Built to Last
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Built to Last
Episode 8: From Beer to Bugs: Building Businesses That Actually Matter with Stephen Dixon
In this episode of the Build to Last podcast, Levi and Colby sit down with entrepreneur and self-described “solutionist” Stephen Dixon, founder of GrimRoss Brewing. The conversation ranges widely—from the messy, nonlinear path of growing a business to the philosophical underpinnings of meaningful work. Stephen shares how brewing beer led him to create a side venture tackling industrial waste with black soldier fly larvae, all in the pursuit of sustainable, circular solutions.
But this isn’t just a story about business success. Stephen opens up about burnout, rediscovering health after years of neglect, and why legacy now means solving real, human-scale problems. Whether you’re scaling a company or just trying to reclaim your time and purpose, this episode offers wisdom wrapped in laughter, curiosity, and genuine connection.
Links and Resources
Stephen on Linkedin - https://www.linkedin.com/in/dixonstephen/
GrimRoss Brewing Co. – https://www.grimross.com/
The Solutionists by Solitaire Townsend – https://www.koganpage.com/responsible-business/the-solutionists-9781398609327
Peter Attia – Physician known for work on longevity and the “Centenarian Decathlon.” https://peterattiamd.com/
BJ Fogg’s Tiny Habits – Framework that helped Stephen overhaul his health through small changes. - https://tinyhabits.com/
Naval Ravikant – Entrepreneur and thinker mentioned in the context of big questions and meaning. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naval_Ravikant
Chris Williamson Podcast – Referenced in the discussion around self-kindness. - https://chriswillx.com/podcast/
Black Soldier Fly Larvae – Central to Stephen’s waste management startup concept. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hermetia_illucens
Quotes Worth Sharing
“I don’t want to be dependent—I want the freedom to choose how I spend my day.” – Stephen Dixon
“Entrepreneurship is just solving problems people care about. That’s it.” – Stephen Dixon
“You can’t outsource understanding. I needed to know how everything worked so I could build it and let it go.” – Stephen Dixon
“Fitness isn’t about perfection. It’s about tiny habits, compounding over time.” – Stephen Dixon
“We’re trying to build systems so we don’t have to do it—so we can, not so we must.” – Levi Lawrence
Episode Breakdown
5:00 – 12:30 | Starting GrimRoss & Leaving the Safety Net
Brewing beer as a side hobby and early-stage entrepreneurship.
The moment Stephen decided to build something he could fully understand and operate solo.
12:30 – 21:00 | Delegation, Growth, and Letting Go
How GrimRoss scaled through organic need—staffing, systems, and trust.
Why meaningful delegation is a constant cycle, not a one-time event.
21:00 – 30:00 | The Shift Toward Impact
Stephen’s personal health crisis and COVID wake-up call.
Redefining success: from ROI to long-term human impact and sustainability.
30:00 – 43:00 | The Black Soldier Fly Affair
The hilarious and humble beginnings of an insect-based waste solution—starting in a basement.
Exploring circular economy thinking and the protein revolution.
43:00 – 54:00 | Systems Thinking & Iron House Pro’s Role
Why most founders want independence—not retirement.
Discussing Iron House Pro’s work helping businesses reduce founder dependence and scale sustainably.
54:00 – 1:10:00 | Fitness, Identity & The Long Game
Strength, mobility, and the Centenarian Workout.
How physical health mirrors organizational health—and how to shift from guilt to purpose-driven habits.
1:10:00 – 1:25:00 | Big Questions, Small Changes
Meditation, moderation, and meaning: lessons from Buddhist thought and quantum theory.
