How to Channel Your Inner Voice for External Growth with Sarah Cotterill

from the crossroads of America in the hoer state of Indiana this is get in the podcast focused on the unfolding stories in extraordinary Innovations happening right now in the Heartland I'm Matt hunkler CEO at powdercake and I'll be one of your hosts for today's conversation I am joined in Studio by co-host Christopher to day hello sometimes known as a little ball of fun yes yes and Nate Spang head of community at Powder Keg and on the show today we have Sarah CEO of shift Edibles and co-founder of the human array because hemp is this awesome plant it legalized across the country in 2019 and hemp

has a really long tap route which what it does is it goes down and irates the soil so you think of all those earthworms right it does [Music] that Sarah cadell is the co-founder of the human array and CEO of shift Edibles and today we're going to cover all kinds of interesting topics and I'm very excited about it because we're going to talk about regenerative Health potentially therapeutic uses of THC and cannabis and just having fun in work and life and I'm so excited to have you on the show today Sarah thanks for being here thanks for having me hello Sarah hello to this is

g to be one of our most interesting podcasts today I think we're already having fun and working life so that's check 100% that's what it's all about right yeah absolutely Sarah how did you get into this amazing world that you're in exploring how to live more richly regenerative Health living a fuller life fun things that don't often get talked about I'm a lawyer by training so don't hold that against me that's the law school is definitely the gateway to fun and I will not go minute by minute so that we can charge by every increment so I'll give you the notes version but I grew

up here in Indianapolis went to the University of Virginia undergrad came back and went to Bloomington for law school and then started out my career at ice Miller doing Healthcare corporate and Regulatory work and I worked with hospitals and physician systems and everything in the business side of healthc care did that for almost 10 years then left went inous and worked with a company where we bought and sold hospitals right at the time that Obamacare was happening wow which was super interesting I have a lot of good stories that are best shared over cocktails or something else probably and learned a lot about having a

small business in some ways because with that business you never quite knew if they were going to go public or go bankrupt so there were lots of ups and downs and then you add the healthcare regulations on top of that which made it even more interesting fine was doing a lot of traveling with that came back and joined American Health Network as general counsel and a whole host of other things and then we sold that company to opum which is a subsidiary of United Health Group and ran that integration and in part with help from the universe decided that wasn't what I wanted to be

when I grew up and tell me a little bit more about that with help from the universe deciding it wasn't what you want to be things just happen American Health Network before we sold was a group of 400 plus providers mostly Primary Care Indiana Ohio and we went through a really interesting strategic planning process which was who was our customer and we decided that the physician was actually our customer that if the physician showed up to work every day and they had everything that they needed in their toolkit if they were happy to be at work if they were enthusiastic if they were motivated then

their patients would get the absolute best care and so with that in mind we went out and looked for strategic Partners talked to Hospital Systems talked to private Equity Venture Capital that type of stuff because Healthcare was evolving and needed more money bigger platform to keep serving the the patients that we were serving so opum was that partner and did provide a number of those things but opum is a fortune 6 company and so when you go from a small healthc care provider small in the the overall State thing in the grand scheme to that much power structure yes all all of a sudden what

you're doing wasn't what you were doing and for me I felt like I wasn't able to innovate I wasn't able to really affect change I'm slightly disillusioned with the health care System the way it is I think it's a disease management system and poor at best I think there are a lot of amazing people that work within it that are well intentioned but the system as a whole could use some revamping and I had some things that happened in my personal life at the same time some relationships that kind of really blew up and I looked around and I thought oh my gosh for my

kind of long-term Health well-being there was something inside of me that said you can't do this and it really had to come to that like I had a be still and know moment where it got really quiet and all of a sudden my intuition went you have to do it differently and so that's the path that I've been on ever since and I would like to tell you it's a nice straight me path and it is not never is it is very winding and circuitous and yes it's all sorts of crazy did it happen in a moment like that was it like a lightning strike

kind of moment or was it something that you're almost like meditating on over time and it evolved so the be still in MO no moment happened in an instant wow it took me a while to listen to it and I think it had to hit me over the head because I think it had been trying to quietly Bubble Up and I'd had these thoughts here and there but know like I'm not going to totally turn my life upside down and go into this unknown State because in many ways that's what it was the unknown and I'm not one that traditionally had liked the unknown I

