Greg Steltenpohl, ‎CEO of Califia Farms | Lessons Learnt Building Califia Farms

Thanks again for joining me today. I am sitting down with Greg Stelton-Pole who is the CEO of Cala Fia Farms, one of the largest fastest growing natural beverage companies in the US. He co-founded Cala Fia Farms in 2010 with a farmers cooperative based in San Joaquin Valley that is focused on creating healthy, delicious plant-based beverages. Greg is well known as the founder and CEO of Adwala leading US supplier of fresh juice and nourishing beverages. Greg led the company through its transformation from small startup to publicly held corporation with an average growth rate exceeding 50% per year in building Adwala, Greg was a pioneer in employing ideas of environmental sustainability, employee empowerment, creative corporate culture, and community-based marketing. Adwala was sold off to Coke, was part of the Coke brand for over 10 years. Greg is a serial entrepreneur. I am very excited to unpack his playbook, understand how he came to be who he is today. Thank you, Greg, for sitting down. I really appreciate it. I'm really excited to be with you, Scott, and love being in a good company you've had on the show so far. It's my pleasure. You are the epitome of what entrepreneurs strive to be. You took a company from startup to publicly traded and now you're on to the next venture. That doesn't happen overnight, as we all know. How did your career start? Where did you come from and university jobs moving into entrepreneurship? Walk me through your journey. Well, you know, it's funny how things, you know, you try to pinpoint a starting point, and in my case, a book literally fell off a bookshelf in front of me, and that book was called The Hundred Businesses You Can Start For $100. My only problem was I didn't have that $100. So, you know, the origins of Audwala have to be traced back a little bit further than that. You know, I was raised in a family that my father absolutely adored fresh squeezed orange juice, and it was a ritual at our, you know, morning table ever since I was a little kid, and I lived in both Florida. And when I was quite young, six or seven years old, we moved to Southern California, and growing up in Southern California around the orange groves was, you know, just had a lot of great memories for me. And the romance of the smelling the orange blossoms and just seeing the incredible output of those trees obviously registered something in my imagination. So flash forward many years later, I studied environmental sciences at Stanford, and when I got out, this was in the, you know, late 1970s. And I had this degree that there really wasn't any place for other than kind of greenwashing big developments that oil companies were doing or kind of fighting alongside the Sierra Club and trying to establish some early, you know, nonprofits that would resist some of the environmental damage that was happening. That was happening back in those days, so I chose a different route, which was just to think about how things were going wrong in the first place. And I just started thinking about business as creating a lot of the problems, but I felt like businesses could be redesigned and that, and because I love food and agriculture. When that book fell down off the bookshelf from front of me, I kind of put two and two together and said, maybe I should, you know, quit, quit stalling on this dilemma and start something from scratch. And so one of the little ideas in this business of a hundred businesses was a kind of glorified fruit stand, which, and the people said you could franchise brand and extend out and have have these little, you know, lemonade and fruit stands all over the place. So I really didn't like the idea of retail, so I thought you could grow something much bigger if you are a supplier and and got into creating something that could really literally be everywhere. And that's how the idea of a dollar got started. And literally, you know, borrowed a couple of hundred dollars bought a little hand squeezer, a box of oranges, some empty bottles. And slows the first few batches in the kitchen kind of got kicked out of the kitchen into the back shed from there, we got a little place that, you know, the few hundred square feet to put a little semi automatic machine. And Odwala just took off like the weed back in the 1980s being one of the very first sort of natural food businesses. And as you as you that was your first venture, so I'm sure there was tons of learning. Walk me through growing that venture, what did you learn about entrepreneurship, what are things that you wish you had known some of the pitfalls, stresses as a grew. I'm sure there's a whole other podcast of just speaking about that. Well, you get, you know, the there is a gene in my experience, but I also think it's, it's a bit like the debate of nature versus nurture entrepreneurs can be born, but they also have to be made. At least if you're going to succeed over time, and I think that we also over glorify them in some way, so I think there's a lot of dark sides to entrepreneurship that we can get to into a little later that I just don't think it's a kind of see for the world's problems. And I think in reality, there's true entrepreneurs everywhere, especially in developing countries where people have to be so creative just to get by on a few dollars a day. So I feel like quite humbled by the experience and, you know, some of the romanticion of it. But I think it also there's a spirit to it that really is contagious and that people really do gravitate around. And it brings out the passion and people and that, you know, you can have a purpose and you