game with the networking for sure, my first year I didn’t get a single lead. My second year I did over 50,000 in commission, and this year it’s gonna be probably closer to a hundred just from the leads that I got through networking. So it’s baked into my day. And it’s something that we do, not passively. It’s absolutely deliberate. So the relationships piece is huge. I was kind of surprised that the network that I built as a school teacher. Didn’t really transfer to any business at this point. Frankly, they all know that I am uh you know, selling houses from my social media and you know, a phone call here and there.
But I’ve built a lot of relationships after leaving, you know, the school building. So yeah, that’s a really big piece. You know, in fact, what I was just talking about in terms of putting on these presentations aimed at Downsizers. I’m doing it with people in my business network. I’m doing it with the estate attorney there. The estate sales person, the mortgage person. So those relationships have been huge.
Chris Thide: I think that that’s so important for people to hear, right? Because I think when people, I know that when I came out the door of corporate and I said, I’m starting my solopreneur business, two things that you said just resonated with me.
One, I kind of thought all my concentric circles of people I knew would be like just throwing clients at me. Did not happen. Two, I sort of was thinking very transactionally, like, where is my next person that I’m going to like, latch onto and work with. So the relational aspect and in committing and investing in relationships, I think is really important. You know, we’re talking about real estate here or coaching, I think it pretty much across the board is gonna apply to anyone who’s going out and launching their own thing. It’s a long game, it’s about connections. I wanted to also just get into tactics with you a little bit, you know, so you joined a business networking group. What were some of the other things you did to just like invest in relationships, in the very beginning when there was sort of like, you turn the spigot and nothing comes out and you go, okay, well we gotta find water somehow.
John Anthony Savoca: Well there’s something called geographic farming where you basically go knock on doors in your neighborhood. And I started by buying, I live in Oak Beach, long Island. Todd come from California, you would probably love it here we’re on a barrier island the bay is on one side, the Fire Island Inlet is on the other. It’s a very, very small community. There’s about 250 of us. And I started just, I, I had mugs made with a picture of the Robert Moses Bridge on it. said Oak Beach, long Island, my name. I put a business card in there and some chocolates wrapped it up. I gave them out to every single one of my neighbors. Uh, I didn’t knock. Long Island is a little different. I have an assistant that works for me, a virtual assistant. And she does, this is when I was still cold calling and I’m not anymore. But she told me that we don’t answer the phone here on Long Island. You know, she does cold calling in Ohio. She does cold calling in in Canada for other realtors, long Island is a different animal. And not only do we not answer the phone, we don’t answer the door. We’re very weary of that. So I, I don’t actually knock and force a conversation, I just leave it there and I’ll do something like that at least eight times a year. And if you see, look at my social media, I just dressed up like a bunny and first of all, for the day before Easter, I just rode around the neighborhood. In fact, I was on the Long Island Wise guy Instagram, which is, you know, the guy’s got over a hundred thousand dollars followers. People send them stuff they, they sent to me to show people, cause I was up and down Ocean Parkway in a bunny outfit on my bicycle.
Chris Thide: By the way, John, that organically hit my feed and I didn’t even realize it was you. And then I go, Oh my god, that’s John. It was amazing. Yeah, it was so cool.
John Anthony Savoca: So I’ve done things like that. I dress and leave things on people’s doorsteps. I put flags, American flags in front of every single person’s house in my community. On the 4th of July, they wake up to a miniature flag on their front lawn. A nd that led to last year, $3.25 million in sales in my own neighborhood.
Chris Thide: I love that.
Todd Jason: this is amazing, man. Like, are you having fun? I feel like you’re having fun.,
John Anthony Savoca: So much fun, I can’t tell you how much I’m having.
Todd Jason: Can we talk about that for a minute? And look, I’m not poo-pooing your previous career. Teaching is obviously one of the most important things that we need educators, great educators on this planet.