like to know what's happening next and how it's happening so what were some of the high level connection points that so you were in so you start off in law you get into Health Care Growth Company exit to a major strategic and then you enter into this life of organic Wellness natural which we could probably get that later too the whole what's natural right isn't always natural but what work some those connection points so there's this moment that you talk about you and you need to listen to that moment what were whatever you feel comfortable sharing like what were some of the connection points that

took you from this corporate executive to I'm going to chart my own path and and pursue my passion mhm I think when I look back I've always been a questioner so I always want to know the the why and my kids will be like oh my God could you please stop asking me so many qu but I'm just I'm so curious I want to know I want to know I want to know and my mom was a big Gardener Master Gardener incredible grew all of my vegetables growing up so I had that in me on S some level my grandparents had giant flower gardens even

when they moved into the nursing home right they were those people and they were taking all of their friends around in the nursing home my daughter when she was little ended up having some relatively minor health issues that kind of traditional medicine wasn't solving and I kept looking and kept peeling back and kept peeling back turned out she had candida which is an overgrowth of yeast in your system and her pediatrician at the time was like oh kids just get this stuff oh it happens and I'm like it doesn't just happen and so we were never getting to the root cause of the issues so

I had all of these little things and then I ended up to help her get rid of candida basically made the majority of her food for a year of her life and I was one that before that had bought food and arranged it on a plate like cooking was not one of my loves passions or skill sets at all so I had those learnings that happened and then I had all of a sudden this time when I said okay I'm not doing this anymore and everybody was like you're going to have to go teach yoga because they've done yoga forever and ever you're going to

have to take on other legal you're going to have to do this and I'm like I'm not I had a coach thankfully that said to me don't do anything that feels heavy oh I like that don't oh I like that a lot and I live by that to this day doesn't mean it's not hard it doesn't mean you don't struggle it's not a challenge but there's something about that heaviness that anchor around your neck just don't do it you go I'm not doing it it seems like you went from this moment where you're really struggling to listen to yourself and or the universe and univers

had to beat you over the head with it a couple of times it sounds like and it sounds since then you've really pardon the gardening analogy but like cultivated this ability to listen and tune in to yourself I feel like that's a superpower and with a lot of the guests we've had here on the show the people who really are true to themselves and listen and follow their path are the ones that seem like they're able to accomplish incredible things are happy in their life and in work and so I'm curious for you what did you learn how did you learn to do that and

what are some of the I don't I don't want to call them tricks but like techniques or strategies that you might recommend someone trying if they're trying to get more in tune with their own inner voice Andor the universe or God or whatever you want to call it I'd say I have a a combination and I am definitely still learning and now it gets me really excited about it patience is forever one of my life lessons and I know that I want to know the answer and I want to know it now and so recognizing that's a challenge was something that was important for me

and I think that's a big part of it taking a step back and saying what lens am I viewing this through and why all of a sudden you're like oh there is a different way to look at it and there's a great quote and I won't get it exactly right by the doy Lama and he says basically when the world looks bad look at a flower there's another truth they like that how do we shift our Paradigm and then when you get into the nitty-gritty for me some of it was I have to move my body I have to walk I have to walk and

when I don't know what to do I either walk or I do yoga and all of a sudden things start to to clear up I've gotten better a line they do and all of a sudden that answer will be like that's what I need to do all of a sudden when I'm not thinking about it y the answer comes so take us back right you're working at American Health Network mm you guys get acquired or strategically invested and then you decide this isn't for you put your two weeks in last day of work you wake up on Monday the next week what did you do

where did you start walking yes okay so honestly I think I went to you I was in the best shape I'm still like I I still do all those things but I went to yoga class and I walked and I lunched like I I saw all the people that I hadn't had time to see and I saw friends of their friends or connections of their friends I really spent a bunch of time talking to people that I thought were interesting and listening to podcasts on things that I thought were interesting and reading on things that I and it just kept following that path were there

a couple of particular books or podcasts that you can look back and like that was a pivotal book or article or podcast I think it's hard for me because I'm such a consumer of all of those things so Zack book Bush out of Charlottesville Virginia does a bunch of connecting the soil to human health for me and that was huge because all of a sudden the language that he was using I went oh my gosh my personal health is so dependent on what I put in and on my body what I put in and on my body really depends on the soil and the way

