Kyle Kingsbury Podcast - #258 Robby Sansom - Force of Nature Meats

Episode Date: June 23, 2022

Robby is a rare breed in many ways, specifically though, he’s actually an Austin native. He is one of the founders of Force of Nature Meats where they are healing the planet through regenerative ruminant agriculture. We’re for sure running it back so stay tuned and go support them at the link below! Connect with Robby and Force of Nature:   Website: forceofnature.com “KKP” at checkout Instagram: @forceofnaturemeats  Facebook: Force of Nature Meats  YouTube: Force of Nature Meats  Podcast: Where Hope Grows Podcast Apple - Spotify   Sponsors:   Bioptimizers - Nootopia To get ahead of a day when you’re a little behind on sleep, check out the geniuses at Bioptimizers newest nootropic baby. Nootopia. Head over to Nootopia.com/KINGSBU and enter “KINGSBU10” at checkout for 10% off your entire order. Equip Foods Is an ultra-clean protein/supplement company sourcing their ingredients from high quality beef while keeping the flavor on point. Go get their whole host of great products at www.equipfoods.com/kkp and use “KKP” at checkout for 20% off!  Lucy Go to lucy.co and use codeword “KKP” at Checkout to get 20% off the best nicotine gum in the game, or check out their lozenge. Force of Nature The homies at Roam Ranch are on board yall! Get over to https://forceofnature.com  for their incredible regeneratively raised bison and beef. Try all their newest products and enjoy. Punch in “KKP” at checkout for $15 off your first order, if you happen to see their products in the “wild”, just pick them up at the market and support responsible agriculture.   To Work With Kyle Kingsbury Podcast   Connect with Kyle:   Fit For Service Academy App: Fit For Service Academy  Instagram: @livingwiththekingsburys   Odysee: odysee.com/@KyleKingsburypod  Youtube: Kyle Kingbury Podcast  Kyles website: www.kingsbu.com  Zion Node: https://getzion.com/ > Enter PubKey  >PubKey: YXykqSCaSTZNMy2pZI2o6RNIN0YDtHgvarhy18dFOU25_asVcBSiu691v4zM6bkLDHtzQB2PJC4AJA7BF19HVWUi7fmQ   Like and subscribe to the podcast anywhere you can find podcasts. Leave a 5-star review and let me know what resonates or doesn’t.

Oh, baby, this is a good one. One I've had in the works for three years. I know I mentioned it on the podcast, but I did record an episode with Taylor, one of the co-founders of Force of Nature and Rome Ranch out in Fredericksburg, which you all have heard me talk about a few times here with the bison harvests and regenerative agriculture and all that good stuff. Taylor was, we had originally recorded back in the day out at Rome in Fredericksburg with Cody, his old ranch hand, and I lost the audio to Cody, I believe. So that got scrapped and then we waited to run it back and it was going to be with our buddy today, Robbie Sansom and Taylor from Force of Nature and Rome Ranch. And now Taylor couldn't make it, but I was like, fuck it.

Let's get Robbie on. He's got a wealth of knowledge. And we really dive deeply into the birth of Force of Nature, into the mission behind regenerative agriculture, and into really what is the best practices for health and wellness. What does sovereignty look like? Food sovereignty, getting the right food into our hands and having access to these things. What does the law look like? We talk many, many, many topics. Robbie's one of the few people born and raised in Austin and a lot of transplants here like myself, but he had a lot to say and just a fantastic perspective on all things food related that I really enjoyed. And of course, having our farm right now that we're trying to build out on a much smaller scale, I had a lot to learn from him. So super

pumped to be able to share this one with you guys. Stay tuned. You don't have to stay tuned. Just forceofnature.com, forceofnature.com. Use discount code KKP and you'll get a discount on your first order. So remember that that'll be linked in the show notes. Definitely support these guys as one of the healthiest ways that you can add supplements in the form of food into your diet. Highly bioavailable protein, highly bioavailable micronutrients like heme, iron, vitamin A, fat soluble vitamins you don't get anywhere else. And really that comes from eating nose to tail. It comes from eating the best animals raised in concert in the holiness and concert of a living functioning ecosystem. And these guys are doing great things. We covered a lot of topics on this, but support them by going to forceofnature.com. And that supports me as well because they are a

sponsor now and going forward. And I absolutely love their breakfast sausages. Check those out. The ancestral blend. These guys are sold anywhere, whole foods, sprouts. So pick one up and you can make burgers with it. You can throw it in pasta. If you're into pasta, do whatever you want with it, but you'll be getting some liver and some heart in there from a regeneratively raised grass finished bison, one of the best on earth. And it tastes phenomenal. It tastes like you're eating burger. You just get more nutrients. So make it easy to eat clean and you'll continue to eat clean. There are a number of ways you can support this podcast. First and foremost, share it with somebody who you think gives a shit.

If they'll listen to it, awesome. If they're not going to listen to it, don't bother. Second, leave us a five-star rating with one or two ways that the show has helped you out in life. Or just change your life for the better. It might have been a book I recommended. It might have been a guest. Anything. Just one or two ways the show has helped you out in life.

And third, support our sponsors. They make this show possible. They make it absolutely possible for me to continue doing this awesome job that I have, where I get to talk to some of the most intelligent and amazing people on the planet. So thank you for supporting the sponsors. This episode is brought to you today by Nootopia. How often do you wake up in the morning and instantly wish you had had just another hour of sleep? You hit the snooze button and hope the next time your alarm goes off, you'll feel more energized.

We all have those mornings. And the worst part is trying to turn your brain on to keep up with the demands of the day. Maybe you didn't get enough sleep. You have brain fog. Your energy is low. You just can't concentrate. Do you feel distracted easily? Feel like you're not get enough sleep. You have brain fog. Your energy is low. You just can't concentrate. Do you feel distracted easily? Feel like you're not getting enough done?

Want to say goodbye to bad days for good? Imagine having control over how you feel and being able to turn on your brain within 10 minutes of waking up without coffee or caffeine. Simply flick a switch and turn on your brain within 10 minutes of waking up in the morning and be totally engaged, focused, upbeat, and productive no matter what gets thrown at you. It's like a do not disturb sign feature for your brain. All of a sudden, everything seems to be going your way. You're in the zone. You're having your best ideas. You're happy. People are smiling at you. You don't get easily distracted. Your mind is clear and it just feels like the universe is on your side. I've personally experienced this over the past few months since trying Nootopia.

Nootopia is the most advanced brain support and cognitive enhancement system that I have ever tried. They specialize in personalized brain supplements, also known as nootropics. If you've never heard of nootropics or brain supplements, don't worry. They've been around for a long time and are safe, legal, and used by millions of top performers around the world to enhance mental performance. It's safe, natural, non-addictive, and you can choose blends that don't have caffeine. So if you're caffeine sensitive, don't worry about that. And unlike other products, there are no crashes, no jitters, no after effects. Simply turn on your brain within 10 minutes of waking up every

morning and the effects consistently throughout your day. I highly recommend the Nootopia system for anybody looking to take their focus and mental game up to a new level. They also stand by their products with a 365-day money-back guarantee. Ta-da! Hey, all right, go here now and experience your best mood and mental performance

with personalized Nootropics. Go to nootopia.com slash kingsboo and enter the coupon code kingsboo10 at checkout for an extra 10% off. One more time, n-o-o-t-o-p-i-a.com slash k-i-n-g-s-b-u and then k-i-n-g-s-b-u all caps with the number 10 for 10% off any order. Our next sponsor is equipfoods.com slash KKP. Equip was founded in 2016 by former podcast guest, Dr. Anthony Gustin, because he felt that people should be able to get exactly what they need in supplements and nothing else. No additives, chemicals, fillers, or other junk. We are proud to provide some of

the shortest ingredients lists in the supplement industry made from 100% real foods. Our best selling product is Prime Protein, a grass-fed beef protein powder that tastes like dessert. 4.9 stars with over 700 reviews. Here's a breakdown of each product and some common questions. Prime Protein comes in chocolate, vanilla, and strawberry. It's grass-fed beef isolate protein providing complete protein. One scoop of protein is equivalent to four ounces of grass-fed beef. That's phenomenal. A lot of people get gastrointestinal issues with things like whey protein, casein, and the like. You can avoid all that by simply having steak in a glass. And the best part is it tastes nothing like beef.

