What Yoga Trapezes, Laser Lights, Kettlebells, Mini-Meditation & Ketogenic Doughnuts Have To Do Wit
A recorded interview between Ben Greenfield (host) and Angelo Keeley (guest/co‑founder & COO of Kion). They cover Angelo's upbringing in a natural‑foods family, teenage rebellion and a traumatic LSD episode, his college study in religious studies and languages, and subsequent international work (France, India) before settling in Boulder. Angelo describes his practice of visualization/manifestation (influenced by Shakti Gawain), centering prayer, daily routines (early sleep, hydration, espresso, journaling, brief exercise, cold showers), and creative pursuits (music/beatboxing). The conversation shifts to Kion: Angelo's role as COO, company culture practices (daily huddles, silence/meditation, monthly retreats, team adventures, hiring focus on emotional communication), product philosophy (broadly effective, evidence-based formulations vs early-stage personalization), supply‑chain/manufacturing challenges, and plans for content and product development.
Chapters
I want to help Ben, like, fully manifest whatever this thing is. There might be, like cool and innovative products or a fad of some kind, but, like, over time, I just think it's fundamentally over and over again about humans. It like planted a seed at that time in my life that that was you never have to be stuck if you're willing and have the energy and the courage to visualize and define what you really want. We're just a group of humans that were born into this life and are trying to enjoy our life, beautiful and healthy relationships with the people around us and be good people.
I have a master's degree in physiology, biomechanics and human nutrition. I've spent the past two decades competing in some of the most masochistic events on the planet. From seal fit, Kokoro, Spartan Agoji, and the world's toughest mudder to 13 Ironman triathlons, brutal bow hunts, adventure races, spearfishing, plant foraging, free diving, bodybuilding and beyond. I combine this intense time in the trenches with a blend of ancestral wisdom and modern science. Search the globe for the world's top experts in performance, fat loss recovery, hormones, brain beauty and brawn to deliver you this podcast. Everything you need to know to live an adventurous, joyful and fulfilling life. My name is Ben Greenfield. Enjoy the ride.
Howdy, howdy, Howdy ho.
My friends. Is a tasty, tasty Michelob Light, my beverage of choice when I'm podcasting. No, I'm just kidding. It's Zevia soda with stevia in it. It's actually pretty good. I should get them to sponsor this show because I drink so damn much of it. I actually interviewed their CEO some time back. His name's Patty. You could go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com Paddy P A D D Y and listen to my interview with Patty from Zevia. The soda that doesn't give you non alcoholic fatty liver disease. At least that's how I think they should label their soda. Anyways, today I had one of my favorite friends and fellas on the face of the planet come to my house for the weekend and a podcast with me. He's really cool. His name is Angelo. Angelo Keeley. He's actually the co. The COO of my company, Kion. I guess I should say our company Kion, now that I've said that. Anyways, Angelo is just a fantastic guy and a wealth of very interesting information. Information on these shows. And speaking of Kion, that's what this show is actually brought to you by. You know, I don't talk about this a lot, but there's this, there's this stuff that you can squirt into your mouth. Insert dirty joke here. That really, really amps up your immune system activity. There's a lot of books about it. Like the Cure in the Cupboard is probably the best book about it. Kills off yeast, bacteria, fungus, parasites. One of my friend Paul Check's favorite little remedies for keeping the gut healthy. And it's called oil of oregano. Wild Mediterranean oil of oregano harvested from turkey with a carvacryl content of over 80%, which is what we have in ours at Kion is the way to go if you want to stay healthy, especially if you travel a lot. This stu like, well, it makes your immune system unstoppable. There you go. How about that for coining a phrase? I'm coining phrases right and left these days. You can get it and any of the fine, fine supplements we have at Kion if you just go to getkion.com that's getkion.com and the discount code that you can use over there is very simple. It's bgf10getkion.com, bgf10. This podcast is also brought to you by photobiomodulation. Photobiomodulation. Light that you can shine in your crotch. It's more than that, though. It's more than light that you can shine on your crotch. They've done literally thousands of studies on the use of red light and near infrared light therapy. They've found that it can increase collagen production and skin health. It can reduce pain and inflammation. If you got a sore joint you shine it on, it can cause a nitric oxide release and mitochondrial biogenesis. For better athletic performance, it can increase your testosterone production. Hence the part about shining it on your naked crotch. And there's this company called Joovv that makes the exact photobiomodulation that I use every day. You actually get to get a joovv along with a nice little bonus gift they're going to throw in there. And this is the stuff that's clinically proven wavelengths of light, very high power. So you only need like a 10 to 20 minute dose. Boom. Done. Don't waste your time. You can get the joovv with the gift at j o o v.com Ben that's Joovv. J-O-O-V-V.com Ben. All right, let's go talk to Angelo.
Check, check, mic check one, two. Mic check, one, two. Yo, Angelo, could you get Me a little mic check.
If I didn't have a mic check, I wouldn't have a check at all. Check one, check two, check three. Wiki wiki wookie.
Okay.
Whoa.
Oh my goodness.
Representing Angelo Keeley, Spokane. Dude, we literally just got out of the frigid Spokane River. That was fun.
That was fun.
Did you like today's workout?
Dude, it was amazing. That was like.
I guess my question, I love the workout. My question is like, how good is that for me and how was that good for me?
I have no clue.
Okay.
It was kids having fun. Now what we did for, for those of you listening in is Angelo, who I'll introduce to you in a second. You have no clue who this cat is, aside from his mad beatboxing skills. He and I went down this morning, Saturday morning, his family's visiting me here in Spokane. Because Angelo lives in Boulder where our Kion offices are, because he's the COO and the co founder of Kion, where we make all things wonderful, magical unicorn tears and formulations and things to make your life beautiful. But I digress. Angelo came up from Boulder to Spokane with his beautiful family and then I ripped him out of bed this morning and we went down to the Spokane Frisbee golf course. We have actually a really, really cool Frisbee golf course here. Rather than just playing Frisbee golf, the way I do Frisbee golf is you either do 10 burpees, 20 push ups or 30 air squats at each hole. And we play all 18 holes, like an hour and a half long workout. And you get a mix of like we were talking about during, during Frisbee golf, like the primal skill of hurling an object towards a target. And the hand eye coordination. And of course the fun. We can't strip the fun out of it. And then you get of course the calisthenics, the cardio, the step count. I think we both got our 10,000 steps in already. And then we did our cryo. We went and jumped in the cold Spokane river afterwards. And since it's 4:20, we had the guys hopboxing in their cars asking us if we. For us. Yeah, we didn't do it.
But they did it for us.
No, for us. Exactly. No, we don't smoke weed on 4 20. We go play Frisbee and jump in the river. So anyways though, that's. That was the workout.
Yeah, I loved it. I guess after I do workouts like that I'm. I wonder, like, did I work hard enough? Because I just enjoyed the whole thing so much. And I have this idea I need to, like, suffer more.
It's kind of funny. It's like when I go out and play tennis. Like, our family plays tennis on Sundays now, and my kids are getting good enough to where it's actually, you know, you're moving around, you're chasing down balls, or.
What'S another example? Like.
When I was in Kentucky and we were waiting for breakfast to be served at the cafeteria that we all went to, they had a basketball court outside. So Dr. Dawson and I went outside. We just, like, shot hoops and played one on one and played some pig and jumped around, and you're working out, and you feel great afterwards. But, dude, there's something about getting out of the stale gym environment, counting reps and counting sets and just playing.
Playing is what it is. I like the playing.
It's play. It's Primal Play. There's a guy named Darrell Edwards who has a whole program called Primal Play. You just go out to the park and crawl and jump around and hang from trees, and it's pretty fun. Sweet. Yeah. So, Angela, there's a lot of people, a lot of people listening in right now who are probably, because they listen to this show, kind of sort of familiar that I have this supplements company called Kion, but they don't know a lot of what goes on behind the scenes there, and they also don't know about you. And I like to get interesting people on this podcast. Like, I didn't just want to get you on the show because you're, you know, you're. You're involved with Keon or something like that. Like, you have a lot of cool things that you've done that go beyond your mad beatboxing skills. And I think you've got a lot of. A lot of. A lot of interesting insight for the audience. And I do want to dive today into kind of what you see behind the scenes in the supplement and the health industry, how integral a role. You see things like company culture and, you know, the health of employees and things like that playing in terms of building, you know, a business that can change the world. And, you know, you also tie family and fitness and all of that into the whole mix. And so I'm excited to have you on just to. Just to talk about a lot of the things that. That I think you can bring to the audience.
So thanks, man. I'm excited to share anything that might be of value.
Yeah. And I'm gonna taunt you over here while I sip coffee, because you're. You're out it's decaf, man. Yeah, it is decaf. I blend my decaf.
I'm on this, this kick where I blend decaf coffee with Ceylon cinnamon, sea salt and organic stevia. And that's it. It's super clean. There's no calories in it. There's. There's no magical brain bending qualities to it whatsoever. So probably most people will find it really boring, but it satiates my appetite.
Yeah, it's rich and earthy and.
