Revolutionizing Fresh Food Production With Eddy Badrina - Replay

We need to change how we farm to feed nutritious, fresh food to communities. In this replay episode, my guest today is Eddie Badrina, the CEO of Eden Green Technology. His company is a vertical farming technology dedicated to growing and harvesting large amounts of produce locally. Eddie is also the co-founder of BuzzShift, a digital strategy agency for midsize brands and organizations. In our conversation today, we discuss the importance of processing difficult experiences and finding growth and gratitude in them. Why gratitude is important even in difficult times and can change one's perspective on even the past. We talk about Eden Green Technology, a company that produces fresh and nutritious food for local communities using vertical farming technology. Vertical farming, farming is a method of growing crops indoors in stacked layers using less water, land, and pesticides than traditional farming. We talk about the company's mission to improve food security, reduce food waste, and promote health and wellness for people and the planet, as well as Eddie's personal journey from being a political consultant to becoming a social entrepreneur and his advice for aspiring leaders. So sit back and enjoy this replay episode of my conversation with Eddie Badrina.

Life happens, and not always the way we expect it to. Every single day we face change, Stress and uncertainty. What if you could learn to thrive no matter what life throws your way? Resilience expert Adam Markel and his inspiring guests explore breakthrough strategies to fully embrace change and build the resilience required to become change-proof.

Hey, everybody. Welcome back to another episode. I'm your host, Adam Markel, and I am Feeling spring-like today. You know, I know when this episode will air, it'll be probably, uh, later in the year in any event. But, uh, and, and it's funny because I'm— Rani and I are— we took, we took some time to go live at a home that we've had for a number of years in Massachusetts. It's on this little island. Mm-hmm. And, and it's funny because on this island we can sometimes feel every every season in an hour, even the sort of microclimates or the way that the weather just moves through around here is pretty remarkable. Although I shouldn't say all 4 seasons, because this time of year, it sort of toggles back and forth between fall and winter. It's mostly winter. But today, it's just sunny, it's warm, and it has me in a warm and sunny mood and feeling— just feeling great. I don't take that for granted because even though I'm constantly reminding myself and I remind others frequently about how important gratitude is, and there's so much that we can appreciate in any moment, regardless of what's happening in our own personal lives or even in the bizarre world that we find ourselves in at times. And yet, even with that reminder constantly in front of me, I go through my moods, you know, and sometimes they track the weather, frankly. You know, gray day, I feel gray. Sunny day, I feel sunny. This is just one of those moments where I'm feeling exceptionally, uh, sunny and happy to have somebody to speak to today. You know, we're all in our own little bubbles at times. I love the podcast in so many ways for so many reasons, and the feedback we've gotten from so many of you. is that it has brightened your day, brightened your week, given you some new insights perhaps to think about. I get the same thing out of this, and the conversations I get to have with people, both friends and colleagues and people that I've never spoken to before, really is just an astounding thing, and it's a great opportunity. Today is one of those days. I get to meet somebody for the first time, And, and have a conversation that's completely fresh. And I don't know, have no expectations about where it goes, just going to follow the breadcrumbs and see where they lead us. So, uh, let's all have fun. My guest today is Eddie Bedrina. He is the CEO of Eden Green Technology, a vertical farming technology company dedicated to changing the way we farm our food and feed our communities. Hi, Adam. important is that today? He is also the co-founder of BuzzShift, a digital strategy agency for mid-sized brands and organizations. Eddie has over 13 years of experience in growing organizations, leading teams, and bringing brands to market. He has had a mission-critical role at the U.S. Department of State, executive leadership at the White House at a White House initiative, and director-level positions at 2 successful startups. Eddie, it is a pleasure to have you on the show today. Thanks for being here.

Thanks for having me. I really appreciate being on here. I'm excited. You said it's nice and warm there. It is one of the most perfect spring days here in Dallas. And so I'm coming off of a weekend of just being outside with my family, my kids, going for a bike ride. And it's just, it's a wonderful spring day. So I'm feeling the same way. I'm feeling the same way.

It might be too that we've been on one level or another, or to one degree or another, locked down like everybody. And so maybe there's a little stir crazy that's being given permission through the weather as well. Probably. But Eddie, I want to start with the bio that I read, and it's incredibly impressive. I want to know if you could share with our audience one thing, one thing that's not a part of that bio, that you would love for people to know about you at the outset?

Oh, man. I think bios are a little bit misleading because they only hit the high points, right?

Yes.

They don't tell you about the 4 years that I spent in, I'll call it career wilderness, in between my White House gig and starting BuzzShift. So that was like '06 to 2010. And I'm as proud— it doesn't show up on paper. It's kind of hard to explain, but looking back on it, I'm as proud of that 4-year dip as I am of sort of the high points that my bio touches on. And I think that only can come through a level of probably just a self-awareness perspective. And then as you mentioned earlier, Just an attitude of gratefulness, right? I've been reading a book that talks about just your— how your memories are— they can change based on your posture towards and your reactions towards those memories. Like, the events are the same, right?

Hmm.

But depending on your attitude towards it and how you process it, And whether you do the work to process it well, a memory can either trigger really negative physiological and emotional states, or it can trigger— the same exact memory can trigger positive emotional states and positive physiological reactions, but it's all based on how you process it and how you view it in hindsight. So The low point, that 4-year low point, if you will, I look back on it and I think, yeah, I mean, I'm grateful for that. It wasn't a joyful time, but I'm grateful for it nonetheless.