Steve, welcome to built to last, the podcast where entrepreneurs share real stories about the triumphs and challenges of building enduring success, hosted by Colby Jardine and Levi Lawrence. Well, welcome Steven. I'm really excited about this conversation for those probably just heard of the intro, but we have the built to last podcast where we're trying to have, like, the complicated discussions around entrepreneurship, business leadership, but also around some of the personal side, especially those leaders who end up, you know, not necessarily separating the two, and how do you focus and build yourself as well as a business? So I've known Steven for a long time, and we've had some interesting conversations, and Colby and Steven have just met and are pretty much blood brothers after about 35 minutes of conversation. And so now I had to stop them so that we would continue the conversation they were jumping into, and have it as part of this kind of lived experience or shared experience. So as per our usual, we don't really want to read the bio. People can Google you. We'll have show notes, but I'd love to just pass it off to you, Steven, to just introduce yourself. A little bit about you know, if I was asked the question, you know, what's your business? And who are you? How would you introduce yourself? Well, thanks, Levi. Listen, I think I think of myself lately. It's funny, I think of myself differently, honestly, because I think of myself now as a Canadian. It's weird. I've never, I've never thought of myself first that way before, but I really do right now. It's just, I mean, I always have under underlying but I'm thinking of myself as a Canadian. So I was born in Fredericton, New Brunswick, and I have a very eclectic background, which we may or may not cover today. I am an entrepreneur. I like to think of myself as a solutionist. I started a business about 12 years ago. I opened up a brewery in predicament. I am a father, a husband, a son, a brother, a friend, and I like the outdoors, and I like to be very physically active. I think that's a good place to start. It's comprehensive, yeah, Eddie, where you want to go first? Colby, you're Jones. They got a few of them, I know. Yeah, I'm trying to pace myself here. I'm curious. I'm curious about the how, how old is the brewery, and what kind of took you into those first steps. Was this like a home, home brew hobby turned into the you know what it is today? How does that story come about? Totally, it is so we started, you know, commercial brewery about 12 years ago. It depends on, you know, we opened up in this large location about a little over 10 years ago. I was a hobby brewer for probably over 15 years before I started grim Ross, and it's interesting. So I was I was looking for a change. At the time when I started grim Ross, I was working for governments. Well, I had been working for service in Brunswick, which is a Crown Corporation. When I started grim Ross, I was actually on secondment to MD power, which is under iron Corporation. And this is, this is not a slight to any civil servants out there. My wife, you know, my business building tonight, have the greatest, deepest respect for those hard working civil servants, honest. But I remember many, many years ago, when I was working for a company that my father owned and bit of a mentor. The guy that was sort of my boss made it Sure. He had talked about a salesperson that they had, and she had had left them. She was wonderful, by the way, and I was doing that job, so they really liked her, and I was doing the job then, and they were talking about her going work for the province, and they said, Well, you know, I think they were speculating as to whether or not she'd go back into the private sector. And and Maynard said, Well, look, she's got seven years, and that's the time limit. Once you're in there. Any longer than seven years, you're ruined. And so, so I think I was coming up on five years, and I had that funny idea in the back of my head, gee, you know, I don't want to become a permanent based civil servant. Again, not that that's bad, but I identified as an entrepreneur and so and so I decided to look around at things to do. I was pretty good at making beer. I was a bit of a geek, so with more of a craft and a science, I really, really enjoyed, you know, all the comprehensive aspects of being a brewer and and I brought it to my wife, and she said, Gee, that's one of the better ideas you've had. So I decided to jump in, and that's how I started. Groom Ross, I. Well, I love the beer, by the way. Thank you. I'm not, I'm not a huge drinker, but when I do drink, I like it to be, you know, good quality stuff and and grimros has definitely been part of that over the past 15 years. Here I'm just doing the math, because my wife has been in government for nine years. You know, one of the things that sort of struck me this so, so I said I had been brewing for almost 15 years. So here's, here's an important part of the equation, alright. So, so way, way back in the 90s, I had started a business with my wife called status Corporation. And that business was an IT company, an IT business, and most of what we did was development. So we basically this was way back when this was a thing. So way back when, you know, enabling web enabled databases, was actually technically advanced, a little bit right. Today, it's obviously not. But back then, it was advanced. I was not a programmer, but I was more of a salesperson. And I was, I was, I knew enough about technology that I could speak to the programmers, and I