Kyle Kingsbury Podcast - #92 Todd White

Episode Date: June 17, 2019

Todd White is a writer, speaker, and a leading authority on the importance of micro-dosing alcohol for health, longevity, and vitality. He’s also the founder of Dry Farm Wines. On his second round on the podcast, we discuss meditation benefits, work-life balance, and Dry Farm Wines stringent but very important hiring process, that every company can utilize for a better work environment.      Connect with Dry Farm Wines Website | https://bit.ly/2j82sVg Facebook | https://www.facebook.com/dryfarmwines Instagram | https://www.instagram.com/dryfarmwines/ Twitter | https://twitter.com/dryfarmwines?lang=en   Kyle Kingsbury Coupon Code for your penny bottle of Wine added to your order: | http://dryfarmwines.com/kyle     Get $10 off your first Farmers Juice box order by visiting  thefarmersjuice.com/king     Get 10% off all foods and supplements at Onnit by going to https://www.onnit.com/kyle/   Connect with Kyle Kingsbury on: Twitter | https://bit.ly/2DrhtKn Instagram | https://bit.ly/2DxeDrk    Subscribe to the Kyle Kingsbury Podcast Itunes | https://apple.co/2P0GEJu Stitcher | https://bit.ly/2DzUSyp Spotify | https://spoti.fi/2ybfVTY IHeartRadio | https://ihr.fm/2Ib3HCg Google Play Music | https://bit.ly/2HPdhKY

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to succeed in the workforce. But just like your vacation days, it's only available for a limited time. Pick up the special edition 4th of July t-shirt at onnit.com. What's up y'all. We got my man Todd white on the podcast. He's come back. He's the CEO of dry farm wines and just an excellent, excellent human being. Uh, the first time we had him on last year at paleo effects, we really took a deep dive into his company in terms of what the hell they're doing with wine. Why it's so important. Why one gram of carbohydrate per bottle, why lower alcohol content, why organic and biodynamically farmed wine is all important. But this time we took it a different direction. If you haven't heard the story of wine, you need to listen to that one

first. But if you hadn't, you're all caught up. Here we go. This one is so damn good. I've been reading this book by Tony Hsieh on the history of Zappos. I think it's great for anybody who's an entrepreneur or even if you're just working in the corporate world to really get a sense of what corporate wellness looks like and what corporate culture looks like. The culture of your business is incredibly important. And it goes into that in the book. So I prompted some of these questions because every time I see the Dry Farm Wines crew, they all look fucking happy. And every one of them looks happy. Every one of them looks like they're enjoying their job.

Every one of them looks like family. And that sticks out to me. It's very real. It's very visceral, that feeling I have when I'm surrounded by the Dry Farm folks. And here at Onnit, we've been doing a lot of events with these guys. We have them out at any major event that we have. Obviously, they're here at Paleo FX each year, but we take a really cool dive and look into the mind of Todd White, into why he does group meditation with his whole company,

and what his hiring process looks like, which is pretty damn stringent, but important and really, really cool to see. Obviously, most jobs you're in do not look like this one. So really taking a deeper dive into the culture of business, we can start to see exactly what ours looks like. And maybe it's the right environment for us. Maybe it's not. But we won't know until we become aware of how important this is. Hope you guys like this episode as much as i did thanks for tuning in all right we're clapped in the return of todd white dry farm wines head honcho has joined us again to talk all things that are good oh i'm happy to be here i was we were just talking about love yes we were romance and this book you want to write i do i write this fucking phone dude yeah. We need to talk about this on the podcast. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Exactly, exactly.

So, you know, I was driving over here in the Uber and I was, and thanks for having me, by the way. Of course. And you look awesome. Thank you. I told you that yesterday. I think you must be keto. Yes, sir. You're doing some fasting because you're just like, all your inflammation is gone and you're

just like. You can just see it on me. You can just see it. You know, when people tell me, oh, I'm keto, I was like, I don't think so. I can tell if you're keto from your inflammation, not your weight. It's just, it's how your facial structure looks,

you know, and you look awesome. So I'm really happy for you. Thank you. But anyway, so I'm in the Uber on the way over here and I'm talking with a guy who has recently owned Shark Tank. Okay. He and his partner own Shark Tank. And they have a great product and they've gotten a lot of buzz, but they're having some challenges in their partnership, right? And they started off as best friends, as many business partnerships start off as. And I was reminding him to turn back and look back at the beginning of the partnership,