can have, you can have a great business idea and a business model, you can have a great design, you can have all those. You know, interesting ideational beginnings, but at the end of the day, there's got to be a lot of grit and passion to get you through the series of, you know, quite frankly, kind of never ending challenges. And, and then you have the challenges of success and, and how, how do people overcome that in a six, you know, in a healthy way. So those are the interesting territories, but if you ask me, you know, entrepreneurs, I think are kind of forged in the kind of trouble they get into just by going after what they first started and thought they had some idea about. I think that one theme that I see a lot on this show when I speak to people that have done the wrong thing that have built their, their own business from the ground up, it's, it's the over glorification of entrepreneurship and sometimes how everybody wants to be an entrepreneur, but they don't realize the struggles that that you can go through. But you've, you know, you've literally gone through the entire gamut, you were starting from a couple bucks to publicly traded. Now, I'm curious because as you start to go towards the route of, you know, it's growing, growing, you have many, many employees and multimillion dollars in revenue and now you're looking to exit the public. What, what, at that point, when do you decide that you. You decide that you want us to do something. Let's move on to other things. Well, you know, sometimes I mean, it's super interesting question because, you know, the entrepreneurs have a particular challenge in separating their identity from what they do. And I believe that that's, you know, when I was talking about the problems of success, that's one of the things and one of the things that entrepreneurship can be a compulsion and, you know, compulsions are really not the healthiest form of behavior. I think it does take a lot of self examination and certainly I would have to fall in that buckets since I'm in my 40th, going into my 40th first year of being an entrepreneur and having been a serial entrepreneur. And, you know, I actually, I'm at a stage of life where I, you know, asked some tougher questions about where, you know, where is truly the right legacy. What is the right legacy to lead given my span of experience and how can I best contribute, you know, the point of view to help the next generation and entrepreneurs overcome, you know, some of the downsides of what we may have created. And, you know, I think people, we don't have to look any farther than a lot of the current crop of big technology entrepreneurs now who live in literal worlds of their own and are now going off world almost, you know, there's three different entrepreneurs that are in the race for space and to be the first to colonize another planet. And meanwhile, back at the ranch, you know, I think we have a lot of, we haven't even unwound the colonization, you know, that we've done on this planet. So, I have a lot of, you know, mixed feelings about how entrepreneurs sometimes get separated from a greater social fabric, because of their success, extreme success, you know. And so, for me, I think social entrepreneurship should not be like this separate calling, I mean, my wish is that that dialogue was much more sophisticated around how we build companies where the social entrepreneurship, meaning, you know, not just responsibility, but actually creatively embracing, you know, issues and frictions in society. And then taking them and transforming them into something that's more aspirationally exciting to people and, and renewing, you know, and we've used that word disruption that the word disruption and celebrated disruption. And, you know, I think there's a little more nuance to it. I think, you know, anything that's re, you know, regenerate, renewal, reinvigorate, you know, that these replacement metaphors for things that have kind of run their course and need to be reexamined from scratch are the kind of ideas. That I'm really interested in. And, I'm, you know, I'm a entrepreneur who's in my 60s. I was in my 20s when, you know, a dollar got started. I was in my 30s when we went public. And when you're in that stage, there's, there is a glory dog. I mean, you just think that each stage is another rainbow. And we got hit by a E coli. I, you know, contamination when our company was about 16 years old at old Walla. And, and we were publicly held. And the world just for our world just ground to a stop. The press and media was almost like a Michael Jackson story because, you know, we were such a kind of darling of California and all this stuff. And when people thought that this fresh juice was making people sick. It was too irresistible of a story. So we had to work our way back up from that over a multi year period where we lost 90% of our sales and, you know, for a while people thought of the brand as a, as a pariah. And, you know, I was really felt ashamed of the fact that we actually, you know, could have made people sick. So I think that these kind of rights of passage, when you get older, you look at them and, you actually don't want to trade them in. This is, you know, my takeaway from those things. I've never want to go through it again. But the tempering that happens. And I guess the, like the priority for me and building a new food company like we have, which is many times the size of a wallet at this point. Now, if he is that, you know, how do you, how do you try to change the food system from scratch? How do you try to rebuild it in a different way? How can you design food safety into the integral DNA of the company from