Good Life Project - Sheryl O’Loughlin: On Building a Mission-Driven Life

Episode Date: May 22, 2017

Guest: Sheryl O’Loughlin, the former CEO of Clif Bar, Co-founder of Plum Organics and author of Killing It: An Entrepreneur's Guide to Keeping Your Head Without Losing Your Heart. Sheryl is currently CEO of REBBL super-herb beverages.Story: A rising star in the marketing world, Sheryl left a career in a mega-corp to join them fledgling CLIF Bar. She eventually rose to CEO, introducing the Luna Bar, before leaving to found her own company, Plum Organics.While that business took off, the demands of the job, along with the collapse of a family business led to relentless stress that opened the door to a devastating eating disorder. After an "intervention" from friends and a long road back, she stepped back in to head up mission-driven beverage company, REBBL, but now with a different lens on work and life.Big idea(s): It's not enough to build a business or brand, you also need to find a way to honor your health and relationships along the way.Current passion projects: Her new book, Killing It: An Entrepreneur's Guide to Keeping Your Head Without Losing Your Heart, enjoying life in Santa Rosa, CA and loving my 16 and 13-year-old sons and wonderful husband of 20 years.Rockstar sponsors:Oganifi - Great-tasting organic superfood green juice powder that you just add to water and get all your greens in on the go! Get 20% off - use the code "goodlife" at check out at organifi.comToday's show is supported Camp GLP. Come spend 3 1/2 days with "your people," make amazing friendships, drop the facade, reignite your vitality and learn powerful strategies and breakthrough business ideas. Learn more now. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

We have got to separate our self-worth from the worth of the company. 95% of businesses fail. It's part of what that journey can be. I call it an epic adventure. It's not a journey walking down a joyful path. It goes up and down. It is an adventure. But that to me at the end of the day is that's what it's about.

It's this experience in life that you had the freaking courage to do that so many people don't. You did it and you have a story to tell. So imagine going to interview for a job at a new company and being greeted, not by any people, but by a couple of dogs, wandering around, finding your way into the main area where all the employers are hanging out in front of a massive rock climbing wall. And then one of the co-founders comes and greets you with his four-year-old daughter on his hip. That was the experience of Cheryl Laughlin, who ended up joining Cliff, the company that makes Cliff Bars, and then launching the Luna Bar and becoming one of the people that then ran the company, heading it up and growing it to this really substantial-sized company before

splitting off on her own and starting her own company called Plum Organics, which she then, along with a partner, grew into this tremendous, tremendous business and then sold it. Now, along the way, it sounds like this is a tremendous series of success stories, but there was a lot of stuff that was happening behind the scenes. Cheryl's personal life and personal health was taking a really big hit along the way. What happened and how that manifested and the interventions and the changes that she found herself making is a big part of the conversation that we explore today, along with just her incredible energy to create things that make a really big, profound difference, not only in the lives of the people that experience the products, but the people who

bring those companies and businesses to life. Cheryl's also the author of the people that experience the products, but the people who bring those companies and businesses to life. Cheryl's also the author of a book called Killing It, which interestingly enough, the name is a bit of a double entendre because it's all about peeling back a little bit and re-examining the assumptions that you make about business and life and actually reconstructing your life so that it takes center stage in the way that you earn your living. And if you're called, build a company. I'm Jonathan Fields. This is Good Life Project. display ever. It's also the thinnest Apple Watch ever, making it even more comfortable on your wrist, whether you're running, swimming, or sleeping. And it's the fastest charging Apple

Watch, getting you eight hours of charge in just 15 minutes. The Apple Watch Series 10, available for the first time in glossy jet black aluminum. Compared to previous generations, iPhone XS or later required, Charge time and actual results will vary. Mayday, mayday. We've been compromised. The pilot's a hitman. I knew you were going to be fun. On January 24th. Tell me how to fly this thing.

Mark Wahlberg. You know what the difference between me and you is? You're going to die. Don't shoot him, we need him. Y'all need a pilot. Flight risk. I had been running on the Chicago waterfront with a buddy of mine who was my running buddy, Peter, and he always introduced me to all the cool things. And this was in 97, and he handed me my first Clif Bar.

And so I tried the product, and I was like, wow, this is really different from the products that were out there at the time. The number one brand was Power Bar. 97. So the company is really new at that point. The company was really new. Well, to me, now it seems huge. Now that I've been doing startups, it was about a $45 million company at the time. So I was with Quaker still at this point.

And he introduced me to my first Clif Bar. I'm like, oh, this is a really good product. And I had been at the same time really dreaming about going to work for a company that was about the outdoors and athletics and things that I was really passionate about. So it just so happened I got an alumni newsletter. And they had listed opportunities and there was an opportunity in there to start a brand management function at Clif Bar. This was literally three days after I learned about this brand. So I'm like, you know, go out and give it a shot. We had been living in Chicago, went to Berkeley to have my interview with Clif Bar.

And so, you know, here, as you said, I've been working for these multinational companies. So I walk into this place and I walked into a different world. So these dogs, they were only dogs that greeted me at the door. There were no people. There were bunks hanging on the wall. Literally can't find any people in the place. So I go and I walk through the building and I see this huge climbing wall. And there in front of it is the whole company participating in a stretching class.

And Gary Erickson, who's the co-founder and now owner of the company, he jumps up with his four-year-old daughter at the time. And he says, yeah, come over to my office. So he sits down in his office on his chair. He plops Lydia, his daughter, on his lap. And he starts asking me questions. And then he's turning over to her and whispering to her. And he's going back and forth with me. And then I looked out the window and there was like the head of sales who was breastfeeding her baby. And I'm like, oh my God, this place is so different. Like here, he's talking to me as a baker and a dad and, and a husband and an athlete. And it was authentic. And everyone in there felt so real and it was so different than what I experienced. So I, you know, I just jumped at

the chance and I felt like this was a little crazy at the time. It was the spot, it was the number three bar. Most people didn't know about cliff bar. So I was like, I don't know if this is the right thing to do, but I just did it. Yeah. So you listened to, there's something inside that said, huh? Yeah. Like, yeah, I just got to try something feels right. It was an experience that literally changed my life and my whole philosophy on business and what business could become. So I don't know if you are familiar with the Cliff Bar story. I am.

Yeah. No, very much so. Should I share a small bit of it? Yeah, I would love to because I'm familiar with it and clearly you are. But it's a really fascinating story. And you also play a really interesting role in that story. Well, we had – so when I had gotten there, I had started – well, Gary had taught me in sharing his love of cycling and how that really the bar came out of it, Cliff Bar came out of his love of cycling. And he really started teaching me to dig deep. So here I had been taught to stand back.