right? And the love, and he loves you, and you love him, you guys were best friends, right? Partnership, this is more difficult than either, they're both married. I was like, this is more difficult than your marriage, right? This is a business partnership. But remember back in the beginning, you were like, you know, you were best friends. And that friendship had a lot of love in it. And it reminded me, and I told him of a book I want to write. And I said, the book is titled, Remember When I Couldn't Keep My Hands Off of You. And since he's married to a woman, I said, you know, it's like your wife. I said, remember there was a time, he's married with kids now, so I'm sure that he doesn't have his hands on her all the time. Boy, does that crumble quick.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. That can deteriorate. But we have to remind ourselves, you know, in his case, and I was talking about his business partner, but I said, think about your wife. I said, there was a time when you couldn't keep your hands off of her. Right. And you have to think in that same paradigm as you look back with self-forgiveness about your relationship with your business partner. You know, there was a time when you guys just got so excited about sharing small things together you got to get back to that right and so that was uh but i love that remember when i couldn't keep my hands off of you so anyway welcome to the on it podcast yeah call kingsbury podcast now oh yeah awesome yeah oh yeah that's so that's so cool i mean i like thinking about things

with different angles but speaking about thinking of things at different angles um last year we had young we took a deep dive into dry farm wines which is still in my opinion the best wine out there uh i drank until i was feeling pretty good pretty sauce last night and i have zero hangover this morning thanks to you guys still in ketosis thanks to you guys. Still in ketosis. Thanks to you guys. So love, absolutely love what you're doing there. But I drove you back to Paleo FX last year after the podcast. And you had mentioned to me that alcohol wasn't even your favorite drug. And that's something that I often say. And I was like, whoa, whoa, whoa, shit. Why didn't we get to talk about this on the podcast? And so i wanted to have you back on here

we are a year later and i wanted to talk a little bit about some of the different things that you're into you talked a bit about this reset that you like to do once or twice a year can we dive into that a little bit yeah so i let's let's start with alcohol for a moment because i'm the wine guy yeah right and this is really important and very surprising to people. So I talk on podcasts. I do a lot of podcasts about wine and healthy drinking and our relationship with alcohol, right? Because alcohol is addictive and a very dangerous neurotoxin.

It's a dangerous and destructive drug. Like all drugs, it needs to be handled with care, which is the reason we only sell and drink low-alcohol wines. Yeah. Right? We're not going to talk about wine today because we've done that before. But alcohol is a dangerous neurotoxin and a destructive drug. It's also a domino drug, right?

Like cocaine, alcohol draws you in, right? So back in the 80s when I was a young lad, right? Wall Street was raging. Cocaine was everywhere, right? It's like, I love this kind of joke like, I'm at a party. Dude comes up to me and he says, hey, man, do you want a key bump? And I'm like, no, I don't want a key bump, but I'll take the rest of your bag. Because who wants a bump? Because once I get the bump, I'm on a bunch more bumps. Alcohol is kind of that same way. Once you start drinking, you're going to get drawn into wanting to drink more,

which is the reason that alcohol has to be really respected as a relationship it has with your life and your mental health and your soul and your spirit, which is why I drink these little alcohol wines. Now, resets. So, you know, we talked about microdosing, which I'm not actively involved in. I've experimented a lot with it. I find my best performance is generally in the morning, freshest, post-meditation when I'm at whole and spirit with one. Microdosing, while I've experimented with it, didn't do anything for me in terms of enhancing my performance. But what I think is useful with mushrooms, particularly for me, which would be my drug of choice, and I enjoy mushrooms in two ways.

Just a bump above micro-dosing, so I would say a recreational dose. A concert dose. Yeah, the concert dose. Or in our case, like we're at Palo FX this weekend, and I don't have any mushrooms with me. We intentionally didn't bring any here this weekend, but it's not uncommon. We have like 10 events this weekend. So we're on the show. We're on the floor. I'm also speaking at the conference. We're on the floor all day. We work all day, and then we have to pour wine all night. We got to bring our game to that pour. We want to bring our love and lean in with lean in with that sharing passion so you know sometimes we'll pop you know a little mushroom cap

right because it just brightens the colors of everything up it's a little bit of energy yeah right and somewhere between micro dose and the concert dose right it's just a little adds a little color to everything um then the concert dose is right? It's just adds a little color to everything. Then the concert dose is quite recreationally entertaining and particularly with, you know, particularly if you're with people that you love or a person that you love. So I'm, my last, let's call it concert dose was a couple weeks ago on Powder Mountain up where the Summit Series is with Baby Bathwater. And I'm there with one of my business partners. And we got into a role. And it was, first of all, he's an extraordinary human, right? He's like, has one of the biggest hearts of anybody I've ever met. I'm privileged

to spend my days and life with him. So, we're with about 10 people who are on a roll, but he and I get separated from the group because we're working, we're pouring wine, and we get separated. And we end up in this like psychedelic circle for about an hour together, where there's just so much heart energy. Like you're just connected in a way

that it's just so powerful. And so, that is just an extraordinary thing that doesn't happen on every role. It's just that moment. It's so magical that just happens. You don't know when it's going to happen. so, the concert dose, I think, is a lot of fun. The good news about psychedelics, they're not addictive, right? Yeah. Built right into the equation. Right. And particularly on the hero dose, we talked about that a moment before I got here. So, hero dose for me is, let's call it four to six grams, right, of mushroom. This is not a fun ride. This is a therapeutic dose. I mean, this is like buckle in and hold on.