the very beginning? Those are the kind of things that get more interesting rather than just another public offering or ex, you know, a billion dollar valuation or whatever, you know, exterior benchmark that gets put out in front of, you know, most people. And I think that it makes you very, like you just said, it makes you hyperconscious of what really matters in a corporate environment, you know, you went through a tough time. It's unfortunate, but I love it. Like you, you, you hold that with you and you use that going forward in other organize it in in California and in anything you touch, right. If, if, if this is a core tenant of, of you as a, as an entrepreneur as a CEO as a founder, that's going to permeate whatever organization, whether or not you're advising a younger entrepreneur, whether or not you're building something out. Now, I guess my curiosity, my question is it's important to have environmental sustainability, employee empowerment, creative corporate culture, community based marketing. These are all incredible initiatives that I think really differentiate companies in a good way. How, how are some ways that you actually achieve these so that they're not just, and there's a, there's a wide gamut, I think, of activities that could achieve these. But what are some of your favorite things that Caliphia does different? Great question. And, and thank you for that. And it is, you know, at the end of the day where the rubber meets the road because, you know, talk as cheap as everybody said, and even companies need to be aware that people nowadays want to know where the receipts are. You know, like, what, what did you really do? That's what you said you wanted to do, but what did you really do? And I, you know, I aspire to make Caliphias. Main business as close to a, you know, regenerative type business for the planet and for individual people who actually consume the product as possible. And for its image and its brand and everything that it stands for to be actually functional in a like socially and cultural positive way. And I think those three parts, you know, the community culture, social part, the personal health standpoint, because we were a food company. So at the end of the day, what we materially make goes materially into people's bodies and materially has an either health promoting effect or a health deleterious effect. So, and then finally, there's a carbon footprint and and or what we call food print, which is not just carbon, but water, land, atmosphere, all the different aspects of environmental consumption or benefit or exchange that the company actually does. So the first of all, the very exciting premise of, you know, trying to create a new food system is that a food system of the future has to be plant based for it to make sense. I mean, everyone in the world has to be a vegan, but it does does mean that the majority of food that we consume has to have a smaller, you know, ecological footprint. Because we don't have the remaining land, we don't have enough water, fresh water that's available between what people need directly and what the farms need to go through the secondary transformation that happens within an animal, where the water uses usually five to 10 times what it is to go directly in the caloric, you know, exchange between a plant and then a human. So that's first and foremost, so we find that it can boil down to a simple, a understanding that, you know, if you drink a pint beverage that pint, where he weighs a pound well literally by switching from a pint of dairy milk to a pint of plant milk, you will save a pound of carbon in the atmosphere. Since the average person consumes over a ton of food per year that literally we can each of us save the ton of carbon by essentially having a primarily plant based diet. And that environmental impact alone is more than almost any other single action or transformation that a human being can do for the benefit of the environment without depending on anybody else and without depending on legislation, you know, governmental interference or guidance no matter how you look at it. It's just a single willful act in decision that people can do so I was greatly excited by that concept and I realized that you can't wag your finger at people to get them to to be plant based the best way to do it. A is make it taste great and be created an exciting brand and initiative and, you know, communication program behind it. So that's what we've been trying to do and other companies like us are joining in that and that, you know, once you go down that road, you examine, it allows you to examine everything else you do by just filling products full of sugar of whether they're plant based or not. Creates diabetes creates easier susceptibility to, you know, both chronic disease and those chronic diseases make somebody more susceptible to immune attacking, you know, organisms like COVID. So like no matter how you look at the circle it's so interesting that if you if you look at it as a exciting challenge instead of in a, you know, responsibility box to check. Then I think transforming companies and transforming the food system is very much within the reach of a single generation and that's the kind of thing that kind of turns I think the people at Cal if you on and myself still at my age and. It really is that when you see the possibility of change and the power is in the consumer and the citizen not only in the hands of something so big you feel you can't make an impact and that's literally the spirit of entrepreneurship that in itself. So for me for like the ability to transmit the idea that action and possibility exists that's as an entrepreneur