This is not a call for people to leave education. I’m sure that isn’t what you’re about but it’s also about your life, right? Like your reinvention, and it feels like you’re beaming. It feels like you’re having so much fun. It feels like you’ve unleashed a lot of creativity. Like are you surprised that you’re also having this success?
Like how much fun is it to have reinvented and be so successful? Like, I feel like you have a lot of freedom right now to be yourself. It feels like you’re very authentically yourself right now. Like, talk about that a little bit sorry to interrupt you, but I, I’m really feeling it right now that you did this and you took the leap and you planned it out. You did all the reinvent steps by yourself. You didn’t even know us right when you did this, but you did it yourself and now you’re there and it just feels like you’re free and having a blast.
John Anthony Savoca: Yeah, I am having an absolute blast. I am a very creative person. I don’t like to ask for permission. School you have to ask permission for everything. I’d like to try things that could be outrageous, and if it doesn’t work, I don’t do it again. You know, I still, I still kind of, you know, move forward very, very quickly. And so yeah, that is a a, tremendous amount of fun for sure. That’s one thing I haven’t figured out yet and I gotta get better at, is I don’t, I don’t really have much balance. I’ll say I don’t have any balance. I, I work all the time, but it is a lot of fun for me, so I don’t really mind. And school was much different than that. It was all very, very regimented. They told me when I was working, when I was off, there was a lot of big chunks of time where I was off.
And so I really love what I’m doing. I’m having a lot of fun and I do wanna work some structure into this because I, while I am doing business, it’s, I’m still at a point in the development where I have a really hard time, you know, predicting when the business is gonna come in, and I’m kind of going in a direction with these workshops that I’m doing where I think that’s gonna become something that’s steadier frankly. But just back to the fun piece. Yeah. It’s, it’s a tremendous amount of fun. It’s fun to be in front of people where I am pretty good, frankly, from my teaching experience. It’s fun to be part of this networking group where not only am I on the leadership committee, I do an education point once a week and I’ll teach sales or networking or mindset or something.
It’s a five minute lesson. and then I take video clips of it and I put it on my Instagram. So all of that’s a lot of fun for sure. Watching people see me being successful, those that probably didn’t think I would be is a lot of fun. So you nailed it, Todd. Yeah, I am having a lot of fun
Chris Thide: I think that’s a secret that is lost on people on the internet right now. You know, there’s debates about this, right? My feed can get full of people who are like, discipline hustle bro junkies. Who are like talking about get up at 4:30 AM and do this for 18 hours straight and knock yourself out and blah, blah, blah.
And like, you know, there, there’s obviously a place for discipline and it can create great results for people. But I think for a lot of people, what they’re not really saying is this secret ingredient can be if you’re having fun, you know, the work doesn’t feel quite as much like work. Listen, nobody likes cutting up clips to put on social media, but like if you know it’s supporting your story and you’re excited to get that story out there and it’s a creative expression of who you are, you know, and especially, listen, John, I identify with you, ‘Cause like I was in a career for 20 years where I felt like the creative part of myself was just not only useless in that career, it was almost like antithetical to it. Like you could not bring that to it. So to me as I’m building this business and part of it is expressing my opinions and putting myself out there, it’s still work, but it is just much more natural and it can happen at 9:00 PM and I don’t feel put upon because it’s like more of a natural flow state that happens. Right.
And so. I think also for you, John, what I see, and I think what Todd picked up on, right, because he’s just meeting you here and I’ve talked to you a couple of times. Your energy is so infectious, man. I mean, just the positive energy and you’re not putting it on, right? This is just genuine. It’s coming through you. Especially when you’re doing something that’s so, personal as selling someone’s home, they feel that, right? Again, in terms of message for the people who are listening, it’s like, follow your fascination, your genuine, what genuinely attracts you. When you put yourself in a space of I guess we’ll say alignment is the coaching word. These things just flow through you. And John, even as you said, maybe a little too much. Maybe we need to put some boundaries on it so you’re not like working through dinner all the time or whatever it is. But, it’s inspiring man. Truly.