was a new enough of a business person that I could speak to the business side, and I could sort of, you know, interpret, you know, the need, and I could speak the language of both to help. He might have just described her business, so I was able to do that. But, but when, you know when, when business ended flowed, I couldn't jump in and pick up the slack, because I couldn't do the programming. And so we decided to shut the business down. We didn't have to, but we decided to do that. And I said to myself that I'll never do a business again, that I can't do pretty much everything. And so for a long time after starting up, grimace, I did everything, I mean, everything from designing the recipes to making the beer to packaging the beer, to distributing the beer, to selling the beer, cleaning the toilets. I did everything so and that's kind of something that I've stuck with since then, is that I want to make sure that that I never beholding to anybody, that I can always do everything for not just the reason that it's practical, but I can do it if I need to, but also when you're interacting with people that then work for you, it's important that you really deeply understand what it is not just to not because you think that they might try to pull one over on you, but that may have happened before, but because you need to help, to mentor them, and to communicate on a different level with them. So I find it to be very useful. We'll chat about this in a bit, but you're now able you have, from what I see as an outside perspective, the freedom to pursue and think on other topics than the brewery business, which is still going when, when it was meaningful delegation of core work in the company of operations or sales or brand, was that something that happened to you? Or did you make an intentional decision and kind of like, I'm now ready, or I'm going to take that step? How? Or is that a moment that a moment that you can remember in time? Or is it just kind of all flow in hindsight, you know, I can see the picture, but when I started, I couldn't see it as it was happening, literally, you know, I was in the back and Don was in the front, you know, and and we don who has a government job full time, Don who has a government job full time, and and then, so we needed people to work in the tap room first, and then, so we hired part time people for that. And then we needed, you know, somebody that could hire the people, but also coordinate the people. So we needed a supervisor, then a manager that then we needed other brewers, because I was too busy. They needed, you know, junior people for packaging and and doing labor work, and then, then, so just gradually, over time, as the business grew, I shouldn't say gradually, it all happened very quickly. We were growing in triple digits, not double digits. And so the growth was kind of silly, like it was, I never would have budgeted for that kind of growth ever. And as a matter of fact, my fear was always that I'd never be able to grow fast enough, or that we would never be able to sell enough beer. And from day one, we could never keep up. And so for the longest time, there was never need even to think about a salesperson. Why would I do that, or marketing? Why would I do that? That would be silly. I can't keep up today. Why would I increase the demand that I can't yet meet? So yeah, so we just gradually grew over time as we needed bodies, and then all of a sudden, it seemed one day there needed to be. Some coordination with schedules and vacations and time off, and, you know, production management and, you know, inventory, all of a sudden things became bigger and a little bit more complex, and we needed to have people to pay attention to that, and that largely landed on my desk. Don was always the financial manager. She's got a background in accounting, so she still actually kind of leads that we have a bookkeeper, but she still kind of, you know, leads that side of things. She probably wouldn't want it any other way, right? She does the same thing at home. And so, so anyway, so it just, it just evolved over time. And, you know, honestly, I'd say that's the hardest part of a business that I never realized when, I mean, I had smaller businesses, but once you get over 20 people, that's really the hard part. I think, in my experience of a business, is managing the people, resourcing the people, and motivating and leading the people. And yeah, it's the hardest part of the business. It's, it's a selfish question for us, because, because we do our own strategic planning and our own goals. And, you know, we're a different industry. We're, you know, we're not 20 people, but we're at that line for our industry where a pillar of our strategic plan is to replace ourselves, or at least make the business less dependent upon us. And there's three owners in our company, and it's the first time I've gone about it trying to plan forward for it, where, like, you know, my first business, similar to yours, was like, Well, I just, like, I was on the lion and kind of kept up with the the pace of it and adapted on a day to day. But now it's been interesting on how do you approach it? Because right now we're making plans for, like, we can't quite afford that, that step, that needed piece that will make us completely independent, and so we're trying to road map a little bit and, like, have our goals adjusted to it. And it's just hoping someday to find some people who did that the first time, but I've never met them. And then what are the what are the nuances that we're clearly missing in this