Because there's going to be some vibrations here. And so for about four hours, two to four hours, you're going to need to hold on and be somewhere safe. Because you're just to need to hold on and be somewhere safe. Yeah. Because you're just jolted. And then after that, you're kind of easing into the therapy with intention. Because at the hero dose, at the therapeutic dose, you're going in with a lot of intention. And the last, I do it once or twice a year because

I don't find it to be fun, right? Now, it is pleasant towards the end, but right there in the center is not, for me, I don't find it to be a great time. Do you have struggles with letting go or surrender to the medicine or what's coming up for you in some of these more difficult times is it just a lot to take on energetically it's just energetically it just comes over it's just like it's the wash and the actually the last one i kind of it was an accident and uh what was happening was that I was grinding, you know, putting mushrooms in a food processor, right? Grinding them up to put them in gelatin caps, right? So that way you're getting a measured dose, which is really important for me.

And since, you know, my mushroom guy always gets the same source, I know what the medicine is. And when i use this capsule i know how much is in it and if i want one capsule or two capsule or five capsule i know you know i know what's happening there but anyway i had this leftover kind of dust and it's like and i just put it in a cup and it was like i don't know it was more than i thought you just eyeballed it and uh and i pour hot water I made this little tea, right? And I was like, I was working on some creative projects. And it was like 11 o'clock in the morning.

And I thought, oh, this would be nice. I'll just kind of bump up into this kind of headspace of, you know, kind of creative. And I don't know, about 20 minutes, you know, I fast every day. So I only eat once per day. So most 20 minutes, you know, I fast every day. So I only eat once per day. So most of the time my body is super fasted out. And so you drink this hot liquid, which, you know, I don't know, 20 minutes later, I was just like in for a ride. Right. And, and so anyway, I had to put the project down. There was no creative left. I mean, it was just like I was just in for the ride. And so, and I was by myself and down at the beach.

I have a place in Santa Monica. And so, you know, so it was, so yeah, I mean, leaning into it, but with that was, I didn't go into that quite with the intention i would have liked to but once i realized that i was not going to be on my project any longer then i leaned into kind of feeling the medicine and sort of getting a reset yeah i think that's so important i mean we go through it you know as we get older too it's funny because the old farts had it right you know when you're young they're like savor the flavor you know did did shit goes by much quicker as you age. And you're like, yeah, yeah, whatever old man. And then you start to age and you're like, holy shit, like time flies by. And especially if you're doing what you love, no doubt about that, but it doesn't matter if you're doing what you love or

you have a miserable job, the years just go by, you know? So I think it's, it's incredibly beneficial for us to have something like that where we can hit the reset button, even just on an annual basis or quarterly basis or however often we deem necessary, but a place where we can kind of recenter ourselves and come back to ground zero, where we are in the moment, we're in a state of appreciation. We have contentment for all that is. And it kind of just draws us back to this, oh, yeah, everything's really fucking good right now. And whatever's going wrong or whatever's the struggle, that can be managed with the right perspective. But I think that perspective reset button is such a critical piece that not everyone is into.

But that's definitely why I like to bring it up on podcasts. Yeah. It's, it's, um, I think it's therapeutic. You just have to enter it with the right intention. I appreciate the thought about youth. I, uh, I love the proverb that youth is wasted on the young. And, um, I work with a lot of young people, right? My staff, uh, there are three of them that are over 30 in the restaurant, but they're in their 20s. And so I have a great opportunity to be both a student and the teacher of young people, but it's never lost on me, and I remind them that youth is wasted on the young.

And, you know, this is one of the reasons I think it's so important to maintain, it's so important to adapt to ketogenic lifestyle and to adapt fasting as a lifestyle as we age and to protect our health and to protect our mental health. This is really important because for most of us, certainly the case for me, as an entrepreneur, I struggled for most of my career, right, before I became what most people would call abundantly financially successful, right? So I was up and down and kind of all over the place for most of my career. And then you reach a place where you've got some freedom, but now you're not healthy enough to enjoy it anymore. And you see this all over the place with people who are pursuing abundance and financial success in their life, and they're not taking care of themselves. And then they enter their 50s or 60s when they really start to accumulate the ability to have some financial freedom because it takes most people

a lifetime to figure out how to do that, right? And then, and the wisdom to understand how to process it. And then they're not healthy enough to enjoy it, you know, and they go into life with chronic illnesses and, you know, and not being in a place. So i think it's one of the reasons that the work you do and the reason i was when i saw you i was like wow dude you're like have just had a revolution what would you do keto fasting yeah i've been i've been i've been doing keto fasting i've been uh employing more balance so you know it's nice to have that annual or semi-annual or quarterly reset, but it's the daily practice. Yeah, we do mushrooms, penis semi-mushrooms, which are incredible. If you haven't tried them, they are incredible. And then also we'll be going to Sultara at the end of May for our first ayahuasca ceremonies nice in over two years so really