Yeah, earthy.
Do you ever do chicory stuff? I talked about that.
Yeah, I have, yeah. Yeah, some. Of course, all the carnivore folks will, will step back in shock because chicory has all its natural built in plant defense mechanisms. But, but actually a lot of people who don't do well with coffee, they do really well with chicory, I think as a company called Dandy Tea. They make like a chicory root based tea that's also like a, like a kind of a liver cleanse because it's got dandelion root and stuff in it. So I don't, I don't do a lot of sugar root though. But it's a good coffee substitute. Kind of sort of tastes like shitty coffee.
So it's. I never really tried to replace coffee with anything. So I just.
It's black.
Do it.
It's dark brown water. Kind of like coffee is, I guess. So it's got that going for it. Tell me about where you're from, man.
Like, originally I was born in Wimberley, Texas, outside of Austin. And I was born to very hippie parents. They had a natural health food store and a natural health food restaurant in Wimberley, Tex.
Really? Yeah. I actually didn't know your parents had a full on. I knew they were kind of like hippie into natural foods, but I didn't know they had a whole store.
Yeah, I mean, I don't. I think this is all okay to talk about. It's so long past. But yeah, basically they had this natural health foods. My dad before that was like a big ginseng and botanical distributor. Like he had like his own business. He's kind of like a wheeler and dealer entrepreneur type guy. And then he had gotten into. They bought this natural health food store. And then that was right at the time when Whole Foods, like, I think they like raised money. They built like these big stores and like all the smaller co ops kind of went out of business in the Austin area. And my parents started this restaurant to compensate for that. And then actually Whole Foods came and offered my dad to come and do the first, like, restaurant for Whole Foods and partner and not have to leave his store and his restaurant in Wimberley. And he did that. And that's when we moved to Austin.
Okay. So it's not like you're bitter about Whole Foods and you never go there because it's an evil giant corporation. It instead served as like an employment opportunity for your dad.
It wasn't. Yeah, it was an original. Like, my dad was a partner in that. The whole restaurant and deal side of that. I mean, I don't. This is like. I don't know exactly how well that went. My dad didn't go to Whole Foods ever again after that. Oh, my mom and I did. I remember going there as like a little kid. I mean, we were. We were pescatarians.
Well, maybe the way your dad felt about Whole Foods is the same way Whole Foods now feels about Amazon. Right. Like, it's just. Yeah, we keep. We keep stepping up the plate and.
Yeah, totally.
By bigger and bigger corpse.
Yeah.
Growing up in that environment, where did you get.
Access to a lot of these natural compounds and herbs? Like, you know, were there situations where instead of, I don't know, using antibiotics.
Your parents raised with it? Yeah, I mean, they were. I was. I guess this is a hot subject just of recent with like vaccination type stuff. Later on I was vaccinated. But, like, as a kid. As a kid, my parents didn't vaccinate me. We never went to the doctor. It was all like botanicals and herbs and vitamins, all natural. I mean, we went to Whole Foods. We went. We never. I wasn't a lot. I mean, I never got to eat. Like, I was the kid that would go to school. I'm not saying this is the right diet, but I would go to school with like, either grilled salmon or like grilled tofu and onion, you know, like on like oral kid who nobody wanted.
To trade lunches with. That's like my kids, they go to school with stuff. Sardines and like jerky, but it's not regular jerky. It's like pemmican and rendered fat and avocado slices. Yeah. Nobody wants my kids lunch.
I just wished I could just have gushers, you know, and like. No. Nothing.
Yeah. Dude. Our upbrings were so opposite, you know, because. Because I grew up on, you know, Godfather's pizza. And then eventually, when my parents decided to get healthy, Papa Murphy's take a bake pizza and like iceberg lettuce and ranch dressing.
And I was Specifically like never. I like not allowed to have iceberg lettuce because it was grown in the same fields and it would be like so full of pesticides. My parents wouldn't let me eat it ever.
People don't realize it's like nature's bioremediant. Like it's just there to soak up toxins. And like my mom would fill up the whole back seat of the Suburban on 29 cent hamburger, 39 cent cheeseburger day with bags and bags and bags from McDonald's and that would just be lunch all week long. We would just have giant bags of the greasy white paper in the fridge.
We literally could not have had more opposite dietary guidelines as children.
And then, and it's kind of funny now, now I'm almost like more extreme.
You are more extreme than me now.
Yeah, yeah. It's kind of funny. And Angela and I will talk about this more for those of you listening in. But like we'll go to health expos or something. Expos and stuff and walk around and like I'm like extremely, extremely attentive to the labels now and you know, I know that, that you are as well. But I'm almost to the point now where I just like don't even like try or touch anything that's, that's even remotely. And it's shocking how many of these so called health foods have, you know, not just like the, like the keto donuts we were talking about last night with the erythritol and everything in them that's just bloating and gas. But so many of these, you know, quote, natural and artificial flavored compounds are just rife.
Yeah. I think like my, my overall approach, if there's something really good I got from my family in that is just trying to get as much from the food I eat and taking a really minimalist approach to food, like just don't. And I think that's, that's kind of an interesting way that I ended up in a supplement company with you because I took supplements and vitamins as a child. But it was always like in a very minimalist approach. Yeah. And food in a minimalist approach. And like not getting like, I don't get really excited about like keto donuts. I need some like special sweeten because then I end up with erythritol and then it makes me feel sick. It's like.
Yeah.
If I make it too complex then it becomes, it ends up having all these side effects that make me feel worse.
Yeah.
I grew up Maybe I should just eat a little bit of sugar.
I did a lot of ibuprofen and Advil and espresso.
Right. As a kid?
Yeah, yeah. Because I started getting like working out and stuff and I get sore and you know, mom took ibuprofen, so I take ibuprofen. And dad had a coffee shop, so I drink a lot of espresso. So those are my supplements was caffeine and non steroidal anti inflammatory drugs.
Yeah, I was like, I got a headache. They would never. Or like I wasn't allowed to have ibuprofen. I had to drink water just to drink more water. Yeah, that was always the solution.
That's funny, dude. So opposite. But.
In Texas did you wind up going to, going to high school like, like after, after your dad kind of got out of the natural food store and got called Whole Foods? Yeah.
So basically my parents both ended up being like small business owners. My mom an accountant, my dad like an IT guy. Actually he got totally out of that and got into like IT consulting. But yeah, I would say like overall the rest of my childhood, quick summary would just be. I was.
Kind of an alternative weirder kid. I mean, I had like these hippie parents, but they raised obviously. Yeah, obviously. But they raised me like in like a nicer school district and so just like found my way, like how to fit in in the world while having like kind of a weirder background. Always did really well in school. Then around high school, I got into a lot of trouble. Like a lot of trouble. Tons of trouble. Kicked out of school, arrested. Just like, what kind of trouble?
I mean, like possession of alcohol, smoking weed at school, getting kicked out of school.
Ibuprofen?
No, getting kicked out of school, getting put in like the spec, you know, like. But before that I've been like top performing student, you know. So I just, I think I was just, you know, if there's a theme, maybe it's like I was really into people and it's an exciting time for like people and social stuff at that high school time. And I just got really into all the social dynamics and fun and like experimenting and so it got me into a lot of trouble, got me kicked out of school and then, yeah, I mean, probably really transformative thing was when I was 16, I had a terrible LSD experience.
Really.
And.
A lot of people now are kind of like interested in lsd. I've even talked on the show before about like when I wrote my first fiction book. Like I would write a ton on Fridays and every Friday I would microdose with LSD. I'd take like, you know, 10 to 20 micrograms and then I'd get the merging of the left and right hemispheres of the brain and I could just churn out creative work that had a little bit of the analytical, you know, portions of the hero's journey. Like I found it to be really helpful for, especially for writing fiction. And I'll still occasionally use it. Like if I have a long day where I have to power through a lot of creative work, I'll use small amounts of lsd. I've never actually tripped on it. The most LSD I've ever taken has been 60 micrograms, which is still nowhere near 100 microgram plus trip dose. So a lot of people are kind of interested in lsd. What was your experience with it?
This was not that context. This was more like super irresponsible writing.
About princesses and clouds.
It was serious, seriously irresponsible. 16 year olds taking way too much, didn't know what they were doing. Wrong place, wrong time, being around the wrong people, basically.
Upsetting these people. I don't really actually know the whole story, but whatever happened, they stabbed me multiple times and nearly beat me to death and left me like in this.
But you were on lsd.
I was on LSD when this happened. Like on a drain, like in a drainage gutter, kind of like in a parking lot. And they found me and I was like naked and nearly beaten to death and stabbed and we don't really know exactly what happened.
And yeah, so that like that's, that was me getting in trouble. So not like mild like getting trouble like scaring the bejesus out of my parents.
Right.
And yeah, that was when I was 16. So kind of following that then I, I had like a lot of like therapy, personal development work to kind of do going out of that. And I ended up moving out of my house when I was 17.
And started supporting myself doing like manual labor stuff like painting, but also doing a lot of music. I discovered this beatboxing skill. I was getting paid commercially to do like beatboxing and, and I was a.