It's going to taste like chocolate, vanilla, or strawberry, and it absolutely tastes delicious. Prime protein is paleo and keto approved. It tastes like dessert, not beef, and there's 30 servings per bag. I typically use this either intra-workout or immediately following a workout. You can add it to cookies. You can do a whole lot of stuff with it. It's absolutely incredible. It blends well in oatmeal and yogurt for the kiddos. They have a complete collagen, which is absolutely phenomenal. My mom, my wife makes, the mother of our children, she makes a phenomenal chocolate mousse, which uses this collagen in it. And it's an excellent way to increase the ability for your body to repair itself on hair, skin, and nails and interconnective tissue, as well as collagen is also protein sparing, meaning your body's going to take a certain amount of protein each day to create collagen. So you can repair connective

tissue, your hair, skin, nails, and all that other good stuff. If you supplement with collagen, that allows the rest of the protein you're eating to then be used for muscle recovery. So adding collagen can be a terrific way to make sure that you're bulletproofing your joints and at the same time allowing yourself to get better gains in the gym. And last but not least, one of my all-time favorites is PureWOD, the pre-workout. PureWOD is a natural energy to crush your workouts without the crash. It's made from real food sources including coconut water powder, green tea, and fruit powders. There's no artificial junk or harmful additives. It's got 200 milligrams of clean, slow-release caffeine from green tea in each scoop, four grams of creatine monohydrate,

two and a half grams of beta-alanine, one and a half grams of L-citrulline malate, two grams of L-leucine, a gram of L-isoleucine, and a gram of L-valine with 500 milligrams of L-arginine AKG 2 to 1. That's going to give you the pump that we're all looking for, 500 milligrams of L-carnitine, which will mobilize fat for fuel and only 20 calories per serving with less than one gram of carb and four grams of protein. It is clean. It is easy to take in and it will for sure enhance your workouts. I guarantee it. Check all of this out over at equipfoods.com slash KKP and then enter code KKP at checkout for 20% off everything in their store. That's E-Q-U-I-P-F-O-O-D-S.com slash KKP. And remember KKP at checkout for 20% off. All right. We're also brought to you by Lucy.co. Lucy, L-U-C-Y.co. Lucy.co

has been a very long sponsor of this podcast. They are a phenomenal way to work with one of the greatest nootropics of all time, nicotine. Look, we're all adults here and I know some of us choose to use nicotine to relax, focus, or just unwind after a long day. Lucy is a modern oral nicotine company that makes nicotine gum, lozenges, and pouches for adults who are looking for the best, most responsible way to consume their nicotine. It's a new year. Why not start it out by switching to a new nicotine product that you can feel good about? I recently tried the pouches and I can say that they hit hard and quick. They are a phenomenal way to gather one of the greatest nootropics of all time, nicotine. And this stacks well with caffeine. This also stacks well with other nootropics.

So if you're into this stuff and you want to maximize your productivity, how you're able to digest and process, and also have a shorter half-life, this is one of the things that makes nicotine such a wonderful chemical from nature is that it's not going to keep you up for five or six hours. It's got about a 45 to 60 minute window. You can just take it right in. Right after I read to Bear, I get him in bed, give him a little massage, then I go to bed. That's when I do my reading. And I'll throw in one of these pouches. I'll get my reading done.

And when it's time for me to go to sleep, I pop it out, and I'm ready to go to sleep. No issues whatsoever. Check it all out. Lucy.co, that is L-U-C-Y.C-O, and then KKP at checkout. Don't forget, KKP at checkout. And I have to read this disclaimer warning. This product contains nicotine. Nicotine is an addictive chemical. There we go. That's the

disclaimer. But if you're responsible and you're an adult and you want to try this out, this is one of the best ways you can do it. Lucy.co and KKP at checkout. All right, y'all, we mentioned force of nature here. We're going to dive in deeply into that in one second with my brother, Robbie. But just to give a quick background on some of the stuff they have, they sell sausages, they sell burger, venison, you name it. They've got steak cuts, chicken, pretty much every major meat that you'd want. Wild boar, chorizo, wild boar beef sausages. They've got bison beef sausage, venison beef sausages. They even got amazing breakfast sausages sausage, venison beef sausages. They even

got amazing breakfast sausages, which I absolutely love. The regenerative beef ancestral blend. You can find that at Whole Foods and Sprouts. They have ground beef, ground bison, ground venison, ground wild boar, ground elk, ground pork. They've got it all. Ground chicken even, and the ground chicken ancestral blend, which is going to have some other good organ meat layered into that, that you likely are not going to even taste. So it's an excellent way to eat nose to tail. These guys are making it highly convenient to get the best possible foods into your body. And you can check it all out at forceofnature.com and then enter code KKP at checkout. And without further ado, you get to hear it from the horse's mouth, my brother, Robbie. Where's he living now?

Because he was only renting there for a minute. Rezvani? Yeah. I have no idea. He bounced around. He's been so damn busy with Zion. I haven't been to the new spot. I need to talk to him.

I need to learn. There's so much I need to learn about that stuff. Fascinating. The beautiful thing is that, and Michael Mead said this yesterday on the podcast, that he breaks down the root etymology of genius. And it basically, the basic understanding when that first came into the language itself,

it had to do with the unique gift that each soul was given when it incarnated. And so finding your genius wasn't becoming Einstein. It was remembering the unique gift that you brought to the tapestry. And when we each weave our own unique gift, then we're no longer demanding of everyone else, save it the way I'm saving it, create it the way I'm creating it, focus on this one problem because each person brings their unique gift into the fold and that creates the new tapestry. So I love that. And I'm thinking about that, like there's a lot that I don't understand

around crypto, around, I understand the need for something like, you know, social media and utilities company that's built on blockchain. So you can't have, you know, you can't be kicked off of Instagram or YouTube, things like that. Right. Um, and then the need for that from an information standpoint, so that people can be made aware of things that go counter to the narrative, all that stuff. But if it's not my wheelhouse, I've been able to surrender that at least and say like, we already got people working on it, you know? Yeah. I know. And when I was younger too, the, you know, I love that, that, that, that concept too, right? Like everybody is your teacher in something, right? Maybe it's call it genius, call it, you know, it just, like I said, being, being a teacher, right. Being able to influence

you and help you understand and improve your experience. And if anything else, learn what not to do or how not to be, but, learn what to appreciate and see value in people and community. I think that's all those concepts tie together. Yeah, exactly. Everyone in the community is not going to be a warrior. Everyone in the community is not going to be the shaman. But each has their own gift, and when expressed properly, that fits the whole in a holistic sense.

Then we have wholeness. we got a lot to dive into. I know. We're going to- The typical theme of this podcast is the intro is really getting to know you as a person. What was your life like growing up and what brought you into the industry that you're in now? We'll dive into what that industry is and what it means for the world and why it's so vitally important and why I've also joined forces on a much smaller scale, but to really seed the planet in a way that can be beneficial going forward. And then I'm sure we can dive into all other topics that we want to jump on. But what was life like growing up for you? Did you grow up farming? Did you grow up in the city? And what kind of drew you towards the passion of being in regenerative

agriculture? Yeah, I grew up here in Austin, Texas. Awesome. You're one of the few. One of the few, along with my co-founders in Force of Nature and Katie and Taylor both, right? And we'll get to that. But I grew up here in Austin. I have family out in the hill country. So I was fortunate enough to get to spend time out in Johnson City, halfway out to Fredericksburg where you've been a bunch of time and one of the cool features of being in central texas is that you know you're close to that and you know even maybe a half a day's drive from the mountains if you want to go to new mexico or colorado but you're also a few hours from the coast and so i grew up doing a whole lot of fishing on the coast as well so a lot of time outdoors a lot of time in natural settings and developing an appreciation for wildlife and an appreciation for connecting with nature and harvesting our own food. And then of course grew up in the city too,

right? And so, you know, had kind of a classic growing up experience for folks that have been in that environment, playing sports, being on teams, things like that. Yeah. It's an interesting parallel. I mean, I came out here. I beat, I like to say, I beat the rush of Californians coming out in the last two years by getting here five years ago. Um, but similarly, I remember like the big qualm my wife had was even if Texans were cool and Austin was a blue city, which we wanted because we were from California. Uh, I just laughed from the, yeah, anywho, people know why I laughed there. It was missing out on the mountains. It was missing out on a 40-minute drive to Santa Cruz. It was missing out on all the three-hour drive to Tahoe. The beauty of the Bay Area still exists

as that. The consciousness around how we should live has changed dramatically. And I think that's why we beat the rush getting here. And we see a lot of people doing that. But I grew up in the city and we moved to Turlock for about a year, which is in Central California. It's a lot of agriculture, but it's like shit agriculture. You know, it's the wrong way to do it. But my great uncle, Uncle Larry, he had a 40 acre peach orchard and he raised mules, which he entered every year into the Mule Days competition. He had eight blue ribbons.

