Welcome, welcome, welcome to another
episode of kiss the ground. For today's
episode, I got to actually sit
down in person with Steven Smith, the
CEO and founder of Anda wellness and
is a regenerative hemp and herb company dedicated
to using regenerative agriculture to create the
cleanest possible medicine. Today, Stephen explains
the diverse uses of hemp crop,
how he kicks started his company and how
he keeps their farming values a top
priority. Well, running his business my
life, my purpose was to be
a protector or to care for whether for
nature. Soil really is the nutritional
bank account for our Willstons. Together we
can do something that we've never done
before. We can rebuild our ECOS system,
our degraded soils and are degraded water
cycles. Freedom to me is the
ability, the right to be all
of who you are. I think we
can all do our roles, even
if you're not a farmer. From the
words of Roomy Let, the beauty
you love, the all that you do.
There is hundreds of ways to kneel
and kiss the ground. So what
is hemp? Hemp was one of
the first cultivated crops. That's that's what
we've been told. That's that's what
we read. It's a questers a ton
of carbon. It has a ton
of uses. Hemp was cultivated in Central
Asia. It's a cannabis plant that
contains fewer thhc levels than others found in
the marijuana plant. Instead, hemp
contains the chemical compound can of annoyed or
CBD. It appears to kind of
the in then more narrow scope, more
contemporary viewpoint that this is. This
is new right, but this is really
ancient medicine. This is an ancient
crop and it's just the past. You
know, eighty years or so it's
been in prohibition. Archeologists say that hemp
was discovered and eight thousand bce in
areas that would now be parts of China
and Taiwan. But Steven's own discovery
of hemp was just about twenty years ago.
I decided to write my senior research
paper on cannabis. That felt a
little a little edgy for North Carolina
in the late s. So I kind
of pivoted over to hemp and I
remember like literally researching in Encyclopedias. That's
dating me, I suppose, but
I was blown away. But I the
historical context and use of this crop
from, you know, rope on boats
to to paper, to bioplastics,
insulation, fiber, on and on.
And I just was kind of blown
away at what started as kind of like
a cheeky quasi rebellion to my teacher
to write about a cannabis crop. Just
confusion and frustration actually, as an
eighteen year old, like why are we
not using this? You know,
hemp is a very diverse resource that can
be cultivated to make clothing, housing, fiber and so much more. Five
years ago or so, I had
an experience with some homemade infused CBD oil
and I recall as flying back to
Colorado for for Christmas and I was tired,
I was getting a goal, I
was slightly hungover and I was about
to get on a plane or leave
for the airport. So I mixed this
oil with tea and herbs and anything
I could find that I thought might contribute
to me making it through the day
and feeling better, but more report tonic
of whatever within the closet, a
totally than the cupboard, a Cornucopia of
wellness delight, you know. And
and and when I got on the plane,
I kind of was like dancing down
the aisle, you know, as
like this is groovy, like I
don't feel I don't feel high, I
really don't. You know, I
feel clear, but I feel so relaxed.
And it felt adapted Jenne in the
sense that I either, you know,
sink deeply into the seat of this
frontier flight or I could turn and
have a coherent, sharp conversation or
read. And when I landed I said
this is something like there's something to
these other canabinoids and I wonder if if
the market will open up in that
way. And so, you know,
I don't I can open up a
little about how this part started. But
a dear friend of mine passed away
from a seizure and and and when she
passed away before, before this happened, a couple years before that. It
would have been two or three years
before that experience, I had this really
strong feeling and vision that I was
going to work with her parents. You
know, we get these things sometimes, I don't know. And when I
landed in Colorado, it was the
end of two thousand and sixteen, I
called her, her parents and I
said, what do you think about CBD?
Do you think it's going to turn
into a market? You think it's
gonna be anything at all, these
minor canabinoids, and they said, I
don't know, but you know,
we have some friends playing around with some
stuff, and that is what started
on the wellness the home to the first
biodynemic certified CBD oil. On the
means way, vibration, ripple and so
people. You know, I've traveled
a lot in central and South America and
I was inspired by a conversation one
time and Argentina where this woman said,
like, you know, you have
good vibes, teeny went on thus like
and and that stuck with me and
I said, well, this is an
experiment. Let's just start with the
name as a placeholder and you know,
you don't overthink it, let's just
get moving. Yeah, and and it
turned out that like the concept behind
that, when you unpack a ripple effect,
the waves that we have in our
lives of ups and downs. I
get really as we started to develop
these products, like I felt that it
was regulating my waves, you know, and it's so I'm happy with the
name, still in honor of Stevens
discovering his passion and creating this amazing hemp
base wellness product. We had to
do an in studio toast, let's have
a little tears, toast, of
the release, yeah, of this amazing
product. You see green it is. MMMM, that's the whole hemp.