that it in which it was grown so you can put the organic label on things all day long and it may still be nutrient-dense food there are just like nine things you can't do to that and so that's what really started for me so now we're going to start get into some juice some meat here and we were already in the meat it's actually vegetables cuz it's grown true true but cannot meat be organic and okay double clicking all right so before we start into that I may be wrong but my personal belief is that there might be some misnomers some myths around different terms

terms and what things are out there with the the population whole as a whole so make sure all of our listeners on the same page can we just do some level setting with what is THC versus cannabis versus CBD versus organic versus natural like what are the swim lanes that that we should be thinking about these things like what's what and what's illegal what's legal in versus in various States Etc yeah so let me back you up a little bit first first because they're they're different categories right there are the labels that would go on food or products right so you could have conventionally grown

which means a whole host of things can be sprayed on it including glyphosate including 24d it's your traditional farming practices of what we think of today then you get into those are so those are herbicides or pesticides quotquot accepted by USDA or whomever yes then there's organic and or organic says you can't do a certain number of things and a lot of those are you can't spray a glyphosate or something like that and glyphosate is one of the most prominent out there it gets sprayed on GMO crops it's really why we have GMO crops when you think about it everybody's demonizing GMO which is genetically

modified it's not the genetic modification that's a problem that's been happening through Evolution the problem is we've gmed these so that we can spray things like glyphosate on them so if you spray glyphosate on wheat for example it acts as a desicant so it dries out the wheat so you can Harvest it faster earlier it also kills certain other weeds and things like that that glyphosate is a water soluble toxin right which means it really is never going away so even the most organic of things have glyphosate in some way because it is in our rainwater right it is in our air and when it

gets into our bodies what it does is it breaks apart the tight junctions of our gut lining so your gut has these nice little things and they fit together and when they fit together it's this very thin boundary when you think about it we talk about boundaries in our personal lives things like that in our body these boundaries are so important because they keep out what shouldn't be there and they keep in what should be there so when your tight junctions break apart in your gut all of a sudden we have these leaky guts these things that start to happen and when that happens we

create inflammation in our body systemic inflammation so when you're starting to see that part of what has happened is really since 1996 we've been using glyphosate on on all of our foods and this isn't a show about glyphosate so I can stop there is that part of why we've seen such a growth in number of people who are like gluten-free like I when you when I talk to my parents or people that that are older than me they're like I don't remember anyone being glutenfree or gluten intolerant are those two things related I think they are I'm not a physician and I'm not a scientist

but I'm going to say that my gut says yes they are I think that the when you go to Europe a lot of their especially their wheat and things like that are raised differently you're only allowed to raise so much then it goes into a smaller Bakery they have smaller production of of foods and you'll notice it's easier on your system because their farming practices are different and I think things are starting to irritate our system more in a way that they wouldn't otherwise because we this systemic inflammation is growing and growing and that is in part because of the tight junctions breaking apart the

other thing that happens when those tight junctions start to break apart is that we lose connection with ourselves and if you think about your cell phone right if you go your cell phone works perfectly sitting here down Indianapolis great right if you go to the middle of nowhere in Montana all of a sudden you are not having the connection that's happening your cell phone the device itself still works perfectly but you're not getting that connection the same thing happens with glyphosate damage in our bodies and our cells you can have a healthy cell that's in there that's saying okay I'm out here then it gets

damaged and it's saying hey I'm damaged anybody and if that communication network isn't working it thinks it's alone so what does it do it proliferates which is when you get cancer you get some of these other things that start to happen so the way our food is grown has a huge impact and not only our food but our soil really what we need to be talking about is how are we soil Farmers not how are we food farmers and that was how I got into the love of hemp to make a long story even longer because hemp is this awesome plant it legalized across the

country in 2019 and hemp has a really long tap rout which what it does is it goes down and erates the soil so you think of all those earthworms right it does that in in hyper mode and you can't spray all these glyphosat-prozess the trajectory of our health but also to give Farmers another tool to maybe transition farming away and that's not an easy thing that's a whole different subject um farming is incredibly hard Farmers have more faith than metal than anybody I know um from being so close to it and um it's hard to go green if you're in the red while we say