And now he's like, dig into your soul. What's in your soul? And for those who don't know also, I mean, talk about like it being personal, the bars that he named after his dad. His dad, exactly, exactly. And so I started thinking, you know, I use Clif Bars, but I only use them when I'm doing a hardcore workout. It was just too much when I wasn't. And the category, there

were virtually no women using the category at the time. This is in 1998. Category being energy bars. The energy bar category. And, you know, it was all about men and muscle. And so we started dreaming about, well, you know, a bar that's lighter, that has nutrients made specifically for women, that you can enjoy on a daily basis. And, you know, I started talking to other women about this, and they felt the same way. And we started realizing, you know, there's just, there's a gap here. No one is addressing this market. I always remember it was, we were just coming out with it, and I was talking to actually NPR, and they're like, why are you doing this? You're cutting off half the market, because at the time it said Luna, you know, whole nutrition bar for women, and the package instead about men and muscle was all about women dancing on the moon, celebrating life. And we had no money to support the brand. We were so small and they were totally self-funding this thing, which is amazing in itself.

At that time, a $45 million company totally self-funded. Tells you how different the industry was then too. So we launched the bar and in three years it became a $70 million business with very, very little support because it opened up a huge amount of pent-up demand from people that were just missing their needs in this category. And it was mind blowing to me. So here I took my passion and turn it into something so different than what I had learned before. And then, you know, fast forward to the year that was 99 when we launched it and fast forward to the year 2000. And all of our competitors were getting bought out by big nationals. And because that was known as the only way to survive once you hit a certain size in that industry was like you have to sell.

That was the word. That was the word. And once everyone else starts selling, people terrified us. Like you guys will get crushed by these big guys. And so Gary, as the story goes, and I'll always remember the day, was sitting in his office with the investment bankers. We had gone on this big roadshow. We had a buyer. Right.

So you're going to sell. As far as everyone knows, everyone's in. You're going to sell. And everyone's in the company. The deal is being made. We're done. The price is set. Yep.

We're done. So Gary was sitting in his office with the contract on his desk. The investment bankers, the lawyers, and the company that we were going to sell to, which actually I was going back to my alma mater, I thought, like, oh, my God, I just made this change and I'm going back there. And his 50-50 co-founder was standing next to him. And all of a sudden, you know, he stood up and he's like, I got to go for a walk. Went around the block, came back. He looked in the mall and he said, I can't sell. And they were floored, the company that was going to buy it.

She was, his co-founder was pissed. I mean, walking away from millions of dollars. The number, from what I remember, what was reported, it was like $120 million deal or something like that. It was, well, it was, yeah, it was because the brands were going for such multiples. Yeah, that's about – very good. Right. So his partner is counting on half of that.

Like a big cash out. Huge. Right. So that kind of led to – you know, she doesn't even know what he's doing, what he's possibly thinking. And the man is so brilliant. Like he's so brave and bold. And he started what we bought her out, a $45 million loan, $90 million company just to buy her out. No investment capital. Could you imagine getting that size loan, some phantom stock? But

Gary began to articulate why he made that choice, which was he wanted to use the power of business to make a difference in the world. And here, you know, the body shop talked about that and Ben and Jerry's, but you didn't hear that much, you know, sustainability was not a word and organic was associated with produce. And here I was, I was blown away by this vision, like, here's my life coming full circle. With the power of business. If you could use it to make a difference in the world, that can be the greatest source of change ever. So I was stunned. I was just stunned by this vision. And I had the joy of being asked to be CEO in 2004 through 2000. It was there through 2007. And I got to experience the operationalizing this vision. And it was such

a mind-blowing experience because not one of us, including me, had any physical equity in the company because of everything that he had been through. And we all believed in our heart of hearts. We had such emotional and spiritual equity in that company. And we've moved mountains. Yeah. We moved mountains against, he had five bottom lines, not just one. He had five. What were the five?

I mean, I've heard of triple bottom line. Yeah. He went a step further. Gary always goes a step further. So he's sustaining our business, our people, our planet, our community, and our brands. And they were all interlinked. And one of the first things we did is we developed a bonus program that was based on all of those, making progress on all of those. And so people saw, we were, this was our purpose. And they, I've learned this so much. When people feel like they have meaning in their work and purpose, it becomes so much more than getting a paycheck or going to a job.

It's your heart and soul that you put into this. And I was stunned by what I experienced there. I was totally stunned. And then I got the entrepreneurial bug and had to try it myself. Were you shocked? I mean, because it goes against so much. On the one hand, it goes, it makes perfect sense. You have this big mission, you have a charismatic leader, you have a great product and a team. But one of the chunks of wisdom that you always hear is people aren't going to work the way that that you're describing. They work unless they actually, they're vested. They have equity. They have some

ownership in the business. So it's fascinating to hear you share that. These people work like they were owners because the mission was so bold and so well-defined and so much beyond them being in service of five bottom lines. Yet, one of the first things I did when I co-founded my company was to give people physical equity also. Okay. So let's kind of make that journey. So you're essentially running Cliff till 2007. Yeah. Yeah. 2007. Okay. So what happens that makes you say it's time? Well, you know, I just, I'd been there 10 years and I had grown up there.

And I had felt like I believed so much in the vision, but it didn't come originally from my soul. And there was this guy that I had hired over at Clif Bar from Idea, the famous design firm, Neil Grimmer, and just brilliant product designer and branding guy. And whenever I was with him, it was like it felt like when I was with Gary, like the world slips away and you're going into another universe of courageous creativity. And that's how I felt like with Neil. And the more I started thinking about, yeah, I want to do my own thing. He was the person that I wanted to do it with. So we spun out of Clif Bar. Was Gary surprised? How did that?

Yeah, it was, you know, I think surprised, but not surprised because I'd been there for so long. You know, and I think someone else actually outside was the wife of somebody who worked there, said it really well. She's like, you know, Cheryl, she was talking to, I've heard this third hand, but Cheryl had been there, you know, it shaped the course of her career. And there's always a time where you say, it's time to graduate. And I felt like I've learned. Gary taught me so much in his wife, Kit, about the world and digging into his heart for love. And just everything and how to run a really freaking great business. That was just, it was time.

I just felt it in my heart and soul. And I've always felt that later on when I decided to leave Plum, it was just, I felt it. It was time. Yeah. What else is happening if you zoom the lens out and what else is going on in your life, in your world at that moment? You ask good questions. I'm trying to think back. Well, I had had my

second child and we had just actually come back from every seven years at Cliff, you can go on a six-week sabbatical. And we had been in, this was a year before I left, but we had been in South America. And I think my world opened up again. Like, Clifford, it's such a wonderful place. And it's kind of like the boomerang. If anyone leaves, they usually come back because it's so special. But I felt like I had been living in this bubble. And I just wanted to, I don't know, I just felt like I was ready to take a bold move to do something. And, you know, it was scary. It was so great.