Well, yeah, yeah, we
we're not interested in clear, clear product,
plant products under the tongue. Yeah, under the tongue, down the
hatch. So what is CBD oil
and what are the real benefits of using
it? I'll be be quick,
but the endoconnabinoid system was discovered maybe thirty
years ago and it's his master regulatory
system, and I imagine it in my
brain that's kind of like one of
those old school, you know, operator
boards, like yes, hold plays
and they're like connecting like all parts of
the body. And so when you
bounce out of homeostasis, when you spike
with anxiety, when you spike with
inflammation or depression or you can't sleep,
your body is trying to get yourself
back to center, long right and it
does that by producing a Nandamide,
which is the bliss molecule or the runners
high molecule, and to Ag,
to Ag, or two a D to
ag. And some folks just are
always calm and not anxious, like we
know some of those people. They
are the overwhelming minority and and God bless
them, like I want some of
that, but that's what this is for
me. So what this does when
you consume on the oil owned, the
whole hemp oil, which again we
think works differently from like a isolate or
a broad spectrum which is more processed, it comes in and and your body
recognizes it as it's the same molecule. CBD looks like a Nandomide it.
They the there like they're like mirrored
ones, phytocnabinoid ones, indocnabinoid ones in
the body, ones from a plant. So when you put the plant version
inside the enzymes that are breaking down
the ones your body produces, and when
it breaks those down you don't reach
homeostasis as quickly. It goes at the
martyr. So CBD is in effect
acting on the oil, is acting as
a martyr comes into the body and
is like Hey, what's up? Taking
me, it's cool, take me, it's fine. It's that you guys.
Go, go, go, go
go. That's how I see it
and that's been backed by, you
know, the medical professionals that we've worked
with. So when you're taking it, it helps you get back to center
line. The number one reason.
We just did a recent poll. People
are taking on to is for anxiety, and especially now. So we have
the audios anxiety, which is supplemented
with Ashwagun to go to Cola, Lemon
Balm, passion flower pepperman. That's
a more directed product to kind of steer
it for that. But then the
other things would be inflammation, which we
all know is the root of so
many issues. Yes, and then sleep.
So people that aren't sleeping. Well, you know, and I've been
taking it for four and a half
years. I should not just do that.
Knock on wood. It still works, right. So I don't meaning
I don't have a tolerance. So
you know, I'm personally. I'm high
energy, I'm passionate. I was
given a dy or at all and you
know, anti anxiety medication as a
kid, like the whole deal, right,
and for me it's exercise, meditation, eating well and this stuff.
So that's why most people take it. But it has amazing effects, from
what I hear, on Women's cycles, you know, so things that I
never thought about. It's coming out
and we hear all these anecdotes that are
just completely fueling the the the progression
of the of the company but anyway,
that's what of you. Yeah,
what about what about four kids? And
we obviously know that kids, you
know, we're in high levels of,
you know, suicide for young people. What is safety? Is there any
issues with young people taking CBD?
So all of our products are under point
three percent thhc by volume. Right. So you know, a consult your
physician is what I'm saying as a
blanket term here. Yeah, or lay
that right. But but we've had, I guess she's ten now, a
young woman that that was having seizures
and her family was going to the dispensary
and using a plethora of high,
really expensive products. The only thing that
worked was Onda and the seizures just
went away. I would say it's up
to every every parent to decide.
You know, if the hang up is
THC, you know it's very,
very trace amounts of it. So it's
really up to the parent to decide. But as far as calming and and
in helping all humans, children,
all animals actually, dogs have more into
Canabin dsceptors and humans. It's just
unbelievable how it just helps bring people back
to center line. So I would
say explore with with you know, your
physician, but our stuff is super
clean, it's all organic and again it
has under that legal limit of THHC. So that would be the only thing
I think parents would probably consider,
you know, for to veloping minds.
You know, I steven didn't come
from a background of entrepreneurship. He was
an art student who had no idea
what it would take to start a brand.