equation. It's the other question, yeah, you know, I find that. So you raise a really good point. I have been trying to build the business so I can, you know, focus on other things. You know, spend time doing. Spend time doing things, you know, day to day that I choose, you know, I'm not obligated to do. And then so I get the business to a point where, okay, I've put them in place to these people, and I can step back. And then, then, then you sort of step further away, and then, well, no, no, no, you know, you gotta go back into it. And then you think you got it figured out, and you back away a bit. No, no, I gotta get back into it. So one of the things that really surprises me, I guess I shouldn't be too surprised, but one of the things that is becomes really evident is that founder, right, a founder, owner that's in the business operating, there's a there's a stickiness that you it's hard to get away from, not because you're necessarily afraid to do that, but when you're there, the people around you still defer so much to you, and so you almost have to make a big break. I think I don't know how to do it yet. To be honest, I haven't finished. I haven't completely done it. I'm still here, and so I'm working on it. Still. It's a work in progress, but that's the hard thing is to get to a point where you get a group of people that feel completely independent to be able to run all of the day to day activities. My understanding is this is even more true for the technician entrepreneur, the entrepreneur who founded a business he could do everything, or started doing anything, yeah, yeah. It's not like I if I bought a brewery and didn't brew, it'd be kind of a different thing, I think. But maybe not, no, I think, yeah, we, we chatted with Jean Francois a little bit about this transition stuff. So I think, I think an intro to Jean Francois and Steven might be in order just to have that conversation. He's done that specific transition quite a few times, and has some pretty interesting thoughts around it well. And now he's got to a point where he has a portfolio of companies, and so they act of managing multiple companies, is the business. And so it's just kind of a wild flip on your head. It's fascinating. So that excites me. See I have a I have a new idea pretty much every day, and so I help impart ideas like constantly, yeah. So before I ask the question of, what are the things you're doing now, I'd love to start with, what was your first business affair? I have to assume that you hit a point a few years in. You're like, Oh, I think I could do a little bit of something else. What was your first like, distraction, business? Have you ever heard the business affair? It's like the side piece. You know, I have this main business, but I have an idea. I'm just gonna go, oh, try a little bit. So what was the. First one that I had, yeah, you did everything, and you started delegating. It started working. What was the first thing that you decided to try? I think, oh, geez, I don't even, I don't even know if I could. I mean, I guess I never really jumped into very many things full. I mean, we might be one sort of big one that I'm working on today. There's and there's a whole bunch of things that I still might do. So I don't want to really talk about them right now, one that I've done, that I'm still doing. And so I grimros. We How do I say this without I don't want to be condescending. I mean, grimmas really puts a lot of we put our money where our mouth is in terms of quality management, more than I've seen in any brewery, especially at a craft level. And I don't think it's being boastful to say we do. I think we really, do. We really have invested a fair amount of money, time and effort, you know, we built a laboratory. You know, we've got some very sophisticated equipment. You know, we were doing COVID testing at our lab. You know, when COVID hit, and until the government shut us down, we had, we had businesses. We had large, large industry, the biggest, largest industries and runs are calling us to say, hey, look, we're the government's not fast enough. We want something to do our COVID testing. Can you do it for us? Policing? So we had contracts lined up, and then the government shut us down. So, but that all that says that we got a pretty decent lab, and so we do lab testing, not just for ourselves, but that's why we started it. But we do lab testing for other breweries, entities, and not just breweries, but so that's and I still, you know, if I could have the time, and I thought that I want to do it, that that's still something, I think we could take quite a way. I think go far with that. Now, I've got some other things that I want to do so I don't think I will, but it's distraction. It's a it's an affair, I guess. But yeah, do you measure opportunities on potential impact or profitability? When I google your name these days, I think sustainability comes up more often than grimros. And I I just like, is that how you measure things now? Like, where's because you could do, you know, you could do a lot of different things. How do you make those decisions? Now, I think that 1010, 1015, years ago, totally, it would have been on, on return on investments. It would have been on, you know, growth trajectory. It would have been on, you know, total available market. It would have been those types of things, right today. So I'm 61 now. I'll be 62 this summer, and it's totally changed. Now I want to have a pro I want a profitable, you know, impactful, successful business. But I really thought that now it's, it's all about, you