How could anything be better? And I've seen the world and the way the world lives so differently. I don't know. I just had this calling to find out what else was out there. And I don't even know how to describe it. It just was like, I felt ready. I felt ready. And I wanted to carry forth my own purpose and what I felt like was so important to me because, you know, I went in there at, well, I was probably like, I don't know, that was, I can't remember. I shouldn't even say because I'm getting so old now. So let's not go there. But you know, when you go to school and you go through your four years of college and you graduate and you feel ready for the next thing to come and finding your own and finding your own, what's coming from your whole depth of yourself. And that's where I was. I was ready to graduate. But I mean, the interesting thing to me is that, yes, most of us reach that point. And most of us ignore it. Because like that same thing is like, okay, so, you know, it was a big move for you to go to Cliff in the first place, you know, you're going from this big, giant, stable thing to something where it was like growing, it was profoundly different. And but

then you, you, you grow up in this company, and you're running the company. And, you know, you've got notoriety, you've got a certain running the company and you've got notoriety. You've got a certain amount of stability. You've got a sense of mission and purpose. You've got community. And so many of us, I think, hit that point in our careers in different ways where, yes, there's all this good stuff, but there's a yearning that's building and building and building.

But we're so terrified of leaving what we have that we pretend that that yearning isn't there. So there was something in you that said, no, I'm okay walking away, which is unusual. That's so fascinating that you say that because when my husband and I talk, I'm always the one that takes a little less risk. And so that's very interesting. Because he's an entrepreneur, was an entrepreneur. He was an entrepreneur as well. And he was way on the other end of risk. But, you know, I talk about in my book what we went through. Yeah. And we can talk about that in a little bit if you want about what happened with his company that we started. It's really kind of like a family company.

But, you know, I think that we went through, you know, you don't realize when you're young how much your journey kind of twists and turns and you evolve as a person over time. So after going through this business disaster that we had, he became a lot more, I think, conservative. He still has the risky side, but a lot more conservative. And maybe I've pushed out more on the risky side with the experiences that I've had. But it's an interesting observation. I don't know. I just feel inside. Yeah. I mean, and also because there's an assumption that entrepreneurship, like the big risk stepping into the abyss is a younger person's game. Like I think on two levels, one, because generally to start something, you know, there is no off button. It's just, you're living and

breathing it, you know, like 24 seven, seven days a week. And also cause you know, like very often we get into a point in life where, you know, like we have partners or kids or parents who are looking to us because they're aging or whatever it may be. And there's like this assumption that, well, this is the stage where you get responsible and you reduce risk. And I feel like there's just like a cultural thing that says there's a time, you know, for you to go and start something. But, you know, it's not when you're sort of, you know, moving into a season of life where you're supposed to be responsible. So I'm always fast. I'm fascinated when when somebody male, female, it doesn't matter, sort of moves into this season simultaneously, says, I'm going to go there.

Wow, what a fascinating thought. And, you know, it's interesting because when I was running the Center for Entrepreneurial Studies over at the Stanford Graduate School of Business, the biggest thing I kept telling people was, we've got to get people who are boomers to be entrepreneurs because they're at a point in life where they're seeing the world so differently and have such a different perspective and have a certain freedom financially that they never had before. They're sort of like on the other side of that. They're on the other side of it. And I think at the time, and that's where Plum ended up evolving to, here I'm a mom.

And maybe part of it was my momness calling out to me and saying, you have a different perspective on the world now than you ever have had before. And it's time to follow that. And maybe that, God, you're like a therapist. It's like it overrode whatever other sort of hesitation. Yeah, I think so. I've never thought of that before, but I think, yeah. Interesting. All right. So you leave and you start something new. We start something new. And it was, you know, Neil and I just in our house with our friend David actually just dreaming. I mean, there's literally in my sunny kitchen with the sunshine coming in the window. And we're just dreaming about what do we want to do.

And our first idea was, you know, why are all at the time, all these organic companies selling out to these big companies and they're losing their soul. And so we thought, you know, here I'd worked for General Foods, now Kraft, you know, a bunch of different brands within a portfolio. So we said, well, why don't we start something which is like a portfolio of organic brands where you could grow your revenue, but also grow your soul. And we'd bring in really small brands and build them through innovation because that was our expertise. So we had, there was an investor who had a similar idea. So we were just like, let's just go for it. And, you know, here, this investors get he said, here's a million dollars, go work on further work on this concept. So we did and we do it out. And we he's like, Oh, you know,

this is sounding pretty interesting. And we called it the nest collective, because it was going to be a collective of brands. And it was like products for your body inside inside your body, on your body, and outside your body. So it was this humongous idea. And Neil and I, my co-founder, used to go running all the time. That was our best time to come up with ideas. And I'm like, Neil, this feels too big. It just doesn't give us direction. And so we both started talking about our kids and how my kids were eight and five at the time and how we wanted to feed them healthy organic food. But this was in the year 2007. And if you walk through the aisles of Whole Foods at that time, the food was not exciting. It didn't even taste that good. And we, you know, we wanted, we had busy spouses,

we wanted to find ways to have a convenient way to feed our kids. And the packages were not attractive to kids. It was not exciting to eat organic, sustainable food. And so we thought, well, what if we do something around food for kids and helping kids nourish a lifetime of healthy eating. And we just found there was a massive gap between organic and healthy and at the other side, convenient and good tasting and beautiful and well-designed. So we went out, we were talking to a lot of parents and they felt the same way. And we went to the Natural Products Expo that year and found there is a huge gap in the market. No one was addressing that at the time. Everything is validating your hunch along the way.

Everything is validating. And obesity was just becoming talked about as a humongous issue. So we had bought a small consumer products business out of this company called Revolution Foods. They deliver healthy meals to kids in schools. And they had started very, very small. It was almost nothing. Healthy lunchbox business. So we said, well, why don't we buy that part of the business? We'll license the name and we'll develop our products within it.

And so, you know, just a really good story of doing great things for kids. So we had developed these products and had gone to a trade show. And we had created this little squeezy pouch that you see everywhere now in kids' foods. But at the time, it was really very popular in Japan and also the United States, also the United Kingdom. Sorry, scratch that. It was popular in Asia and in the UK. And we were fascinated by the package because it was just, you know, it was flexible and it wasn't like the baby pouches, the baby jars where the product just was cooked the crap out of it. And it was almost like the product was made almost like making ceviche.