So the early stages of Anda were
born from a lot of intuition and
the amazing people steven surrounded himself with. But we were early on faced with
with forks in the road, you
know, and it was like, well,
you can get a really good margin
if you use an isolate or you
can disregard your interest in sourcing directly
from a farm and buy from a bulk
supplier at, you know, forty
percent less or any number of these kind
of shiny, slippery, you know, paths presented them so for and more
efficient the American way. I don't
know. So you know that that became
a parent very early and you know
Annie and I, who is my cofounder,
we we were adamant about sticking to
our guns on this and and I
had worked in the wine business,
so that was constantly informing the model and
in my experience working in the wine
business and it was always about farming on
the highest level and then, gentle
minimal processing. So if you think about
farming, processing or manufacturing and then
marketing and sales, kind of in these
three columns, it was just really
the best you can do in farming,
which I can elaborate on our view
point there. And then, you know,
like the natural wine maker's gentle right, like honor the farming. It's
like, if you can imagine if
you were farming citrus like in this area
and putting so much love and care
into organic by Oo, dynamic regenerative citrus
and then you just blasted it into
emergency powder, you've lost the soul of
like the integrity of the farming,
in my opinion. So that's what we
see, you know, with with
a lot of hemp products. So yeah,
the thing that makes me think of
is the you know, a chef
that has really good ingredients doesn't need
to do much. It's like, you
know, just taste this peach,
taste this tomato, maybe with you know,
a little bit of lemon or olive
oil, and you know it's alive
with flavor. So it's it really
is with the minimal processing. It's really
honoring what nature did and having that
flavor actually in that that communication, actually
make it all the way to the
experience of the human being. Trying it
absolutely right. They're all parallel and
you know, that's something we find.
It's a very philosophical or kind of
it's a perspective that that humans have,
right. Are we of the mindset, or are people of the mindset of
this pharmaceutical perspective where we take nature, we break it down into these little
pieces, into the elements, to
the particulates, and then we have the
arrogance to try to reconstitute things in
a way that we see is the most
fit, whereas our perspective is on
the other end of the spectrum, which
is, like you're just saying,
farm honor the plant, keep it all
intact and trust that those nutrients are
together for flavor, for for for for
health and and keep it, keep
it aligned. You know, as far
as running a business, our mission
is to heal people, empower the farmers
and support the regeneration of the earth. And and anyone that I work with
on our small team, you have
to refer back to to those pillars and
they came to us on a group
camping trip, me in a couple of
my colleagues. We were camping and
it hit us like right on the edge
of the deschutes river, right near
our farm, or or Kassade farm that
we partner with, and it's still
our guiding light. So you know,
there's overlap, of course, but
at the same time the body, the
farm and the Earth are systems,
their ecosystems that we want to try to
positively contribute to the balance, wholeness, vibrants and and and highest functioning or
being of those entities. Yes,
and so those principles, pillars, columns,
whatever, those guide everything we do. The pillar for empowering the farmers
was really tested in two thousand and
nineteen after the Hemp Farming Act was passed
in two thousand and eighteen, which
legalized and regulated production of hemp. Production
was blooming and then it wasn't.
Even though in two thousand and nineteen,
for example, the bottom fell out, and I mean it was a nightmare
for a lot of farmers. We're
still with our farmers. We pay and
what they say their hemp is worth, you know, completely disregarding industrial commodity
pressure. So I think to us
you know, to be a business with
integrity. It's relative, right,
but we have set a course in our
framework and a mission and we just
do our best to stick with it and
and so far that model is is
working. It's not a totally it's not
delusions of grandeur. You know,
some shiny and it's sure, it sure
is hell not just a marketing facade, which you see more often than not.
Onto wellness has two farms they've partnered
with, hoskin berry farm and Kasade
family farms. And so Kasad family
farms, which I can speak more to
this model. Dear Friends of mine, Kate have stad's a really talented hat
maker. Have knowner for many years. Her husband, Chris, amazing farmer.
They are first and foremost food producers. So our interest is to partner
with people that are making food for
their communities, their region, whatever there
reaches. They grow about a hundred
tons of food. They're not just a
little market garden, which not that
being a market garden isn't fantastic, but
they're really growing quite a bit of
food. They they integrate hemp in the
rotation, so they have chickens,
pigs, cows, Turkeys. So these
poly cultures of livestock. They're growing
herbs, flowers and all these vegetables,
and so when savory comes in and
starts to to measure their I packed.
They're looking at the health of their
water systems, they're looking at biodiversity in
the soil, they're looking at inputs
or no inputs, which in their case
they don't use any inputs, certainly
not off farm inputs. If anything,
it's a compost and nutrients developed on
site. And and then carbon sequestration.