Gigging like, like for actual commercials or like Kinkos.
I was on the Kinko's hold music for like a long time. Yeah, it was like Kinko's. I don't remember what it was. It was something like that, you know, and like a Chili's thing and I got like tv, I got just like gigs doing that stuff and I was playing a lot of drums in music and making money doing that. And I was like, pretty. Became pretty independent in high school. Like pretty distant from my parents. So I don't know that you asked that. What was high school like, that's.
Did you also like, did you get out of like the whole like hippie food scene and health food and like, change up your diet and things like that too, as part of the rebellion?
Yeah, I mean, I started. Yeah, I mean I started, I mean, just as like probably like teenage kids like that had cars. We'd like drink alcohol and go to McDonald's and go to Taco Bell and like eat bad food, but never like that. I still don't think I've ever had a Twinkie. I don't think I've ever had bologna. There's all kinds of stuff I just like.
I should. I should take you to Carl's Jr today. Apparently they just launched their CBD burger.
Oh yeah, it's 4:20.
Well, today when we're recording, it's 4:20. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. You can't eat just one, literally. I bet. So after, after high school, did you wind up studying university?
I did. So it's kind of an interesting turn then. So I was always like a really high performing student, but after all that, it kind of like blew up my whole world. And so I ended up going to this school in Austin where I. Where I went to high school called St. Edwards University. It's like a smaller, private, liberal arts Catholic school. It's the same order as like Notre Dame.
And I took this. I had gotten into. I'd also gotten into like this. This Christian church basically at the very end of high school that was really into meditation or this thing called centering prayer, which is like a meditation. It's like a Christian meditation. It's basically like just silent prayer. But it kind of looks like meditation, but it's more like within a Christian context.
I've never heard of that. Yeah. And like I grew up in a Christian household attending church, but I've never heard of centering prayer.
It's cool. I'll turn you onto it, man.
Tell me a little bit about it.
It's kind of funny we haven't talked about it before.
Yeah, what. What exactly is it?
Well, I guess just like the basic tradition is. I mean, I have all kinds of things to talk about overall, like kind of religion stuff because that's what I study in college. But basically there's a really strong tradition from the early days. Desert Fathers. I don't know if you know about that, but as Christianity suddenly became, like, popularized in this third and fourth century. There were lots of Christians who didn't see it as like a. Like a thing that made sense to be super popularized and kind of like not commercialized, but, you know, like, that lots of people could do it. It required more, like, aesthetic lifestyle. So people would go into the desert to live like Jesus during the 40 days and 40 nights, which is kind of like the beginning of the monastic tradition. And in that they. There was a lot of just silent prayer. People would just sit in silence. Rather than, like, praying to God and like, asking for God to help you with something, you sit and you wait for God to speak to you, for example. And which they, you know, they see all kind of like biblical tradition, things that Jesus said about that. But that grew and was really a large part of the monastic tradition for Orthodox and Catholic churches. There's a ton of literature around it. You know, I don't know if you've heard of St. John of the Cross. There's a really famous book called the Cloud of Unknowing. That's a lot of, like, medieval monastic writings from the Christian faith that are all. They're all very much based in, like, sitting in quiet contemplation. It looks just like meditation from other traditions.
That's interesting. You know, we're sitting in my office right now, and on my bookshelf up there, I have a whole bunch of books on the left about the spiritual disciplines which are kind of, you know, high up on my priority list to study and that I'm in the midst of getting into right now. And two of them are silence and solitude. And I haven't yet come across something like centering prayer, but.
It sounds very tied into just the whole practice of meditation or even like, Native American sit spots or this idea of just being with yourself and your own thoughts. But in the case of centering prayer, you're waiting for some kind of a message.
Yeah, well, so centering prayer is like a modern. Then there was like a big kind of. There were a lot of, like, Catholic monastic priests in the 20th century. Are you familiar with, like, Thomas Merton? So, like lots of people kind of in that tradition of Thomas Merton, there's another guy named Father Thomas Keating. He actually just passed away in this last year, who really helped develop the movement, I don't know, in the last 60 or 70 years of kind of bringing that back to Christian culture, what had been a really big root or some believe was a root of the Christian faith around.
Silence, I guess. I think it's similar to those. But I'm, I'm one who doesn't see all religions as kind of like the same. I see them as actually different and having different belief structures. And it's not, that doesn't mean, and I'm not saying in that that one is better than another, but they represent different things and have different focus. And so I would just say that like there's definitely a Christian theology that's part of centering prayer that is different from like Buddhist, I don't know, like Zen meditation. Because there's just a different framework about how they see how you see the world and what you're looking for in sitting prayer. It's basically about sitting in silence and seeking relationship with God. So I got turned onto that.
And so then I was like, wow. And I was raised non religious, like totally non religious. So then I went to this Catholic school and then you had to take a religious studies class. So I took Intro to New Testament in my first semester and it was like the coolest class I'd ever taken, but it was kind of mind blowing. Cool because I just thought like, oh, if I'm in like a Catholic school and they're going to teach something like Intro Testament, it's going to be almost like indoctrination. Like they're going to try to get me to like, it's going to be like Sunday school, you know, like teaching me about all these things. But no, it was like the historical critical method where you break down and analyze the exact historical context of when and how religions came to be, what the writings were. And basically it just like.
I would say for most people who grew up in a normal Christian context, it would be very upsetting to their faith because it would be kind of confusing because there's like you just learn all the details of like how the books were written and how the apostles were maybe not actually people actually wrote. It wasn't actually like, you know, John that wrote the book of John. It was a community 60 years after Jesus's death, who wrote that, who had really different influence and insight, etc. And so I was just like, whoa, like this is crazy, like how all these things come together. And so yeah, in college I ended up being a religious studies major, which I would have raised. Like my parents were like, what? Like we raised you non religious? And now suddenly you're like, you know, into this church and you're like studying, you know, religion. Like it was, they, they thought it was a very odd, it was an odd turn.
Is that what you Wound up graduating with was religious studies.
Yeah, Well, I ended up doing a major in religious studies. I did a minor in music and a minor in. In philosophy. Yeah, What'd you do after that? So the other main thing I think that, like, really came up when I was in college was I got really into languages, which I'd never studied before, and I got really into.
Service. So I started doing these service projects. I started going to India.
To, like, do these service projects with. With. With an orphanage there and develop, like, a program to send kids, students from the university, to run summer camps there. I did similar stuff in Central America. I got into learning. I realized, like, that I could learn Spanish. I got suddenly really good at Spanish. And so when I graduated, I actually really. So also when I was studying religion, I learned Arabic, I studied Islam, I studied Hinduism. I learned like, a bunch. I studied Koine Arabic.
It's a really hard language, isn't it? Yeah.
I mean, I didn't take, like, multiple.
Shit that gets you hired by the CIA.
I, you know, and I didn't know. I was like, what am I going to become? I'm going to become like a. Like, do I want to be, like, a diplomat or an academic or like, what? I mean, all I knew was that I was really, really interested in humans and how humans told each other stories and tried to live better lives. I say, like, that's the theme. Like. Yeah, and I was really interested in that more than anything else. So, yeah, I also studied koine Greek, you know, which the New Testament's written in. Got really good in Spanish. And so when I graduated, I was like, I want to go for sure overseas, because I'd been doing a lot of overseas stuff. And so I moved to France. And actually right before I moved to France, I met who's now my wife. She went with me, which is kind of a whole nother interesting story. I think it's most interesting around. If we talk about visualization and manifesting what you most want out of your life. That's probably, like, one of my most unique stories and proofs of how powerful, being extremely clear about what you want in your life is and how you can get exactly what you want.
Tell me that story. Yeah.
Okay. Yeah, so I guess.
I actually had been doing, like, an internship in France, and I had met my. Who's now my wife, like, a few months before, but we didn't really know each other that well. And she's a few years older than me too, so she was me, like, ignoring me. I wrote this song, though.
That really clearly described. It's actually called like the Wife song. So I was in a hip hop band then I was a rapper in a hip hop band. Like bass, drums, guitar, keys, Kind of like Tribe Called Quest, but very like jazz players. All my best friends were pretty successful in Austin. I wrote this song about manifesting the perfect wife. And it literally in detail described exactly what I wanted the relationship to be like, like how it would really function. And it wasn't like a bubble gummy, like, we're gonna be the perfect fit for each other and be together forever. It was more like, I'm looking for someone who wants to be really real and who I will struggle to be real with too, that I will struggle to accept and not try to force to be a certain way, etc. And like, pretty, I think a surprisingly adult and mature perspective for me at like 22, 23. So I wrote that song when I was in France. I came back, I performed it for the first time. I literally had to read off my computer. My. My now wife came to that show, had never heard us play music. That was the first time she'd ever seen us play music. Played that song that night. The next day I got invited to go over to her house to like, go watch a movie. And we started dating. And that like, literally is my wife now.
I mean, before that, had you kind of been in the manifestation?
Yeah, I mean, well, so after that kind of serious.