It was the acid from the fruit that helped us offset the vegetables so that it was much fresher in that pouch. And so we're like, oh, this is a very interesting way to deliver food. So we're at the trade show again. And this guy comes up to our booth. And he's got his badge turned around. So we had no idea who was, he's looking at the product, looking at the pouch, checking it out and sniffing it. And he looks at us and Neil and I, and he says, you know, I'm Paul, I'm the buyer at Toys R Us, Babies R Us. He said, I've been looking for a baby food like this. And we had only had it for kids food.

And I'm thinking of importing it from europe but if you can come up like with something like this for me for baby food you know i'll take it you but i you have two months to do it right and you know i remember like this is fucking nuts there is no way we didn't know anything about baby food. What did you tell him at the moment, though? We just smiled really. Let us think about that. We'll get back to you. It's like, no problem.

Yeah, no problem. So we go back to the company and said, we have a challenge. And we need you guys to help us decide if we should do it. Here's something that sounds crazy. We know nothing about baby food. It's a lot more obviously sensitive than even kids' food because of the baby development. But if we can do that to our mission to help kids develop a lifetime love of healthy eating, this is the place to start is when they're babies. Yeah, it's like the earliest possible point, right? Totally. So everyone looked at us and they're like, let's do it.

This is what purpose does for you. You know, let's do it. So we said, okay, Paul, we're on. We're on for the game. We'll see what we can do. And it was so hard. And we made so many mistakes. We had no idea what we were doing.

And it was so new. There was no one else doing baby food in this pouch. So we ended up finding a way to get him this product in two months. And he was like, oh, you know, this is great. He was really stunned. So he really, Paul set the whole, really the whole domino effect. So he brought the product into his store and he was so impressed by how quickly we were able to innovate. He basically took everything that we

had made since then. And Toys R Us, Babies R Us, it's like this huge, beautiful display of our products, dedicated to our products. And retailers started to take notice. And what was happening, and consumers were taking notice, because we didn't even fully realize this at the time, but we had the baby food in jars was a loss leader category, meaning that retailers lost money on every jar that they sold. It was a way to bring consumers into the store. So here we had created this product that was more expensive. It was double the price. The velocity, how much it was moving, was similar to baby jars. So the retailer was making regular margin for the first time.

And the jars didn't break, so they didn't have nearly that much loss. I mean, Amazon.com was one in five baby jars was breaking that they sent out. You know how much that impacts their business. So here, the retailer has this huge benefit. The consumer is loving it because the jars don't bake. They're convenient. The product tastes good. Actually, this is an interesting side story. We were talking to actually moms at the time we brought them into our offices offices and we were sampling the product to see how babies responded. So we'd hand them a pouch. We'd say, hey, can you feed this to their babies, your babies?

You know what they did? They took a spoonful and instead of giving it to their babies, they tasted it themselves, which was a huge insight for us because they were the judge. So imagine tasting baby food out of a jar versus plum that was so fresh tasting. And we knew we had something. So the consumer was there. The retailer was there. And then Whole Foods took us. And then Target took us.

And it basically created a whole new category. All of these people came into it, but it, we were, we were the first and it made a huge difference. Whether you're in your running era, Pilates era, or yoga era, dive into Peloton workouts that work with you. From meditating at your kid's game to mastering a strength program, they've got everything you need to keep knocking down your goals. No pressure to be who you're not. Just workouts and classes to strengthen who you are. So no matter your era, make it your best with Peloton. Find your push.

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And it's the fastest-charging Apple Watch, getting you 8 hours of charge in just 15 minutes. The Apple Watch Series 10. Available for the first time in glossy jet black aluminum. Compared to previous generations, iPhone Xs are later required. Charge time and actual results will vary. Mayday, mayday. We've been compromised. The pilot's a hitman.

I knew you were going to be fun. On January 24th. Tell me how to fly this thing. Mark Wahlberg. You know what the difference between me and you is? You're going to die. Don't shoot him, we need him! Y'all need a pilot.

Flight risk. So the company is essentially exploding. The company exploded. And then I did too. Yeah. So let's go there because, you know, this is the best of times on the surface. Yeah. You've got this, like, you're just hitting everything.

You're innovating like crazy. You're literally creating a new category. You're solving problems on levels that you didn't even know existed. And from the outside looking in, it's like, wow, you know, she's got the golden touch. You know, she's doing it again. And there's this amazing thing happening. But that's taking a big toll on you personally, it sounds like. Well, there were a couple, it was like the perfect storm of taking a toll. So as I'm going through that, I'm starting Plum. I also had a really, really tough investor that was kind of like a neighborhood bully. And every day I didn't know what kind of mood he would be in. He was up and down and yelling and not yelling, and you're the best, you're the worst. And so I'm on this roller coaster.

And then at the same time, my husband decided, you know, he had the entrepreneurial bug and wanted to start something. And it was a great idea. It was called Blue Sky Family Club. And it was this big indoor play space for kids where kids could do exercise and eat healthy and be creative. And parents could relax with a glass of wine or a beer. It was anti-Chucky cheese. And every parent we told about this drooled over the concept. And Patrick was so over the moon excited. And, you know, I was excited too. And I was in love with Patrick and I didn't want to be a naysayer, but it took, you know, it took a little while. And I finally said to him one Thanksgiving,

when was this in 98? I said, okay, you know what, let's go for it. So I got on board. And the idea was, you know, look at my company from the beginning was VC backed. And so we didn't have as much control. And his, we thought, well, let's self fund this. So it's our baby. But we took on a massive amount of debt. And we thought we had, we would have more control and it would be our family business. So we opened the, you know, so many, I mean, I could go on and on about building a restaurant. It's so many city delays. And we were so naive in restaurants. We were actually paying $20,000 a month rent alone. We were. And there were delays and upgrades and we didn't know enough to negotiate with the landlord before he took a lease and then it had been very cold this was in emeryville in california been very very cold all summer and you know perfect way to open

a play space literally the day we opened the door, it was beautiful and sunny for months. And I'll always remember the day. Patrick is a total optimist. And he came home one day and he's literally white as a ghost and cold to the touch, almost like touching a dead person. And I was looking at him like, Patrick, what is wrong? And he wouldn't tell me. And it felt like hours. It could have been minutes. I don't know to this day how long it was. And I said to him, years later, I said, why didn't you tell me what was happening? And he said, because I knew the moment I said something, our lives would change forever. And they did. We lost

everything we had. We almost went personally bankrupt. We had to move out of our house immediately and to just this dumpy apartment. I would hear gunshots outside my window. And it was, I mean, it was crazy. It felt like you were in a different world. And even just last year, this is eight years after we had closed the doors, we just finished paying off our SBA loan. It was, I went into like feeling nothing mode because Patrick, I was so worried about Patrick. He couldn't get out of bed. He literally couldn't sleep. For three months, he had to go to the Stanford Sleep Clinic to learn how to sleep again. And he'd wake up in the morning and he'd hold me tight because he didn't want me to go. And I had to break away to go to plum. And it was just like heart-wrenching.