It was really prized animals that were just incredible. So he could ride mules. That sounds like a hoot. Yeah, it was awesome. But that was the thing I was so pleasantly surprised with when I came here is you are fully immersed in nature. Is it different? Absolutely. It's completely different than California and it's hills instead of mountains. And it's a four hour drive to the coast instead of a 40 minute drive to the coast. But all that's still here. And like you said, you know, we're, it is because Texas is so damn massive, you know, like it was eight hours from San Jose to San Diego, going lengthwise through California. It's eight hours to El Paso going east to west, not even crossing the state completely. And we've done some road trips heading back to Arizona and cutting through Roswell, New Mexico and Colorado and all these different places. It's cool to feel like it's not far and then to still

know we get rain in four seasons, we get snow here, we get brutally hot summers, which we're experiencing right now. Like you're always connected to the timing and the circadian rhythm of the seasons. And that's something that really is missing when you're in a pampered environment like California, you just don't experience the big swings. So I've really appreciated the connection to nature since coming here and the connection to y'all. Like it's, it seems like, you know, this was the birthplace of whole foods. This is the birthplace of a lot of regenerative agriculture. And it really seems like this whole state is primed to be that guiding force and doing these, these things going forward. I love that. I love that. Well, that's a cool, that's a really cool story. And I love that

perspective too, right? Like Texas can be comforting and comfortable and build resilient communities, but it can also test you. And I think those tests are important, right? When it's 100 degrees outside, that's rough. You're walking around the hill country, we have snakes that'll kill you. And there's some badass stuff out there that you gotta be mindful of. And so I think it's more of a complete human experience than, as you said, a more, uh, refined and, and, and more kind of contrived human experience. Yeah. I mean, I remember Rogan talking a lot about, you know, when you're in LA, you can't see

the stars at night. There's too much pollution. Um, you get coastal fog, then it's sunny, but it's sunny, you know, 330 days a year, very, very little bit of rain and all that. And it's just kind of like a, there's a way of disconnecting you from your surrounding environment, you know, and making life like your own little unique perspective of life seems so damn important because you miss out on the whole. I remember Laird Hamilton talking about that. Like when you get on a big wave, you, the first thing you realize is this thing is far greater than me. The power is far greater than me. And you have to surrender to that and listen to it and go with the flow of that. And I think one thing that Southern Texas does is it reconnects you to that part of that expansiveness and that diversity of terrain creates diversity of culture too.

And I think there's value. And there's a lot of people here that came from California that I agree with and don't agree with and so on and so forth. But I think that's important. I think that tolerance is important. And yeah, I just think Texas has a really, really cool way of allowing for people to mix up. But I think one of the founding, one of the core values is independence, right? Like just, I want to respect you as an individual and as a person and as somebody that has a right to so many things that I also have a right to, but

kind of stay out of my business, you know? And I'll allow the same for you. Right. And I'll extend that same courtesy to you. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. I had, I had, I had grappled a lot with'll allow the same for you. Right. And I'll, and I'll extend that same courtesy to you. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. I had, I had, I had grappled a lot with that over the last two years. Cause a lot of the thought of the joke was like the caravans coming from New York and California. Don't forget why you left, you know, do not forget why you left and, and, and still continue

to, to bring that ideology here. And you know, what, what helped me alchemize that was understanding that these conversations don't happen on the West coast and the East coast. And I know they do in pockets, but if you look at the salad bowl that's become Austin and the surrounding areas, this is where these conversations are happening. stepping of government? What is an overstepping of human rights? What is, what should be made our choice? What should not be our choice? All of these things I think get to happen here. And, um, I, I have, I think there's promise in that because we can, we can connect to one another and really iron out the details and the fogginess of everything that's going on in the world. And, and, and, and that's one of the things that's always made Austin special. And I hope you retain that. Um, there, there was an interesting, it made Austin special. And I hope you retain that.

There was an interesting, it was, you know, I watched that show Yellowstone. I keep hearing about it. Yeah. It's way, it's like Dallas, the sitcom or the show Dallas. Very dramatic over the top, completely unbelievable, but beautiful. You know, great, great story. But there was one great quote when somebody, because there's a lot of people moving out out that way and so boy was asking his dad what's a transplant dad and he's like well transplant somebody that moves that tries to get away from something somewhere and moves to someplace new so that they can

re-establish that very thing they tried to get away from in a new spot um but you know i think one of the things that's always made austin special is that idea of that melting pot right it's always been the hippies and the rednecks that, you know, Willie Nelson and, and then, and then the, and the Cowboys and this, this, this beautiful environment of tolerance, right? Like, again, it's okay if you see, think, see, and feel differently than I do, I will tolerate that. Right. And it's a place for conversation and for collaboration and understanding. And it's probably not the impression that a lot of people on the outside get, but again, that is what Austin is. It's part of that keep Austin weird mantra, right?

Yeah. And it's one of the things I'm anxious about. I'm concerned, right? I've seen that, I've seen in a lot of ways and even broadly beyond Austin, us become less tolerant, right? It's either you're with me or against me. It's binary.

Either you agree with everything I agree with or I have to villainize you and identify you as lesser than human so I can justify pretty extreme actions against your intolerance towards you. And I hope we don't lose that. I hope Austin retains that special component of its character, because I think that is going to be important for healing and change. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. And I don't know if you're familiar with Douglas Murray as an author. He wrote The Death of Europe, I think maybe five years ago, but his last two, and now I'm drawing a blank. The War on the West is his most recent. It's a phenomenal book. I'm talking about the war on Western culture, critical race theory, kind of a lot of today's hot, sticky subjects. And then before that, the madness of crowds, which came out in 2019, which was just like the kitchen sink of culture, cultural issues and political issues. And it's, it's so brilliantly written, but he really talks about the, the softening that's required for

understanding for forgiveness to take place for any true healing to happen. Like we have to come from that place of, I, I, I will allow you to, to think and, and behave in the ways that you will, so long as they don't encroach on me and I will offer, you know, and I hope you offer me the same, you know, and like really coming to that bridge point, but, but let's chat. Let's chat regenerative. Like I know Taylor had a similar story. It's funny. Cause I was really hoping Taylor would be on today, but that gives us another opportunity to run it back. When I had Taylor on with his old ranch hand, God, why am I forgetting his name? We did it out at Rome ranch and you know, rookie mistake. I was just me. And now I check on audio and make sure everything's going so we don't lose the 12 minutes here and everything's rolling and

we look good. But I lost one of their audio for the whole thing. Their mic wasn't fucking plugged in. And so we had to scrap it. But I know Taylor has a similar story, grew up in Austin, you know, drawn to the country. Talk about, you know, epic force of nature. Talk about Rome Ranch. Talk about like the, where did the birthing ideas of these things start to become apparent as a real see a need, feel a need type situation? Like, okay, we see that the tide has shifted in a certain direction. When did you first get switched on to, I know you've been hunting and things of that nature, but when did food become such a prominent area that you wanted to get into? Yeah. Well, so I spoke a little bit about my early childhood. Then I, you know, went on to business school here at UT for undergrad and graduate school

and went into do work and consulting for big businesses and just felt really uninspired, right? Unfulfilled more than anything, right? Like you want to do something meaningful and purposeful and that, you know, makes a difference, right? If it's just padding your pocket or somebody else's pocket and shifting wealth, that doesn't drive me in any way whatsoever. So I left and found entrepreneurship and startup life, right?