Acid trip stabbing thing, I was in the hospital. I got turned on to this book called Creative Visualization by Shakti Gawain.
You mentioned this one to me a few months ago. Yeah, what was it called? Creative Visualization.
Yeah, by Shakti Gawain.
Cool. By the way, for those of you listening in, show notes are@BenGreenfieldFitness.com Angelo Just like it sounds A N G e L O. BenGreenfieldFitness.com Angelo I'll link to anything like that that we bring up. So Creative Visualization, what's it about?
It is about.
Visualizing exactly what you want in your life and doing it in a distinctly visual way. And so I got that book.
When. Yeah, when I was literally in. Actually, I think I just got out of the hospital. I'd been in the hospital for a while and I just got out. One of my friend's parents gave it to me and I started reading it. And at first I was like, why did they give me this book? It seems like kind of woo, woo. Like I don't really get it, you know. And I started reading it. And I don't think I realized until probably 10 years later how much that book influenced me and my thinking and my openness to.
Having the courage to not complain about what's going on right now and not be confused about what's going on right now and to actively seek to design and visualize what I really want from my life and to take the risk to try to go and get it and do it. Because I think in that type of, like, situation, right then when you're, like, so down and you made such a big mistake and everyone's disappointed in you, you're in trouble with the law. You're just, like, terrible. Like, you're. I mean, the feedback I was getting was like, people were worried about me, but it was like, you're not good.
I think it. Create. It, like, planted a seed at that time in my life that that was.
You never have to be stuck.
Yeah.
If you're willing and have the energy and the courage to visualize and define what you really want. And so I don't. I didn't really, like. I didn't, like, start, like, hardcore visualizing at that point in my life, but when I see, like, how I got out of that hole and somehow ended up going to college, finding, you know, being successful in college. I didn't mention this before, but I end up being the valedictorian of my college, too, and like, developed all these cool programs, overseas service programs. Like, I really, like, flourished in college.
Well, that's. That's part of the thing with visualization or manifestation is you. You begin to do it.
Whether it's closing your eyes in a meditative setting and imagining and bringing to life the tiny, intricate details of whatever. Maybe, let's say you want to start a coffee shop. So you see yourself in your apron there at the coffee shop, hunched over the espresso maker, and you have a team of baristas around you, and someone's standing there at the counter ordering. And the thing about it is, sometimes you don't even know you're taking some of the steps towards making that happen. But you're programming yourself subconsciously, and you're almost taking those steps whether or not you know it. You know, that's a big part of the book I'm bringing my boys through right now called the Master Key, which is like one of the original correspondence courses in meditation, is it just teaches you how to visualize in intricate detail what it is that you want to achieve. And then it delves into how you know whether you like it or not, like you're programming your subconscious when you do that and you begin, you begin to take steps that you might not even be aware of towards achieving that.
Yeah, I think that that alone is really powerful. There's even more you can do too. Like once you start to harness the power of visualization and being really clear about what you want, there's more you can do to like strategize how to get there and like how to take more action and execute better. But simply alone, having that vision and being willing to like kind of program your consciousness around that then just sets up all your decisions within that context. Whereas if you think, if you always think I'm stuck or you always think I'm always gonna do this thing, like you're not even gonna imagine that you could take a different step. So every time that like an option comes up to, you know, exercise or not exercise, drink water or not drink water, you're just like, oh, I'm lazy. I don't like. You just fall into the other decisions.
Yeah, it's almost like a filter. Or let's even say like exercise doesn't really serve that purpose. Right. Let's. Let's say for ex. I don't know, you like the, let's use the coffee shop analogy that you want to build is going to take X number of hours per day. Well, maybe someone invites you to CrossFit, right. And you have that option to do whatever five 40 minute CrossFit workouts a day, and you might instead subconsciously make the decision to do the 10 minute burpee workout in your room just because you have that filter that says, okay, I need X amount of time for this. So this is the decision I'm going.
To make, which I think really just drives home the point of not only like taking, being willing and open to have the vision for what you want, but also taking the time just to really evaluate what's the current vision that you have, what's the current belief patterns that you have. Because they're showing up in like all of my actions every day, like they're just playing out all the time. So if I start to feel like, oh, these act like what's up with these actions? You know, I need to like manifest this other vision. It's like, like just taking the time to even see like what is the vision that I'm holding right now that, that these actions are playing out from.
Yeah. Do you like how all my analogies, by the way, are based around either coffee or exercise?
I'm used to it immediately identify my two passions in life. So. So you, you wind up getting married to Carrie.
Yeah, I wound up getting married and.
Starting a family right away or.
Well, so there's a. There's like a five year thing. In between graduating college, moving to France, launching a satellite campus for university in France, getting really close with Apple leadership. I became fluent in French over there. Apple France, ran Apple India. I got a job in India, moved to India, did a bunch of business development and training work over there, then finally moved to Boulder.
Honestly had like a really powerful retreat when I was in India that helped me have a breakthrough to realize that I wanted carry to be the focus of my life and family to be the focus of my life. Immediately quit the job the next day. I'm a little, you might start to find impulsive sometimes. I immediately quit my job the next day, moved to Boulder and immediately got married and started having a family. And that was in 2012.
So in 2012, what were you working at in Boulder? Like what was your job?
I moved to Boulder with no job. But I had made good friends in India, these Swedes who had like the biggest software outsourcing company. And so I launched that in the US and started doing like selling and developing software projects. And then I got turned on to some family run businesses. One in behavioral healthcare. It was basically like a young adult mentoring program. And the other was this like a creative incubator. I started consulting with them to help develop the whole creative incubator program. And via that they then brought me on ultimately to help.
They were actually trying to, they're trying to like build and sell one of the companies. And so they brought me in to help manage that and run with like due diligence. And it was really great for me because I, as you can tell, like I said, I studied religious studies. It's like, well, how'd this guy end up with like business chops? Yeah, you know, like I learned all the sales and human stuff. But that experience gave me really helped me develop really super solid financial chops. And then I ended up running this behavioral healthcare company that was about based out of Boulder. It's like 50 employees, multimillion dollar company trying to help them develop and grow and sell that. And around December 2016, I realized I wanted to move on and do something different. I left that and I thought I just need some like time to figure out what I'm gonna do next. And within two weeks I got this call about if I could help. Look at this project with this guy, Ben Greenfield. Oh, yeah. And I was like, Ben Greenfield, which.
I think that make the biggest mistake of your life.
But I do think that's kind of like one of the most interesting things about like, the, I don't know, like the origin story of our relationship or the origin story of Keon. You had already envisioned what Keon was going to be before that.
But I almost wonder, like, if your listeners, if they'd be surprised to hear, like, this guy didn't even know who Ben was before I didn't. Yeah. And so I got turned on to you and I went to the website, and this is the website. Anyone who's been following you a while, like three years ago, like, it was kind of ghetto.
Do you mean BenGreenfieldFitness.com a little bit. I mean, that entire website was originally just a triathlon blog. It was me traveling around the world doing triathlons and writing race reports. Like, here's the energy bar that I ate before this race. And at mile 13, I decided to really put the hammer down and I ventured beyond my lactate threshold old, which could have been a mistake because I think I got a little glycogen depletion at that point. And I eventually wound up crossing the finish line with a big smile on my face. But my entire psi being at 95 instead of 100 probably held me back a little bit during especially those flatter. And that was the blog. It was just me writing about exercise.
You make fun of it, but people love it.
Yeah, it wasn't even Ben. I bought Ben greavelfinance.com several years, but it was. It still exists. So it was like BenGreenfieldTri.blogspot.com and it was just like triathlon adventures around the world with Ben. And yeah, I mean, like, we've brought on an SEO team and we've made it into a big boy website with a nice landing page. And it looks nice and everything, but yeah, for a long time it was pretty ghetto.
So anyway, so I go to that page and I asked a couple friends who are in Boulder. And you're pretty big in Boulder because.
There'S like, there's a lot of people in Spandex who like to exercise in Boulder. Exactly.
And people were like, Ben Greenfield. And so I had a couple friends who were like, just could not. They're just like, loved you and obsessed with you. I was like, wow, I should take like a hard look at this. And so, you know, I looked at what the business plan was and kind of what the ideas were and flew up here and met with you and I think what kind of going back to this sense of I'm really interested in humans and I'm really interested in helping humans like fully manifest themselves and just live the best lives they can. I was personally less interested in oh, this is a good business plan or this is a bad business plan or this guy knows a lot about health and fitness or these things. I was like, I just like really liked you. I was like, this dude is.
You, Ben, are so unique and so passionate and so authentic like just on your own terms. And I think I really, I liked that. And I was like, I want to do, I want to help Ben like fully manifest whatever this thing is for that alone. Because there will be like cool and innovate. And this might come up when we talk about products. There might be like cool and innovative products or a fad of some kind or someone who's like hot for a while because they, they said the right things are gone, the right shows or these different types of things. But like over time I just think it's fundamentally over and over again about humans. This whole thing, business supplements this phone in front of me. It's just, we act like it's, we act like it's something more, but it's just humans like doing things in the world together. And I was, I was just like intrigued by.