in this lovely there a whole bunch of pieces that go into that so then to get to your question to about cannabis if you think of a pepper plant right there are a million different types of pepper plant there's the red pepper plant and the yellow pepper plant and the jalapeno and this that and the other cannabis is the same way we are using the overarching term of cannabis to talk about Delta 9 THC which is also marijuana right but cannabis is this whole broad family of plants and within that family is the hemp plant which is what is legal across the country in every

state and that hemp plant is can be grown for fiber so think about your paper your insulation in cars that they're starting to use it for clothing all of those kind of textile applications you can grow the hemp plant for grain so you think about hemp hearts or hemp protein powder right or you can grow hemp plant for the canabo that are in them and those cannabinoids are where you get into the Delta 9 THC the Delta 8 THC the CBD the CBG and the list goes on and on there have a hundred different cannabinoids and they all interact differently in our body and they're

all grown in the plant to some degree and so you pick your seed and say okay this seed has been grown so that it has more CB and that's what we're going to harvest and that's what we're growing the plant for now that plant that CBD plant will still have some Delta 9 THC in it that Delta 9 does have a psychoactive property but to be considered hemp it has to be below a certain percentage which is 3% if it's above that it's basically an illegal plant you're supposed to destroy and all that type of stuff if you have a license to grow marijuana in

the states where it's legal then you're growing a slightly different plant and that Delta 9 THC is higher does that make sense yep so are you so if you're farming if you're growing hemp then you're there's different I'm going to use the wrong word but different strands or different seeds that grow different types of hemp that have different applications of which there are vast and many and some the end result product is what people think commonly is marijuana but that's just a little piece of the world of hemp it's a piece of the world of cannabis so cannabis is really the overarching thing and then

there there's hemp and there's marijuana and there's all of these then arguably synthetic type of things that basically like a Delta 8 right Delta 8 is under scrutiny right now in a whole lot of places because Delta 8 exists in very small amounts in the plant but you can take CBD and then through a process of chemical plus heat you can create Delta eight synthetic there's an argument right is it synthetic is it not this is part of what's happening at the federal level where um some states have made it illegal some states have not touched it yet Indiana it's sits in a question mark

Place Texas it's totally illegal Florida it's totally illegal so you can it it is a state byst state type of issue and on a lot of that you get down to follow the money because you have your traditional cannabis your marijuana industries that are saying all of a sudden this Delta 8 which is coming from the hemp plant Which is less regulated so less expensive than is infringing on the sales of the traditional marijuana and marijuana in Most states is burdened with a lot of Regulation a lot of taxes it's expensive to grow it's expensive to buy so that's where you get some of the

controversy so can we the rest of the podcast can we think about two buckets tell me if you like these two buckets actually three buckets cuz we want to talk about Community Y and then and think about the bucket of the quote unquote substance that's illegal in some states legal in some states and illegal in other states and in the third bucket you mentioned on or no in and on earlier I thought that was interesting I never really thought about that way what you put in and on your body the on part I think is really interesting I never thought about that way organic makeup

or Oils or lotion or whatever that was my business I started after college really rep purify was that's why I started Powder Keg is I was struggling with that business I started it too early basically there wasn't enough search volume to be successful with it it was about 5 years too early with it toe fun fact your skin is the largest organ on your body in your body on your body that you and we don't and we don't think I think we don't wake up every day and think we think about our heart in our lungs and our liver or whatever but I think people

don't really think about their skin a lot I don't know maybe I'm wrong no you are and let's talk about Community right now based on that because this leads into it what we're doing with the human array is reconnecting people to their bodies so that they then can reconnect and evolve in community can we double click I'm going to use the term double click into that CU that it seems very like philosophical and like conceptual of you need to reconnect with your body and it's okay I feel pretty connected right now but tell me on and the listeners on an applicable level someone wakes up

in the morning listens to this podcast and they hear you say reconnect with your body what do they what is that mean to the average listener there's so many different things we were just talking about your skin did you know your skin is your largest organ oh my goodness our bodies and nature essentially the cosmos our body we've Rewritten or we've written ourselves out of the definition of nature by the way if you didn't know if you look in the dictionary it excludes humans which I think is a mistake but so in my my definition of nature the human body is in there you guys

talk a lot about tech our bodies and our natural systems around us are the highest Tech that exists on the planet and we're creating all of this other cool Tech and it's starting to catch up in some ways but we don't know what our skin does we don't know how our gut works we don't know about the fascia system do you know about the fascia this is like my favorite I went to a my fascia workshop and it changed my life yes yes yes yes I learned about a little bit about yoga yes tell give me that give me the fly over so the fascia

is basically all the interconnected tissue in your body it is essentially made of collagens um structured water it's why our bodies are really about 100% water it wraps every tissue every organ your bones are basic your fascia just vibrating at a different speed and it holds up your body it's not your bones that hold up your body it has more Sensory neurons than your nervous system it connects faster and why when you go to touch a tea kettle that's hot you immediately pull your hand back is because of the way the fascia can connect in that Quantum communication so there's so much cool stuff that