know, solutions that it will really, truly help humanity. That sounds kind of silly to say and cliche to say, but you know what we need? I think that the world more than ever needs more people. And I say this as a joke that you know so entrepreneurship is about finding solutions to problems? Yes, of course, for everybody, right? But even somebody might say, Well, look, we need that 39th flavor of ice cream. And so, you know, because I think there's a niche for that, there's a niche for that lobster shell, you know, flavor of ice small pain and big pain to solve, right? And then, yes, that's solving a problem. But that's not the kind of problem I'm thinking about. I'm thinking about. I'm thinking about real problems, like problems that we the people have, the problems that the Earth has, problems that that our environment has, like real problems that are going to make a difference for the long term impact of humanity on this planet. So that's, yeah, that's so is there a moment in time or realization or whatever that just happened gradually, that shift we can happen gradually. No single book or author happening that's kind of well, so, so that's, that's something so about two and a half to three years ago. So when I started gram so let me see, how do I say this so? So before grim Ross, I was I took sports and athleticism and fitness race. Here. My background is in kinesiology, and I've always thought, you know, so sports and physical activity and fitness and wellness and health our bodies has always been something that's important to me. And I was, I was in quite good shape, you know, 15 years ago, and and then when I started grim Ross, you know, I was working in a full time job at MB power at the time, and I was starting a business. And anybody that started a business in. I was that even starting a business is more than a full time job. So I was doing almost three jobs. So I was working all the time, like I'd be up at 5am and I'd be getting home at midnight, like every day. And so I got into a habit of, that's it. Like my whole my fitness routine change, you know, my sleep patterns changed, everything changed. And then for the next 10 years, I just got progressively less fit. I gained weight. I was eating too much and not well. I wasn't sleeping properly. I was drinking more than I should. Everything was just and I woke up, you know, towards the end of COVID, and I had COVID, I got COVID, and it kicked me in the butt, really hard. Now, could have just been because that's COVID, but I thought to myself, You know what? My body is not in good shape right now to fight this. And so I was, I had sort of a force downtime. I went to the family cottage and Grand Lake, and I was by myself, and I just I reflected, and I said, That's it. I'm not going to I'm not going to follow this path. Clearly, I'm driving myself into the ground. And so that was a bit of an epiphany. And I started, so I started doing all kinds of things. I started journaling, I started meditating, I started reading a lot, you know, a lot of philosophy, a lot of, you know, listen, I'm reading a book right now. It's a, it's written by a physicist. It's, it's called irreducible, and it's about quantum mechanics. So I'm really so I've got an incredibly diverse, eclectic, you know, set of interests. So I think it's me paying attention to, you know, getting myself, my body, my mind, into a better place. And so I'm, and I believe a lot in continuous learning. Yeah, that's great for all. I'll put in the show notes if you have any super remedies to stay young, you know, like the fact that you don't even have gray hair. It's I have. I have, like, three or four right here. I found one right there the other day. Yes, but there's 30 years between you. That's Steven Dixon protocol here next, next week. Yeah. So you still have grim Ross brewing. And from outside perspective, things to be going really well. Like, it's amazing for me, because I was very closely associated in the beer and beverage industry for a long time. And I think back as, Oh yeah, 15 years ago, that just wasn't a thing really. You know, there was a couple people that market and, you know, buyers sold Guinness and harp, and that's, that's all they did. And so, like, it's still relatively young, but you're still, from everything I can see, that's still going well, and it's a depressive part of the market. The are you, what are the problems you're tackling, the big problems, not little, not little, p, but big P, what are the problems you're tackling, and are you doing that with grim Ross or with other company, or both? So when you say so, you're not, you're talking big picture, you know, well, big picture, I guess, is like, because I love your tape, turn to like solving the big, complex problems. Yeah. Are you using your current tool of grimros in meaningful ways to do that, or have you decided to fund new opportunities to better address it? Just like, what was your thought process on that? So, okay, so little bit of both. So with grim Ross the market, you're right 15 years ago, by the way, I always want to, I always I do this as much as I can. To give credit to somebody that really helped me a lot was Sean Dunbar. By the way, Sean was not, not just a leader in in the craft sector, in craft beer in New Brunswick. He was a leader in Canada, right? So he was one of the first in the entire country, not just in the province. So So kudos to Sean. And Sean, by the way, has given back so many times to so many people, just attesting to his character. And so when we started, we were brewery number