How unique you do it and how much I think potential you had if I could support you in it and then the possibility of all the other unique people we could bring into it and make something really special.
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Right? Which, which is actually what I want to. I want to get into like, like how we've actually done that and some of the things you've learned along the way. And you know, part, part of that weirdness, honestly, is, is that's the way I've always been, even, even being homeschooled, you know, growing up, which of course just turns you into someone who thinks outside the box or who at least cares a little bit less what other people think about you because you don't grow up with as much peer pressure. I was like a homeschooler but I was also a weird homeschooler. I was just totally independent and solved problems my own way and didn't really even do a huge amount of formal book work as much as my parents would just hand me books and I'd figure out how to study the subject on my own and just grew up. I've always been a little weird in that way. And I don't want to talk a lot about me because a lot of you listening in, you might not know that Angelo interviewed me about the whole Kion backstory, about my vision for Kion, about how I wanted to launch this company that would really supply people with everything that they needed to fulfill this adventurous life. Everything from mind and body and spirit optimization, the best supplements in the world, the best formulations in the world, the best bars and coffees, everything that we're doing now. But I don't want to exhaust you with that story too much because Angelo and I actually had this long interview where we talked a lot about the backstory of Kion from my end and I'll link to that in the show notes if you go to bengreeklefitness.com Angelo we even video recorded the whole thing so you can watch us chat at each other and try and set up like big boys. Whereas right now we're just like sitting cross legged on towels in my office.
So you and I work together. We co founded Keonos. You're now the COO of the company you're running the day to day in Boulder. And I want to talk a little bit about that, about.
How you're actually building a healthy company culture. But before we do that, I also want to just learn a little bit more after you having been through religious studies and grown up in a hippie home and done visualization and manifestation and know use drugs in high school and, and now you're, you're immersed in the health and the supplement industry and now you know, heavily influenced by weird guys in spandex like me. Like what's your actual daily routine look like? Like when you wake up in the morning? Like, like what's a. What's what. What's a day in the life of just like you working on your own body and brain look like?
I would say that there's a few things. One is that the daily, weekly, quarterly and annual kind of all go together for me and they really support each other. But on the daily it really looks like pretty consistently since having children it's trying to go to sleep at the same time. My kids Go to sleep. Because what I found is that I really need alone time. And I need alone time at hours that are, like, either late at night or early in the day. And I do worse late at night. Like, late at night works. If I'm in, like, some kind of really powerful manic, creative phase where I'm just, like, fueled but on a consistent basis. I just don't do really productive stuff at night.
I found the same thing. I'll be sitting around at night, it'll be 9pm and there'll be a lot of things one could do, right? Like, everybody's telling me, you got to watch Breaking Bad, or you got to watch, you know, this or that on Netflix, or, you know, there's this magazine that. That I should read because my cognitive power has gone down at night. And I just. I've realized the same thing. Like, not a lot of productive things happen at night. Like, that's when you party. That's when you watch tv, that's when you drink, you know, whatever the case may be. And I've fallen upon the same thing. Like, when the kids go to bed, I grab books and go to bed, or go make love and fall asleep. And like, literally within 20, 30 minutes after my kids are asleep, I'm out. And it's enormously productive.
Yeah, it's like, it's. That's probably the biggest game changer. If there was anything I could tell someone, it would just be go to sleep earlier. At least for me, that's what works.
Yeah, for us. We were talking about this, though. We were playing golf this morning. There's some people, like, we have tech people on our team who stay up late or who sometimes seem sleep deprived when we have our morning team huddles. And it's like, you kind of want those people, too. You want the night owls, the people who actually do get shit done at night. And, you know, we could get into Michael Bruce's book about circadian rhythms and how different people are wired to operate well at different times of day. But I think painting with a broad brush, and I think there's actually a percentage is like 60 to 70% of the population. It's like, go to bed sometime between 9 and 10, get up sometime between 5 and 6, and, like, life is going to get pretty. Pretty good from a productivity standpoint.
Yeah. And so for me personally, I try to go to bed, actually. It's like closer to eight. And when I do that, I feel like I need less sleep. And I can wake up around. I mean, I probably don't actually go. I don't actually go to bed around am probably like actually asleep around 9. I can wake up around 3:30 or 4. And then when I do that you're pretty early. If I go to sleep that early then I can. If I go to sleep at like 10 then suddenly I need to go to sleep. I need to wake up at like 7 or something. It's really weird. Like there's something that shifts, but yeah. And then it's really just immediately drink water. Like just drink two glasses of water. Because if I don't drink two glasses of water like then it kind of starts off my whole day weird. And then I drink an Americano. I always drink espresso. I have an espresso machine in my house, you know that.
And then I go like straight to reading. I read some type of like spiritual or emotional development type text. And I guess when I say spiritual what I just mean is something that is a, that recontextualizes all of life. It's not just about like.
Work or obligations or family or body or any of these things. It's about like just that just. That puts life in a bigger perspective.
Yeah.
And then journaling and then some type of exercise. The exercise. If I know I'm gonna have like an exercise later in the day that and I'm gonna have time for a bigger exercise later in the day then just like something really chill. Like it could be like just like hang from my pull up bar, do stretching to some music, do some yoga. If I, if I don't think I'm gonna have time for exercise later in the day.
That old used used stationary bicycle in your garage that I crush whenever I visit you.
I've literally. That's. No, that's what I do. Like if I feel like I don't. Oh yeah. I can actually just do like a chill ride in the morning too and like be like I kind of cheat then actually to like get on my phone and like do some work or while I'm riding the bike.
It's kind of funny because, because you know I'm working as like this virtual CEO, right. Like, like we're doing. Doing a lot virtually with our team. But when I go on my monthly visits to Boulder, for those of you listening in, you know I'm not saying the Ritz Carlton Bolton. Like I'm crashing in Angelo's grandma's bedroom at, at my mother.
The room where my mother in law stays.
Yeah, the room where his mother in law stays in his house. And literally like you Know, I, I go out to, to your garage and work out on your used bike with the, with the old kettlebell. And sometimes I got my X3 bar or whatever with me and, and, and crush it in there, you know, in your tiny little garage or go to the park across the street from your house. But yeah, like, like, and, and a lot of times we'll do these little workouts together. It's kind of fun. Yeah, it's, it's, it's amazing how good of a workout you can get without a Frisbee golf course.
I know. Without a Frisbee golf course. Yeah. So if I don't have time, I just try to make myself like, I just try to. I don't have. It's an embarrassing thing in terms of like, I don't. If I try to get too complex about my workouts and like study in too much depth, it kind of turns me off and I don't get into it. So I either do something chill or I do something like, just really hard where it makes me feel like I want to, to throw up. So I just do like sprints on the bike to pull ups, to push ups, to kettlebell swings, to squats. I just do like, simple stuff and.
Just do it hard. How are you journaling, by the way, before you get into that exercise routine?
I have multiple different journals. And so I have. I like doing, I like doing visual stuff a lot, so I like doing mind maps where it's like just a big white page. So I have journals that are more set up for that. And then I also have like lined journals and it's. I have a lot of different types of prompts that I do around it, but this was going to be like the weekly, you know, quarterly monthly thing. What I found over time is for the longest time I wanted to be, I wanted to try to train myself to be like those people, honestly, like someone like you who will get up and do like the certain exercise regimen or whatever. My story is about you. I'm not going to say you're that, but like, and there's people, other people on our kion team that like literally will just like, do these two a day workouts. And they like, do it in this very precise way and they're super disciplined. It's like I have to be more in this, like, flow. And so what I've found is like, what's the container or like the boundaries for me to where I can think or feel like I'm in a flow, but I'm still being Productive and moving things forward. So I've developed like these binders that are for different aspects of my life where I've done really deep visualization and design and strategy work around like how I'm going to manifest something in my life. And I always come back to those binders every week, sometimes every day. And then I use those as ways to prompt my journaling. So less than it being like I'm going to do the same gratitude journaling every single day. It's like every single week I need to be having these really deeper check ins with myself about where I'm at in my life, how it's all kind of falling into place or not, and what I need to reset. And then I use that as the guide for my daily work. So I can't just like stop journaling forever, but I don't have to maintain the same thing every single day.
I think that's really important because you know, like I've got like the Christian gratitude journal that I write in every morning and there's some mornings when I wake up and I'm like, I feel like this is a morning where I should be like whatever, writing down 10amazing new ideas or reflecting upon like a Benjamin Franklin asked what good have I done in the world this week? Or what good shall I accomplish this day? Or different forms of journaling. And for me you're correct. I mean you've identified me properly as that person who is pretty rigid in my routines and my habits. But I really like that idea of giving yourself permission. Let's say you do have a daily journaling habit of being open to other, other methods of journaling and not necessarily thinking you got to journal the same way, you know, 24, 7, 365.
Yeah, I think it's just finding, I guess in this kind of like minimalist approach again for me, just show up and journal. Like if I can keep it that simple and then I can feel like there's freedom for how I express myself in it, then I'm much more likely to do it. Yeah, I am. I will do it. I just keep doing it because I feel like I get to be myself in it.