I think we're going to start hearing about your fascia and Quantum biology hydration is a huge thing so right keep drinking we are all chronically dehydrated so whether you take my view that we're about 100% water or you go with the traditional 70% water when you now look around the studies are saying people about 68% hydrated that 2% decrease and hydration causes all sorts of your issues so when you go back to like how do you know yourself and your body if you're chronically dehydrated nothing's functioning nothing's talking the way it should in its body your brain isn't working easy ways like one super easy

way is when you wake up in the morning get your glass of water put a little bit of that Celtic gray sea salt in it maybe squeeze a lime into it all of a sudden you're remineralizing and you're starting to structure the water in your body which is what you need for your body to be the electromagnetic being that it is okay electromagnetic being I have a question I don't know if you're going to know anything about this but I want to ask one of my friends swears by every morning grounding himself he takes off his shoes and walks outside he lives in rural Northern

Indiana walks around his property Barefoot and says he needs to get grounded every morning is this a thing this is a total thing I did it this morning I sleep grounded so I have a grounding mat on my bed so this goes into again your electromagnetic field so we know there's positive we know there's negative right our body because of all of the the emfs and just living gets an excess of positive charge in it the Earth has it has a negative charge in part because of the way the lightning comes down and I can't give you all the like exact sciency answers but when

you put your bare feet on the ground especially like wet grass all of a sudden your body starts to come into polarity it neutralizes and so it does it brings down inflammation it brings down all of these things so yeah ground ing is a super easy way and it puts you outside so if you can take your little glass of water with salt and lime you can go out in the morning and it's hard this time of year because today it's gorgeous but we start to get into cold and yuck that's perfect cuz the more you tell Nate you can't do something the more he's

going to do it I will be out there in the snow yeah I mean 15 minutes if you can get 15 minutes on the ground and you can get your eyes to see that Morning Light Matt is a huge direct sunlight into the Eye Guy does asphalt count as the ground or does it have to be on grass or dirt not really yeah yeah concrete is better than asphalt um because it's a little bit more conductive but if you're going to spend the time put your feet on the grass or the the dirt and while you're at it go hug a tree right that's pretty

and you start to get into the woess of that I wonder what my neighbor going to think tomorrow morning when I'm out there huging some trees I'm like oh yeah please take a selfie and share it on LinkedIn that would be fantastic everyone C told me to do it that's great I'll happily claim it I actually might do that you should you should take climb the tree get all the way up in it yeah there you go yes mhm now my 18-year-old will tell you that different trees have different energy yeah that makes sense okay all right you can feel them and it's funny and

she'll probably kill me for even saying this she'll be like I think the trees in Michigan are really happy like they don't seem like they need a whole lot of hugs but these other trees they do and she's gotten sewn into trees she now plants trees with kib keeping in up beautiful on a regular basis like it's really neat that is so crazy that you just said the trees in Michigan look happier I was just up in Southern Michigan like over by the like Buchanan area like just north of South Bend and as I cross the state line it's right there in the S Jo

River and I was like man these trees are really beautiful and I'm only 15 miles north of Indiana and I would literally told my Aunt I was like are the trees different around here like they just look so full and the color was great and I like I took pictur I took pictures of them I was like I don't dig pictures of trees I'm like not a I'm not like a nature landscaper I was like these trees just look so beautiful see they're happy and now they know that you've noticed them they're like w maybe we can start a movement here in Indiana to have

happier trees than Michigan for sure yeah I like it that's amazing one hug at a time if you're listening go hug a tree seriously do it all right so then then how do you think Community with all of that so how does that all how do you feel like you connect so whether it's your professional life what you've moved into or personal life how has that manifested itself using these techniques into improving Community yeah so I've been a studier of the the body in all of these different ways and other things and things like okay when you um the bullet train didn't work until they