Went to work for a startup company that was in the information product industry. And we grew really fast and did some really incredible things. And it taught me a ton. And at a young age, I was in a senior position overseeing close to 100 people and nearly a dozen different departments within this company. And that was really cool and special. And it gave me just some really valuable learning about what it is to be a leader, what it is to develop people and be in a

mission-based environment and figure out how to be scrappy and do it all simultaneously. And meanwhile, you know, Katie and Taylor, you've talked about Taylor and, you know, they, we all grew up together. We all went to the same high school together, you know, all of this stuff. Katie was a little freshman while Taylor and I were seniors, you know, but I knew Katie since we were in elementary school because we grew up in the same neighborhood. So it's just this really interesting background between us. But they went to a college here just south of Austin and fell in love, and they have a really cool and beautiful story that I can't do justice to. But they started a couple of businesses together, and one of them ended up being a business that is a vegan energy bar company, right? They were plant-based.

They were trying to follow the conventional wisdom of doing what was right for human health and what's right for ethics and living a moral life and what's right for the environment, because that's what they were told. That was the narrative. And the harder, the further and harder they went down that path, the more challenged they, the more challenges they have, right? Their health was challenged. And, you know, Katie was trying to compete at the Ironman World Championships and was struggling and, you know, kind of the more difficult it became, the more, the more hardcore they went. They went, you know, vegetarian, vegan, raw food, juice, just kind of just followed the dogmatic guidance and eventually figured out, hey, this isn't working for us. We need to rethink it and reincorporated animal-based protein and

almost immediately saw things improve for them, which is a story you hear time and again. Right. Marxist and Rob Wolf, the carnivore dog, Paul Saladino, all were diehard vegans. At some point, right? Until they reached the brink of health consequences and then switched back. Yeah. And they're, you know, trying to stay on the leading edge. And now, fortunately with information being shared so broadly and at such a nearly instantaneous rate, you know, we're all able to open our eyes a little bit more and break out of the, you know, the propaganda machine that was feeding us a bunch of lies.

Um, nonetheless, um, so they had a vegan energy bar company and change their, change their, their diet and lifestyle. And that was really where Epic came from. It's kind of like, okay, well we need to sustain, um, we need healthy protein. We need protein as nature intended it. And that includes animals. And if we can get it in a shelf-stable packable form, that'd be incredible. However, we still have that value set, right? We still care about welfare of animals and we still care about the environment and we still care about human health. And so where does, how do we, you know, we've been told our whole lives that you can't consume animal protein and maintain those values,

which is also a bunch of bullshit, but we didn't know it at the time, right? And so that was the dawn of Epic, right? Like, let's try to find a way to address these issues. And we ended up reconnecting right at the launch of Epic and I came on as the CFO and COO, having done all the business stuff, right? And scaling and growing and numbers and people. And, you know, Katie and Taylor are just incredible visionaries and they're special. And, you know, Taylor's ability to tell a story is unparalleled and the romance that he brings and Katie's just heart and soul inspires and drives accountability and make sure that we don't, you know, make those easy compromises that happen over time, right?

And, you know, translating that into regenerative agriculture, that's the journey that we went down. And you started peeling back layers of the onion. Where does healthy meat come from? Well, you know, it comes from healthy animals. And healthy animals happen to come from healthy ecosystems and healthy environments. And what makes healthy ecosystems is healthy soils and balance and diversity. And it kind of gets into these principles of regenerative agriculture.

And we crossed paths with the Savory, with Alan Savory and the Savory Institute and began working with them. And, you know, this is about a decade ago that all this is going down. All of this is below ground at that stage. Right. I mean, and that, and, and, and, and that really kind of grew until, you know, the, the next chapter where, where we sold it. I can, I can elaborate more on that journey if you'd like. Yeah, absolutely. No, I do want to pry into the educational aspects as well. Cause I know one of the things when I had Chad Johnson on the podcast, who's a permaculture expert under study of Sepp Holzer, people wanted to know more. Where can I learn more?

Which books should I read? So I like giving them tools like that. aspects, not only for what we offer or what we're going to offer, but also for us as team members to really grasp is we are going to hit up a Savory Institute hub in Virginia and do a four or five day training out there. So I'm pumped. Tell me more about that. He was briefly, I shouldn't say briefly, he was highlighted in a Kiss the Ground documentary. And I know you guys just had that filmmaker out at your last event. Yeah. We sponsored the film too. That's so cool. That is so cool. Yeah.

There was a couple things in there that were a little narrative-y around like eat less meat, that kind of stuff. And it wasn't like, and always eat regenerative. That was nice. But no, don't eat less. Just eat regenerative and you'll be fine. And there's more than enough to go around. But yeah, savory was highlighted in that. And because it's new, and at least new to me, I'm trying to learn from the, who's the Mount Rushmore, right? So you got a Holter, you got a Richard Perkins, you've got an Alan Savory, and just really finding who those

people are and then seeking out where can we gather as much knowledge and wisdom from these people as possible. Yeah. And what's crazy is if you actually go, you could go back real far. You could go back to Aristotle and Socrates or more recently, you could go back to FDR and the Dust Bowl. I mean, it's just like, unfortunately, these are lessons that we've learned time and again through the, literally through the millenniaia as many great civilizations have risen and collapsed, you know,

partially due to resource degradation and the compromises that makes in the fiber of a society. Right. But, but, but kind of going, going back to our, our journey and regenerative to getting it to where it is. And then, and then, you know, maybe translating that for some, for some folks as you know, how they can support that and learn as consumers or maybe even land stewards. Right. We, we solidified our partnership with, with, with Savior grew Epic. We were fortunate enough to be acquired by General Mills and really interesting transaction where we really didn't want to sell, but, um, you know, they came to us with the right proposition, meaning we won't terminate any of your employees. We won't eliminate

any of your supplier processor relationships. We won't adulterate the product, right? We actually want to learn from you. We actually want you to influence our organization. You'll be one of the smaller, if not the smallest brand in our portfolio, but have the capacity to drive the biggest change. And it's like, well, what the hell are we doing? All these startups and these mission-based businesses, if it isn't to influence that scale and sure we could, we could wait. Um, and a different partner might come along and there might be more money on the table, but that's not why we're doing it, right? We're doing it to drive change. And so found the right partner. And it was, it was, you know, fortunately, um, you know, John Forker and Dan, you know, founder of founder of Annie's was a liaison for us in that. And,

you know, we were able to really fund a lot of the land to market ecological outcome verification program that Savory's done to kind of create a consumer facing seal. And we were able to fund the life cycle assessment done out at Wide Oak Pastures that empirically validates the potential for carbon sequestration and regenerative systems. And in other words, you know, to simplify that one, the study showed that in order to offset the carbon footprint of one impossible burger or one beyond burger, you have to eat one regenerative beef burger, right? Like it's actually doing, it's actually sequestering carbon out of the atmosphere into the environment versus just being less bad and having a whole slew of toxic externalities and other consequences. We can talk about how evil these plant-based meats are, but it was really cool for us to be able to do that and drive that.

General Mills became the first large company and the first Fortune 500 company to make a commitment to convert its supply chain to regenerative agriculture. So 3 million acres of wheat, which would be going into like Cheerios and Nature Valley and stuff like that. So really glad and cool to be able to do that. But then that, you know, after three years of running that brand for General Mills, it became clear to me that my time was better spent furthering our mission in regenerative agriculture and going into the meat business, you know, fresh and frozen meat means I can translate that mission from ounces into pounds. And that's really the genesis of Force of Nature.