feeling called to go back to that medicine my wife we're gonna and i are gonna go to that with a couple other friends and um those seem to be pretty damn impactful you know you yank the curtain back and see exactly what's going on i've never done it it's incredible it really is it's on my short list i just for sure i hadn't had that just haven't found the intention around the time yeah yeah you got to create the space right but um you know how what what do i create for space in my day for myself and i think that's really been one of the driving factors now is how do i have that little reset every single day and that's something that really resonated with me when i spoke to you last year was this group meditation

you do with your whole company every morning at 9 a.m. And it's a powerful move to have that, not just as a way where it's, as a company, you say, this is really important, let's all do this together, but to give permission and create this space where it can happen. Because people, it doesn't matter who the fuck you are, if you have kids or not, if you are in college or not, you always have a schedule that's really busy and it's really hard to fit stuff in. And when you have free time, you want to spend that the way you want to spend it. But oftentimes those activities are not filling your cup, right? They might be celebratory where you're getting hammered or staying out late

or partying or fill in the blank or even just watching shitty TV. You know, it's not, that's not filling you up. That's not going to leave you more whole than when you started. So really what I've been focused on is my daily reset, which could be Qigong, Tai Chi. i go for a lot of walks now i probably walk more than i ever have each each lap around on it is about 1.1 miles and i'll just listen to audible sometimes i'll listen to binaural beats or sometimes i'll just go quiet and listen to nature listen to the birds we've got blue jays and ryan one of them green macaws they look like parrots they're like a tropical bird we've got some pretty cool birds in Austin. So, you know, going for the walk, being mindful, listening to nature, following my

footsteps and my breath. I think those are great ways where I can actively meditate. And it's something I can trickle in throughout the day. You know, I got a moment 20 minutes before my next meeting and on it, I'll take a lap, you know, and just fit it in wherever I can. And that adds up over time. So I think that those are really the critical practices. But in doing that, you know, more of an active meditation each day, that also leads to better fitness. And that's a lot of the ways that our ancestors moved, right? So it's not like I sit on my ass for 23 hours and then bust my ass for 23 hours and then bust my ass for an hour and call it a day. I'm actually moving all throughout the day. And then I'll still

have like a pretty good high intensity interval training day, or maybe I'll lift weights for an hour, but that's pretty, it's few and far between, you know, when I was fighting, I trained two or three times a day. I'm probably lifting twice a week now. It's not often. And just moving more throughout each day. Yeah. You know, you mentioned a couple of things that our meditation practice, which is 10 a.m. every day. So we, our group meets 27 or eight people every morning at 10 a.m. for an hour of meditation together

and gratefulness therapy and sharing of head space and vulnerability together. And you mentioned TV and you mentioned these activities where there's celebrations or these things that keep us busy but don't fill us. But what they do do, and television is probably the greatest example, but there are many examples. What television or entertainment does do is it suspends the trauma of thinking, right? And this is what meditation trains us to do as well. Meditation is just a much healthier way of doing it, right? So most of us are caught up in this

headspace of regrets of the past or anxieties of the future or the appearance of what we think other people think we should be. So meditation really trains the brain to, over time, to silence and to manage that trauma. And trauma is injury. It's, in this case, injury to self, the trauma of thought. So meditation is really helping us silence the mind in that way. But you mentioned at my company, when I started this business with meditation in mind, and we credit meditation for all of the success that we have, our business has grown 675x in revenue in the last three years. We credit all that to meditation because meditation allows us to get out of the way and to open the channels of abundance, right? Because

it's all that resistance, all that trauma of thinking that's blocking our abundance and blocking our birthright innocence to access the love and freedom that we deserve. So, you know, I look at all the prior businesses I've been in. I've been self-employed since I was 17. And, you know, the struggle with the work-life balance, which is like a work-life balance is a tension. It's a scale. One thing is giving up at the expense of the other, right? So so we looked at it and said, well, work-life should be a circle, not a balance. So there's no tension and it should all be connected. And so we, you know, Ram Dass said this favorite quote that I like to think about business and think about my life, my circle of life with the people that I live with. And the quote is, we're just all walking each other home, right?

That's the meaning of life, right? We're just all here walking each other home. We all want the same thing. We want to love and be loved. So if we can build that into our business circle of life, right, that's all connected with this concept of all we really want and everything that we do, everything we do is in the pursuit of love, sharing love, and being loved. That means feeling that I'm enough and that I'm whole. Everything we do is demonstrating our need to love or be loved.