John Anthony Savoca: Thank you so much. I really appreciate that. I think it’s something where, um, it’s funny you brought up the hustle bro culture. I am one of the ridiculous early people. I do stay in shape. I train jujitsu, six days a week. But having said that, I’m, I’m saying that because I, if I don’t feel good at 11 o’clock and I want to take a break at that moment, I have the freedom to do that.
Having that ultimate control over, you know, the decisions that I make about how my time is spent. Is really really important to me. Like I’m never part of a, a meeting that I didn’t decide to have that was totally a waste of time, so eliminating those things and having those that control over my life, is a really, really big difference too.
So if I gotta work on a Saturday to go show a property or whatever, but I have so much more control over my life during the day. It’s not even close. I, I would take what I’m doing, all day long.
Todd Jason: So, you mentioned this physical health stuff in Jiujitsu. I’m actually curious a little bit of a, side question on this, but I think it’s really important ’cause we don’t talk about it that much on this podcast yet, Chris, but I think we do because one of the things that I believe in that successful reinvention also needs to honor, our physical health, our physical energy, our habits, our routines. It sounds like you’re somebody that’s always been on that. How much do you think that plays a part or has played a part in your ability to make a career transition, in your mid fifties, like the fact that you are in shape and, and that’s a big part of your life?
Talk to me about that piece because I think this is something that a lot of the people we work with just miss. It’s a lot of like getting more on the computer, getting fueled up on AI. Getting fueled up on networking, all these things like all like computer, like these are the muscles being worked out, but how much of this do we need to like expand and get in shape physically? What are your thoughts on that?
John Anthony Savoca: I think it’s as important as any other skill that you’re doing. I’ve cut out a tremendous amount of other habits that don’t work for me. I really don’t drink at all where that was part of my life in the past. don’t have any time to have a hangover. I don’t have any time to have anxiety. So, you know, healthy habits really, really play a big role in, I think, in pushing forward with, especially when you’re dealing with so much unknown, right? I am one of those guys that I, and I just naturally wake up early. I’m somebody who’s way smarter at the crack of dawn. By eight o’clock at night. I’m useless, you know, and other people are the opposite where they you know, they don’t get going until the afternoon and they’re doing work at 11, 12 o’clock at night.
So my, routine and the things that I do to stay healthy, both mentally and physically have played a tremendous, in fact, I don’t think I could possibly do it if, if the Jiujitsu and the weight training and the other stuff that I do, weren’t part of it. It’s also a confidence builder. I belong to this gym that’s, uh, owned by a former UFC guy. There’s probably a dozen professional, or, you know, amateur looking to be professional fighters there, and then everybody else like me just your regular person. So, you know, just to kind of build this network within the gym, and I’m 20 years older than everybody
Todd Jason: Right.
John Anthony Savoca: like the guy is, you know, in his late thirties, and then everybody else are kids. And, you know, to get respect from them, for them to be happy, to see me, to be part of that culture gives me a lot of confidence to push on with, you know, what I’m doing.
Chris Thide: You know, that’s so important, John. So first of all in that realm. And then in all these realms, just putting yourself in a room where you’re inspired, where you’re connected, where you’re, you’re feeling energized by it, but also just more about the physical health in general. We don’t always hear this like at the people that we’re talking to directly, but you do hear it in the culture, like, I don’t have time to work out.
I don’t have time to work out. And listen, I used to say that honestly. I actually used to say it when I was in a corporate role, and then when I shifted into what I’m doing now, my life is more flexible, so of course I have more time to work out. But another secret sauce that people don’t talk about, it’s like, if you, invest in that part of yourself and you’re physically moving around and you know, for me it’s usually early in the morning too, and I think for many people it is. The energy you get from that, the confidence you get from that, if you have a bad meeting or a bad conversation that goes wrong, but you like ran seven miles in the morning, it sort of doesn’t feel you kinda like, eh, whatever.