Katie and Taylor had kind of in conjunction with this purchased a piece of property out in Fredericksburg, named it Rome Ranch. They own that, it's entirely theirs. Rome Ranch is 100% Katie and Taylor. They're nice enough to let myself and Kirk, who you met, our VP of operations, have some bison in their herd

and we pay them a grazing fee, but we get to participate. And also it's sort of like we're walking the walk, you know, I mean, we're not full of shit. And we talk to ranchers and talk about these values and doing these things. We get to be a part of it and in some capacity and we'd be hosting tours and doing things out there and folks would come and say, holy shit, this makes sense. I see all these disparate issues, whether it be pollinators and toxins in our food and soil loss and protein and carbon sequestration from atmospheric carbon. All of these things I thought were these disparate issues, dead zones in oceans, they all connect at agriculture and the scale of agriculture is massive, right? 11 billion acres out of 30 billion acres across the globe.

Nearly half of the land mass of the United States of America is under some form of agriculture right now. It is impacting everything in ways that are almost unfathomable to the average person. And we have the capacity to do something about that. And they have these epiphanies and then they say, okay, now I want to change the way I, what systems I support and what kind of meat I purchase. How do I do that? And the call to action was just, it's a lot, right? You got to go visit, you got to read a book,

become an expert, go visit somebody. Maybe there was an online business at the time where you could source a beef item or a something item. But, you know, we kind of reluctantly decided, okay, startups, I mean, people see that, hear about the glamor okay startups i mean people see that hear about the glamour side of it they don't hear about the grind it sucks it's hard it's really really challenging and in every way imaginable and every and it never gets easy but you know we felt like it was incumbent upon us to try to create a brand that addressed some of those

challenges right to create more awareness about these concepts in regenerative agriculture and more access then so once you have that awareness and you can decide for yourself, kind of like we were talking about earlier, right? Is this for me or not? Am I happy with what I'm getting now that I know what it actually is? Or do I want something a little different, a little better? You should have that awareness and then you should have access to a choice to do something about it. And you actually connect to a supply chain where you're supporting a community in a rural area and supporting a processor in a region, in a small, middle-sized regional capacity that's supporting ranchers and producers in that same arena, right? And that's what we're effectively kind of what we're trying to do at Force of Nature, right?

Create that access and awareness, facilitate the creation of that supply chain, support the heroes on the ground doing the really difficult work. And the truth is, the plight of the farmer and the rancher in America is devastating. It's a tragedy. Our system is failing them. And we're all complicit in that system until we do something about it. We lose five, maybe 10,000 farms a year. That's just numbers on a stat. Those aren't farms. Those are families. That's legacies, right?

That's generations. It's generations. It's their identity. It's their sense of self-worth. Five to 10,000 a year. Back at the turn of the 19, you know, in the 1900, maybe I think it was like 30% of the population was working the land. Now it's something like three to 5%. And we're losing more every day. Suicide for farmers you've heard is higher than that of veterans. It's just a failed system and it's

producing food that is toxic and unhealthy and consumers are complicit in it. We're these consumptive machines that are doing what we're told. And we don't even realize it in many cases, right? We're buying what we're told, how we're told, where we're told, why we're told, we're told what to think and not to ask questions. And so, you know, I just think that's wrong in so many ways and we're trying to do something about it. Absolutely. Yeah. So much comes up from thinking about that, even from like the, the sell to General Mills early on was like, I think one of the key takeaways in the, in the documentary food Inc, which is one of my favorites by the end of it, they say you vote with your dollar. Right. And, and, and the big corporations like Walmart are listening. Right. So they showed like we walked through a Walmart and they showed, and you could say everything you want about how they treat their employees and all that shit. All right, cool. Let's table that.

But at least from a market standpoint, they had organic yogurt in there and they had organic cheese because, and this was, you know, the documentary is a bit older, but people were demanding it. Right. So then it showed up, it became available. And I think that that is such a crucial piece is like, A, can we get access to as many people as possible? B, so long as they're not going to fuck with the product itself and try to squeeze every last cent out of it, if the intention is there to learn from you guys and to want to be

able to scale this stuff, then that is the massive intention, right? Because that gives people access and then we have that choice through knowledge and information of what we want to put into our bodies. Joel Salatin said on the last, you know, of course, he's featured in Food Inc. The last time he was on Rogan's that something like one in 10 people will need to get into regenerative agriculture in order for us to not reach some type of interstellar, you know, corn growing scheme that we wind up with, with a massive dust bowl. And I think that is an important piece. If you're not going to be

one of those 10, that you support the one in 10 that are actually doing this in a way that's sustainable for the planet and for us. And another key point that he brought up was, Rogan playing devil's advocate, like he always does, you know, was talking about, can you sustain the whole planet doing this? And what about the costs? And Salatin just beautifully illustrated that what you're paying for, you're paying for your health. This is preventative care. When you eat something that is connected to the earth and has lived a healthy life, that puts health and vitality into your body. You can go cheap right now at McDonald's, but eventually you're paying for your health on credit. Do you want the chemo bills?

Do you want the medication bills? Do you want all of the lying on your deathbed and the headache that that costs? What is the true cost of that? Or you can pay up front now for something that is going to make you and your family healthier and you don't have to realize any of these genetic issues that a lot of people are going through. Oh man, I really want to dive into the true cost of food because we can go so deep there. But I do want to, I just want to point out too, and because you said it, right? You vote with your dollars. What I think is interesting, another way of looking at that is, you know, no company,

however big, Walmart included, no company is going to make a product a consumer won't buy. Right? So we start to say, hey, we expect more, we expect better. That's what we're going to get. You know, we sit there and fall in line and buy what we're told and continue to accept that they're going to race to the bottom to pursue profits at the expense of our best interests. And if we want to be the victims of that and continue to support a vicious cycle to the detriment of ourselves, the land, communities, the environment, then that's the system that we're in. And that system's actually racing towards a cliff. So I would say there's an illusion of choice that we have to do something

about it. Because if we don't do something, it's a devastating reality. So even that has a shelf life on it. But the other side of it too, on this idea of voting is, you know, I think we kind of have an apathetic attitude towards voting. Even, you know, we think about it from on the political spectrum, right? Like, well, I don't like my options. I don't like option A or option B, so I'm going to abstain. Well, when it comes to consumption, you don't get to abstain. You're voting, period. Right? So either you're voting for change or you're voting for the status quo and you're complicit in the system and whatever adverse consequences come with it. Yeah. I think it's important that we understand those adverse consequences.

You know, that's something that I really loved in that podcast that never aired was Taylor had just had out a soil expert on their land. And the general consensus was that it would take 10 years to raise organic material in the soil 1%. And what they had found was that that wasn't actually the case, that when we were regenerating the land, that it could raise 10x faster than that. And they had done some soil samples and found that there was about a 3% raise on average in the three years that they had been doing the regenerative agriculture, literally 10x faster.

Nature's response to a harmonious way of producing food was exponentially better than they had ever imagined. And that to me shows the proof is in the pudding, right? When you talk about carbon cycles and closed chain loops, you have the ability to sequester carbon for 500 years when you're doing it from a regenerative standpoint. And you can offset what the vegans are eating, right? So it's multifold. But yeah, talk about the true cost of food and really break down some of the key issues

from an environmental standpoint that are solved, the solutions that lie within regenerative. Yeah, and I will say this, I think on Salatin's position on how much change needs to happen, I think there's a lot of different folks have looked at it a lot of different ways. And I think, again, much like everything else,

diversity helps. But I do think that we continue to be surprised at the power of nature, right? 500 plus years to make an inch of topsoil in nature, you can do it in seven to 10 years following regenerative practices, right? And so like the potential is massive. And this is an area in a field where we understand less about the soil than we do about the rainforest or the oceans, right? And then when you think about the true cost of food, you know, we fail to appreciate complexity. We're all victims of a society that promotes reductionist thinking, right? And we focus on the shelf price. We focus on this illusion of what the value is on what's behind it.