i've always been shocked that so many people just don't they don't feel that and and so. And you know it starts with being a part of it and then hopefully people discover their own initiatives you don't have to start big companies you know. So I think societal transformation is an imperative and i'm just like super thankful that I can have the opportunity to to make really great healthy products in California which is a state that appreciates it and. It's a state where so many innovative ideas are coming out but we've had some unhealthy ones come out of here too so we have to keep the keep the power to both point it in the right direction. Very well said and I appreciate you you highlighting that because I think that that's something that escaped a lot of first time entrepreneurs who are very much focused on the six on their perceived notion of success as opposed to. What success really is once you once you have figured out how to hit those traditional benchmarks i call them traditional just because they're probably the way that most businesses benchmark themselves of probably for the for the wrong that's it's not the right way to benchmark yourself but. When you start a business you want to be profitable you want to appease your shareholders your investors whatnot but that's not the only way to build a business as you as you can see like you're living you're literally living proof of how to build a business that is socially conscious. Now my question is to build the business is socially conscious you have to get everybody on board or it's going to be very hard it's going to be not built by everybody I mean like your culture your employee or the people that you hire and you bring into into your organization and you mentioned everyone at call of the is very is very proud of the work that you do so for somebody is building an organization. How how do you find those people that are in tune with what you're doing well I mean you hit a very good point around the team and you know obviously i'm the guy in the show here whatever but we have. 300 and 300 in place and we have some incredible leadership in the company that's distributed through all different aspects of the company and we're vertically integrated so we have manufacturing we have you know raw material sourcing we have logistics we have it we have you know huge financial infrastructure we have investors from all different parts of the world. You know so these these things never happen as a result of just one person's effort but I think the entrepreneur bears a unique responsibility particularly in the early stages to you know they have to embody what it is that you're the mission is about and if it's not really a mission and it's just. Just fishing around for an opportunistic business plan and then getting people fired up around that plan. I you know the longevity is probably going to be under question i think resonance for me is the word that is really important when it comes to people and how to hire and bring the right people on board and you know I continue to make mistakes. Personally, so I think anyone be lying if they found really the solution because you know things ultimately become really important to are things like loyalty and things like consistency humility. So not just people who work hard and not just people who have certain skill sets or maybe massively productive so that alignment and you know ultimately being in tune with each other. You can do extraordinary things and the more that you can accomplish much much more when there is a minimal of internal friction because. Organizations that drag themselves down with too many internal processes or too many internal points of conflict or too many chiefs can never really have enough energy to successfully compete or you know make their marketing goals really work because that energy was chewed up on the inside so. You need to catch you need to set your sales and catch the wins of the environment where the strength is much bigger and too much internal focus sometimes also makes companies to team oriented and not enough paying attention to their customer so. Being customer focused is one of the challenges that I find amongst executives the hardest to find because I think you can't just rely on the marketing department for that or else you again. And cause a lot of unnecessary meetings and they become the sole defender of the point of view of the you know the end consumer when you know you would get there a lot faster if people thought about those no matter what role they had in the company right and then they would be bringing that point of view to the table so. You can't there no cute answer for it i think you always have to just be awake in an interview I personally have learned to do at least three in person interviews before making a decision because I find that the first definitely the first time people can. Boy over with their energy and enthusiasm second time they don't have quite as much third time they might drop a lot of you know they become a real self right right so it's kind of wear them down and then see what they're really made up yeah no not not really but I do think you have to go be go beyond you know you can't take things that face value. You mentioned a really good point there i'm when everybody's responsible for customer success that's that's evangelism right across the whole organization. I spoke to go ahead sorry well i'm just going to say like plant based i mean we we are not a company of 100% vegans and you know when you have a you know hundreds of people and. You know it's a democracy and I like people doing things for reasons that they internally i've gone