That's such a— I think such an important point you just made, Eddie, and it's a subtle one. So I don't want to run past it too quickly because to be grateful for something even in recognition of the fact that it wasn't joyful. It wasn't the best time of my life to be in the dip, as you called it. We've all had dips, and sometimes those dips could be years long. Yeah. For many of us, we've had that occasion. But to be able to look back on it, and often we hear you look back and learn lessons. I mean, that's in many ways a big part of a conscious pivot is the recognition that as you're pivoting, not only is that change going to be all headed toward growth, like ultimately in the midst of the worst storm, you can know for sure you're going to grow as a result of whatever it is that you're dealing with.

Yeah.

But that even further out into the future, you'll be able to look back at it and actually feel Genuine gratitude, not some BS. We're not talking about trying to just, I don't know, tell a lie.

Right. Yeah. You're not whitewashing, right? You're not whitewashing the events, but you are, as you process them and as you can understand the failures, understand the sadness, understand the grind in the context of where you are now, it's not whitewashing it. I mean, I mean, it literally is changing your memories. It's changing your past. And it gets a little— I mean, it gets a little heady, but you can change your past in the sense that you can, as you process and do the hard work of going through those hard times and, you know, with a counselor or with a group of friends or with, you know, a trusted one. Yeah. Hmm. You can shift your perspective on what actually happened there and it won't cause you continued stress. It won't cause you continued anxiety, right? You can tell how good or how well you've processed something by, we call it the nearness, right? Like, so if you have a memory of, and for instance, for me, I was coming off of a year and a half of a startup, director of communications. It was a slow downhill slide. I basically got my MBA at the school of hard knocks from a year and a half of working in this startup. I got to see everything that went on, finance, operations, sales, marketing, the whole deal, investor relations. I learned how to run a business by being in that environment and learning honestly how not to run a business. When I can look back at that and say, man, that was a tough year and a half, and then it was followed by 4 years of— I'm actually probably on 2 years of like, okay, what do I want to do next? How do I start my new business? Can I do this myself? If I only take a look at at that from a negative point of view, it was just, I mean, it's just a really hard year and a half.

Right.

But if I take a look at it, it's in terms of, oh, that was my MBA that I got paid to go through, right? And I learned the hardest stuff that you'll never find in an MBA sitting in a classroom. All of a sudden, that totally changes my perspective. Right? It's not whitewashing it. It really is like, okay, this is— that's— and, and so I look back at that year and a half, and in my— it's not— I don't, I don't look back at it with anger. I don't look back at it with frustration, right? It's not near to me because I've processed it. Most people, if there's—

Your stomach doesn't turn when you have a memory triggered, right? And, you know, it could be a million things, email, it could be someone's name, it could be whatever it is, right? That just There's a memory that brings you back to that, right

back into that spot,

right? You don't get that turning in the stomach, the cortisol start to course through your body, right? You're in this or that shaking. Not

so. That, that's why— that's how you know if you've processed it well, whether you can look back on that and it doesn't trigger those things. If it does trigger those things, that means, you know, what we call it's really near to you and you, and you haven't done the hard work of processing through it because you get stuck in there, right? It happens with PTSD all the time, right? You get stuck in that loop of you're all of a sudden in that reality, you're in that past event.

Yeah.

And the only way to go to get on the other side of PTSD, which I've had to do through a previous experience, the only way to get to that other side is to finish the story.

Yeah.

You have to finish the story, which is I came out of it and I'm alive. Yeah, I'm healthy. You know what? I learned a ton from that. And when you can finish that story and you can be— you can set it, you know, your arm's length away from it, you're not near to it anymore. That's when your past changes.

So tell me if you go along with this. I would say finishing the story is the equivalent of closing the loop. Yeah. And otherwise, that open loop sort of just continues to repeat for many, many people. And I've had that experience myself as well. You know, it's interesting because we do a lot of work. Our business is a model for speaking to organizations about organizational and individual resilience. But the way that we deliver our content is through books. We do a lot of writing, but it's a lot of speaking.

Yeah.

A lot of public speaking. And we work with public speakers. And interestingly enough, that when you're wanting to close the loop, or as you said, finish the story, I think one of the early signs of spring, since that's how we started our conversation today, you know, that first shoot, whether it's the daffodil or it's the, you know, the forsythia or something, is the ability to speak about it.

Yeah.

Because when we're in it, Often what we'll say to somebody who's contemplating sharing a story is we'll say, we don't typically want to share a story you're still bleeding from. That's one you sort of keep on the sideline for the moment. Right? But when you can speak about it, then you've stopped bleeding from it.

Yeah.

And it's interesting too, is that the process of speaking about it or getting prepared to quarterizes the the wound and allows you to actually be past it. So it's part of the healing or part of the process that allows you to finish the story is to actually be thinking about if I was going to teach this to someone else or share my lessons or share— forget the lessons, just the experience that I went through with other people. Could I do that? And what value would come from it?