You know, are they sequestering carbon? Right? You know a little bit
about that. So we're, I
think, two years in to a five
year data cycle. Basically, cascade
is a certified organic farm and in two
thousand and twenty they received their ecological
outcome verification certification with Eov certification. The
farm is seeking to make an impact
on the climate crisis through healthy soil and
ecosystem function, and so that farm
is is being documented and recorded to to
back up what little data. You
know, what data they already have to
support that it is regenerating and making
that place better. A lot of products
nowadays claim to be organic or sustainable, but when it comes to using the
term biodynamic, you have to be
certified. First pros and cons to that.
But if you're certified biodynamic, in
my book, you check out every
farm I've ever been to and worked
for that's been biodynamic. Is is absolutely
it's a high, high level regenerative
organic certification and land to mark. It
is really interesting because they work with
farmers in a less prescriptive way, so
they don't say you have to check
all these boxes, you need to spend
all this time online. They come
out and they work with them to figure
out what is relevant to this site, where the bottlenecks you know, what
can be done to improve or get
through these things and and while documenting the
progress along the way. Kasad family
farms is located in Jefferson County, Oregon.
Like a lot of people in the
West, you know, really short
on water. This year it's been
wild. But they are young go getters.
That are I mean the farmers and
ranchers in my life are some of
the most intelligent, hard working,
problem solving, just unrelenting people. I
know. You know and and and
that's where we look at our model and
think I hear I've heard this again
and again, especially working in agriculture.
They always got the short into the
stick. You know, some shiny you
know city brand just sells for ten
billion or you know whatever, and and
and they're not always historically conscious of
their sourcing and where they're getting it from.
And so farmers, you know,
if like farmers are breaking even,
it's like a good year. What
other business would ever be okay with that
for forty years, you know?
So if we can contribute to financial and
biological diversity on their farm, even
if we're just chipping away little by little
because we're a small company, we'd
like to see that model scale. Not
necessarily in the way of saying hey, dit your carrots and go all him.
That would be in violation of the
model, you know, to be
kind of anti monocropping, but can
hemp be a little bumper in other food
producing farms? Want to ask Steven
what was his opinion on the global implementation
of her generative farming techniques? He
said we have a we have a ton
of people on this planet. But
when I see what Chris and cater doing,
for example, and they've got eighty
plus acres under cultivation and it's by
diversified. It's again not not pulling
in external inputs and producing ton of food,
a hundred tons rather of food.
I don't know, seems like their
neighbors could do it too, you
know what I mean? Like so someone
asked me, excuse me, the
other day about that same question and she
said, well, my friends family
grows let us in the Salinas Valley and
immediately thought of east of Eden in
the book when, when, when he
was trying to the main character was
trying to ship let us to New York
on freight trains in ice boxes.
That was like a part of the book
that just popped up to me.
HMM, and I thought, well,
I don't know if we should really
be doing that, you know, and
and I don't know, maybe it's
easier said than done. Feeding, feeding
the whole planet is is something I
can I don't have a solution for.
But but I will say that I've
seen farm is produce substantial amounts of food
for their community and they are less
than one percent of the farmland that's being
cultivated. So if they're biodiversified,
you know, hundred Acre farm can be
growing that much food in that way. So questering carbon, high levels,
low inputs, all these amazing things. Well, you know what about doing
it for a hundred other farms in
the area right so I'm optimistic. I'm
certainly more optimistic to explore that before
some lab meat or science tied. I
mean, that's just me, I'm
just I'm I'm thinking low tech. Get
back to nature. Let's not try
to use technology and science to outsmart nature,
because it seems like a futile task. The New York Times released an
article called attack of the Super Weeds
and the resilience of pig weed. They
have the ability to re root themselves
after being removed from the ground and have
slowly built up an immunity to many
weed killers. Even with scientists developing new
chemicals to kill the weeds, nature
always ends up on top. Do you
surf at all? Have you served? I don't serve regular but I do
love surfing. You know, the
feeling or the concept like it's like,
you know, there's something about farming
and surfing that are interesting to me in
that we are writing what we're given, like we are at the mercy,
like we are not in charge,
you know, and as soon as people,
I think my opinion, realize that
we are riding the wave of nature
and and what we're given, the
more in harmony we the sooner we can
get to where we probably really should
be going. And other than the people
that are making millions and billions off
of these chemicals, I don't understand how
anyone else sees that as as a
solution. Yeah, it's. You know,
every time I walk in a city
and I see a weed growing out
between a crack and the sidewalk,
I'm like, yeah, there you go,
you know, like it's always going
to take over. Yeah, it
is. Yeah, it's. Regeneration
is the design principle of nature and whether
we're whether whether we snuff ourselves out
and then regeneration takes place after that.