through a process and they appreciate so and like I said it's not about veganism but it is about understanding why plant based is important and you know factory treatment of animals. In my own belief system is not ethical and you know there are there are ways that you know it can be done and there are ways that it shouldn't be done and you also have to look at what kind of system you support through your dollars and you know we're voting our dollar with every every time we lay it down to buy any meal. And I you know having people who realize that let me give you a little example for calipia calipia started literally. You know it was for a whole different reason we were concerned about the food waste that was going on with the citrus crop in california and 20% of it was literally going to the cows and what it took was. A entrepreneurial commitment from this group of farmers that that I got into a partnership with and the other thing was my own love of citrus combined with the you know just a persistence in solving some problems that hadn't been solved before but along the way. You know there there was another problem that happened between some of the citrus part or so you know we we were able to pivot the business to plant based milks and just in parallel with this coke had. Had gotten old walla and grown it along the pathway so in the time because when I started making the plant milks at california lower sugar was a core ten and we also had this this maximum of something different something better. We didn't need a complicated ten commandment you know set of you know core values other than understanding what did something different and something better mean and something that was truly helpful and we couldn't be in the sugar game and because in beverages. I hate to say it but in most cases it has been all about the sugar game and that by refusing to play that game we distinguish ourselves so that our number one selling product became a 40 calorie per serving unsweetened almond milk and meantime coke turned old walla from an average of having between 110 to 120 calories. Having an average chloric count of between 240 and 280 during that same period of time. So now coke stopped selling product at odwala I just had one the superfood product had six times the amount of calories that are on the best selling product at california as of 40 calories. So these are the things that if you don't have the value system in place you just won't end up making those decisions and today california serves over a million and a half servings a day so that's a million and a half times a day that someone is saved from a sugar overload. So yeah that's a hell that's a to their health like that's an incredible number that you're saving from that. You know when when you and if you think about every entrepreneur if every entrepreneur could tackle their idea system a little bit you know with the environment and with people's health in mind. It doesn't matter what people would do I think we'd end up with the world we wanted because people embrace those companies I mean it's that the brand love that that people get when they really commit to those those same values is you can't buy it. And literally that's the other thing about the approaches you ask me in the question about community based marketing for example is one of the things you listed. Community based marketing means the dollars you spend circulate right back in locally used or in the parts of the community that most need those dollars. If for example all you do is television advertising who benefits from that the network advertising the broadcasters that's where it all goes and that goes in inside of only a corporate ecosystem. If you support the local schools the whatever the pta you know the food program for gardening the you know in our case we're trying to use our own supply chain. To get our product to underserved what you call food deserts food swarms inner city places where natural food products are needed the most but are least accessible so that's the kind of thing that I talk about when you use your business model to actually do the thing you talk about. These are things oh no i was going to say this is just something that we're seeing people want from companies more and more and this is not reactionary on your part either i want to highlight that this has been your core tenant for a while but now companies are trying to jump on this bandwagon. Well it's a good bandwagon to be on if you really actually do it so I mean for example we yeah actually have to worry about it because there there is backlash almost a kind of reversal that happens when people try to find the faults of people with which is a healthy you know I think a skeptical healthy point of view but. We just made a million serving pledge about three months ago to get a million servings of our product out to you know as donations is not a sale you know a product to you know sell to the consumer but get to those people on the front lines of the covid battle so whether it was nurses. nurses daycare people homeless shelters food banks whatever it is and you know at least at this point and we said we would do it by the end of the year and I think we're already at a 90% fulfillment rate of that pledge and we want to re up it again. Those are the things that companies can look at because there are things that can be done that don't necessarily hurt profit margins but actually employ the work of everyone in the company and just apply it to a little better end and I think that's. That's the sort of win win and you know use the use the operations of the business to actually do even more good it's kind of my own