So this same book that I'm reading, actually, by the way, it's called Anatomy of the Soul. It's kind of looking at neuroscience and spirituality and how they're closely linked. But one of the things that they— that the author's name is Kurt Thompson challenges you to do is to write your autobiography. And in this case, what we're talking about is write through that event. And he literally says, handwrite it. Because when you handwrite it, you engage both your right brain, which is thinking about the event logically. And then when you write, there's a tactile left brain component to it, which actually makes you stop and Think and then feel the event, right? And so when you talk about resilience and we're talking about a lot of psychology, which by the way, I'm a psychology major, which is a whole nother story how I got from that into entrepreneurship. But when you talk about resilience and grit, being able to write that autobiography, engage both the left and right brain, and then to be able to speak it To one person, then to multiple people, and then to your point where you're speaking it on stage really does— it helps you. That whole process helps you become— give you more perspective onto that actual event, and it helps you maintain that distance from that event, that healthy distance from what happened in the

past. That it happened, but it It's not— it doesn't define you.

Right. Yeah.

Part of your life experience, but it's, as you say, there's a separation between the event itself and what it says about you or what you make it mean about you. Yeah. And that's— it's really interesting because where you said that you can change your past, change your memories, I was just curious, when you talk about processing it, What was part of your process? I'm not going to— I don't expect you to share the whole process, but it took years to process the being on a— to be on a sinking ship. Anybody who's an entrepreneur, been a part of a business where the ship— I can't even say it today— where the ship is going down. Yeah. Is one of those things that it's not quite as life and death as being on the deck of the Titanic, It's pretty close. But it is because it says so much. We make it say so much about who we are that everything that we imagine, you know, is the worst-case scenario is actually transpiring in front of us. And, you know, investors' money, their equity is disappearing. Promises that have been made are not being kept. God knows there's a lot of other kind of, you know, sinking ship moments and desperation and desperate acts that go on in those moments, right? That is not an easy thing to experience.

No. I mean, you know, to answer your question, I think I processed it just through— I think I had good friends and colleagues who asked me really hard questions of like, hey, why does this define you so much? Right? What part of your identity is this really taking a hold of? As I've grown older and had a chance to do multiple startups now, I think one of the healthy things that— I don't know, I wish I could get it without having to do the reps, but I think sometimes you just have to— is understanding that my identity ought not to be wrapped up in my work. A good friend, older gentleman, told me a long time ago, he said, man, think about the end in mind. And the end for us is our headstone. It's our obituary. I hope to God that in my obituary on my headstone, no one ever mentions Eden Green or BuzzShift. Because if that's makes it to the top of the list of my life, I feel like, man, I missed out, like I wasted my life. I want them, and I think everyone wants to have on their headstone, beloved father, trusted friend, faithful husband, all those things. No one ever put their company name on their headstone. Just isn't it? So if you know that from the at the end, I want to be known as a beloved father. I want to be known for being a faithful husband. I want to be known for being a trusted friend, being a mentor. Then if I work my way backwards to right now, it puts in perspective my role as a CEO. It puts in perspective my past roles, right? Win, lose, or draw. It puts in perspective all of those, and once I can. those in perspective, then I can differentiate my identity from the win or the loss. Ironically, it's much easier to differentiate yourself from the loss than it is from the win because—

Why is that?

I think because entrepreneurs, and honestly, all professionals, they measure themselves on the wins. That's the bio you just read. And so LinkedIn doesn't want to hear about your failures. So you're literally defining yourself on your successes on LinkedIn or on anywhere else, right? On your bio. And so the wins help— the wins become more and more enmeshed in your identity than the losses. You can rationalize or write off the losses, whether you internalize them or whether you are able to process through them well, you can justify those. It's really hard to separate yourself from those wins and just say, hey, the successes, the acquisitions are as equally not a part of me as the failures. That's really hard to do for most folks because entrepreneurs are a little bit by nature, a little bit crazy and a little bit narcissistic. And, they need those pelts on the wall, right, to tell them that they're worth something.

What would you say— and it's so interesting because I have a whole agenda for where I thought this conversation was going.

I usually do that to people.

I totally go off on tangents. But, this is really beautiful. I think it was Wayne Dyer. It's always funny to attribute. Attribution is important. I buy that. But so much of me inside says that pretty much there's no original thoughts anyway. Everything has been— we're all, as Plato said—

Nothing new under the sun.

Just remembering, remembering our words from a prior iteration of us or someone else's. But Wayne Dyer gets credit for saying something like, when we look at things differently, the things we look at, or when we change the way we look at things, the things we look at change. I think that's the—

Right.

Yeah. And I think that's what you're talking about, is that you can actually change your memories, change your past even.

Absolutely.

And that's not, again, this— we're not talking woo-woo here, right? No. That's just to be clear.

This is— another author puts it, you have to pay attention to what you're paying attention to. Right? And if you're paying attention to the negative pieces and you're not aware of it, it will lead you down a really dark path and it will affect your grit and your resilience, right? It'll affect, you know, the book behind you, Love My Life Challenge. It'll affect the way you love or hate your life.

Indeed.

Right? But so you have to pay attention to what you're paying attention to. And that's really important. And it's not woo-woo. It's actually very, very crucial to making it as an entrepreneur, to making it as a professional.

I wish I honestly could remember the date. This has never come up in my thinking before, Eddie. So there is a book called The I Love My Life Challenge. I'm wearing this hoodie that says I love my life. I gave a TED Talk with that. You'd think it was the the entirety of our brand. And frankly, if there was something that was written on my headstone tomorrow that I'd feel proud of, it would be that.