changed the front of it to mimic the beak of the king fisher which is a bird we have out here like at Guist for example and when they did that thing can fly so I had not literally but move really quickly yes I guess we live in a world where things may be starting to fly Engineers who listen to the podcast I just wanted to clarify I don't know can you guys make it fly but it's that kind of biomimicry piece of things so I'd been collecting all of this information starting to see all of these things but it wasn't until I really stepped into

a community to participate to talk about these things to basically to have the humility to say I can't do this alone I need help that's when the potential came that's when the quantum leaps happened in my own personal life from a health and wellness perspective from all of these things that I've been thinking about starting to manifest and that's what I think we've lost walked down the street and nobody even says hello to each other we can't look each other in the eye we do not see each other on the street then Sarah and I mighty good to see you so do I and I

now make it like a point who's that crazy person yeah and that's what we need to remember and there's this micro macro level that's happening that we've forgotten about if we are not healthy in our bodies if we are not comfortable in our skin if we are not hydrated if we're not functioning if we're not doing all of those things then we we sit down at the dinner table with our families when we come to work when we do all of these things we're not really bringing our whole selves we're not functioning at our our best which means our communities aren't functioning do you think

part of that is because our brains have not evolved at the same rate as society and Technology have because when you think about even a decade ago the number of connections that a single person had it was closer to dunbar's number of 150 today I don't know how many connections I have in LinkedIn but it's definitely more than 15,000 and at some point brain and maybe this is just my brain it like lets go of like holding on to information and I had to literally retrain my brain to be like this person is introducing themselves to me remember their name because I was just out

there so much having conversations with thousands of people I I'm curious if if any of your studies took you in that direction and if you've learned any ways personally to live more connected and and More in community even with the Advent of a new social platform every year no I think it's interesting there's some statistic out there that 1900 in 1900 what you learned your whole lifetime is the equivalent of what you learn in a day now so we have all of this information all of this people and now we know we can look it all up again so I do think the biggest thing

for me is how am I present in where I am how do you believe community and that feeling of belonging in in your community affects your physical health I think you can't separate them that you just you can't it's the it is the place where all the potential happens it is the support system it's how you go in and go and you don't realize you need Community until you need it right like you don't realize it until there's a crisis in your life and all of a sudden you look around and you're like uhoh who Am am I going to call and that's when the

real panic and fear sets in and so some of it is if you have it there is this sense of security right and you're like okay I can try that because I know I have these people around me that are going to cheer me on that are going to support me that are going to really be honest with me and I think that is some of what we've lost too in community is the way for us to sit around this table and for me to go to 5 years ago you told told me this or two weeks ago you told me this and this is

how you wanted to live and this is how you wanted to show up are you doing it right are you doing it in the way because I'm not sure you are right and to say that in a a loving way to help people grow yeah I and I think that that you're talking about you don't realize that you need Community until the bad side when you like look around you need it or I am I'm such a a big proponent of there are those times where people show up and your community shows up and like taking a moment you like step back and be grateful

and just like bask all of that in like even in the hardest times when like people show up I just am amazed and I just take that in I'm like dang I'm really lucky I'm really fortunate that like we talked about on the at the event the like Brienne brown brne brown sorry the 1 in by one in square right all that stuff to get that feedback and that's super impactful hey these 10 five 10 people they're going to be Straight Shooters with me and be so grateful for the community that we do have it does wonders to like mental health and even I think

physical health I think there's some tie there but I I don't have any research or anything to back it up but just by the way I feel but you just know and part of that is it's fun right you are laughing right that's good for your energetics among other thing it resets your and we need that and in icara Greece which is one of the blue zones where people they have the most centenarians they talk about it's not what you eat it's who you eat with and so they're always setting an extra T place or two um at the table when I went to Italy

in the the spring it was that same way we stayed at this amazing Villa The Villa owner and his wife who were making all the food joined us our guides joined us it was just like the more of the marrier and it was this incredible sense of place and sense of people and I don't care what I saw in Italy those dinners were the best because everybody's sitting around laughing about everything and nothing I just happened upon a photo cuz I was challenging myself last week at the powderkeg event to find the earliest photo of every person who came on stage that that was in