idealism about the right way to handle community based you know help. Very very well said we we've covered a lot of the caliphia I want to I want to ask you some sort of life lesson insight questions from yourself but before I go into that line and they're they're a little bit they're more rapid far than anything. I wanted to just give you the floor was there anything that I don't know about caliphia that you're excited about where the company's going where you want to see it go that you're working on right now things like that. Well I think that the directions for us as a company being a plant based pioneer and and brand is that we view you know the products of an animal based food system meaning you know there's a whole spectrum of activities that go from mostly related to cows but extends into chickens and eggs and to. Bigs and sheep and all kinds of other species but the cow because it's related to dairy milk is the one that caliphias most directly looking to supplement and and replace as a mainstream kind of core. Product stream and if you think about. Dairy milk is a kind of in the production of dairy is a kind of refinery system so just like crude oil goes into a big factory and comes out as plastic comes out as jet fuel comes out as. Tar and oil it's got all all these different things that comes from crude well the same you know raw milk comes into a big factory system and is separated by weights of fat and densities and all kinds of things to become Jesus and and butters and spreads and everything else so when you go at it from a plant based point of view this is what. The vision that caliphias trying to go and we just launch a plant butters we just launched a product with plant proteins that come from peas and rice we are moving into spreads and and in the direction of. Of things that can replace cheeses so those that whole spectrum. Is such a large part of land use in America you know the bulk of where dollars go from the consumer you know we're talking about things that are on the order of. 25 30 billion you know dollars worth of expenditure every year just for what the consumer is paying in retail so. The world of you know whole different way of doing things by partnering with plants is just the biggest message that I think caliphia wants to bring and we have embraced you know and and are looking to evolve this model of. The community based marketing into not just a project or a program that we do annually but to work with other businesses to figure out systemically how do we address you know how systemic racism has embodied itself in the food system for example. And you know getting high quality high nutrient dance products into those communities at an affordable price is the kind of challenge that we can't undertake. By ourselves as a company but we really have to participate in with a vision and you know we've been able to partner with. Visionary retailers like target we've been able to partner with NGOs and large nonprofits like you know feeding America and those type of partnerships are. We need sort of the next generations food system vision and that that's really what I wanted to convey that I think is possible. But I think that everything you're doing is and I didn't realize going to this all the initiatives that you were actually engaged in so I you know I appreciate the conversation but I think that everything you're doing should be a beacon for other companies to emulate. Because just being aware of all these things that you have impact over and all especially because you deal with health and and again the things that people put into their body not only being just like a socially conscious company but being a health conscious company and all these things. And the way you lead and the way you manage the the culture of the organization everything is like checking those boxes off that they I think are good things for a company to emulate so. I hope I hope the people listen to this and if they are if they are in more traditional structures it perhaps unfortunately don't focus on on all the things that you mentioned. That they start to investigate at least and understand how their company within their own specific industry or ecosystem can have more of a forward thinking I call it forward thinking I really should think it should just be the way you think but a forward thinking view on how to how to you know run an organization so. Thank you Scott but really you know it is time the time is now and I think covid gave a. Reset button you know for in so many ways and hopefully people you know by having more times with their family more times to make their own food. You know just more occasions to put into question the daily practices and so on and really Cal if he is part of a much bigger movement that many many young people are already born with an attitude you know around what has to be. And I just I think my biggest role is that their dreams can be possible and they can do it but it does take commitment and it does you know it doesn't happen that easy and listen you can pick up the fight anywhere along the way. You know intrapreneurship we I started the company I was actually a intrapreneurial part of this farming company and I was a division I was creating a new division for them but you know this this is not it can happen for people inside of big companies. But you do have to take a stand at one point and stand for something and mean it you know you got to you do you just have. Whether you're punked down your own cash or all your sweat equity you you just even in work sometimes it's an unpopular decision that has to be made or an unpopular point of view and if you lose your job because