Yeah.

That encouraging people to love their lives no matter what, which is the through line of that particular talk, is so— it's a, again, forgive this self— promotion of another title, but Pivot is a pivot moment. It's a pivotal moment in a life to decide, to take charge of what you decide something actually means, including the memory of something from the past, which is what you're talking about. I wish I could remember the date, specific date that I woke up and instead of when my feet hit the floor, as I'd been accustomed for years to just— upon my feet hitting the floor, I would feel this rush of heaviness, anxiety, anxiousness, even dread at times.

Mm-hmm.

And this was during my career in the law. I was an attorney for 18 years. And it was somewhere in the middle there that it just became so readily apparent to me that my life was didn't feel like any life I'd ever expected or planned. And in an instant, in literally a moment's time, I decided that I would look at things differently that morning.

Hmm.

And as soon as my feet hit the floor that day, instead of feeling this rush of anxiety, I said those 4 words, I love my life. And I only said them not because it came to me, you know, through some channel or something. I was watching Jerry Maguire and couldn't fall asleep the night before. before. And Jerry's mentor, this guy Dickie Fox in that movie, says those words. He goes, I know I've failed as much in my life as I've succeeded, in all honesty, but I love my life.

Mm-hmm.

And those were the words. And he said, I love my life. I love my wife. And I wish you my kind of success. And I went to sleep with that in my head. And I woke up that morning, I put my feet on the floor, and I said, I love my life. I do. You know, and that was it. From that moment, it's not like everything shifted or changed in my life, but my— the way you, you, you said that I changed my, my story in that moment. I was, I was taking ownership of my story.

Mm-hmm.

I hadn't closed the loop on my— on the failures and the issues that I'd been dealing with. I didn't finish the story in that moment, but I took ownership of it. And that was literally the pivotal moment for me. I just don't know the date of it. Looking back, wow. Do you know when something like that happens to you and you go, wow?

Yeah. I'm pretty transparent about my Like mental health and just the ups and the downs that I've been through. And I'll tell you, there was a— I believe it was January 4th, 2019, where I came to a moment where I realized something has to change about my life. And it was I had sold BuzzShift in 2016, my business partner and I had sold BuzzShift in 2016. We thought it was going to go really well. We actually had a chance to take a step back and say, how would we run this differently? 11 months later, we had a chance to buy it back. So we reacquired BuzzShift 11 months later. It was sort of as if— and I'm a man of faith, and so I felt like, okay, God had pulled the rug out from under me when this acquisition came up. It was totally out of the blue. Very thankful for it though. And then 11 months later, he shoved the rug back under me when we reacquired it. And I found myself going, I want to be thankful for this gift of reacquisition, but I really don't want to be doing it. My business partner, Cameron, and I had thought about, okay, what's next? We have a 2-year employment agreement. What's after this? And all of a sudden, instead of what's next, it's, oh, it's this. Right? And so, I went through this probably from 2017 all the way till 2000 and— sorry, 2018, that I was just miserable. I mean, I was miserable for 2 years. And it came to a point where I was like, man, I just don't want to be doing this anymore. And like you said, every day I would get up, sometimes I didn't want to get up. Right? And I think a lot of folks who are listening probably know that feeling of just this dread and anxiety of getting up for another day.

Exactly.

And it wasn't because of the company or my team that I had built that team. I love the people on there. I loved what we were doing as a team, but I myself was just not— that's not where my heart was. And so, you know, I had always— my posture towards owning businesses is not really owning businesses. This was actually the last message I gave to my staff before— after we— so quick story, we sold it 2 months ago again. So we have the great fortune of having sold the same business twice. But I told my my staff on the last call, staff meeting before I left, I said, hey, here's the deal. I have never thought of owning BuzzShift as owning it. I was just charged with being a good steward of it. It was a product of Cameron's and mine's, like the gifts that were given us in our head, our intellectual and mental and leadership gifts. But it was a in itself a derivative gift, and it was meant to be shared and stewarded, right? So I said, hey, me selling my part in the company was really acknowledging like, hey, I've tried to steward this company as best I could over the last 10 years. And now I think we've found someone who could steward it as well or better than I can. And so I'm jumping around, but it was a long process after I came to that low point in my life through therapy, through friends, through just a great little colleague network of leaders and colleagues that helped me realize that it was all right to hand off that company and to start something else. And it wasn't defining my identity. And actually, it was the best thing that I could do for myself and for my team was to find someone else to help steward that company better than I could. And once I got processed through that, it just freed up my mind because I still wanted to be excellent and diligent in whatever I was doing. I was charged with stewarding that company, and so I had to be excellent with it. If I wasn't, or if I wasn't finding someone who was as excellent as I was, that was doing a disservice to, you know, for me, to the God who had given me that company to grow and steward. So, you know, for me, that was really— it was instrumental in helping me let it go.

Yes.

And differentiating myself from it in that I knew I was stewarding it and that I could hand that stewardship off to someone else.

So there are, I think, without trying to make— sort of oversimplify this, there are people that are doing well, let's say, that have transitioned and moved on past an event or a trauma or a period, a season in their life where they felt the way you were describing, where, like me, I ended up in the hospital with an anxiety attack one Saturday morning. Yeah. Things like that.

Man, I literally wanted to jump off a bridge.