And I think if you look at what the, in the case of meat, right? If you look at what is going on to promote there being cheap meat, it's on the backs of those farms. It takes a system that grinds up and spits out human beings and their family in order to produce cheap commodities. It takes, you know, putting animals in an industrial factory setting, not treating them like living sentient beings, but putting them literally in factories, confining them, confining their diet, making it entirely artificial, not allowing them to express their

biological innate behaviors, let alone fulfill the important role and potential they have in nature. It creates all of those terrible, catastrophic, global realities that we're facing and promoting, again, high atmospheric carbon levels, dead zones in oceans, acidification of oceans, loss of pollinators, extreme floods, extreme droughts, extreme weather, glyphosate showing up in breast milk and toxins in our food, less nutritious food, all of these things tie to what I was talking about earlier, the scale of agriculture. You know, the largest welfare program in the United States is the Farm Bill, where we paid farmers to produce food that is getting to the point now

where it's so engineered that it basically isn't hardly food. It needs to be incredibly processed to be put into as an ingredient in other food. Yeah, several countries won't even accept our grain. Yep, and we produce it at a loss, but our tax dollars go to fund them to do that so we can perpetuate this system, right? And all of that translates to propping up the illusion of this cheap price, right? But what you're getting and what you exchange for in cheap is you lose value, right? And when you support that system, you take agriculture,

you remove the culture and you create agribusiness. It's only about the numbers. It's only about the profits. But they get a lot of money and they get a lot of profits and they do a whole lot of socializing and engineering and training

the way that we think and perceive things, right? Because the flip side of that is, you know, supporting regenerative systems, you're actually addressing and mitigating and resolving all those issues that we just highlighted. And you're doing it in an ethical and moral way. We're doing it in an evolutionarily consistent way.

We could probably get into some esoteric and spiritual stuff and say, we're living a life that's more consistent with our design and with the design of the planet and the ecosystem and the super organism that we're a part of, yeah, you're trading off your health bills, you know, the lower likelihood of cancer, heart disease, diabetes, dementia, all these things that we're seeing, you know,

mental illness of other varieties, like all these things we're seeing this huge influx of, right? You know, the food that we eat is a major right? The food that we eat is a major driver. The lifestyle that we live is a major driver of that as well. But what else, right? Is better meat expensive? Because you can buy the cheapest of the cheap industrial sick, suffering animal byproduct for $5. And you can get a higher end version of that,

a regenerative version of that for maybe 10 bucks. So you're paying an extra $5. Is that expensive? I would say no. I would say it's not expensive when you look at the value that you're receiving versus what you're actually paying. And if you were to normalize the cost, you'd probably see that that cheap industrial mean, if it isn't incentivized through tax bills and through all these other things and the loss of the toll on human farms and families, it probably costs nearly the same when you level the playing field. But then you can expand that even further and say, okay, well, candy's not cheap, right? When you're in the checkout line, you see the same thing. You got young kids, right? There's a bunch of cheap candy. It catches their eye. Nobody thinks about a

Hershey's bar is expensive. It's a buck 50. But on a price per ounce, that's about $16 a pound. That's way more expensive than a pound of the most expensive regenerative beef you'll ever find. It's way more expensive, right? But that regenerative beef, that pound of beef is going to give you about 100 grams of protein, all the micro and macronutrients that you need to survive. You could make a meal for multiple people out of it, maybe even for multiple days, depending on your situation and if you're fasting, right? Now, you can extrapolate that further and go to 7-Eleven, not just buy a Hershey's bar, but buy a bag of hot takis, a big gulp, and whatever thing is rolling on the heater behind the counter. You know what I mean? And you're paying 10 or 11

bucks to be poisoned. I mean, sure, you'll get some calories to fill your tummy for a little bit until that signal in your brain gets tripped again to say, hey, you didn't actually eat any food. You need to eat more crap. But you're not getting anything from it. Again, a pound of protein from a dinner of animals is way cheaper than that. Same thing, look at a value meal at Chick-fil-A. You're looking at like 12, 15 bucks, right? And then you look at paying $30 a pound for almonds. Nobody bats an eye at that.

Look at the prices that we pay for wine and scotch and olive oil and vinegar. And there's all these things that are, they're not even sentient. They're not even living animals that have a journey and vinegar. And there's all these things that are, they're not even sentient. You know, they're not even living animals that have a journey and experience. And they don't, and the other thing too is, you know, these animals,

it's not just about whether they're a sentient animal and then they become food. It's about the life they lived, right? When you go to Rome Ranch and you go to other regenerative ranches all over the country and world, they are performing a service, ecosystem services. Their biological role and potential is extremely important in creating healthy ecosystems that do that job

that we were talking about, addressing that myriad of global challenges that we're facing. We can get more into the education on the facts and awareness as to what those principles are, how this works in practice, some of the data on it. Happy to dive into that too. But, you know, that, that, that, the true cost of food thing is one that really, really affects me because what I see is I see people being deceived and misled and fooled. You know, it's like when you, when you create, when you look at it from a different angle and you, and you create a little bit more perspective, you know, the truth starts to reveal itself and become more self-evident and you create a little bit more perspective, the truth starts to reveal itself and become more self-evident. You can recognize how you've been influenced by powerful

lobbies that are controlling the narrative. Yeah. It's an important piece. I remember, and I know I've said this multiple times on the podcast, but the book, How to Eat, Move, and Be Healthy by Paul Cech was something that fundamentally changed the way that I looked at food. Not only did it point to the reasons for organics and regenerative and soil quality. I remember the guys wearing like a I love dirt shirt fucking 20 years ago. You know, he's pretty ahead of the curve. But he spoke about like some of the things that are legally allowed in to animal feed and the fattening process in their final days, like a certain amount of cement,

a certain amount of cardboard. And it's like, what, what, like really? To increase the fucking weight, bog down the four stomachs so they can't process food and get fat and sick right before slaughter. And that's, you know, just from California's agriculture, you know, and you see this far enough and you realize like, maybe it's agriculture, you see this far enough and you realize maybe it's not

alien beings off planet that are controlling Bill Gates like a sock puppet. It doesn't even have to fucking be that, right? It really doesn't even have to go that far. Money can be a driver and you can follow the money trail. And so these, these unelected officials that are somehow in charge of what goes into our body from the FDA to, to get any of them, you fucking pick an acronym. When you look through the history of what's been allowed in there, it's a joke, you know, like the CDC had commercials, black and white commercials of what the hell was that spray in the seventies DDT getting sprayed. And they were spraying kids and family members eating on a picnic table, DDT it's safe enough for you and your family. And they're eating fucking sandwiches

on a picnic table, whiffing in the DDT, right? Oh, that turned out to be wrong. That turned out to be deadly incorrect. Oh, you mean science isn't always accurate. Yeah. And so we have a laundry list of things like that. And the one thread that spins through that that connects it all is money was a driving factor, right? So it doesn't need to be an evil force. It could fucking be, I don't know. But that clearly has been the driving factor in our food, in our quote unquote health, whatever that means, from a mainstream perspective. I've certainly never found health in a doctor's office. It doesn't mean that I don't have great MDs that I've worked with in the past.

We drive all the way to Marble Falls to meet with Dr. Amy Offutt. It's an hour and eight minutes each direction. So my kids can see functional medicine doctor who knows what the fuck she's talking about and isn't going to force feed us whatever the next pill is. But once we take that, when we wrap our heads around that, the gravity of that situation, we understand that food is thy medicine, let thy medicine be thy food. When we grab these ancient truths and harness them for ourselves, then we get clear on what is our doorway into health, right? And then there's a myriad, there's thousands of books, we got more information than we know what to do with. But I think that fundamental point in which we shift and start to take control of our lives

is one of the most empowering things that we can do. Yeah. And I think, like you said, I mean, I think when you look at it from the political spectrum, it's a game of misdirection, right? And for a long time, the narrative and the propaganda has been easily controlled. But you look at where the money's going, they're contributing to both sides. You know what I mean? And by contributing to both sides, you just create this misdirection, as I call it, or distraction from the reality. Now access to information and truth and people standing up and telling different stories and creating different perspectives is happening at unprecedented rates. And so now you're seeing an accelerated effort to prevent the conversations or censor conversations. Like, wait a minute,

folks are about to wake up and disrupt that flow of money, right? The Ministry of Truth featuring Dolores Umbridge. Yeah, let's keep the money flowing, which is probably an entirely separate podcast, right? But I think, you know, despite governments and despite interests and despite large organizations' best efforts, you know, the power still stands in the people, right? Like we still wield the most awesome weapon of all.