you said something then you know. It's not the right spot for you right didn't pick up where that leaves off yeah like I got I just this last story because I I think it's an example of that yeah I was just before I started California I was. A founder a co founder of another company and that company has raised capital was I had the involvement of a former chairman the Pepsi and then involved the another guy was a big entrepreneur. You know a lot of big shots were involved in the thing and it was great and we were trying to bring women products from Africa here raw materials and had great aspirations but at the end of the day you know there were too many cooks and. Not enough people you know serving the food right and I you know I would I realized my own internal. Unhappiness and so I just I laughed and it's the first time it was so hard for me as an entrepreneur to leave and I left and literal the next day without any provocation there's a guy on the phone and it turns out to be this guy. You know bird Evans who owned this on Pacific and was the head of this big co up and so. There was no connection literally he had no knowledge that I was leaving my other company so it was just because I did that out of principle and out of what was being true to myself literally the next day. That that the new opportunity came and that became you know the destiny of California so I love that stuff and you know sometimes the world laughs at you too because the first CEO that they sent in after I had left. I was a guy named sugar man and he turned out to be a great guy but the irony of coke buying and then putting in a guy who had the name sugar man was a bit too much right. It's a little ironic a little little you know life's life's a funny thing life's a very funny thing and you know the sugar man stories funny but you know what you just mentioned about you leaving in the next day. I don't think there's too many people I don't know actually anybody who's left something of their own will and regretted it ever something always happens something interesting something always happens. You've heard enough hot air from all of us on your show to know what you're talking about yeah a lot of entrepreneurial stories. Yeah well that's great well I you know I wish that people really take the deeper message from these kind of conversations and and do go out and act on what they really believe in and that's the biggest fun of. Yeah that's the real essence of entrepreneurship yeah very very good okay i'm have a couple rapid fire life lesson insight questions and then and then i'll and then i'll figure out where people can go and find more about you. In California even though i'm sure it's just the website but regardless of it's some other links from you. So what would be what would be a resource could be a person it could be a book could be a podcast that you learn from that you'd advise other people to go check out. Well I would first of all i'm kind of a omnivoreic book reader buyer consumer and I just and i'm my own personal mentors aside from steep jobs who was was you know probably the closest thing to a business person but I regarded it more as an artist and designer you know type. You know soul but I think that it's so it's hard for me because you know I literally devour stuff from so many sources but for a long time Odwala supported a group called the bioneers and that's you know like pioneers but bioneers and the bioneers is all about practical solutions for restoring the environment. They usually have cutting edge speakers resource series all really based around tackling tough questions and. And for example pulse damage is one of the godfathers of the rebirth of mushrooms and you know in all their applications was first kind of you know got audience based out of bioneers so that would be the top of mind one for me here. You know if people are in the food industry and they don't you know subscribe to food navigator for example I think that's like really a right on. Hub for you know you know discovering what's going on on on food industry other than that man it's just follow your passion I you know whatever is. Is working your interest just go deeper into it and as soon as you go deeper it will just lead you to the next thing and you're talking to a guy who loves the east side of the series the wild side you know I you know to go somewhere without a trail and navigate by by the landscape you know that's my idea you know like real fun so. And you do it by paying attention and then figure out where you want to go so you just put the two things together and usually you know you you can avoid being lost and part of navigation is pay attention to big features and understand the weather and. You know the weather is a metaphorical thing for that the ecosystem for whatever is the bigger system that encompasses the system we're in so we all learned that the United States is not the be all an end all it's part of a bigger system and whatever system of capitalism and and. Free trade and globalism it's inside the system of our total earth atmosphere so regardless of what how big we think we are we're always inside of a different system and so that's a world within worlds is kind of the foundation of the whole concept of ecology. So I resist other than plug in the by an airs and you know i would resist any easy answer to your question but you do promote a very very insightful way of looking at the world which will lead to many more answers and just giving a book title so i appreciate that i appreciate that very good answer. What what would be a lesson that you would tell your younger self. Oh trust trust yourself more and believing