There you go. And we know that— and I so appreciate, Eddie, that you say that, that you'd be willing to even say that because I think a lot of the personal pain that we have, we, for a variety of reasons, we keep to ourselves. We don't allow ourselves to be that transparent or vulnerable because, hey, I think we've learned in a variety of ways that sometimes vulnerability is, you know, it's like making yourself a target even for things. Yes. So, there are people that have moved past something and they are now listening to this conversation and perhaps thinking to themselves, well, I have this opportunity to go back. And instead of when I think of someone or I think of some time or some season in my life or some situation in my life, they can look at it and change the memory, change the past, as you said at the very beginning. There are also people that have not yet found something else or something more or different or better, even if you want to use that. Sure. That thing hasn't materialized. And I can imagine people listening to this going, yeah, I would love to be sitting in the seat of CEOship of a new organization and a new life and looking back and going, Yeah, I'm grateful for that now, you know, because I know that that seems to be like, you know, the person who's at the top of the mountain going, yeah, the climb sucked, but man, I learned, you know. Yeah. So, so what do we say to people in both of those camps? Isn't it— isn't it— I guess here's the question, because this is more of a teeing up for a question. So is it the case that you Because it's kind of a chicken and egg thing, that you look at your history in a certain way, and that looking in that particular way at that history changes the potential of a future or even a present? Or is it that you get to a future or a present that's better and then look back and change that history or the way that you look at that history. Am I making sense with

that? Yeah, you are. I think there's a third way. I would say is just to be present in it. If you're in the middle of this, if you're listening to this right now, and you are in the middle of— you're waking up every day and that dread as your feet hit the floor is is palpable, I would say, like, hey, recognize that and don't ignore it, right? Because 2 ways you can not process it well, one is to just totally ignore it, which most people do, right? They look at past events or they're looking at their present events and they just sort of put it out of their mind. They're like, yeah, I don't want to deal with it. And they think they've moved past it, but they haven't, or they relive it again and again and again and again. Neither of those is really healthy, right? The healthy way is to just be present in it. And again, like I'm an avid book reader. Surprisingly, I don't read a lot of, you know, quote unquote self-help books, but, you know, a couple, And, you know, the Curt Thompson one really isn't a self-help book. It really is a good look at neuroscience and spirituality. But there is—

Anatomy of the Soul.

Anatomy of the Soul, yeah. There is another book by a guy named Terry Looper. And again, he's on the spiritual side of things, but it's called Sacred Pace. And one of the things that he says in his decision-making process is just to get in neutral. Now, there's a couple of things you need to do before you can get get in neutral. And I won't spoil it for anyone, but in Sacred Pace, it's actually the last of 4 steps, 4 or 5 steps. But when he talks about getting in neutral, he says it's getting in a place where you're good with an outcome either way, right? Either way it goes, you're good with that outcome. And so if you're feeling like, man, I am just getting crushed at work, I'm getting crushed at my startup, it's failing. I'm just in the midst, like I'm in the doldrums. Just get in neutral and find a way to get yourself to be all right, whether it goes up or whether it goes down. When you can get in neutral, your decision-making process becomes that much clearer about what you need to do next. And also when you get in neutral, uh, it doesn't affect so much your your psychological state or your mental or emotional state if things go left, right, up, or down because you're just— you're in neutral. You're waiting, right? You're waiting for the next thing. And so that, you know, and that requires just being in it.

It is a very powerful place to be. If you're going to reframe any situation, the We have a book that's coming out later this year called Change Proof, and we'll start to speak more about that in the next few months. But there's a process or a through line in that book, I'll say, that involves a process of pausing, asking, and choosing. And that pausing is really what you're talking about. Yeah.

And

it's this idea of you remove the judgment from it. If you take a look at any situation that sort of has you by the throat, let's say, we know what it feels like to feel like Oh yeah. That's something, you know, is sort of stepping on your neck, that initially, if you can just do what you just described, which is it's not a good or a bad, a right or wrong, or fair or unfair, just something you can look at neutrally. It's like shifting your car into neutral and then deciding in that moment which gear, you know, is next. But you are not You're now able to choose because when we're thinking that something is really threatening to us, bad or whatever, however the way we look at it, it's really difficult then to shift into something like gratitude or I love my life no matter what or anything. Like you said, I can look at that situation and just change the way I'm seeing it and then it's different. Yeah. Like you've literally altered the past.

Yeah.

But you can't alter the past when you're in first gear, and first gear is this thing sucks, and I suck because of this. Yeah.