And then we were worried about the kids, what was our stress doing to them because we couldn't hide it. And here I'm trying to just be strong as I walk into Plum, but my life is falling apart. And Plum is crazy, crazy startup mode. So we can talk about how I dealt with the stress, which was not a good way to deal with it. I mean, let's go there. So I was a runner, so I would go out and go for a run. And it was the place where I felt like, honestly, I wasn't in the house, like hearing these creditors calling us and Patrick, like freaking out of what to do.

And so it was my space. And so then, you know, I just decided to run a little more and ran a little more. And then, you know, I was running for hours at a time and I was cutting down on my eating a little bit. And friends and family were saying, oh, you know, you're losing some weight. And I'm like, cool. You know, who doesn't want to lose a few pounds? That's great. And then they started saying, you're kind of losing a lot of weight. And I'm seeing the

numbers going down on the scale. And here I'm a business person. So numbers, that's what you look for, you know, numbers. And I'm seeing the numbers in my mind going in the right direction on the scale. And people started really saying, you know, I'm pretty worried about you. And I mean, it took years for me to truly realize what was happening. But little by little, anorexia was eating away at me. And I started feeling like, again, I didn't fully realize what I was going through, but I felt like I couldn't think. And I was just like, everything was, my life felt so out of control. And here I'm like, I've got to be the leader of this company and be strong and come in and, you know, be really thoughtful about where we need to go with our growth.

And I just started realizing I can't do this anymore. I can't put on this charade anymore. And I had been, you know, I had always dreamed about being like going to a university where the sun was shining and people were talking about big, giant ideas. And it was this place of brilliance. And as I'm going through this, I don't know, somehow these jobs come serendipitously at certain times in your life. And I heard about they needed someone to run the Center for Entrepreneurial Studies at Stanford. And so I'm like, I I got to go check this out. And I went and it's like it was out of my dreams.

You know, Stanford is frigging la-la land. Yeah. I mean, they play jazz music. I've walked the campus. Oh, my God. Yeah, it plays jazz music in the center of the business school. There's balconies, you know, off of the Center for Entrepreneurial Studies. And everyone's brilliant and beautiful.

And it's like, you know, and talking about big, huge things. And so it's just my time. That same feeling like I've got to have a change because this is not good for me anymore. And it's not good for me anymore. And it's not good for the company anymore. You know, so I, I left. I know you talk about a moment where I think it was four of your friends basically got on planes and had a bit of an intervention. Yeah. I'm going to see those friends in two weeks. We've got our annual girls weekend. I don't even think they knew at the time that was an intervention.

I have one friend that lived near me, but one of my closest friends lived in New York, so we hadn't seen each other for a while. And her name is Ange, and Ange's birthday is what we're celebrating in a couple weeks. So she comes to my house, and I open the door,

and her eyes like bug out of her head. She's like, oh, my God, what has happened to you? I mean, I looked like a skeleton. I look at pictures of myself and I did. I mean, literally look like, you know, a Holocaust survivor. And I had hit I remember that day, too, because I had hit my lowest number that I had ever hit before. And it actually scared me.

So we, you know, throughout the weekend, we're talking about it. And I was really, it was the first time that I started telling people that I realized that something is seriously wrong. And then I was starting to do something about it. And the reason why I realized is because we had plum and sold and we decided to move up to wine country and in Santa Rosa. And I wanted to just take some time off. And Stanford was awesome, but it was way too long of a drive. I just couldn't even go there if I had wanted to. And so I was going to, you know, just take some time off and kind of find myself again. So I'd been starting to deal with it. And when, I don't know, after that discussion, I'm like, this is really bad. And I felt very depressed. And that was the other thing. I'm like, everything now is, there's nothing now that's telling me I have any stress or anything, and I'm still feeling depressed. Yeah. And I started finally just digging in and working on my recovery. And it was really, it's so weird to sit there and go,

I was going to a therapy once a week, nutrition therapy twice a week. And you're digging into your whole soul. And it was like, it was, it was super hard. It was super, super, super hard. But one of the things, the amazing things about it is that I would bring my kids sometimes with me to the nutrition therapists. And it was so interesting to hear her talk to them and explain to them what was happening. And, you know, they said, she would say things like, tell, God, I haven't thought about this for a long time, and I'm going to start to get a little teary-eyed. She would say, you know, tell me, tell me what scares you. And, you know, and they would say, whatever it was, one of them said, you know, riding a roller coaster. And she said, well,

you've got to understand that eating certain things for your mommy is just as coaster. And she said, well, you've got to understand that eating certain things for your mommy is just as scary. And just put it in words that they can get. And all of a sudden over time, it started, it just started coming to me like, if I'm going to do this for anyone, I mean, people, the doctor would say, you know, you could die from this. I was like, die? What are you talking about? Like, it didn't make sense to me. And it started clicking in. If I could, I can't do that to my family. And it was, I don't know, the whole thing, going through blue sky and going through that.

Like, I was strong for Patrick, and then I fell apart once he was strong, and then he became strong for me. That's why he's my son. We celebrated our 20-year anniversary yesterday. And I was here in New York. He's in California. It brought us together in ways that we have an unbreakable bond now because of it. And then I came back, and I said I was never going to do the day-to-day thing again. And then I found my company

Rebel. Yeah. So just to kind of put a cap on it, because you mentioned it, but very quickly, you did end up, you ended up selling Plum and being able to exit very nicely from what's told. And the interesting thing is that didn't solve the problem. That was the moment, which is so interesting because I wonder sometimes whether, you know, as long as we have this thing that just demands a hundred percent of our attention, a hundred percent, you know, like it gives us an excuse not to go there. Deal with this. Even if that thing is also a big part of the problem, you know, and then we think when it goes away, everything will get better. But sometimes when it goes away, that's a moment that we actually have to face ourselves fully. And then

that's when the real terror sets in. It is. And that's such an important point because I find one of the reasons why I moved to Santa Rosa and getting out of the craziness of the valley was I wanted to force myself to be alone with myself. And that was very hard for me. I kept myself, to your point, so busy. And I know I have that tendency still to this day. Being alone with your thoughts is hard. It's hard. It's scary. I think for most of us, it's one of the hardest things we can do. It is. Which, and I think we judge ourselves for that.