the powder kig directory and I was looking for the earliest photo of you and I I found it but in finding that I found a photo of you me and maybe 20 other Founders grabbing dinner at Scott Jones's house oh yeah I don't know if you remember I I didn't remember it until I saw the photo yeah and there's something about people going through similar experiences and sharing over Meal which I think Paul Singh was in town from 500 startups and like we use that as a reason to be like let's get all of our Founders together and have a meal and it was all

the kind of who who of Indiana Tech and there's just something about sharing a meal that is magical there is and that is one of the things that we're doing with the human array that we're getting ready to kick off here soon which is we're going to get people together to share a meal to share we're calling it the wisdom to share some wisdom where do I sign up all right I'll put you on my list all right perfect and we're going to create these groups that come together ideally monthly and they don't even have to be the same group but we think it's important

to get people back together to talk about this some of the stuff and then to laugh and have fun and eat good food I'd love to hear your perspective right because if you think about it from a high level Society is the most connected that we've ever been digitally 177,000 like we're so connected but yet there's like this loneliness epidemic right of like people feel more alone than they ever have and I I'd just be curious to hear your opinion of like why getting people together in person in groups to break bread is so important I think you're 100% right that we are super disconnected

and in part because we don't know who we can trust anymore you look around you're like um I don't know if I can trust my politician or my doctor or my church or my teacher it's all in question and at the same time there's infinite everything it's all coming to us right so it comes back to okay we do have this kind of ancient wisdom in US think about it with Evolution that doesn't just all like poof go away but we've forgotten to tap into it and it's in that sitting here and being able to look at somebody in the face to be able to

hug them to touch them to feel the energetics that all of a sudden there by the way oh good that's going to be a gift on the podcast episode for sure I can't help but think about our core value trust yourself and how this all relates to that and and isn't even deeper meaning of what we originally meant when we said trust yourself as a core value at Powder Keg but I do think that there's some level of like personal intuition that if you can cultivate that it can be one of the most powerful tools or skills you have it totally can and similar to

what you're doing with powder keg we're starting to amass what we call catalysts the people that are making the changes because recognizing that you know your way in is not going to be my way in to this growth thing I do think there's some kind of foundational types of things that everybody should be doing in their lives from a a health and wellness perspective but you know for me me it may be yoga and moving my body um for you may be breathing right it may be how I fuel myself it may be that I need to sit in meditation it may and when you

start to build that foundational level of Health then everything comes with it but to have that Community both from a resource perspective and encouragement perspective creates all the difference did we cover everything you wanted to cover to because we're down to our last we need about eight more hours I know I was just I knew you were going to say that coming up to the lightning round like we literally could spend 12 hours there we didn't get to a half a dozen topics maybe next time we can do it over dinner and exactly and at the wisdom I think that'd be great that would be

cool yes I do want to but as we wrap up you're in that as we talked about the THC cannabis space if we do have a lot of Indiana listeners could we just get like a quick one to two minute flyover of where Indiana stands on all that stuff just so like people know what's being grown where and how they can leverage these resources in their everyday well-being sure yeah marijuana or cannabis as some people call it is currently not legal in the state of Indiana I personally think there's a way for Indiana to do it and do it really well and do it in

an Indiana fashion and we can talk about that in in a different way so that we don't have the black market so that we don't have all of these things and we really do use it as a revenue stream and an Avenue of Health for people in Indiana who are otherwise just crossing the border to go get it and bring it back um so that being said hemp derived products are for the most part legal Delta 8's a little bit in question but it is still generally being sold all over the state of Indiana Delta 8 is essentially a cousin of marijuana it has about

two-thirds of the psychoactive properties for some people that have have problems with the the Delta 9 that it makes them anxious Delta 8 can be a better better product for for them there is also hemp derived Delta 9 that's what my company shift Edibles has Gourmet chocolates that are milk and dark they are they're excellent and I will tell anybody that is listening that if you go online to CBD Jubilee that's where we're selling our products in part because Alex who's the owner of that company used to have a store in Broad Ripple she just closed it so she's all online now but Alex is

such a wealth of information about all things hemp cannabis how they interact from a health perspective like ask Alex she knows just invite her to her dinner yes we should there we go she us start a website called ask Alex right ask jees ask Alex right I went to a I went to a wedding once in Denver and they had a five course meal and they did meal pairings you know like wine pairings yeah but they did it with cannabis that's wild I could not hang not five courses it was insane I was just like how are you guys like I am not on that