I think that's why entrepreneurs, they're always in that high gear. It's why it's so, so very important for entrepreneurs and leaders to take some serious portions of their day to think and to process and to be present and not just keep on driving on. And it's very practical. Most CEOs, most healthy CEOs will tell you it's a dirty secret, but We actually do less work than most people. I've had conversations, neighbors, friends across the street, colleagues who talk about like, Hedy, what does your inbox look like? What are your decisions through the day? You must be working 12 to 14 hours a day in a startup. And I'm like, guys, this is my 3rd startup. One as a participant And then one is an owner and now this one is a CEO. The key to it is to not have— don't put yourself in the position of having to make so many decisions because it takes up your mind space. What you need to do actually is to get a little higher level and suss out what are the most important decisions you need to make, and then delegate everything else to folks that you trust and folks that you hire. In the beginning, As you're starting up a company, you're making all of these decisions. But eventually, you want to be carving out massive amounts of time to read because your reading and your processing will help you make those bigger decisions that are crucial to your company's success. I tell entrepreneurs all the time who are in the middle of it, Maybe they've got 5 employees, maybe they've got 1 or 2 or 3. And I say, okay, list out everything from top to bottom, stack rank what's the most important things that you can be doing. And then on the other side, stack the things that you like doing from the things that you least like doing. And everything on the bottom on both of those lists, Try to hire out as quick as you can, even if it's at the expense of your margin or your take-home pay, because that will help you grow. And as you move up that list, you have to align what is most important versus what you like to do the most and get to where you're only doing the things that align with most important and what you like to do the most. And then again, try to hire and delegate everything else on up that progression. And you should have, as a part of your yearly planning, a list that are both crossed off and remaining of what I've crossed off, that's success. I can look at that and say, I love it, and I can appreciate it, and I will always outsource X, Y, and Z, or I will always hire for X, Y, and Z. And then work your way off into— your annual plan should be, I need to X out these because then it'll help me focus more on those top-level things. And those will make you very, very successful in a short amount of time because they compound on themselves. It's just like compounding interest. The more time that you're able to— the 5 minutes that you spend on, I don't know, emails or scheduling, for instance, the 5 or 10 minutes that you spend on scheduling that turns into an hour during the week. If you turn that hour into thinking and reading to help big, huge business-making processes or talking to your investors or mentoring your top-level staff or building a farm team of people who are rising up in the ranks, every hour that you take from those bottom tasks and put to the top, they actually compound upon themselves because then you're able to move the business that much more with those high-level decisions. And then they all of a sudden, in a matter of time, free up 2 more hours to then cross off the list and hire out. Do you get what I'm saying? You can get very quickly to the things that you love to do and that are most important to the health of your business. And that's when you are cooking with gas?

It's one of those fundamental questions that is, again, in that what distinguishes or separates sort of leaders, really effective leaders from less effective leaders, is something like you're asking now. What is mine to do? What's not mine to do? It's an essential question. And when everything is yours to do, You have a clear sign that you are— there is a— you've painted yourself into a corner, into a very restrictive box. So I know we could go on this trail and not stop for 2 hours, but I'd say taking what you described, which is this T-chart exercise. Sure. So anybody that's listening, if you're driving, pull over and get to a place where you can just write these things down or re-listen to this later. It is such great advice to create that T-chart and then ultimately making— literally carving out time to think is a novel concept that you schedule time to think.

Yeah.

Because it is, again, it's yours. That's yours to do. When you abdicate your thinking or you abdicate to someone else, the high-level thinking for a business, the strategic thinking for a business, you're then, you know, you shouldn't be surprised when things don't work out the way you want them to work out.

Right.

You just can't be the chief cook and bottle washer, as the old saying goes. At the beginning, yeah, that's the case. And there's plenty of people go, well, I'm at that beginning and that's what I have to do. But as fast as possible, one of those inflection points or pivot points for you will be when you start to look at it the way you just described it, Eddie, and answer that question, you know, what is mine to do? What is not mine to do? Yeah. And what's not yours to do is not yours to do. And not because— and you don't— you can't violate that sort of sacred rule because every time you do it, you're taking away from what you actually are there to do. and where the highest and best use of your time can be utilized.

Yeah.

And this is not about just figuring out how to work 10 hours extra a day. That's not what we're talking about because then we get into this other place where I think people are being convinced that if they do find that extra 5, 10 hours or whatever it might be, you know, I could do with 3 hours of sleep or 4 hours of sleep a night, that what you end up with is burnout. You end up like those I think whether it was Goldman Sachs or whoever, they just had a New York Times article about these investment bankers, right?

Yeah, it's Goldman.

Yeah, burning people out. And burnout is ultimately, the cost of exhaustion is massive. Maybe I'll use this just quickly as a bridge into this conversation about resilience in the remaining time that we've got. I want to talk about your new venture, Eden Green Technology, a vertical farming technology company. Not everybody knows what that is.

Yeah.

I'm fortunate to have a son-in-law that is part of a foundation where they do regenerative farming. And so I'm used to this conversation just a little bit, but would you share with us a little bit more about the company and its mission? And then we can talk about— I want to answer this question, how green technology is actually going to produce resilience Ultimately, what's, you know, how do we become more resilient or change-proof is the term we're using as a result of the work that you're doing currently?

So yeah, Eden Green, you know, our mission is to change the way that we farm food and that we feed people in communities. And we do that, we want to do that by creating a mesh network of independently owned and operated greenhouses, whether they're owned by entrepreneur-led investor groups, whether they're owned by municipalities, state and local regional authorities, nation states, whether they're owned by— we're talking with a number of Native American reservations and tribes about putting one of these on their reservations. But when you can create a mesh network of these greenhouses, what you're doing is you are fundamentally changing the supply chain of nutritious fresh food to people around you. And what we're doing in essence is we're redefining what locally grown means. So if you can imagine, vertical farming is hydroponics. There's nothing GMO or steroidish about it. It literally is just growing addressing plants in the way that they want to grow in the most optimal way possible, which is feeding them constant flow of nutrients at a certain water temperature and a certain water flow, combined with the climate around them, the humidity, and then the light that they get throughout the day. And being able to control all of those optimizes a plant's growth. And so if you If you multiply that by 18 feet high, right, and an acre and a half large, in an acre and a half of one of our greenhouses, it grows the equivalent of 35 traditional farming acres.