four, I think, in the province, and now there's like 64 I think there's been more. So the market has changed dramatically. The world has changed. Like I said, we one year charted 700% growth. But it's, it's ridiculous, and so, yeah, that sounds like a really rough year, actually, for those who kind of understand it, it sounds rough, really difficult. It's not fun, to be honest. No, what percent growth one year. Oh, what? I know, yeah, we started very small. So, okay, so, but it was stupid, and by the way, that's that's very hard to manage. It's not easy. It's hard, yeah, so and so. We've gone through a lot of change, you know, so we've had really great success, and we're very happy. We're very proud of our attention to quality and consistency. And as we were growing, we started to get interest from the outside of New Brunswick, and we started to export. We were selling in Alberta and Manitoba, and we were starting to sell beyond that. We invested in our business quite heavily to increase the capacity to we had decided that we strategically our business that was going to be our growth path. Our growth path was going to be to go across the country. Now that means a lot of things. It means, you know, increased complexity and logistics and decreased margins and but we had thought through that, and we were going to go and do that. And so we invested in capacity to do that. We felt that our product was was good product that we could do that we were getting good traction out there and, and so we, we invested in equipment here, and then, literally, as we were constructing the expansion and installing the new equipment that came from Italy, COVID hit right when we were literally, we had to go through massive, you know, hoops, jump through massive hoops to do the installation, to bring the guys in from Italy. It was a nightmare. And and then so what happened is that, you know, good and bad, when market changed in craft beer, people became very hyper local, because everybody was very focused on supporting their local businesses. And that was a good thing. And so we benefited from that, but we also suffered from that, because as we were looking to go across Canada, people were really, you know, retrenching and supporting the guy down the street, not the guy down on the other side of the country. So that business went away overnight, and it really didn't come back the same way. And so, you know, that had that created a something for us to change our business a lot. So we're focusing more on local business. We're focusing more on our local tap room and interacting with people and that sort of thing. But you talk about, you know, so there's been a lot of interesting problems to solve. And, you know, people talk about problems being a problem, you know that that's life. I mean, so, if you know so some of the some, some stoic velocity that I've, that I've written, read, you know, shed you, if you, if you expect to wake up every morning and have everything go according to plan, you know, you the traffic is going to be but you know the weather's going to be sunny and everybody's going to be cheerful when you walk in. And you know you're not going to, you know you're not going to get sick. And if every if you expect every day to be perfect, you're not going to be happy. But if you get up in the morning and you expect that, hey, you know what? There's going to be all kinds of things that I have to fix today, and that's going to be fun, you know. Think of it like a game, a video game, any kind of game, you know, any kind of game you engage you typically, you're trying to overcome a challenge, right? So that's the best way to look at life. So, so move forward to one of the problems that we had as a business that was not in line with my philosophy. Was, you know, we're an energy intensive business, and we have waste, more waste in some businesses, less than others, but we have waste. And so I was focusing on how we could be more sustainable as a citizen, as a business. And we looked at, you know, so one of the things that we did, that we that not everybody does, is we really went all in on spending. So spending is a form of is a form of carbonation. You're carbonating your beer. So when you when beer is fermenting, you know, it's, it's, it's expiring. CO two. So if you've ever been a home brewer or been to a brewery, you notice there's bubbling of water with a hose going in it. That's, you know, that's the CO two bubbling out. And so that's a that's a greenhouse gas, right? And so what we did is, if you, if you put a valve, a pressure valve, on that, blow off to instead of it blowing off, it stays in the beer. And instead of having your beer produced and then putting CO two into it, by the CO two, you have a great big CO two tank outside, and then you inject the CO two into the beer, we naturally carbonate our beer. So we use the CO two as being produced in the beer to carbonate itself. So that was just like, that's just an example of there's all kinds you can do to solve problems and be a solutionist. So recovery, you know, recycling, there's all kinds of different things. One of the things that I had an issue with was we were sending our spent grain like. Left over grain. After you finished extracting permits beer, we were sending it to a cattle farmer. You know, I'm, I'm a pescatarian. I eat fish and plants. That's it. And so, you know, one, one of the many reasons this, there's more than one reason, but one of the reasons why I don't eat red meat is because there is some, you know, there's some environmental concerns. There's