Passing on the torch. Ben Higgins has some words of wisdom for JoJo Fletcher and Jordan Rodgers as they embark on their engagement spinoff show journey.

During an exclusive interview with Us Weekly, the former Bachelor, 30, reflected on his own show, Happily Ever After, that he shot with ex-fiancée Lauren Bushnell after popping the question. “I think that the show we did was hard, really from beginning to end,” Higgins explained. “If you took a step back and if anybody cared about Happily Ever After or not, which I don’t know if there was any person in the U.S. that did, if you take that back and think about it, thad to be a really hard situation, right?”

The Almost Famous podcast host noted that the show prevented him from kick-starting his political career, due to contractual obligations. “[My] pursuits were running for office. [I] was spending all this time preparing for this, meeting with people, talking with people,” Higgins told Us. “That ended abruptly and suddenly and then all of a sudden, there’s this show in place and they’re talking about this couple’s lives. That was a hard transition for Lauren and I.”

Higgins recommends that Fletcher and Rodgers “have a clear direction on where [their] show” is headed. “Not that it’s scripted, not that it needs to be, but, you know, with Jordan and JoJo’s show, it sounds like they know where they’re going,” he affirmed. “It’s going to be about them being engaged, about their strengths and failures, but it’s going to be about them and it’s going to be them just sitting down and talking bout life together. That, to me, means direction. Lauren and I didn’t have that direction. We didn’t know where Happily Ever After was going to go. Most weeks we were shocked or surprised at, you know, what’s going to be happening. It was hard, it was really hard.”

The former bearer of red roses added that he gives himself and Bushnell, from whom he split in May 2017, “major credit” for putting their private lives on display immediately after getting engaged.

These days, Higgins has time to explore the possibility of running for office. The Generous Coffee founder tells Us that he is interested in representing the independent party instead of the republican party, which backed his campaign during his first attempt. “I really am attracted to the idea that I can be an independent, that there’s a lot of independents out there, a lot of voices, and so that can be attractive. I actually do think it can be very beneficial,” he said. “I think if I ran again, I really think I would make the time and the effort to run as an independent, just so I felt like I could actually voice my opinions without disappointing the party associated with me.”

Higgins will be taking the stage at Politicon in Los Angeles on October 20 to further discuss his political endeavors on a panel called “How to Change the World.”