Totally. Because we're like, I'm better than that. Like I've accomplished so much. Yes. Like I can be still and it's brutally hard for so many of us. Well, it's an interesting side story in there. So I had at that time, you know, I had no title on my business card. I didn't have a place to go through every day. And I was so lost. And so I did what any good Jew would do. And I joined a women's support group in a local Unitarian church so I can meet some people. So I go in the first day of the meeting. And so it's kind of like

your prototypical thing that you would think. There's a well-worn rug and these dumpy couches and smells like coffee, of course. So I walk into this room and there's this group of women who are in their 70s and 80s. And we're sitting around a circle. And it's exactly to your point. So they're going around and they're talking about how they're helping an ailing husband or they like puttering around in the garden, volunteering in the church. And it comes to me. So here, you know, I sit up straight in my chair to, you know, I'm going to rattle off just what you said. Here's my resume, you know, and I'm going through it. I was the co-founder of Plum and I ran Clip Bar and all this stuff. And they just kind of looked at me.

And I took a deep breath and I looked at them and I said, listen, I'm just trying to find myself. And this wise woman sitting next to me said, you know what? We've all been there. We maybe can help, but we can at least just be here to listen. And I realized that there was some sort of click in that moment that I am beyond the ups and downs of my company. Here they wanted to see me as a loving daughter, a mom, a wife, someone who loves drinking Chardonnay and going camping, and I'm an avid reader. They didn't care about all that other stuff. And here's people who you think, oh, they're always thinking about their accomplishments at 70 and 80. And it didn't matter.

And I just started, it was one of the things that started me thinking about the world so differently in that moment. Yeah. It's interesting. I remember reading some research on happiness. And it turns out that I think when you're younger, you would assume that, I think a lot of people would assume that once you sort you hit the later season of your life, that you start to get less happy because you're things, you lose ability, illness. But the research actually shows the opposite, that most people actually become happier. There's this sort of curve where you start to actually, there's a certain perspective

that sets in. There's a certain contentment. There's a certain, you know, okay, I'm at a place where I can breathe a little bit. I often wonder whether we would all do better spending a little bit more time with people who are, you know, in that season of life just to help us get a bit more perspective. Well, it's interesting that you say that because I have never been afraid of getting old, but I can never articulate why. And I was reading Joseph Campbell, famous Joseph Campbell, who is such a brilliant man. I was reading his biography and the biography was actually called The Hero's Journey. And when I was reading his work, there was something that he said that just stopped me. Exactly. It's interesting. I didn't know there was research behind it because what he said was, when you're in your youth, you're always striving for the next thing.

And your head is so much in the future. It always is in the future. And he said, when you get into a certain point of your life, it's about the present. And this is where you are. And I was like, oh, my God, that is what, like, I have this dream of walking around everything. I love the sun. You could say, keep using the sun, but walking along a path, holding hands with my husband. And like, that makes me so happy when I think about that. And yeah, it's like, you just, you don't feel the pressure anymore. Yeah. Well, I mean, I think if I've kind of gone down the sort of like Eastern philosophy,

Buddhism path, and you know, my sense is that so much suffering is self-generated by us because it comes from us either living so much in the future and having anxiety about the future, which largely we can't control or having lament about the future, which largely we can't control, or having lament about the past, which is over. And there's a certain amount of grace that just comes from being able to wake up and say, huh, it's like I'm here. And experiencing that. And sounds easy, but it's brutally hard. Well, and I think to your point, though, in Blue Sky, yeah, it was a very expensive mistake, and it was so hard for our family. But at the same time, and to your point about Buddhist philosophy, we learn so much from going through that. And that is the hero's journey, right? You come out the other side with such a different perspective. So I think that is part of it. It's building your story. And my kids

are now 13 and 16. And, you know, you want to hold them and say, no, it's going to be okay, I swear, you know, and your heart like breaks. I remember my son, this was just this on Monday, he had done this whole test online and he was so proud of himself because he didn't even have to do the whole test. And he hit save and the whole thing disappeared. And he's slamming the wall with his fists and he's devastated. My heart was breaking. And I just wanted to say, it's going to be okay. But I'm like, no, he's got to feel this. He's got to feel what it's like to have these things happen in his life because that's what it leads you to, to learning how to live. Yeah.

Yeah. No, I agree. The Apple Watch Series 10 is here. It has the biggest display ever. It's also the thinnest Apple Watch ever, making it even more comfortable on your wrist, whether you're running, swimming, or sleeping. And it's the fastest-charging Apple Watch,

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So, at some point you decide to go back into the belly of the beast I know. As we're sitting here, obviously, you guys can't see this, but I'm drinking this like actually super yummy beverage, Rebel. That is your new company. Yeah, I know. I said I was done with the day-to-day, totally done. So I was just going to teach entrepreneurship, which I started doing at Sonoma State.

And I was going to serve on boards. And then this guy, Paulo Hawken, I had met him at Nest, now called Plum. Neil and I both met him. And he was introduced to me actually by his father, who's Paul Hawken, who's considered like the father of sustainability. And the man is brilliant. He said, I want you to meet my son. He's a real amazing product innovator. So Neil and I really wanted to hire him because we soaked in great people and we couldn't make it work. He had co-founded Bossa Nova beverage company. He wasn't ready to leave. So he just popped into my life back through LinkedIn. And he's like, Hey, you know, we're looking for a board member. And I was thinking of you. And so we started talking and, you know, like, oh, this company sounds pretty cool. So I decided to be on the board. And the more I got to know the company, all of a sudden I'm like,

oh my God, this has got the magic that I've seen in these other brands. I smell it. You know, it's got it. And what I was finding was it's these three powerful things. It's the brand, it's the purpose, and it's the people. And so when I looked, I started realizing this brand, which is, it's all about, it's a coconut milk-based elixir. And it's all about the goodness of the plant queendom it's all pure to the core totally clean label and or organic and and so exceptionally healthy no stabilizers in there no you know natural no natural flavors it's just the product as is paulo is a brilliant brilliant craftsman

it is we we cultivate you know from the best of the plant queendom and then he crafts it into this beautiful beverage. And also what he gets that every company that I've been part of gets is that it doesn't matter how healthy it is, if it doesn't taste exquisite, it's never going to be able to come into its own over time. It's just going to stay within a really small core. And he understands the art of food. And this brand, so REBL, R-E-B-B-L, stands for Roots, Extracts, Berries, Barks, and Leaves. So it's in the product. It's a fun acronym too. Yeah. So it's all about these super herbs such as turmeric that people now know a lot about with its antioxidant and anti-inflammatory properties, but also herb adaptogens, which people are just starting to realize now through ashwagandha, there's clinical research behind it that shows that it actually helps your body adapt to stress. So it's so old, but yet it