And so if we recognize that and say that also everything is the foundation, when I share space with you, I want you to see me and I want to see you. And we all want to be seen, brother. We just want to be seen. And if you can apply that to your business life, right, and I think meditation is the best way to get people into this head space of seeing and being seen and being vulnerable, and it's okay, and particularly for men, right, because fucking men, they're wearing this mask of masculinity right so from the very beginning you know we've been

taught that vulnerability is weakness you know we that strong fucking powerful shit that's that mask of masculinity you got to pull that shit off and then when you're seen that, that's when you are whole, is when you're seen and other people see you, right? And that's particularly for males, it's a tough thing because, like to enter into therapeutic doses about, you know, accepting my weaknesses of not being able to fully release and be seen. Right. Yeah. Yeah.

That's big. Particularly for males. Yeah. Got to keep that bad-ass shit on all the time. Yeah. Yeah. And it's, you know,'s there's uh there's cultural programming on all sides of the fence certainly uh with women and double standards and a lot of things on the way a woman should behave and a lot too for men

you know like suck it up pussy rub some dirt on it you know and boys don't cry and all those things. And that, that really leads to impacts that in, in, for men and women, but the impacts are really you're, you're, you're taking away somebody's ability to be human, right? If you're teaching a boy not to cry, they're losing that release, you know, and that's one of the things they talk about in ayahuasca is that there are many forms of purging sometimes you laugh sometimes it's a cry sometimes it's you know purging like literally you're vomiting or you're pooping your brains out all those are different forms of purges but it's it never ceases to amaze me the circles that I've been in and and you know if I see another guy who's physically fit I I know before he knows he's going to cry.

You know, like that's going to come out and that's okay. Like, let's allow that release. Let's create a space where it's cool to feel all the feels and to be fucking human. Right. Because without that, that's when we start to, we have behaviors that are not in alignment with truly being the best version of ourselves. We've all suffered through it. Yeah. You know, I mean, the other thing I try to remind myself of, speaking of suffering, which I think all suffering comes from attachment, right?

Of one kind or another. We talk a lot about that at my company, like how to understand attachment and suffering. But most people we meet are suffering from some trauma we know nothing about, right? Every day, every person we meet is having, there's usually something they're suffering from that we don't know anything about, you know, and to release that judgment. When people are not behaving in a way that we find acceptable, tap into that, to the source energy, you know, that, that you tap into when you, when you have therapeutic experiences, whether that comes from meditation or whether it's an, you know, an exogenous, you know, whether it's a drug or, but as you mentioned, I think meditation is the foundation of health. I mean, every day, you know, we tap in and as a group, it's particularly powerful, you know, to meditate with a group and particularly a group of people that you spend your, most of your life with, you know, so I spend more than 50% of my time with the people I spend daily creating, you know, commerce with and creating life with.

And so to be able to meditate with them and tap into who they are and to see them and to have them see me as a really powerful thing. Yeah. Yeah. Big time. Talk a bit about, I mean, you talked about having been an entrepreneur from a very young age, self-employed since 17. Talk about some of the different jobs that you've had and what you've learned through the process of elimination and getting to where you are today, because Dry Farm's a rad company. And, you know, one of the cool

things that I noticed right from the jump when I saw everyone from Dry Farm was just how happy generally the people are, you know, it's across the board. And I'd like to think that, you know, we have that on it and there's, you know, it's not, not everybody's on board. I think that's the case in any, in any, in any company, but you guys have a, have a, a pretty tight knit group and it seems like everyone's enjoying life. So talk about how you guys got to that point and what were some of the lessons you learned business-wise. Well, we could talk a long time about this topic. But, you know, so I, in manifesting, so we're all manifesting every moment of every day. The question is, is that manifestation intentional?

And does that manifestation have an outcome that's desirable to you? Right? And so, when I was manifesting this business, I had 18 business rules. And I'll just give you an example of one of them. Right? There are 18. But one is, I'll never be in a business again that has accounts receivables. Right? Accounts receivables, right? Accounts receivables is when I'm extending credit to my customer.

I'm going to sell them something, send them a bill, and they're going to pay me later, right? So I'll never have accounts receivable again because the problem with accounts receivable is that on one day, I'm spending all of my passions and energy on loving my customer and trying to create this extraordinary experience for them, right? To have the very best experience they can have with me, the business, and them as the customer, right? And then the next month, I'm having to call them and break their balls and get them to pay me, right? So that's an inconsistent value, right? So I made these 18 business rules that became dry farm wines, right? So as an example, I'll never sell a product that I don't get paid in advance of, or at least at the time of service, right? So I don't carry accounts receivable.