You know, I think that, I think the important balance or trick in that is that I have to ensure that I'm getting, I'm doing those weekly check ins and quarterly and more in depth annual retreats as well as making sure that the influence on me daily is a positive influence with good ideas because otherwise I could.
Kind of get stuck in a rut. You know, it's like. I think that's the thing. It's like if you find a good thing, like you find Christian gratitude journal and that works for you, then there's an element to just keeping it super simple and just do that every single day. And even if you don't like it, some days you just keep doing it. Whereas if you kind of let yourself do whatever you want to do, you could get influenced by just kind of like lame ideas, start watching the news too much and then like your journaling is going to be about like just not deep stuff. So I think it's really important to make sure that you have or I have really positive.
Influences about personal development, about thinking and visualization that support me in like journaling about the right things.
Yeah. Yeah. What happens after your exercise session?
I take a shower and then I just get into it with the kids and my wife. Yeah, I do alternating cold and warm.
Your shower's fricking cold.
It's really cold. Well, in the summers I do just like straight cold. But in the winter cold, I do literally get ice cream headache within three seconds.
It's so freaking cold. I was telling you my strategy. Like when I'm at your house with my cold shower hours, I'll do like 20 seconds on the head, then turn 20 seconds left armpit, then right armpit, then the upper back, then the crotch and you just kind of like do circles. But every time you hit the head, you can only last like 10, 20 seconds. That will allow because I'll do. A lot of times I'll do like a two to four minute, sometimes five minute cold shower. But I'm always turning in circles, hitting different parts of my body. It kind of makes time go by too because you count down facing forward, then count down facing the left in the back. Just keep on going around.
I first got turned on to cold showers when I took this Kundalini Yoga class at college. Actually I was must have been like 20. And I don't know how they got it, how this teacher got it accepted, but he like taught yoga and it was basically like just Kundalini Yoga for a whole semester with like all these college kids. And we had to go through like whatever the main Kundalini manus like script was. And we did. It was cold showers. We had to do mandatory cold showers. But they taught you to like yell wahe guru. Which is like some, I don't know, it's some God thing. I don't remember what it means. And I got to do that. And I still do that. Where like I don't yell it if it's early in the morning, but I'll be like, why girl? Like somehow doing. I don't even know what it means, but it's, it's like my little habit.
It's probably offending your neighbors hopefully. Yeah.
I mean hopefully all of our Sikh friends out there, they. Yeah, they know what it means.
Yeah, we're probably getting laughed at right now. You're probably pronouncing it wrong. So at what point do you, do you head into the, to the giant kion skyscraper downtown?
It's actually not a giant skyscraper, but it is a cool. We have a cool office now.
Pretty cool.
It's like a tree house. And you haven't been, you haven't been back since we got all the plants hanging. There's like really cool hanging plants everywhere now. I'm typically there by nine, sometimes earlier and sometimes later. But yeah, everyone's there. Like everyone's supposed to be there at 9.
Yeah, our offices are really cool. I mean we've got like standup workstations now and you know there's like the joov photo biomodulation panels where you got to be careful when you walk in the room because you don't know who's going to be like half naked in front of a, of a light panel. And we've got all like the special coffee superfoods to blend up with our kion coffee and you know the, the nice blenders that you can put all sorts of stuff into and saddle chairs, terra mats.
Yeah, like it's pretty cool. Like how, how. And I really like that part of company culture. You know, it's almost like it's, you know, we're sitting here in my office right now with the walking treadmill and the joov lamp and the stool and all the different things that I use, the fluid stance, balance boards, all that stuff. And I just really like being able to walk into our offices and see it's almost like a little playground. Right? Yeah. I think we need to add some like rings and pull up bars this week. It's called breakeation is the technical term for like hanging from stuff.
This week we're going to have the rings, the pull up bar and the yoga swing installed.
Yeah.
Which is good because we kind of have, we have like a pull up competition basically this year.
Yeah.
I set it as my own personal physical goal and then Caitlin, our like HR manager did it to announce like everyone.
Yeah. So if you're listening in and you're like a Kion customer, you know, ordering your bars, your coffee or your flex, whatever the case may be. And customer support just goes to. And you're not able to get a hold of everybody. It's because our entire office is like hanging from yoga swings, and they're literally.
Doing a pomodoro break.
Yeah.
And like.
Yeah.
And actually customer service. Mike and Kim are like an Al Bella. Brandon. They're like the Bella and Brandon. They're like the leaders of making sure breaks happen.
Yeah. Yeah. And how many employees are in that office on tip?
Just under 20 now.
Yeah.
So it's gone, like, pretty darn fast from, like, none.
Yeah.
To like.
And that doesn't count all the virtual employees and folks working and contractors and other folks. Yeah, yeah. Which is. Which brings it to, I think, significantly more than 30 people.
Oh, for sure. Include all the contractors.
Yeah.
I mean, there's a. Yeah.
So one big thing about managing and juggling all those people is the company culture. And I know you're big on that. I mean, as somebody who you've already talked about loves to study humans and the way they operate, the way they tick and how humans stay happy. How do you. What are some of the just, like, the boots on the ground strategies that you use to maintain good, healthy company culture?
I want to answer your question about, like, boots on the ground strategies. I also think that it's important to name that it's more than just strategies or tactics. It really is a mindset about what we're doing. And.
Everyone that we hire and the company as a whole, we're all passionate about supplements, and we're passionate about health, and we're passionate about bars. What?
Enemas.
Enemas. We're not as passionate about enemas as Ben, but yes, we all don't drink.
Out of the stainless steel buckets at the Kion offices.
That said.
There'S a really healthy balance of we. Again, just coming back to the human thing. We're just a group of humans that were born into this life and are trying to enjoy our life, have beautiful and healthy relationships with the people around us and be good people, whether that's with Kian or not with Kion. And so it should be, if we really want to honor that and we really want to help people, empower people to live the most joyful, fulfilling, adventurous lives that we really hold that and believe that day to day. So it's not like, hey, how can we do cool team stuff to make sure everyone's, like, happy and the culture is good. It's not like a strategy to get the culture good. It's like being rooted in that belief. And I think the other big part about being rooted in that belief is that.
I'll just speak for myself on this. I think oftentimes when people communicate with each other, they think that they're just communicating. And I really got this from the behavioral healthcare company I worked with and actually a really interesting book I think. His name's Paul Geltner. He wrote this book called Emotional Communication. And it's more, it's like for therapists, it's like on like transference and psychoanalysis, but it's all about that. Oftentimes people think they're only giving cognitive communication. Like I'm communicating a set of ideas to you right now. But actually every single time we're relating to someone, we're both wanting to communicate ideas cognitively that the other person will associate to and then be able to like have a conversation back with us. We're also communicating an emotion, always, always communicating an emotion. And we're trying to induce in the other person some type of emotional experience in the same way that we're trying to like induce a thought in them and get the, the thinking back and forth. And so I hold that really dear and I really believe that. And so when I think about what we're doing with people all the time, like anytime that there is an initiative or we're going to communicate something about what we're doing or why we're doing it, just knowing that like the whole group all the time are having an emotional experience and we're feeding off each other and the way and as, as conscious as we can be about that, the better the culture we can have. And so when we are hiring people, we have gotten feedback from our last couple hires too, like marketing director and the ea they're like, whoa, dude, that was like a lot of interviews. I don't know, they went to like seven, eight interviews.
Views.
We really don't just try to understand what someone's skills are and what their abilities are. We want to be 100% confident and clear that that person will be able to understand when they are communicating something emotionally to someone else. Frustration, fear, happiness, joy, and be able to realize it and name it and be clear about it and not have like drama or other garbage or just a lack of self awareness about what they're actually feeling, what the other person's feeling. Because if that is not the case, then we're going to spend all this time trying to talk about like business planning and like objectives, but people are having this whole emotional experience with each other.
So almost sounds to me like a blend of like empathy and radical honesty.
Yeah, I think it is, yeah. I mean it's like really being able to sense what's going on with someone else and be really clear and honest about what's going on with you. But also people just have to be able to like tell what's going on with them. So I think at the, at the base, like that's the key. It's like getting, making sure that, that, that we have that fundamentally with the team and then it's finding tools and strategies and tactics that like support that. And so, you know, we have.
I, I don't know how unique they are. I mean we, we got many ideas from other people. I brought a technique that I had the last company I was at where we begin meetings with a moment of silence. And so every single day at our daily huddles, we also have a daily huddle. We start with three maintenance minutes of silence.
Daily huddles. All the people in the office are gathered around. Everyone who's virtually is called in, you know, via zoom line. We got video, we got audio, and everybody's gathered around at the beginning of.
The day, 9:45am we start with three minutes of silence.
Yeah.
So everyone basically starts and it can be meditation, it can be breath work, it can be stretching, but we all start in silence together just to like get into ourselves. It's really cool. More recently, we moved into a different person leads every day. And then we just check in about what's going on that day, what our objectives are. But we also regularly check in about emotional things or self care, like just making sure people are looking out for themselves and taking care of themselves.