is so related to modern life. And I'm blown away by this brand. So the Rebel, which has as a brand marketer at heart, this is such juice. It's the strength of the herbs in the rebel, but it's also the strength of the individual. And every single person, part of their now bigger, ever-growing tribe of rebels, people get it. Consumers get it. So I'm like, okay, it's got the brand thing. The purpose is mind-blowing to me. So this company was actually started by a nonprofit, and the nonprofit is called Not For Sale. And Not For Sale, Dave Bestone, who is the founder of Not For Sale,

his whole goal was to eradicate modern-day human trafficking, and that's the sex trade and the slave trade. And it's something that people don't realize how big it is. It's 30 million people around the world and growing. It's the fastest growing illegal industry there is. And just to give some perspective, at the time of the slaves and the Civil War, there were about 8 million. Now it's the second biggest illegal industry behind the drug trade. It's bigger than illegal weapons. And 80% of who is impacted by it is women and girls. And so he wanted to find a way to solve this problem. And he had been a business person. So Dave was brilliant. And he is creating a whole new model, which is the nonprofit model in many ways is broken.

And Not For Sale is a nonprofit, but it's just you're constantly out trying to raise funds from donations and foundations. It's just a hard road. And here's business that if you have the right business is a sustainable, valuable business model. And so what they came up with was a solution, which was to create a beverage using the herbs from the indigenous people to help them to get out of a slave vulnerable situation by helping them to gain their livelihood. So now fast forward to this day, and that was they were addressing the issue in Peru. We give two and a half percent of every bottle sold, our sales, not our profits, our net sales. We don't have any profits as a company that's investing in the business. And we also work with growers throughout the world to help them to have a livelihood

so they're never vulnerable to trafficking in the first place. So this story, we go to work every day fighting trafficking. Do you know how powerful that is as a motivator for our whole entire team? So that connects into the team, the third thing, brand, purpose, and team. This team has so much grit, and they believe so much in this idea and what we're doing, really courageous creativity. And now we're attracting, we just hired these two, a senior VP of sales, senior VP of marketing that are world class. One was the senior vice president at Kindbar, and the other was vice President of Marketing over at Crave most recently. Brilliant people who have that same passion. And so I'm seeing this as a board member. Some of this is very recent, but I'm seeing all this magic. And Paolo, who had been the

CEO of the company for three years, he never wanted to be the CEO. He hated being the CEO. He was a product guy. And he's in, we had to go into our first institutional fundraise and he's like, can you help me? And I'm like, all right, well, listen, Paolo, I'll do, I'll be the interim CEO. I'll help you find a CEO and I'll help fundraise. Cause you know, I had already done fundraising six times. I knew the drill. So I go into the fundraise. We raise the money. And, you know, the board started saying, hey, you know, would you want to do this some, you know, full time?

And I'm learning about this brand. And I was like, oh, my God, you know, I feel it again. And these were some really hard conversations with Patrick. Yeah, I would imagine because there's a whole other thing that's a concern for you now. It's like you know that there's a dark place that you can go to. And there's a dark place also that I can go to and many entrepreneurs go to. And we can talk about that in general because we definitely have the light side or persistence and dedication and the dark side, my dark side. And I'm finding as this book has been out there that I've written, Killing End an Entrepreneur's Guide to Keeping Your Head Without Losing Your Heart, so many women are coming forth telling me they have an eating disorder or they had one. And I really think these statistics are even a lot bigger than they're even showing because this seems like it's women, men are impacted by it, but this is women's way of dealing with the stress and lack of control. But things like bipolar disease, ADHD,

depression, drug abuse, all of those things are found, first of its kind study done by dr michael freeman that much higher in the entrepreneurial population than the general prop so it's the dark side of of the light and i think the light is being shined on that over the last couple of years more and more i mean very sadly because suicides have been reported pretty broadly and so now all of a sudden, I think this, the world of entrepreneurship is starting to have to face its dark side a bit more and hopefully, you know, making some inroads there. Totally. And in a culture that it's all about through the media, which is why I'm so happy you're doing this podcast throughout the media,

through the people I met at Stanford. Like, this is where you make billions of dollars and life is perfect. I mean, that's why I wrote my book. I'm like, it is hard and no one is talking about it. And there's got to be a place to do that. So, you know, so Patrick and I are having this hard conversation and he was really resistant to this idea. You know, I'd been through my recovery. Like, I don't think this is the right thing. And I really don't want you to do it. And I'm, you know, I was having so much fun. And as I'm doing it, though, something was different this time. And I was creating the space for my family. I was doing different things to make sure that we were still connected with family and friends. I wasn't lost in the isolation of entrepreneurship anymore.

And I felt differently. And, you know, even as we went through some hard times with the company, I said, Patrick, I don't know. There's this weird feeling that I have. And I love this company with my heart and soul. And I love every single person a part of it. But it feels a little bit outside. Like I can see the problems, but I can see the other side of them, where before I can never see the other side. And maybe it didn't define you as much anymore. so wrapped up in things when we're entrepreneurs or a lot of times our net worth is wrapped up in it. You know, we're artists in a way and it becomes everything, but we have got to separate our self-worth from the worth of the company. 95% of businesses fail. It's part of what that

journey can be. I call it an epic adventure. It's not a journey walking down a joyful path. It goes up and down. It is an adventure. But that to me at the end of the day is that's what it's about. It's this experience in life that you had the freaking courage to do that so many people don't. You did it and you have a story to tell. And I know that may say, I had somebody say to me the other day, like, I am, I'm not convinced of it. Like, this is my company. What if it falls apart? And I said, what if it falls apart? What if it does? And it very likely will. Yeah. And I think like, as entrepreneurs, we need to go there, actually. And not live there,

because that becomes a dark space. But we need to ask that question. And then we need to say, okay, so if this does happen, what would it look like? Yes. And then how would I recover? What's my recovery story? That's right. So it's kind of like it's just there. Yes.

And we can kind of breathe through it a little bit more. I look at, similar to you. I look at entrepreneurship as a spiritual path, you know, and what I've come to learn over the years is I love building something like we're probably wired similarly. I love the white page. Oh my God. It freaks out so many people. I'm like, just give me something blank and I'll, I'll fill it with ideas. And then it's in the world. Right. And what I've learned is that, yeah, I do love creating something from nothing. What I'm maybe even more interested in is how the path of entrepreneurship shapes the entrepreneur. Yeah.

Yeah. That's very insightful. You know, and I haven't come to that until really recently, actually. And a lot of the work that we do now outside of, you know around that because it can destroy you so easily if you don't treat it as a spiritual path. If you treat it as more of just a commercial venture and there's only one metric for success. Like you said, 95% is not going to work. But if you treat it as more like a spiritual path and say, look, I want this to succeed. And even if it doesn't, there's value in it.