I have 18 of those rules. So I took all these lessons from prior businesses that I've been in and then manifested what was the right business for me, which was also a lifestyle business of something I was passionately interested in. But I think at Dry Farm Wines, everybody is connected. They are all truly connected spiritually and happy to be there. And how that manifests itself is that our hiring process, right? So our hiring process typically takes about two months, right? Our entire culture, our job postings are 12-page long, right? And if anybody's interested in seeing this, you can go to dryfarmwines.com forward slash family, and you can see our currently

open jobs. We're constantly hiring because our business is constantly growing. But you can see these job postings, and what's unique about it is that most of the posting is not about the job. That's like just a couple of paragraphs. Most of the posting is about our culture and how we see the world and the values that we believe in. And then there's a 15-question questionnaire at the end. Most of them are not business questions or life questions.

It takes the average candidate, good candidate, between three and six hours to complete the questionnaire. It's an essay form. You have to complete the questionnaire before we even look at your resume. Now, our feeling about that on two points, one on explaining our culture is because if you think any of these practices are daily hour of meditation, our words like talking about love and spirit and brotherhood and all the things that we talk about and the way that we practice our life together and our views on the world, if you think any of that is strange or is not for you, you can select yourself out, right? As most people probably do. I mean, thousands and thousands of people have seen these postings. Most of them self-select out. And then most of them also don't want to do the questionnaire because it's like, well, what if the job's filled or what if they don't like,

and I've spent this time. And so our point of view is if you're not willing to invest three hours of your time with us today, right? Then you're not going to invest tomorrow on the backside, right? And so we ask them to send their resume, the questionnaire, and a five-minute video about why they want to work for Dry Farm Wines, right? And so that level of commitment shows us the spirit and heart of the applicant before we consider whether or not we're going to move forward with them in the process. And the process takes usually about two months, largely because of our travel schedule. So in the end, getting everybody together in one place to evaluate the candidate. So we start with the questionnaire.

Then there's a 10-minute meet and greet video. From there, there's a 30-minute video call with the five leading people on the hiring committee. If we go past that, if we get past the 10-minute, we go to the 30-minute. If we get past that, then we assign them two projects, the same two projects that all candidates have done. One is a writing project and one is analytical. And then we have a third video call that they present their project to the group right because this project's been done by hundreds of people you know we know what good project work looks like on these identical two projects if they are relocating most of our people relocate

from somewhere else because we live in a very small place in northern california live in the napa valley almost everybody relocates and almost all the candidates find us through our network right our wellness and health network and our spiritual network and uh so if they have another if they have a significant other they'll be relocating with on that third video call, we also interview them. Okay. That makes a lot of sense. Now, the reason we do that, and I want to see the two of them on video together. It's not an individual interview with the significant other because who you decide to spend your life with tells me a lot about you. And the other thing I want to see is how the two of you interact together,

right? And so that tells me a lot about the healthy relationship. Because when I hire you, they're coming with you, right? And so their spirit energy is going to be a part of our – this weekend, we have 25 people we flew in from California for Paleo FX and supporting events. And three of them are married and two of them brought their significant other with them. Right. And so all the significant others, whether they be boyfriend, girlfriend, whatever their flavor is or husband or wife, all of them are also friends of ours. Right. So, so we want spiritual alignment with everybody.

Right. Cause that's if, if, if your spouse is not spiritually aligned with us, that's going to be a problem, right? And so anyway, so then following that, if all moves forward from there, we then fly them and their significant other out to Napa for a three-day interview, right? And so over that three days, we're doing a lot together, and they also get another two projects, right? So it's a very, and then it finally ends up the last night we do a team dinner with everybody on our team plus significant others.

So it's generally 30 to 35 people and the candidate and I cook the meal. Now, the reason that's really important, this is a critical part of the interview process, is because I can tell a lot about you, whether you're a doer or not. When I go to the market and shop with you, I'm going to watch your behavior. Like, how are you leaning in? Are you contributing? How much attention are you paying? And I'll tell you what, when I get in the kitchen with you, how you behave in the kitchen tells me a lot. How do you maintain your workstation? Are you a self-starter? How much direction do you need, right? How clean are you? How much are you leaning in, right? You can't fake that. Yeah.

Right? You can, some people interview really great, right? This is great interviews, right? But they're not really doers. They're just charming, right? Yeah. And so they're just great interviewers. And so, but you can't fake execution on cooking, right? I don't care whether they're good cooks or not,

although most of them are, because most people who are soulful and spiritual are also cooking, right? I don't care whether they're good cooks or not, although most of them are because most people who are soulful and spiritual are also cooks, right? I don't care whether they're great cooks or not. What I care about is their behavior, right? And how they merge in, how they lean in. And so that's, you know, and then, you know, once all that's over, then there's an entire team discussion on the candidate. And we go around, everybody contributes what their impression of the candidate is. And then typically it comes back to this five person senior hiring committee. Anybody gets a veto. Nobody's ever exercised a veto singularly, but there's an exhausting discussion about the candidate, you know, and everything that's up or down for them. So anyway, I think hiring is one of the most important things that we do.