Yeah, or going to happen either
or we actually can find ourselves connecting to
that design principle, that organizing principle, is kind of the thing that I'm,
you know, most excited about,
and I know Paul Hawkin just came
out of the new book just this
past week, yesterday the day before,
called regeneration. Subtext is healing or
reversing climate change in one generation. Yeah,
I saw and so it's quite a
compelling possibility and how to but but
I'd love to ask you. I
understand that you've described yourself in the past
as an aspiring polly math so I'd
love to know such a nerd. Yeah,
what does that mean? And what
subjects are you aspiring to currently mastering
in your in your polymath exploration?
Okay, yeah, sounds good. So
this, this goes back to,
I think, honestly, what set me
on the course of all of this. You know, like I always grew
up with a guarden, my parents
always grew food, my grandmother always had
a garden. You know that that
was always a part of my life growing
up, but without any sort of
like rhetoric or conversation or identity. It
was just like, you know,
North Carolina country folks growing food, you
know, no chemicals or anything.
And when I went to Napa and two
thousand and ten to work as an
apprentice for David Mahaffey, who I hope
to see this weekend at Olivia Brion
winery, I was just wide open to,
you know, what is wine making, what is grape growing, what
is farming? And little did I
know that he would become a good friend,
a mentor and I would be living
with him and his wife on their
property for four years. He he
is, he inspired that he really did
you know? He is an amazing
wine maker, he's an amazing farmer,
he's a woodworker, he used to
shoot photos for polaroid back in the s.
He used to hang with Warhoul.
I mean the guy never finished his
Undergrad and yet he convinced Harvard to
let him teach film and photo, which
he then segued into a Master's program
he's just like he just flows through life
in this really interesting way that's fearless
and curious. Mm and I, I
just I don't know that I had
met anyone like that, you know,
in the way that it's like he
didn't give a shit. You know,
he didn't care what people thought of
them. He still doesn't. He just
was curious to learn and make connections. And so, you know, I
think we grew up on a an
age, a time where, you know,
being a specialist is is, is
encouraged. Right. You know,
I'm really good at this thing and
I fit into the COG and this way
because I bring this service and that
that is great and probably very functional for
this reality we live in and this
system. However, it wasn't really for
me. In fact, early on
I was interested in, you know,
skating and I also like Skateboarding and
surfing and I also like wanted to play
Lacrosse and learn about and so from
an early age I was like, well,
am I a jock? Am I
a skater? Kid, like,
what's the identity? And I remember
like thinking about how I felt even in
middle school that I had to identify
with a group, and yet I wanted
to be connected to all of them. So what I met David, it
made me feel validated that that was
okay in a way. Yes, and
he just told me. He said
I moved to Napa when I was thirty,
and I just asked a lot of
questions and he figured out how to
make wine. You know, the
guy can make a violin in seven days,
like he's just talented, you know. But he also he goes there,
he does the work. So for
me, I not to get who.
I just think it's interesting. I
one time had a reading from like
a psychic, astrologer, chart reading
person, and she said this is your
last life. She said you were
a man of the of the of the
cloak in your last life and you
adhere to your responsibilities and your your restrictions,
and this life you're gonna taste the
fruit of your you know, like
just do everything and explore and I
was like that sounds pretty good. Yeah,
like I can identify with that.
And so, you know, like
I live half the time in Oregon, which is really fulfilling up there to
be connected with that community, and
half the time down here, and,
you know, part of me feel
spread but at the same time I think
there's value in having kind of a
broad awareness of all of these systems and
all of these parts of this existence
and then, you know, pulling from
that perspective to find connections and create
new paths. You know, I find
that really inspiring. So that's where
I'm coming from with that statement, as
though, you know, we need
to identify ourselves on social media and stuff
like that, but I think it's
fun. I think it's fun to know,
you know a little bit about a
lot and then ultimately that can inspire
our path and and creativity in new
ways. As we've said before, hemp
is an ancient crop but, as
we see with Stephen and onto wellness,
it is one that is still being
explored even today. Steven said, having
experienced in a variety of fields can
help when taking on a project with so
much room for growth. There's something
unique, right, about what we're about
this time and this category or product
or crop. You know, I'm not
selling wine. People know what wine
is. It's been sold for hundreds and
hundreds of years. It's not a
pair of socks. It's a product that
people don't not everyone knows what it
is or what to do with it.