other concerns as well, but environmental is one of them. Cows produce certain amount of CO two and methane, and so, you know, look, the guy that owns Farms, a good friend of mine. I grew up with him, and I love him, and he does great work. And by the way, in terms of farmers, he's one of the best of the best, but it didn't jive perfectly with my values. And so I started looking at how I could be more sustainable in operating my business from our waste management. And so I was looking at bio digesters. I was looking at composting. And you know, you know, you're on Google and you're researching, right? And I discovered black so to fly larva, insects, bugs, magnets. And so I discovered that people were using them to, well, listen, they've been around a lot longer than we have in terms of, you know, the circular, circular ecosystem. And so I discovered them, and more I researched, the more I realized how amazing they were and and as I continued to dive into research, I thought, Jesus, this is this could solve our problem from a waste problem for grim Ross, but there's this is a much bigger potential opportunity, because not bringing in solution, you know, starting to gain traction today. So when I started grim Ross, I started the business in a small space in our basement, maybe 150 square feet, and and then I expanded to maybe 500 square feet with picker rooms. And then I then 4000 feet anyway. So in this same room in our basement, it was no longer being used, I thought, I'm going to try to raise, you know, maggots. I'm going to try to raise black soldier fire. Just visualize the spousal conversation, right now. I love this so much. Very patient wife. So I went and got it, you know, so we would compost our food. So I would take that, that food. And so I got some, some black soldier fly larva. I just mail ordered them, and they got them in, and they really were in a container. And all, you know, maggots and so I started this operation in my basement. And the first thing you learn when you do this is that if the feedstock for the larva is too dry, they escape because they it's too dry, right? And so these things are the size of median almonds, so they're pretty big. And so, and this room was right beside our home office in the basement, and so my my wife would with holler to me, Steven, get down here. There's maggots crying across the floor, and they move pretty quick, so you get anyway. So what happens is they find their way into little nooks and crannies where you can't see them. And then, and then, maybe, then, you know, few weeks later, you know, you walk downstairs, you open the door, and my wife screams, because the room is full of black soda flies, because they, you know, they've, they've paid it, and they've emerged as flies, and they look like wasps, right? They're pretty big, and they look like wasps. So anyway, so So she called down, anyway, the second thing you learn is that when the feedstocks too wet, they escape. And so you go through all this learning, these learning phases. So I learned, so I'm a very hands on kind of person. I like to, you know, do things that I say they want to do they want? So I questions how I went through this question, what? What do you mean by escape? Like, like, how do they get out of what they're iron? Just walk me through that, because I'm picturing something in my head. And you said they're about the size of an almond, so the thing that they the fly that they turn into is quite sizable. Yeah, yeah, right. What size of the wasp? Okay. So what are they in, and how do they escape? So when you have them in that so when your feet, when you're, when you're raising the larva, you've got it in a tote, plastic tote, yeah, in this case, that's not what I would do. You know, commercially, you'd do something different. But in my home experiment, my little proof of concept, it was in a plastic tote, and I had like, different levels. I had, like, drainage and, you know, so I had this all sort of contraption made up so, you know, wouldn't get too wet. And. It. So what happens is that they they crawl out, so there's just enough moisture on their bodies that they can sort of stick to the side, and they kind of wiggle this, wiggle the way up, and they get out. Got it? Yeah, okay, okay, continue. So, so, so that's, that's it. So, I mean, I've since since then, that was now a few years ago. Since then, you know, I've done a great deal of things. I've I've, I've worked with RPC, and we've done a a pilot facility. We built a pilot facility. We reared many generations of larva there on on the feed stock that we think we're going to feed them. Can't talk about who we're working with right now, but so so that is something that I that I am continuing to pursue. And so is this about reduction of waste, or what's the sort of a this is, this is like a, this is a, it's a multi fold, fold opportunity. So this is the ultimate in your you know, circular economy, circular ecosystem. So over time, you know, since the dawn of agriculture, you know, 10 to 15,000 years ago, we have increasingly removed the natural from system. Insects have always been a very important fundamental, you know, foundation of this, this circular ecosystem that we, that we live in. I mean, maggots. We all know that, you know, you see that, you know, the dead animal outside the road, and why is it moving? Well, you know, you go turn it over, and you find out why it's moving. You know, rotten food, rotten. So maggots, you know, basically, are eating decaying materials, just like fungi and bacteria are. So it's a