Because if I like to think of it this way, I want to hire really smart and capable people who are spiritually aligned and then get out of their way, right? Because my job is to teach them how to make good judgments, right? That's my only job is to teach them how to make good judgments. So, you know, a manager tells you how to think. A leader inspires you to figure out solutions on your own, right? And so the real job in leadership is to teach people how to make good judgments. And so at Dry Farm Wines, we only

have one rule, and that's that we meet at 10 a.m. Monday to Friday for meditation, for an hour of meditation. There are no other rules. Unlimited paid time off, unlimited expense policies, unlimited opportunities for you to fuck something up or to do something great and inspirational. And so if my job is to teach you how to think about being inspired and how to make good judgments. And making good judgments with – so we have no rules, so therefore you have to make – expenses are probably the – it's probably the key area where people really have the opportunity to lean into their integrity.

Integrity is what you do when nobody else knows. And so making good judgments is about having sound integrity so i'm teaching them how to make good judgments and you ask yourself three questions is this self-respecting and do i feel self-love around this decision because first of all i'm not respecting myself this is not a good decision. Number two, is this respectful of everyone else on the team? Is this respectful of my peers? And if they were to see this in the light of public scrutiny, would they think this was a good judgment?

And the third question is, is this a beneficial judgment on behalf of the business organization? Now, if you can answer those three questions, then you've made a good judgment. And if you can't, you need to look again. Right? And so my job is to teach them how to do that and then get out of the way and let them create and to be inspired and to inspire each other and to inspire something that is greater than themselves. So we want the collective whole to be greater than the individual parts. And you see that when my team is together and you'll see it tonight. Yeah. And you'll see it tomorrow night when you, I hope you're coming tomorrow night. I should be able to make an appearance. Yeah. So I have been out of town more than I've been in town this month, so I want to –

Yeah, yeah, I hear you. I hear you. But lean in with us. So you'll see it. You can feel it, right? People talk about it all the time. We do 123 events this year around the U.S. I mean, we're the official wine for virtually every health

and performance conference there is. We were just down here pouring wine for you guys recently, I think. Yep. Pretty much every event we have, we got you guys. Yeah. So you can feel it. And I'm not even here. Yeah.

But hopefully you can feel that from our people when they're here, how leaned in they are to that love and energy and that spiritual connection. But it's there because that's who they are. And we put a lot of emphasis around it. We talk about it all the time, right? We talk about the connected source energy and tapping in. It's the same way I view alcohol, right? And when I talk about people drinking, it's like, I don't want people to drink to check out, right? That's a high alcohol experience, which is why we're focused on lower alcohol natural natural products. Right. I don't want you to drink to tap to to to to to to check out. You should have moderate natural living wines to tap in. Right. Tap into that source energy. Tap into that spiritual connection like the one you and I have. And I hope you feel that from all of our other people, right?

And you can see when we're together that they have great merged flow, right? And that comes primarily from our meditation practices. And from the fucking stringent process to bring in people that are like-minded and on at least a similar path. Well, yeah. I mean, the thing is one single bad hire is so disruptive. Yeah. Right? So disruptive, too.

And the other thing is, here's two other things. When we think about business, when we have to terminate someone, which is rare, but it happens. First of all, if it's an involuntary termination, meaning we terminated them, right? We fired them, right? If that happens, as an entrepreneur, you know, that almost never happens soon enough. The moment we start talking about somebody enough that we think they should go away, they should probably go away, right? And so, but if they do go away, either voluntarily or involuntarily, that's 100% our fault, 100% management's fault.

Now, most managers or many managers, many leaders like to blame the candidate, right? But there's only two things that could have happened if we have a voluntary or an involuntary termination. This is really important. And I want to mention one other kind of rule set after this. If we terminate, only one of two things could have happened. Either we failed to assess the candidate in the interview process or we failed to lead them when they got there. Right. It's almost never, ever the candidate's fault, right? It's either we failed to assess or we failed to lead when they came. And so that's when management looks in the mirror to take responsibility and be accountable, right? Instead of looking out the window to blame somebody else, right? The second thing is if you have a team member who's not performing, there's only three things that could be happening. One, they're not capable. It means you failed to assess them in the interview process.

Number two, they're not inspired, meaning that you're not leading them. Or number three, they don't know how to do it, so you're not training them. Those are the only three things that can happen in most of it is you failed to assess, particularly early on, which is why we put so much time and energy into assessing a candidate because we don't want to make that critical error. That's the most common error, particularly in this uber-tight labor market, right? Like, it's hard, it's super hard to find quality people, right? And so, we oftentimes just kind of take somebody in who really shouldn't be there, right? We would rather restrict growth than grow the staff with people who shouldn't be there. We constantly don't have enough people because of our growth rate.