Yeah. And so many companies don't do that. I mean really, the light bulb went on for me when I interviewed Todd White of Dry Farm Wines and also went down to their offices and took part in their morning company culture, which is like they start off with Wim Hof breathing and, and then silence. And sometimes I remember when I went down there, we were gathered on a table for a good half hour just doing breathwork and meditation to start off the day. And then gratitude. And then everyone went around there, the warehouse workers and the IT people and the tech people and the CEO and everybody just sharing what it was that they were grateful for that day. And granted, it was pretty long. I think our 15 minute daily huddles are almost more palatable because I got to a certain part where I Was like, ah, I'm gonna go get stuff done. But, but. And I'll link by the way in the show notes to my interview with Todd White where we actually we, we detail in pretty good detail about, about how they built that company and their company culture. But yeah, this just this idea of starting off the day with some form of meditation or mindfulness or coming together and gratitude and it's, it's beyond just like a, a business building meeting, but is instead, you know, instead involves, you know, what, what are you grateful for today? What are you grateful for yesterday? What'd you do to take care of your mind today? Or your body or your spirit? You know, what's one thing that you're excited about this weekend? And sure, we also talk about our personal rocks and our big accomplishments for the day.
Personal rocks are like our goals. Objectives.
Yeah, our goals. Our objectives. But yeah, I mean that, that 15 minute daily huddle I think is huge.
Yeah. And so we, like you said, we alternate between things like expressing gratitude, shout outs for other team members. Lots of good stuff. It really creates an awesome bond between the whole team or among the whole team. We do monthly team retreats and an annual or monthly team adventures and an annual retreats. The monthly team advanced adventures are really fun. Like I actually missed the last one but we had a, one of the kion coaches flew down. Everyone went and had. He's like a professional coach.
Is meaning someone who's been through my, my multi week certification program.
Yeah, like half a year certification.
It's half a year. It's like 20, 27 weeks. And then we have. We. Then there's continuing ed. Like after you learn about all the different elements of body, mind and spirit optimization and so pretty intense physiology and even like you know, pharmaceuticals and biochemistry and biomechanics. Then we also have guests come in. Like our Last guest was Dr. Mercola. Came in and talked about mitochondria. Before that, Garrett Gunderson came in and talked about like how to build your finances and your business. So it's like this whole coach certification program. But you had one of the coaches actually come in to who happens to be.
We have, I mean man, the initial group of coaches that went to that program there. Like really cool, talented, amazing people. One of them happens to be a professional snowboarding coach. He flew down. Our whole team went out and did a day of snowboarding with personalized coaching.
So just sometimes it sucks being a virtual CEO.
There's white water rafting like next month. We've done.
Archery. We've Done. I mean, last one you were around for was when we did that big like snow hike, which was super fun.
Yeah.
So we just get out and like, and take a Friday once a month to just enjoy each other together and do something cool and push each other.
That's one of my favorite parts about Keno too, is like people drink the Kool Aid. Like we did the snow hike, but like, you know, half the guys had their, had their shirts off doing their cryotherapy as they're hiking. And it's like, you know, you just got this team of employees marching through the woods, you know, in the frigid wilderness with our shirts off. And, and I think that's a huge part of Kion. You know, those of you listening in, like when, when you're talking to a customer support person or you're ordering a supplement, I mean like all our employees are out using this stuff, trying it, experimenting with it, you know, doing all the stuff that you hear me talk about, from you know, fasting to cold thermogenesis to like we're trying, we're trying a key on to live what it is that we're, that we're saying. And I think that's a big, big part of, of creating not just a quality company culture, but also quality products is like people are actually using them, you know.
Yeah, our team, we, we're all, we believe in it. I mean, we're all doing it because we believe in it. I just got, it's funny, I got almost like nervous for a second. I was talking about all this kind of like woo woo cultural stuff. And I can imagine listeners who maybe more like business oriented, like, yeah, sure, like you do all that but like, you know, you're making money. It's like, man, we're running a good business business. It's a profitable business. It's growing. Well. We're being, we have super sustainable month over month growth. We're not trying to grow too fast, but we're growing well and solid. And we also have like a really disciplined approach to cash that like, we don't put money into things that we have to take risks sometimes, but we put money into the right things. But it's also out of like.
It'S out of respect for our whole team too. Like we're not trying to go on some big, we're not trying to have like this woo woo cultural thing and just have some like big dreamy vision and only do that. It's like, like be disciplined business people, treat employees really well and build a Culture where people really like being together and they actually take care of themselves and they. I mean, the other big thing is like, people go on walks, I don't know, three times a day. People are like calling each other to go on like walks down by the creek.
While also trying to go after this big vision. Like, you can do all these things at once. You really can. And it's been really fruitful for us.
And I think it's important you bring that up too because, you know, lot of people, like, why can't I buy my Kion Flex at Whole Foods? Why can't I get Kion amino acids? I'm in London or in Sydney. And it's because we're building a high quality company. And yeah, we'll go wholesale retail. Yeah, we'll have an international presence. And yeah, we're rolling out what, over the next calendar year, like three new amazing formulations that we have to kind of hold close to our chest. But we have some, some really, really cool stuff that we're developing. But you know, part of building a really quality company. And I think this is something people don't realize. Like, you have to scale an amazing team of employees who speak our language.
And that's the hardest thing.
People. You can't just like hire, you know, like six new people so that we can go wholesale retail in three months. Because a lot of times, you know, the. Not only the customer service just goes to pot, but, but just like the employee culture just degrades. And like, we want healthy, happy humans at Kion who are able to create something great so that people can experience, yeah, our products over the world and at their grocery store. But it's, you know, it's a slow build. To be able to do that and.
Do it well, that really is it. It's to do it well. Like, you have to be disciplined and focused, not try to do too many things at once. And the biggest thing is the people. Like, that's the biggest challenge is how to. Again, as I described for going to like seven interviews with people, like, it takes a lot of time. Yeah, it takes a lot of time to build a team intelligently. And I think that's the thing too. It's like in terms of culture, team. Like, you can say you have a team approach, but do you really have a team approach? And what is a team approach? I mean, I think of. I just quickly go to the metaphors of like large team sports. Whether it's like a football team or basketball team or a band, like a big band. Everyone's playing a musical band, which I think is similar as well. Everyone's playing a distinct role and they need to do their role really well and they need to listen to everyone else, they need to watch everyone else. They need to be like sensitive to and like you said, empathic to what's going on with the other, with the other players so that you can all move in unison together. So you don't just like throw six new people on the field. You don't just throw six new musicians in the band and just assume everything's going to be the same. It's like, no, you gotta, oh, you'll.
Be all over the place and then you'll grow fast and then you'll turn into just a horrible customer service and crappy products. Speaking of crappy products, I know that you after kind of getting thrust into the role as being the COO and even the co founder of Kion, I mean you own a significant percentage of, of the company. You've been really getting exposed to the health and the supplements industry traveling around all these Expo west and all the places that I kind of avoid and send you to in my stead.
What are some of the biggest trends that you've seen, for better or worse in the health and supplements industry?
I mean, there's really obvious ones within our field. I mean, you just see like, and.
It'S Keto donuts, Keto.
I mean, Keto everything.
Right.
And it's, it's interesting to see someone like you, right. Who I think was an early embracer and spokesperson for Keto, defined as keto.
Really 2012. Yeah. When I, when I started using that for, for endurance sports.
Yeah.
Then Greenfield tried out blogspot.com?
Was it really still?
I should add that to the show notes. I will right now. Yeah.
So there's these kind of like obvious things like that and I think other things that, you know, listeners to the show are aware of. I mean, like bigger moves around longevity, focus, personalization of diet and supplementation. I. What I think is most interesting is the personalization aspect, the degree to which you can get more information about your unique body and your unique behaviors and how new behaviors and new diet and new supplements could specifically help you to have a different experience. I mean, that's the most.
Although admittedly it's pretty Mickey Mouse right now. Like I got it is. Yeah, I got an email the other day, you know, from somebody. They're like, oh, we have this new company. We're completely customizing and personalizing know everything, you know, based on your genetics and your labs. And you know, it's like a little vitamin dispenser that like, you know, gives you your vitamins based in your labs. But it's so difficult because things fluctuate so rapidly. It's, it's not scalable at this point. So it's very expensive. And there's also, there's, there's not a lot of long term human clinical studies on it as well. Like, like, yeah, sure, maybe you do have the genes response responsible for low vitamin D absorption from the sun and therefore you fall into the vitamin D supplementation category. But where's the research that shows that? Or your microbiome is deficient in X, Y and Z probiotic, therefore you should take these specific probiotic strains. It's tricky. And it's also, again, it's not super scalable at this point.
And it's not. I mean, I'm glad you kind of segued into this. I think it's what's most exciting and it's not really here yet.
Yeah.
And so.
Similarly, like, for us, it's like, how does a company like. And I don't mean to bring it back to us, it's just the most real way I can talk about like, for Kion to like work within this field and try to offer people something like this. Because the solutions out there, the partners that we could work with potentially to do things like this, it's just like you said, it's kind of Mickey Mouse. Like we could package it and put it all together and tell you that's what's happening, but it's not really. Really, we're like selling you a story.