So 1 acre is the equivalent of 35?

Yeah, 1.5 acres is equal to 35 traditional farming acres. So, and the water usage on it, which by the way, 35 farming acres produces roughly 500 tons of leafy So in an acre and a half of our greenhouse, you can produce 500 tons of leafy greens. You can do that using 90,000 gallons of water a year. That sounds like a lot, but your and my household each consume about 45,000 gallons of water a year. So in 2 households' worth of water consumption, you can grow 500 tons of leafy greens. Wow. And you do that using minimal light electricity costs for a facility that size. So what you're basically doing is you can, because it's only an acre and a half and because it's using so little resources, you can place those almost anywhere in the world, but it works really, really well in urban populations, which also— Yeah. is where people need the most nutritious greens because the density of the population. So all of a sudden you go from 2,000 or 3,000 miles away getting your leafy greens to 20 miles away to 2 miles away to, in some cases, like our R&D facility is right across the street from a Walmart distribution center. You are changing how you define locally grown so that it's Consistent year-round. We do 11 to 13 harvests a year in one of our greenhouses. So no longer do you have to wait a month, shipments every month. It's every other day these greens are getting to the shelves and to people's kitchens. Every other day, it's constant, right? It's consistent. It's safe, right? Because you're eliminating this huge supply line and All this waste, you know, farms in the supply chain waste around 30 to 40% of greens. To get from the farm to the shelf, there's 30 to 40% waste to get there. And then once it's on the shelf, right, too, it only lasts for so long. So you're eliminating waste and you're eliminating all that supply chain potential for things to get into—

Just the distance. Distance,

pathogens that are in, you know, that are in the ground, that are in the air, that are in the water. You're eliminating all of that, so it's consistent and it's safe. And then that makes it— because it's so close, it's accessible to almost anyone.

So talk about the soil here. I don't want to so much—

No, no, yeah.

The science of it, but although we could a little bit, but I'm just curious about how it is that that soil is regenerating. How is it that that soil is so resilient enough to produce how many harvests in a year?

11 to 13 harvests. 11. So, so we use— hydroponics uses what are called grow mediums. So it's either— there's 2 types of grow mediums. One is called rockwool, and it's literally what it sounds like. It is rock heated to 1,000 degrees, melted to 1,000 degrees, and then spun into this wool cotton candy-like medium that, that plants can grow in. And it's inorganic, but it doesn't bring any of the pathogens or bacteria. You only give it what it needs. And so we put in nutrients, we put in some really good growing activators like bacilli in there to help the plant grow. And then there's another type of medium called a Jiffy plug, and it's peat and coco husk, right? And so you put them in these— put the seeds in these mediums, and they grow in these mediums, and then the water flow that comes through it Gives it all the nutrients that it needs. When it's time to be harvested, you just take it out of our plant spot. You cut the plant and then that whole thing is recyclable. The Jiffy plugs are recyclable. You just throw it in the compost and start all over again. And so you're planting new and new seeds. So we don't use soil, which most people think is— soil is essential to plant growth. Soil is not essential to plant growth. Soil is just It's nature's medium for plants, but we all know, most of us know we're running out of topsoil, efficacious topsoil. Like in there, the most sort of conservative estimates will say we have anywhere in the US, our topsoil is probably good for anywhere from 50 to 200 more harvests. Wow. That's not a lot. It's just not.

And that's the result of overtilling, but there's a lot of—

Overtilling, same crops every year, right? It just sucks all the nutrients out of it.

We didn't learn from the Dust Bowl era, in essence, right? Yeah,

it's just repeating itself, right? So the only alternative then, becoming more and more, is to keep on putting extra fertilizer, extra, you know, all that stuff into the soil, which is— it's not doing it any good, or you find alternatives to grow plants that are not in that soil and you give the soil a chance to rest because it's not having to just be pressed so hard. And then, you know, in regenerative farming, you actually rotate the crops that are going through there, right?

Right.

So we don't think we're the silver bullet.

No, it's a combination of things.

Absolutely. It's a combination We know what we can grow best, and we also know from farmers that they know what they can grow best in that soil, especially on a rotating crop. And so we just want to grow these certain crops. There are about 50 to 100 varietals that can be grown commercially viable in our system, and that's what we want to grow. And there are a lot more varietals, probably 200+ that we can grow in our system, But as a greenhouse is an economic unit, the verdict's still out on whether that greenhouse can be profitable, as well as being able to grow those 250 varietals.

What's the biggest challenge to this new, forgive the pun, budding industry?

Yeah, I mean, it's really what we just talked about. One is education, like, okay, what is hydroponics? So your plants aren't GMO, they're not on steroids, how are you growing so fast? And then 2 is credibility. People cannot believe that you can grow in a greenhouse vertically 18 feet. And then economically, people can't believe that our greenhouses are actually economic units unto themselves and that they're profitable. Because a lot of what you're seeing all around here right now are really, really technologically innovative farming that's totally unprofitable. It's not sustainable. It's not scalable. It's like a technological marvel, but—

The nutrition, we didn't speak to that, but—

Oh, so the taste is—

Spinach is spinach and—

Yeah, spinach is spinach, kale is kale. I'll tell you, you have to come down to our R&D facility, and then as we roll more of these out to go into these greenhouses, but we did a taste test, a consumer taste test with a major, major retailer, and they have this, it's called a hedonic scale of what Like hedonism, like what is the most palatable? What's the most enjoyable? And our greens that we submitted for their hedonic scale were second only to ice cream on the hedonic scale for their consumers. They loved them so much. They were so enjoyable.