Yeah, so I think there's a
certain requirement of folks that are in this
space to be able to pull from
a breadth of other experiences, to make
parallels in the Bush whacking and in
the trailblazing and in the formation of this
path, while also being cognizant of
the opportunity to not do it that way.
Right. So don't want to do
it like dairy, almonds, beef,
whatever commodity, you know, massive
ocean liner. That's really hard to
turn right, when you've got these
we're writing the narrative right and I can
see and feel the the pepsis,
the corporations, the big entities, kind
of in the shadows waiting for,
you know, some of the stuff to
clear up a little and then to
make Ocean spready launched to sbd Soda.
I mean this it's happening now,
yes, but but we need to be
vocal and loud and transparent about the
opportunity for those that, you know,
give a damn of us to do
it differently from the way that these other
agriculture industries have ultimately, I would
say, in some cases, ruined,
but certainly change the course of what
our great grandparents dairy industry look like.
Right. So it's clear. It's
like we are in the front line collectively.
Let's let's see if a different model
works that benefits farmers, benefits the
Earth. They're still enough of a
margin for me to eat Raman, you
know, or whatever, and we
can all benefit from this. So I
think this is a unique situation as
an entrepreneur, because it's so new that
we can pull from this wide array
and make these parallels so people are comfortable
and see it, but also pioneer
this. This, you know, different,
different path that maybe a lot of
us believe could be more fulfilling.
Kiss the ground and Onda recently collaborated
on a new product called contentment. It's
the first land to Market Save Rey
certified crop product. We're super excited.
I mean we with this product.
We use to own the whole hemp oil,
which is an infusion oil. We
didn't, you know, we went
the route of infusing whole him,
whole mint. So ment has, you
know, great benefits and then,
of course the flavor is fantastic. So
it's great. We get to give
twenty percent to the impact fund. We
pay back to savory and land to
market. We pay our farmers above average
market price. So we're really trying
to walk, to walk the walk in
a different economic model that is empowering
people. You guys savory and then the
Kasad family farm. So we're pumped. And today is the pre launched day.
So it's funny because it just so
happened that it's the day that we're
getting together to do this. So
Yep, today's the day. It's going
live on the website and folks can
be involved with just buying a bottle.
You know, in addition to our
new collaboration on has a few other projects
in the works. We have some
really cool products we want to launch and,
to be honest, we're starting our
first kind of fund raise. So
we're looking at what it what it
might take to find the right strategic and
aligned partners to amplify our mission.
Really, you know, this was never,
never created with an exit strategy.
This isn't some tech company to like.
That's I want to flip. This
is. This is a mechanism for
the mission. That's it. So
what's coming, I think in the next
six months to a year, is
building the team out a little bit.
As you know, we launched world's
first biodynamic CBD oil and first verified regenerative
through the Savory Institute. So we
have these great kind of starts and and
first, but now I want to
expand the product line. I would love
to, you know, explore what
it look might look like to have a
bit of more of a person brick
and mortar experience, whether that's in an
urban area or exploring my past with
the winery model and having kind of like
an interactive, you know, on
farm room. Yeah, you know,
in that direction and just keep dreaming. I mean I would love to be
involved in other aspects of hemp,
you know, more partnerships. Yeah,
yeah, it's a very, very
exciting time. So it's important on this
podcast to talk about how we can
take care of the planet, but also
how can we take care of ourselves. Stephen may create wellness products, but
he says true self care starts with
the body. And Mind. I would
say for me it's it's the basics, lots of exercise and adventure, meditating,
connecting with my friends, you know, and and that's allowed me,
I think, to not burn out, because every other job before this it
was two year years, two years
of just full throttle and we grow a
business, we'd succeed. It was
always successful, but at the expense of
my emotional and physical wellbeing, and
that that's something that I wanted to do
differently. So if I call,
you know, call in or call my
team and say, guys, I
got to take the afternoon, I don't
have any shame anymore in that and
I certainly don't have anyone telling me what
I should or shouldn't do. So
I try to trust and knowing when you
need to rest and knowing when you
need to charge and just getting a deeper
self awareness so that you can navigate
your mission for the long haul. And
it feels it feels good. I
feel like I'm on the right track.
But how does Stephen Kiss the ground? I think I'm trying to use my
my life force as a warrior for
this cause, you know, everything we've
talked about. I want to I
want to use the fire and use the
passion and in the community to yeah, to give it a shot to try
to heal, heal all all beings, everything we've spoken about, the soil,
the farms and and that's it.
Just just committed