That's right. It just changes the nature of the experience. Yes, exactly. And that's what I said to this guy that I was talking to. I said, he has just a very soulful company with real purpose in it. And I said, you know what? At the end of the day, if it doesn't have commercial success, look at what you put out there in the world. This beautiful thing that you've put out there, and it's going to lead you now to another place because of it. And it doesn't have to be scary, but that's why the title of my book is killing it.

It's a double entendre. Which is funny because when I first saw the title, I was like, I don't know about this. Yeah. And then when I actually, I started reading, I'm like, oh, it's actually, there's the Silicon Valley killing it meaning, but then there's something else going on here. That's right. Which is, there's a, you know, a deeper sort of context to it, which is, you know, okay, now it's, it's about living life along the way. It's about, you know, a more holistic approach, which feels like a good place for us to come full circle. So the name of this is Good Life Project. So if I offer that phrase out to you to live a good life, what comes up? Wow. Well, I think, you know, to close down that story with Patrick and I, how he ended up saying, I'm on board, was that he said, you know what? I know I can feel it in you. This is different. You're thinking about this so differently, as you talked about on the spiritual path, that it seems like you're just in, you're in a calm place. And he said, you'll,

we'll both know if it starts to grow wrong and we will be partners in this every step of the way. But I am having the time of my life at this company, Rebel, and I am so proud of it. And to me, what the good life is, is, you know, I think about this as an ecosystem. Look at, you know, study plant-based foods. I think about my life as an ecosystem in that I have all these priorities in it. And I think the word balance is bullshit. You know, I don't buy the word balance. It drives me crazy when people try to make people feel guilty by saying your life should be in balance. To me, it's an ecosystem that is constantly trying to move towards balance, but it's evolving along the way and it's feeding each other. So one of the things that I've found

in living a good life is that, you know, I work out of my home office. I run a company a lot of times out of my home office, even though it's getting bigger by the second, because I can see my kids walking in the door and I can give them a hug and a kiss where they never saw me before. And that love that I get from my kids and my husband, I bring right into the company. And when we talk about Revel, we have this vision tree that we created and the whole thing is rooted in love. And I love these people and that I love the love that I feel every day. And I know this probably sounds corny, but the love that I feel every day for the people at Rebel, I bring back into my home.

One of the things we do is within our Slack channel, which is our internal communication channel, we have a specific channel called Weekend Stories. And what people are to do is they are to post things they're doing on the weekends, whether it be cooking or going on a hike or playing with their dogs, being with friends, whatever it is, to show each other that we're, you know, enjoying life outside of this place is so important because when we come back in, revitalize with energy, with new creativity, because we've been part of the world. And the worst thing to me, though, that we can do as entrepreneurs is isolate ourselves. It's the first thing we want to do, but it's the last thing that

we should do. You know, when we connect with people, our friends and our family, they will love us way beyond where the company is. And they are the people that uplift us when we're down. And they are the people that just remind us who we are. And there's people that, in my case, if something's going terribly wrong, they're the canaries in the coal mine. And so I think those connections with those people, those relationships are essential. And those relationships also to an entrepreneurial tribe, the tribe that always wants to tell each other how good everything is, we have to find those entrepreneurs that were willing to say, you know, this is hard. And, you know, I'll say,

I can say a million things, but I'll say one more thing about the journey is a lot of people, I use the words bold humility. And I heard those words from Francis Moore LaPay, who is, you know, brilliant writer about the food movement. And what struck me about those words, and I've carried them with me now, is as entrepreneurs, we think we need to be bold and we need to go all in. And it's about pushing into new places, regardless of what anybody says. And you have to be bold because you are pushing into a world that no one's gone before. So what I think that needs to be done is we need to balance that with humility. And by the way, I know how far bold can take you if you carry it too far because of blue sky.

So humility means a lot of things to me. But Steve Blank, who is, he started, he wrote the foreword to my book, and he's started along with Eric Reese, the lean startup methodology. What is profound about that is, Steve encapsulates it beautifully in this quote. And what he said is, a startup is not a company. A startup is an experiment waiting to find a sustainable, valuable business model. And so that is humility. It's listening to the

marketplace. It's not every time someone says something's wrong, you don't go changing it, going all over the place, but it's finding the thread of truth and knowing that this is time to adapt or time to pivot. And that's what Neil and I did at Ness. We pivoted from this big portfolio to focusing solely on kids. And so it's learning from the world and also the humility of yourself. And I know where I'm good and I know where I suck. And I always tell people at Rebel, I always say, you know, I want you to call for help when you need help because a lot of people think of that as a weakness. To me, that is a sign of strength because you care so much about this company that you admit when you're in a place where you need other people to hold your hand and help you. A good life to me is all these things feeding each other.

Thank you. Thank you. I love what you're doing with this thing. It's a beautiful thing. Thank you. No, thank you. I love what you're doing with this thing. It's a beautiful thing. Thanks so much for listening to today's episode. If the stories and ideas in any way moved you, I would so appreciate if you would take just a few extra seconds for two quick things. One, if it's touched you in some way, if there's some idea or moment in the story

or in the conversation that you really feel like you would share with somebody else, that it would make a difference in somebody else's life, take a moment and whatever app you're using, just share this episode with somebody who you think it'll make a difference for. Email it if that's the easiest thing, whatever is easiest for you. And then, of course, if you're compelled, subscribe so that you can stay a part of this continuing experience. My greatest hope with this podcast is not just to produce moments and share stories and ideas that impact one person listening, but to let it create a conversation, to let it serve as a catalyst for the elevation of all of us together collectively, because that's how we rise. When stories and ideas become conversations that lead to action, that's when real change

happens. And I would love to invite you to participate on that level. Thank you so much, as always, for your intention, for your attention, for your heart. And I wish you only the best. I'm Jonathan Fields, signing off for Good Life Project. The Apple Watch Series 10 is here. It has the biggest display ever. It's also the thinnest Apple Watch ever, making it even more comfortable on your wrist, whether you're running, swimming, or sleeping. And it's the fastest-charging Apple Watch,

getting you 8 hours of charge in just 15 minutes. The Apple Watch Series 10. Available for the first time in glossy jet black aluminum. Compared to previous generations, iPhone XS or later required, charge time and actual results will vary. Mayday, mayday, we've been compromised. The pilot's a hitman.

I knew you were going to be fun. On January 24th. Tell me how to fly this thing. Mark Wahlberg. You know what the difference between me and you is? You're going to die. Don't shoot him, we need him. Y'all need a pilot.

Flight Risk.