level either and it's really funny because cannabis affects everybody differently right so if you're not a connoisseur you don't really know in which different ways and sometimes like Delta 9 people will be like I don't feel anything but with Delta eight they will it takes some time figure out and and like why are you using it what do you need it for and that's where again Alex is a great resource CBG is an awesome type of thing if you need a pickme up and at the same time leveling out that's a great thing so yeah there's so many different ways to go I love it

this is a that's a great little two-minute resource for all of our Indiana listeners out there but I do believe it's time for my favorite part of the show the lightning round oh there's a I added that yes this is new so these are three quick questions first thing that comes to your mind lightning round there are no wrong answers and we're going to start with outside of the amazing entrepreneurial ecosystem what is Indiana known for I know I'm just trying to think I think our Indiana is known for Farming Farming which is one of our greatest opportunities in this whole yes upcoming World true

story I drove my first combine on Saturday wow I was harvesting corn I got to no help just me and a combines still have ones that are driven by humans when you work on a small farm yes they do 2001 International Harvester great awesome um sorry that was totally off the topic but number two what is a Hidden Gem in Indiana I think if people haven't been down to Brown County and shades and some of those types of our state parks state parks are awesome you should definitely go that's a great place to walk in the dirt get grounded down at Brown County get grounded

get grounded yes and our final question of the lightning round who is someone we need to keep on our radar someone who is doing big things me boom yes Bo boom thank you so much for coming on this was a a spectacular episode our most unique episode for sure I would say I feel like I learned a punch and just am thinking about my body and just the way that works in a different way and I appreciate that perspective a little bit different than our normal kind of tech entrepreneurship business talk and I really appreciate that yeah and I will tell you just a plug

for the human array is that we do work with companies and individuals because we do and communities because they're all nested right so it's how as you are an individual how are your people showing up and we have a whole kind of thought process around creating living systems within your company within your body how that translates so I love that yeah just one quick final thought this was really educational for me and and made me think about things in an entirely different way but my take away from this is the CR the critical nature of authentically reconnecting is has never been more important than now

and we're actually just on the tip of the iceberg of what's going to be required with the things that are going on in this world and this is I'm going to be like reflecting on this pretty pretty hardcore it's really interesting that you just said I tip of the iceberg last time I was hanging out with Max Yoder friend of the show friend of the powdercake community founder of lessonly we were just talking about the con conscious and subconscious and that your Consciousness being like the tip of the iceberg and I've lived a lot of my life thinking that was reality that was all of

reality was the tip of the iceberg but you actually look below the surface and what's going on in subconscious your dreams analyzing your dreams being in touch and channeling the universe whatever you want to call it just like an amazing well of of opport and it's really interest I'm just a well of wi maybe it's of how we've been talking for the last hour there's connections there's things happening here you just said Iceberg there's something there the Happy Trees in Michigan crazy there's the the dots are being connected here ter thank you so much one final reminder to all listeners out there if you send

us three large shirts to 16 Tech address to powderkeg in Indianapolis we will give your company your organization to shout out on the show we'll talk about it we'll wear them you'll get all the Jazz of our YouTube vide we have some for the next show do have a special one for the next show some nice polos actually somebody can run on for so we'll dive into that next time but thank you so much this is a great was awesome thank you so much yeah awesome great job this has been get in a powder kick production in partnership with Elevate Ventures and we want to

hear from you if you have suggestions for a guest or segment reach out to Matt or Nate on LinkedIn or on email to discover top tier tech companies outside of Silicon Valley in hubs like Indiana check out our newsletter at powder.com newsletter and to apply for membership to the powdercake executive Community Check out powder.com premium we'll catch you next time and next week as we continue to help the world get in since you just listen to this podcast you might be thinking about starting one for your company lucky for you our partners over at casted have you covered cassid is the first and only podcast

in video marketing platform made specifically for B2B Brands I love this about them the platform makes it possible to publish Syndicate amplify and measure the value of your podcast and video content in fact we use it for our podcast here at powderkeg and if you're a startup you should listen up because cassid for startups is definitely for you they are offering exclusive deep discounts of up to 82% off retail price for qualifying startups connect with casted at casted . us/ powderkeg