And the nutrition, the quality of the nutrition, vitamins, the things that are associated with a food, a vegetable, Yeah. Didn't change either?

Didn't change either.

Yeah.

Didn't change either.

Because that's in the DNA of the seed is what you're saying, right?

It's just in the seed and then the nutrients we give them. Yeah.

It's the medium to give that seed its best environment to grow in is really what you're talking

about. The medium and then the environment around, and that's the secret to our success is

sun and water.

And the microclimate that we've created around each individual plant spot.

It's such good news to hear this, Eddie. I mean, it's not often a day that for me, I don't glance at something in the paper or in the news or whatever that sort of gives me that sinking feeling.

Yeah.

Mostly because blessings have given us, like you're a dad, so am I. We have 4 kids. We're actually expecting our first grandchild in the next few months.

Congratulations.

Thank you. Yeah. Well, I mean, but I, and at the same time I think, well, The world that that child is inheriting is a different world than the world that I inherited, and so on and so on. So you think there's not a lot of good news often about our climate and about changes and about things that we're discussing, like how do you feed this? How do you continue to feed the world? And you're giving— I think this is remarkable, feels like Actually, really good news.

It is good news. And to your point earlier, it provides our population with resilience. There's a, there's a huge movement going on talking about food resiliency and city resiliency. And it's just the ability for, for communities to take hold and to empower them to take hold of their nutrition and to take hold of their well-being. And we're really addressing that food resiliency. With these Native American tribes, what I'm most excited about is being able to change the narrative of these reservations from being underserved, impoverished, just unfortunate situations, to all of a sudden being the provider, the source of local nutritious greens to a 400-mile radius around them. Like, what national karma is that, right? Where you can totally change the narrative of these tribes and these reservations. That, that to me is a story I can't wait to tell once we close one of these things.

Just gave me chills, buddy.

Oh man, it's—

Talk about turnaround history.

Yes.

Turn around the past with something really Really so positive in the moment and for the future. Are you being met with— and this maybe we're just kind of wrapping up here, but are you being met with open arms in that conversation?

Absolutely.

You are?

Yeah. Yeah. I think that the pandemic has accelerated the trend of things like food resiliency, have accelerated the trend of honestly a fragile supply chain. Yes. So I think people are coming out of the pandemic where capital was a little frozen, where people didn't know what to do. Now that capital is becoming more and more available and is having to be utilized because of the stimulus and injection of more cash into the economy, cash sitting on the sidelines is becoming less and less valuable by the day. So people are having to invest it. And they're looking for things a little outside their comfort zone because they have to. So we're getting a lot more traction this year as compared to last because people are willing to take that chance, both from— they see the environmental realities as well as the economic inflationary realities. And they're saying, okay, we got to put our cash to use. And this seems like a really, really good way Indeed.

edengreen.com, everybody. There'll be full show notes. You can find out more about Eddie's work and about the company, of course. And I'd love it if— ordinarily, I'll say, if you found this episode to be really helpful, please share it with someone. That continues to be the case, of course. I also feel called to say that sharing this episode with someone else for them to be able to hear what Eden Green is doing and to become a little bit more aware. Let's just say the awareness of what hydroponics is in this context and how it is a point of resilience for all of us. And as you said, food resiliency is something that I think will be more on our minds going forward than it has been. Even up till now. And so ahead of the, what do we do, which I think a lot of people are already asking that question, but more and more will, I think this is a solution to that. It's part of a solution. It's not the only one, as we said, but it's an important part. And, and to start with awareness is really a key here. So thank you so much, Eddie, for being on the show today and the way that this conversation tracked was really interesting. I so enjoyed it. Thank you for being

here. Thanks for having me. It was an absolute pleasure to be on.

Yeah. I want to remind everyone as well, as we say so long for the moment, that what Eddie shared at the beginning about changing your memories, it really is true, at least in my experience, that you can have a moment where you just decide that that's where you're at. I mean, that's literally, this is where I'm at. And it could be right this moment. For me, I woke up one morning and I put my feet on the floor and I didn't feel anxious. And that might sound strange, but it was just such a— like it was my companion. I was waking up feeling that day after day. I didn't even remember what it felt like to not wake up that way after so And then, one morning I woke up, I decided that what I really wanted was to simply love my life with all of its challenges and everything. So, no matter what, in essence. And, that was a choice that I got to make that day. And, we get to do that in this moment. Eddie, do you love your life? I'm asking this question.

I do. I love every second of it, man. It is a blast.

It is. It's a wild ride, everybody. That's for sure. I think that's something we can all agree upon. So enjoy the ride, and we'll see you again really soon. Thanks so much.

Thanks for listening, everyone. We hope you now have even more tools and greater insights to build resilience and become change-proof. Help us inspire others by sharing this episode and leaving your comments over at AdamMarkel.com/podcast. For more resilience tips and strategies, including support for building change-proof teams, visit AdamMarkel.com/becomechangeproof.