yourself more listen listen to the deeper part of yourself more but always have an inquisitive mind including about yourself and. I you know I have to define self I don't believe in a self I believe in selves and and you know we have an internal community inside of ourselves just like we have the modern ecology is just like we are literally a walking bunch of biomes right we have a. We have a skin biome we have an intestinal biome we have like biomes in all different parts of ourselves just like plants do they have a there's a biome on the surface of the leaf there's a different biome in the root system there's a different biome in the in the canopy in the at the top of the plant in the bark so. Like we are just way more complex than any of us imagine and so I think that when we start thinking about self improvement or we start thinking about how to to to. Think of ourselves that I just encourage curiosity and openness and lack of certainty as one of the healthiest points of view to lead you in the right direction. There was an old guy Alan was he had a book called the wisdom of insecurity. But you know people think insecurity is a bad thing you know they think it's paranoia but. In security means you just always just have a little bit of caution involved you always have a little bit of question involved and if anything I think the world today needs a precautionary principle before jumping in and you know running around and alter you. Yeah well I think that I think we've ran around and altered it too much so we're at the point where I think we do have to be a little bit more cautious is not so much to run around with anymore where we've yeah. I'm I'm passionate about the discussion and I don't want to overstep my bounds of this I'll keep it extremely short but. It sounds great thank you it sounds contradictory for a guy on entrepreneurship show to be talking about being cautious okay and anyone who knows me and i've probably been involved in I don't even want to counter price hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of launching products so but I do think that how we do things. That is a big question nowadays the how of things is is the answer to the why you know why we do things is in how we do things so. I think that there's a there's something worth you know thinking about it is yeah agreed agreed. And last question and these are all very open ended that's why you're a great guest by the way because you take the open ended and you run with it some people are very short and succinct but I like I like when you just when you go into the depth of how you come to an answer on these things because. I'm not sure if you're if you probably are you're very self aware of how you communicate but you do have a very strong opinion but then there is a story that comes to a logical conclusion and I really appreciate that because that's how I think so thank you for for doing this for these questions I really like the answers i'm what a success mean for you. Well. Well that's the little zinger at the end right well. The I to me in leaving and I've had a near depth experience about seven or eight years ago and I had a liver failure and it turns out I had a congenital defect of a bile duct which just blocked up and literally you know kind of blew up my liver and so. In in being in that you know kind of in between state I did have to kind of face the answer to that question first hand and. I didn't come up with this original set of words because I actually heard it recently but I said that is what I feel and to have increased the flow of goodness in the world is what to be you know when I leave and pass to the next world. I hope that I can look back at my life and say yes I increase the flow of goodness. Very good answer very very good answer. The most important question would be where can people go to connect with yourself. We're all the we're all the places you know that's we have to get this on on on record that's the most. Okay well first of all we have some great retail partners whole foods that's always been a huge supporter of calpia target is a great supporter. But most recently we've been delighted to find out that even you would say even but people at Walmart are hungry for really good dairy alternatives and you can find the product there as well so probably any major retailer in the United States. But and we are I am proud to say the top selling oatmeal on Amazon so if you want to get you know any plant milk in a shelf stable format for your pantry you can get it on Amazon. But main thing is try to get to calpia dot com calpia farms dot com and on calpia farms dot com you can look at length at any of our products you know stories about the company and we try to keep a pretty artistic Instagram account for people to just you know. Bring more interesting visual design into their lives so those are those are some good starting points for people to discover calpia. Perfect yeah you actually have a really nice looking Instagram I'm just taking a look at it now it's a you have coffee hacks on there I've I've never been on your Instagram before right now so I'm going to have to get this coffee hacks I got a I got a go look I got to go look and see. Yeah there's a little bit tongue in cheek but but they do come in handy there you go very good so all right thank you. My pleasure my pleasure that was really good I really enjoyed that thank you so much taking the time I really appreciate well I'm in an inspiring place so the spirit of that is and I have a view down one of the deepest valleys in the world you know so it's it's an inspirational place to talk to you so. Oh thank you so much I'm glad I got you now.