But what we can do, it's a sexy story. And sorry to interrupt, but I would rather, and this is what we're doing with a lot of our new formulations. I'd rather say, what makes a human body, no matter what human body it is? What do we know.
Enhances mitochondrial biogenesis and mitochondrial health in every human, regardless of their genetics or their microbiome? What lowers postprandial blood sugar after consuming a carbohydrate rich meal in every human. I don't care who you are. And then creating products that paint with a very broad brush using the highest quality compounds that we've researched. And I mean, like, we do a ton of like, you know, one of our formulations that we're working on right now. It's been like, what, like almost two years that we've been working on getting the perfect mix of ingredients. But when we roll it out. I mean that will be, you know, almost in the words of Ryan Holiday, you know, in his, his book about books, it'll be a perennial bestseller because it's something that just freaking works for everybody for blood sugar control and you know, and we've got another one, you know, working on for longevity. And I'd rather take that approach. And yeah, maybe five years from now complete customization, personalization will be affordable and research proven and scalable. But like what I'm passionate about right now is just creating products that work for everybody.
So. And I feel like the approach at Kion that we've been trying to take to this like interest in this type of personalization is on the content side. So anyone that was around and got exposed to for example, the fasting challenge at the beginning of the year, rather than saying everyone should fast in this way and this is the only way to fast and this is the right solution for everyone. Like everyone must do keto. If you eat any carbs then you are a bad person. Like this kind of, of like just super straight story that this is the only story for everyone. It's not. People have different goals and different interests and different body types. And so we tried in that, in that we did a fasting challenge at the beginning of the year and did a fasting guide and I honestly hadn't seen anything like it before that just broke down all the different types of fasting options and why they were unique and why they would fit you and your body and what you might want to do right now and then encourage people to join us in our community to participate in whatever form they wanted to do as part of it. And then us as our team again, we weren't all doing the exact same type and we did different types that worked for like what worked for us that week. Maybe we were busy, maybe we couldn't do like a non caloric 5 day fast because we were concerned we couldn't maintain it or we were, someone was training for something so they needed, you know, they needed some calories. So we, you know, just, I think there's still an element to. And this is, this is what I'm most interested in. And I think where we, I'm, you know, I feel proud of what we're doing is not trying to tell people one story. You must drink your coffee like this. You must never eat this thing. It's like, hey, these are the different.
These are the, this is what's going to happen for certain people if they eat these foods and you should pay attention to and try to understand yourself better. There's a great article on. On Kion. You have a video about. I can't remember the. It's like a. Oh man. There's like a bad. I can't remember. We end up re changing the name because it was like F diets. But whatever it is just really breaks down like how people can analyze what diets are the best for them.
How do you maximize your diet to you. I think that's. And again, I don't want to. I don't want to sit around like bore people talking about our own Kool Aid. But that really is a big thing I want to be able to give people is content that is digestible and is able to be adjusted and customized to everybody regardless of their level. Like I have a big new book. It's 600 pages. It's all scientific research. It's the kind of thing that a physician could go through and learn something from every page but at the same time something that somebody from the lay public who is genuinely and very much passionate about their health could go through and also just get a ton of takeaways from. But along with that, both book when it launches like we've got at Kion, like all the little pieces of that in tiny digestible formats, you know, we're making content that will come along with that that really allows anybody to dive in at any level and get content that's I think very, very easy to understand. And that's what I'm excited about too is not just scaling our supplements to all levels, but also our content content.
So and just last plug for the supplements, as you said before about the kind of coming up with with formulations that really work for that would create the same effect basically in everyone again, empowering people with the information and the knowledge to know why they might do something at a deeper level. And they can be really thoughtful about when, why and how they're going to invest their money in improving their health versus feeling like the pressure like they just have have to do this fad because everyone else is doing it. It's like what are your priorities? Is it more longevity focused? Is it more like weight loss focused? How can you balance these different priorities in a way that makes sense for you and your life? And I think all companies that are in the health sphere can do a better job of that. Even if we don't have the technology to analyze someone's genome and microbiome and all that and offer the perfect thing for them right now, there's still good work that we can do right now. Now, the other really big thing I've noticed within being in this industry is just how hard if you're on the brand side, like, we are coming up with ideas and formulations and making finished products for people, how hard you have to fight on the supply chain and on the manufacturing side to really get an awesome product.
Yeah, that's what a lot of people.
Don'T realize it is like, not. I mean it. You know, you really, you have to be. The kind of feedback that we get from vendors and partners is like, gosh, like, really, I have to give you all that information. And like, it's like, we are. And there's other brands out there like this too. We're like annoying to these vendors because we've just found, like, if you don't, if you don't examine all these certificates of analysis and push for like where this ingredient come from, it comes back.
To bite you too. Like, if you go to a supplement website and there's a product that every single product is in stock and everything's available, there's probably something wrong. Like they probably have access to some pretty shitty ingredients and they're just like filling bottles up because nothing ever goes out of stock. Like, there's no high quality raw ingredients that you ever just can't get your hands on because it's like not available seasonally at the moment or whatever. Like, I didn't like, that's one thing that frustrates me is like, I want all our products to be in stock all the time, but it's like, no, the goats are not making colostrum right now. We're sorry, this product's out of stock. Like, the goats are out right now. So, I mean, just little things like that, you know, that, that are frustrating, but that are part of running a high quality company. And, and you know, at, at the risk of the, the comments, I know we're going to get on this podcast already. You know, was this the Kion commercial podcast? Which it totally is. Really. I wanted you guys to get to know some of the faces behind the company.
Yeah, let's talk about Angela more.
I want to actually, I know we're running up on time here pretty soon, but I actually, I'm very intrigued about like the musical and the creative aspects of you five years from now, ten years from now, whatever. Like, do you see yourself going places with music or continuing anything else, you know, aside from Keon, of course. Course. You know, assuming, you know, get fired from the company you know, are you gonna, are you gonna keep. Keep the music or whatever, write an album or anything like that? Like, where do you envision yourself in that respect?
Yeah, for sure, man. So, I mean, I guess I stopped making as much music when I moved overseas and then once I moved back to the US and started having kids, it was like kind of taxing. But of late I've been making a lot more music and writing a lot of music and I just love it, man. And I've been getting cool feedback from people about like, hey man, I'm like waiting for when you're gonna make your next Instagram post, you know. So I'm like really stoked about it and I think that.
The most exciting thing I have planned right now is like a one man show where it's music and visuals and like creative comedic monologue all mixed together.
It'd be amazing.
Yeah. So that'll be in the of form. So I'm pretty, I'm really, I'm stoked.
So, so fall of at the time of this recording, 2019. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
So I'm stoked about that and I'll be doing a lot, man. I'm excited. And who knows man, maybe you and I will have some type of unique performance coming up that people find out about.
This podcast might get released after that fact. But yeah, Angela and I have some, some cool things in the works that. Well either way, we've got some stuff we're going to be doing together together in the music department that it might come out after this part before this podcast is released. But we'll record it for you and put it up over@getkion.com which is where you can not only learn more about Angelo, but you're on Instagram. I know you have Angelo keeley dot com. Is that a good place for people to just go check you out?
Yeah, for sure.
K E L L Y. I'll link to that too. So I'll just link to everything. Go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com Angelo and that's where I'll link. Link to where I was in the hot seat and Angela interviewed me about the initial vision for Kion and how it got founded. And then I'll link to some of the books that we talked about as well as my interview with Todd White of Dry Farm Wines and the key on you coach certification program. I'll do a pretty good job putting together show notes for you guys. And in the meantime, we are about to take our families down into downtown Spokane and show them the gondola and the Spokane river and Riverfront Park. And then.
My executive assistant accused my life, saying, penny, she's coming to the house tonight. She's gonna babysit the kids. And Angelo and Carrie and Jess and I are gonna go out in the town and have a cocktail and go to my favorite restaurant here. Shout out to Wild Sage Restaurant. We're gonna go eat some food at Wild Sage. So thank you all for listening in and for getting to know.
A guy who's really not only my main man at Keon, but also really becoming a good friend of mine and a guy I really appreciate and admire a lot, Angelo Keeley. So, Angelo, thanks for coming on the show, man.
Thanks for having me, Ben.
All right, cool. You want to. You want to beatbox us out?
Sure, man.
Well, thanks for listening to today's show. You. You can grab all the show notes, the resources, pretty much everything that I mentioned over@BenGreenfieldFitness.com along with plenty of other goodies from me, including the highly helpful Ben Recommends page, which is a list of pretty much everything that I've ever recommended for hormones, sleep digestion, fat loss, performance, and plenty more. Please also know that all the links, all the promo codes that I mentioned during this and every episode help to make this podcast happen and to generate income that enables me to keep bringing you this content every single week. So when you listen in, be sure to use the links in the show notes, use the promo codes that I generate because that helps to float this thing and keep it coming to you each and every week.
Sa.
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