Like you’ve already put yourself through it, you know, you already got your cauliflower ear boxed in the morning. So like what can happen after that? Right. So I think that’s something that, on a broader sense, I would say it’s a reprioritization of our humanness, and that is what enables us to be so effective in our reinvented world. I do wanna shift gears one ’cause I, I, what I want to ask you, John, ‘ cause we’re having a great conversation here and I really wanna leave the people who are listening with, some specific inspiration. Let’s imagine someone’s out there, they’re 50 years old, they’ve got the golden handcuffs or just the handcuffs, and they feel like they gotta stick around in this career for five or seven more years to get that pension, to get that 401k, whatever it is. But they’re just like, I’m done with this shit. John, what do you, what do you say to that person?
John Anthony Savoca: You know, this might be easy for me to say, I say, burn the fucking bridge and go forward, you know, make it happen. I couldn’t stay another day. I drove home and I said, I’m not going back, no matter what. And so that drove me you know, move forward. Like, I’m going to meet the right people.
I’m going to figure out the right actions to take every day. Other people are successful at it. I can be successful at it. Period. And just let me add, I mean, I had the support of my wife, she was on board from day one. And that was really, really important. ’cause if she was fighting on me, that would’ve made things much more difficult.
Look, if I didn’t leave that day, I don’t think I’d be as successful as I am right now. You know? So that’s my advice. I mean, I know other people say, Hey, start making a little bit of money. Do it over time. I, I’m the opposite. Burn the bridge and, and fucking go.
Todd Jason: I love it, man. This is the first person, Chris, that we’ve had on that was that on? Compromising around it. But I think it’s an important message. I mean, I’m a little bit like that, Chris, you know, I’m a little bit more impulsive I will just burn it down, you know, and just, and then deal with it, you know?
And I think for some people that’s a really important thing to hear, that we all have the power to change our lives like today. You know, we do. We have the power to change our lives today. Such an important
conversation, you know, that everyone needs to listen to and your specific advice of Hey, like don’t wait. burn it down, you know, is relevant here. Like this is a relevant thing that a lot of people want to tiptoe around and maybe not say that, like, do it really very thoughtfully and you know, that’s also potentially a recipe for never doing it. Right? And so like, let’s go. Is the energy a little bit here not to get into our three bro energy a little bit, you know?
But there is something to that that I think is valuable for everybody listening. And I just want to thank you for taking the time to share your story. You’re very relevant to what our mission is here. I feel like a partnership with you and I’m rooting for you and I can’t wait to see how big this goes. And just again, thanks for being here, brother.
John Anthony Savoca: Thanks Todd I appreciate it, I appreciate being here.
Chris Thide: Listen, when a guy who lives on a barrier beach says, burn the bridges, you know, he means it. Thanks, John.
John Anthony Savoca: You know, can I just expand on that if you don’t mind. The piece I want to add to that is my family was on board with burning the bridges. You know, they saw what I was going through with this career and where we were. So, you know, that made it possible. It’s easy for me to say burn the bridges, but if you have people in your close life that are pushing back against that, so once I got the okay from my, you know, my sons, my wife, and it was on me, I did not even hesitate.
And, and I never looked back even a second to say, maybe I shouldn’t have done that.
Chris Thide: That’s beautiful. I love that man. thanks again John this has been amazing, brother.
John Anthony Savoca: Thanks guys. I
Todd Jason: All right, everybody, until next time, tune in reinvention. By the way, if you’re loving this conversation, we have others also coming like it. Make sure that you subscribe to our podcast. Follow us along. Like to me this is the conversation that is relevant right now in the world. Like this is it. So follow us along, we’re just gonna continue to name, reinvention, help people with their careers and their lives, and we look forward to getting to know you. Thanks again, John.