But we'd rather compromise growth than work with people we don't love. Because loving the people you're with is really healthy. And that's another thing, this vulnerability and this ability to be seen. And this is particularly poignant for males, way more than females, is this ability to say, I love you. There's just so much baked in shit around that, man. There's so much baked in fear. When our warehouse workers, this is the most poignant example. Like our warehouse workers join us for daily meditation and gratefulness therapy, which is where everybody goes around the circle of love. And they express what they're grateful for that day or some lesson that they have learned that they're grateful for.

So they're both expressing gratitude plus they're teaching lessons to the others. Well, the warehouse workers, they don't come through the same hiring process that everybody else comes through, right? Because it would probably just frighten them, right? We couldn't get anybody to apply, right? It'd be just too frightening. So they come in through like a Craigslist ad

and they're interviewed by the manager and assistant manager of Warehouse and Fulfillment. And so they don't come in quite the same way that the others do. So they're coming in and then showing up at a meditation. Usually meditation is the first time I meet them. I'm not a part of their interview process. And so you see these kids, they come in and they're scared, right? Because they've never been vulnerable before. They've never expressed open gratitude in front of 25 other people, right? They've never been seen before. They've never been given permission to be loved in a professional environment. They've never been given permission to be vulnerable, right? And so this opening up, at first they come in and they barely say three words, right? When it's their turn, I know the experience. So we're going around this circle and every person takes two to three minutes

and they talk about what they're grateful for, right? This is all in, everybody's eyes are still closed. We're still meditating. It's this practice. And then it comes around to this new kid who's in the warehouse, right? Or even, you know, and they say just like a sentence or two, not two or three minutes, right? And they're scared shitless, right?

So because the whole time the gratitude is going around in an order. So as soon as this person finishes, then the next person expresses. So they know it's coming to them. So they're like consumed with what am I going to say. But over time you see them because they've never been seen. They've never seen other people in this way. They've never had male leadership. They're all males. They've never had male leadership in their life that said, if you want to be really powerful

and strong, then you'd be vulnerable. You'd be seen. Then you're going to get powerful. You share love and you feel love, you're going to get powerful. It's not weakness, brother. You're going to get powerful. And so you see over months how they lean into this process and who they become and i'm going to finish this with a story so i was i do these lessons or whoever's leading the meditation does lessons i mentioned earlier it might be on like attachment to suffering could be you know freedom is on the other side of fear, right? It could be all these lessons, but I was doing a lesson a while back on the masculine, the mask of masculinity. And, um, and there's a 21 year old kid who, um, works in the warehouse and he had been there for a while, but this is when he started to lean into his meditation.

And he told the story during his gratefulness therapy. He said, I'm just super grateful for the lesson we had a couple of weeks ago about the mask of masculinity. This is a 21-year-old, super masculine, super straight kid, right? And beard, a beanie, you know, like warehouse guy, right? And he said, I'm super grateful for the lesson that we had on the mask of masculinity a couple of weeks ago. And remember, everybody's in meditation and he's talking. He said, yesterday, I was with my 14-year-old brother and he was, you know, acting up and we were out and, you know, he was just trying to, you know, acting up, and we were out, and, you know, he was just trying to, you know, be this thing, this man thing, and, you know, I was able to sit him down and talk with him

about this mask and how, you know, he can just be who he is. He doesn't have to be somebody else, right? And to have this sharing, this intergenerational sharing, right, that's where it's at, man, because they're not getting male leadership. You know, it's just not out there. And I say male leadership is absent and vacant across all social, economic. I see it with kids from all types of families, right don't know how to adult. They don't know how to make good judgments. They don't know how to be seen. in our organization is so tight, but that tightness is really a deep love and appreciation and vulnerability that they all have with each other.

I fucking love it, brother. Hell yeah. Excellent, excellent round two. Well, we'll definitely, we got to create a new coupon code for Dry Farm Wines now that we have Kyleyle kingsbury podcast uh how about how about we just create it right now we use kyle kyle that's it man that's it so

for all your listeners we love to do this uh penny bottle wine we give you a free bottle except that um we can't give alcohol away that is illegal So you get a penny bottle of wine with your order, and you can redeem that at dryfarmwines.com forward slash Kyle. Awesome. And there'll be your landing page and your mugshot and all your beauty and your keto, your new keto face. That keto face, and it's going to be great. So it's dryfarmwines.com forward slash Kyle. Thanks for having me today.

Awesome, brother. Thank you so much, Todd. It's excellent. We got to make this an annual deal. Let's do it. And by the way, I love you. I love you too, brother. Thank you. Thank you guys for tuning into the podcast with my dude, Todd White from Dry Farm Wines. As he mentioned, if you go to dryfarmwines.com slash Kyle, you will get yourself an extra bottle in your subscription for a penny. They give it to you for free, but that's illegal.

And hope you guys love this wine as much as I do. And hope you guys love this podcast as much as I do because Todd is awesome. Thanks for listening.