And we talked about it a moment ago, right? It's our behavior, it's our choices, it's what we do. And nothing, nothing can stop a groundswell and an uprising from the front lines of all of us as individuals doing our part to stand up and support and drive change. And again, it's not for me to tell you what to think or how to act or be. I'll tell you, I want to give you access to the truth. I want to give you awareness to issues. And I want to inspire you to understand my perspective. And I would love for more people to agree with me, but if you don't, that's fine. Again, I want to make sure that you have access to the truth and then you have a choice. And that just doesn't exist to the level that it should.

Right. And not everybody, you know, I'm reminded of the first Matrix movie where Joey Paniglione, you know, who turns out to be the weasel inside of the operation. You know, he meets with one of the AI guys and he's sitting there and he's like, I want to eat this steak. And I don't want to wonder if the computer algorithm got it right. You know, ignorance is bliss. You know, there will be people who find the truth and say, no, fuck that.

I'm still going to McDonald's. It's too hard. I'm still going to do the thing, right? Yeah, I can't afford it or whatever the X, Y, and Z is. And look, a lot of people, i take pot shots from people online now on occasion uh because i'm friends with aubrey marcus or different people who have wealth and like i grew up on spam and mac and cheese and it was a it was a really good night you know tuna helper it was a really good night if we got the kielbasa thrown in to whatever pasta dish we

were having right wow all general mill stuff you, like you're getting Cheerios for breakfast, carbs and gluten every day at three squares a day. And then, you know, when I was fighting in the UFC, I lived in my mom's garage for five years. We had our son at Stanford Hospital. We brought him home to my mom's garage. It was a detached garage that we kind of outfitted into a studio.

My wife, who is the fucking angel, lived with me there for five years. We had our son there until he was a year, almost two years old. And thankfully, I had been switched on to Paul. So while I'm living in my mom's garage for 500 bucks a month for rent, utilities, the whole thing, which was a steal in Silicon Valley, I spent every dollar I had on organic grass-fed, grass-finished ground beef. I couldn't afford filet mignon. I couldn't afford a T-bone. I couldn't afford a ribeye, none of those things, but I could afford the grass-fed, grass-finished beef. And so we had grass-fed, grass-finished ground beef. And it was little decisions like that. People look at my kids

now and they're like, damn, that's like a little meatball, you know, and they're so intelligent and they're so aware and so social and all these things. And it's like, yeah, you take the rate limiting factors out of the diet and look what's possible. You know, we're all in a human experiment. Why not run the experiment of health and see what that does for you? Yeah. And it's amazing what you can afford when you cut out all the bullshit. Yeah. Each of those choices, you know, Ramit Sethi was on the podcast years ago. He wrote the book. I will teach you to be rich. Also comical because everybody's like, where's money to this and to that. And it's like,

read the fucking book. He's not, he's not trying to make you in a millionaire. He's trying to help you see where do you bleed out things, money that you don't really need. Do you need the $5 coffee at Starbucks each day? Do you need the X, Y, and Z thing that just 15 different subscriptions to Hulu, Netflix, this and that, right? That all add up. Can that be allocated to something that actually matters to you, right? And when, when you understand this stuff, food does matter. It becomes one of the most important things every day. And it's never like a choice. I mean, people eat at our house all the time because we love cooking for people. It tastes fantastic. Like our healthy food tastes fucking phenomenal, dude. Like when you understand

how to make the right flavor combinations and add the right spices and and pair up you know the right veggies with goat cheese and different things like that like it's it's a no-brainer you know i mean you can make hyper palatable highly processed food by trying to hack you know our our our our engineering right but all you're doing is a cheap substitute for and not even cheap in terms of price, cheap in terms of effort. It's just a substitute for quality, whole foods, meals that you make with your hands, you can identify and your fifth grader can pronounce the ingredients for. You know what I mean? That food is unparalleled.

Any person who tries it or has it says this is amazing right it's that's that that's the that's the real thing that we're trying to imitate as we we cheapen our our effort and food production again in the name of of profits right and um i i totally agree and i think the other thing um that gets lost in convenience and packages and, you know, all the rest of it in the processing is the experience, right? The community, right? Like when you make food as a family, you're connected to it. When you harvest food as a family and a community, you're connected to it. When you share in it, that's an experience. When you appreciate it together, it fuels you differently. It energizes you differently. It inspires you differently, right? You came out to Rome Ranch to do an event that, you know, we at Forest of

Nature helped sponsor in a bison harvest, right? Pretty, pretty powerful experience. And, you know, cheap, quick plug, we're launching a podcast ourselves, not interviewing folks, but telling stories. Taylor's- Oh, I can't fucking wait. Taylor's the narrative and the name of it, get this. I told you nobody does words like Taylor. We're Hope Gross. And the first episode is just talking, him talking through a bison harvest and what's happening.

But there's an instinct in there, a primal nature within us where we want to have that connection to the food and we want to be doing it with other people, whether it's within our family member or just our closer, slightly broader community. And going end to end with that, right? When we're just trying to get calories out of a bag, there's no connection to it, no substance behind it.

And it's lost its essence in its soul. It's probably not good for us in more ways than we can even realize. This makes me want to tell a story. The first harvest we did was two years ago. Wolfie was in the womb. And so we came out and it was just me, my son, my son's friend, Sol, and one of my buddies. And we were told, hey, we're going to have to harvest earlier

than we'd like because this particular female bison was fucking up the ranch end and, you know, had hooked and horned quite a few people and was really just, you know, she was unruly, right? So we had to harvest her in particular. And we came out and I did a seven directions prayer as was taught to me via various medicine men, my boxing coach, who's a Mayan elder at Native American sweat lodges. And it's funny because even just mentioning that, woke culture will shit on my whiteness

being able to do the seven directions prayer. But as Paul Cech states, if it is a gift for the all to connect us Cech states, if it is a gift for the all to connect us to the all, then it is a gift for all. And so the power of this prayer was that out of the herd of 80 some odd bison, knowing we could only get one, she walked out of the fucking herd 50 yards away from the group and presented herself at 20 yards right in front of us, broadside. And like, I was blown away by the connection to the animal at that point. And my son and his friend sat on my lap, you know, at 20 yards and watched her go down. And we came up and we prayed for the animal.

We thanked her. She grew my little girl in the womb. And that's a, it's such a powerful connection piece that you miss, you know, when we're, when it's food is marketed in a way and it's packaged in a way that you're completely out of how that animal got there. You know, there was no relationship, right? I have her, you got a gyro school behind you. We have her gyro school. We've brought in a ceremony with us. Her skin is in my room, you know, like we carry her with us to this day. And she has built both of my children, my wife, she nourished her while my wife was creating our little girl. Like that's such an important experience that reconnects us not only to our food, but to something greater than ourselves. You know, God, that's really beautiful.

I hate to even follow that because it is, it's that profound. It's that deep. It's that personal. And it's that emotional, right? How can you love something but take its life? How can you respect something and be excited for it to die, but simultaneously feel sadness and heavy weighted emotions and then be thankful, it's almost confusing. It's an amalgamy of emotions. And I think some of it ties to us breaking the chains and conditioning of the modern idea of what it is to be human. We have this impression, this misguided impression that there's nature and the natural world and earth, and then there's us. There's our civilization. There's human beings, and we're separate from all of that.

It's like, no, we're a part of that, right? And it's all a part of a system. And in that system, it takes life to sustain life. And the cycle goes life, death, decay, new life. And it's beautiful. All of it is beautiful. Not just life and new life, but the death part and the decay part leading up to and creating new life, right? Nature isn't cruel, right? But she isn't kind either. And that's just, and we have a hard time with that. We have a hard

time accepting death. We have a hard time accepting that it's not about good versus evil. It's just about being and contributing and living and appreciating. And what I think is so fascinating about that story that you shared is, and you had other people in different instances share a similar story, right? These animals, they're a herd. This animal somehow, some way, identified what was happening. And the story behind that food matters, it lived its potential.

It helped regenerate that land. It was doing these things and identified that it was time for its journey to continue in a different way. Self-selected out. You were able to harvest it. What did the rest of the animals do when that happened? They stood, they probably came by, had a moment,

their own experience of reverence, but then they move on. That's just part of it for them. Because in some ways, they have a superior intelligence or they haven't built the facade that blocks the natural intelligence that we all have to recognize that this is life, this is beauty, this is what it takes to exist on this planet. And I think the more that we can connect people to that, the more that we can help them wield that weapon, wield that influence that we were talking about before. It matters. What happens before you find something in a package on a shelf

matters greatly. And you have so much influence over that story and all of the implications and all of the externalities, whether they be to the environment or to the human, to human health or to, you know, you know, different social issues or different ethical realities across the planet. It's it's complex and it, and it's, and it's deep. And it's why we do things like that, right? Because we want to try to create those awarenesses and those of that nature, getting it as close to home as possible. But that's not, you know, there's white oak pastures isn't right down the street from me.

Rome Ranch is, but the highest quality food that people can get would be from a white oak pastures or a Rome Ranch or Enforce the Nature. And that's one of the beautiful things that you guys do is you do connect people to the highest grade possible food that is regenerating the earth. And that to me is more important that we have access to that and then get it as close to home as possible if it does exist. But if it doesn't, you still have access to that

for you and your family. You guys have done a lot of cool things. You've been sending me out boxes of the new breakfast sausage and all the new things that you guys are getting into. And I'm just like, Oh baby, let's go. Like we've got so many good things here coming. Where can people keep up to date with you guys online? Obviously the podcast and then where can people get their hands on your

incredible food? Well, yeah, let me, I definitely want to answer that, but I want to, I want to take a step back. Right. Because I just want to, I think this is important. I think transparency is important. Like, we're not perfect. Our supply chain is not perfect, right? We're trying to build better supply chains and we're trying to celebrate progress and not let our ideals be the enemy of the opportunity to improve food systems, right? I think going back to what you just said, I think the best place to get your food is to don a bow and a rifle and a backpack

and hit the mountains for days and struggle and suffer and fail. And maybe if you're lucky after a few attempts, harvest an animal, an elk, right? And then deal with trying to figure out how do I get that back? How do I work? How do I earn the bounty in the kill?

And then to get it back home, right? There's like, that is the most connected to your food and our evolutionarily consistent reality in the past. I think the next best way to source your protein is as you said, right? Not just local, but local done right. And White Oak Pastures you referenced is a great example of that. There's awesome folks like Stimple Creek in

Marin County in California that are doing incredible things with beef, right? So you find somebody that's passionate, is trying to make a difference, creating incredible proteins in a region and access that, right? That's the next best thing. But to your point, that isn't accessible to everybody. And it may be that there's a great beef producer, but they don't have venison or poultry or something else that you want, right? And that's where I think what we're doing at Force of Nature, we're really the third best option, right? We have nearly all of the proteins and we're available on a national scale, you know, in retail, almost every major

retailer in the country and every, in every state. And we're available in, you know, online, you can order us direct to your door and we're available in restaurants, right? You and I were talking about HopDotty here down the road that's sourcing our bison because they're trying to take a stand to do better and they want to support the regenerative movement. And so we have a brand that is working with White Oak and Stimple Creek and many others, not that we can be local at a national scale and all of the good actors and all of the allies in the space can benefit from it, right? So, you know, I wouldn't want to put us up there next to some of those other folks, right? I mean, it's just we're doing a different thing at a different level

and I want to be transparent about it. You can say you're the head of Voltron and that you're connecting all of the arms and the legs. You guys are the head of Voltron. I'll take that. Maybe, maybe, maybe. But, you know, and then there's, and then there's some just like, there's some natural companies that are, that are greenwashing and misleading. And then there's like the super industrialized, you know, Tyson's, Cargill's, JBS's, you know what I mean? Like those are the folks where I think your point earlier on, I think meat, any meat is better than not meat. And I think the plant-based facade is, is, is, is, is,

is a tragic, cruel and evil lie, right? Plant-based facade is is is is a is a tragic cruel and evil lie right plant-based isn't better just because it's not an animal i mean the plant-based system is worse for the environment than the animal-based system is unquestionably so eat meat you need it um and and and my suggestion would be eat on those top three tiers and you know us being the third rung there um as far as where to learn more about regenerative agriculture, we didn't get into it as much as we could have or probably wanted to. We'll drop some cliff notes and we'll run it back to Taylor for sure. Well, you know, I was just going to say just for more information on us and we could probably dive

in. So, you know, we have a cool website, forceofnature.com. We have blogs and all kinds of access to information and content and some videos. We try to put out inspiring stuff on Instagram too. So at forceofnaturemeets. You know, the Where Hope Grows podcast is literally launching this week. And this is, I guess, I don't know when this podcast will air. It'll air after the fact. So we'll have that linked in the show notes for people. Along with the website and everything else.

Yeah, we're in early June right now. And then, you know, if you go to our website too, we sell a couple of books. Defending Beef is one and the book by Gabe Brown, Dirt to Soil, just good entry level step, you know, interesting reads and expose you to some issues and create some general awareness and good stuff. So that's really what we're trying to do effectively is be a content creation company. That's how you create awareness, right? So we're trying to find more ways to create these experiences and share them. Folks like yourself, right? The partners and ambassadors and people that we work with who allow us, who share their platform with us because our values are aligned and allow us the opportunity

to tell the story and create more awareness for more people to bring them into the fold. You know, I can't thank you and others like you enough for giving us those opportunities. Absolutely. Well, there wouldn't be the opportunity if you guys weren't doing it right. So I really appreciate that. And I've, you know, to say that my experiences at Rome have been life changing is an understatement, you know, it truly is. So I love what you guys are up to. And I'm excited for what the future holds, knowing that you guys are leading the way.

Well, thank you for that. And it just to that last question that you, that you threw out to, you know, I just want to emphasize for folks, it can be confusing, right? So just for some clear, for some clear direction, since we didn't go in, since we didn't go down into the rabbit hole into what is regenerative agriculture, it's not organic. It's not grass-fed. It's not natural, right? Natural doesn't really mean anything.

Organic is an important milestone in improving our food system. It basically says it limits what toxins you can spray on it, but it can still devastate landscapes. It's still a challenged food system that's literally unsustainable and it compromises land and diversity and ecosystems. Grass-fed can be a confusing claim, right? An animal eats grass and then it goes and finishes its life in a CAFO eating grain, getting fat. They consider that grass-fed.

You can make a grass-fed claim in that environment, right? You know, regenerative is the highest level of practice. It means that it lived its life in a pasture, not just in a pasture, but on land that is regenerating. It's land that is improving. It's being stewarded by a rancher or land steward that's practicing, you know, principles of soil health and ecosystem health is supporting reintroduction of natural cycles and processes, the energy cycle, the water cycle, the carbon cycle, and making sure that

their land base is better than they found it. That animal lived an evolutionarily consistent, healthy life. It wasn't one of the six sedentary animals, but it was a thriving animal before it made it to you. And it's what I would consider a virtuous system and seeking to replace the vicious system that exists, right? And I would say grass-fed and finished, organic, natural, all those things are encompassed within regenerative agriculture. So it sort of contains everything else. But everything else doesn't necessarily mean or imply that it's regenerative agriculture. And I think that's an important starting point for people to kind of get and feel. A lot of folks get confused and fooled by those claims or just by the fact that there's a pretty package that's named after a farm.

Grass Run Farms is a brand that's owned by JBS, as an example. You know what I mean? So it's just like, there's a lot of misdirection out there. You just got to open your eyes and pay attention. But the last thing I'll say on that front too is, if they have a story worth telling, they're telling it, right? And if it's all talk and no show, like, Hey, we're good. Trust us. Or look at this, listen to this claim. And there's no, there's no transparency behind it. There's no enthusiasm for highlighting why it's special, why it's meaningful. If they're not highlighting it, it's because they're trying to hide it. Yeah. So look for folks that are trying to pull the, pull the curtains back and, and connect back and connect you to the supply chain and tell the story.

If they're doing that, it's because they're doing things right and they have something worth sharing. And you could probably trust that. Hell yeah. Beautiful, brother. Well, thank you so much. All right, man. Thanks a bunch. I really appreciate it.

Yeah, we'll do it again. Yes, sir. Thank you. you