part of the process, and we've removed them, we've removed insects and all kinds of fungi and bacteria from our systems, and it's created a lot of problems for us. So, so, there's so when I first started thinking about this, I was thinking, What could I do with this stuff? Well, I learned that there were people that were taking the larva and they were euthanizing them. So think of larva as very tiny livestock. All right, so I'm the farmer, and today, grim Ross, I'm the farmer at grim Ross because I'm rearing tiny single celled organisms, right? And so if those single celled organisms, yeast cells are not really happy, they produce bad tasting beer. So basically, those little yeast cells are eating the sugars right from the work, and they're metabolizing that, and they're they're excreting, you know, compounds, you know. So we often say that the yeast are farting CO two and they're peeing, you know, alcohol. Well, it's not just alcohol. They're excreting all kinds of compounds that contribute to the flavors of the beer. Where am I going with this? So, oh yeah, so I'm a farmer. So these lot, these Laravel lifestyle and so, so you euthanize them, and then you process them. So you you dry them, and you remove the fat. This is the very high in very high quality protein, and remove the fat, and those oils are also nutritious, and they're fast, and poop is a great fertilizer. And so, so, so, so my first thought in this business, my thinking has evolved, but my initial thinking was that, well, we've got a biggest products here, you know. So I could, I could take care of this waste stream, and I could turn it into protein. And so there are markets for the protein, and in fish feed and pet food and poultry feed and pork feed and so on. And eventually, humans, humans do eat some proteins from from crickets, for example. It's not uncommon. And then the frass is great fertilizers, and this markets there, and and so that was that was something that I thought was was advantageous. And of course, one of the big benefits is that, if we're so, so when I sell to a fish feed producer, let's say I'm selling them on the notion of protein, and it's going to offset some less sustainable protein, which is fish meal primarily, right? We're overfishing our oceans. Some of the methods we extract the protein and fish meal from the oceans is dragnetting. So we're destroying, you know, the ocean bottom. We're in a cold climate, particularly It takes hundreds of years for those cold corals to grow. So we're really raping and just destroying our oceans and getting fish meal. Well, the other big problem we're getting in getting protein is from soy meal. It's because we're cutting down forests to grow soy so deforestation to grow. Soy is a pretty big problem, and so, and most people don't account for that when they are making their choices, no. And so these were what we were this is what I was thinking. But increasingly, as I as I go down the path, and I sort of building this business, and I'm building business relationships, I'm thinking that at least half of the equation so the value proposition is on creating sustainable feed, right, and fertilizer, but, but equal to that is the waste management solution and scope two, three and four emissions. Scope for emissions, or emissions that you know, you you don't create first place because you're doing something else. And so, so large industrial, you know, organic food producers have a lot of waste, and so, so our idea is we take that waste that would otherwise produce CO two or methane, and we basically eliminate that, because the larva produced very, very, very minor amounts of greenhouse gasses, almost none new, and we create a sustainable product. So now, in any type of product, like any type of organic food product. Is there any limitations de la pretty much anything. So, so now I don't want to get into too many, too much detail, but there are provinces that are having some big initiatives to, you know, divert organic waste away from landfills. And so we could do that. There are there. There are markets that have very big fish waste problems. Well, we can solve that. New York City used to send all of its human waste out into the ocean and barges and dump it in the ocean, but they obviously can't do that anymore. So what they've been doing for years is they've been putting it into containers on trains and shipping across the country to municipalities to to process that, that human waste. Well, what's happening is that those cities now are reaching their capacity, and they're no longer accepting it. So you've got, you've got many kilometers long, you know, train, you know, cars full of human waste with nowhere to go, and so the Largo will eat this as well. Now, obviously you can't take that larva raised on human waste or other waste feces and then process it and feed that protein to a fish or a chicken that you're going to eat and do that, but you can use those larvae for other things like biofuel and so on. Can certainly use the fertilizer. So I guess what I'm going with this is that the value proposition is pretty significant, if you look at both sides of the coin and so. So I guess I'm thinking about this business being a spin off, but a grimros, because it started from grimros and it just started, well, look, how can I solve this problem? Well, then, so just, and, you sort of and, and, and, and the next thing you know, you have what might be that very significant business, absolutely fascinating and exciting. Like, it's just, oh, it's big solutions to big problems, is absolutely fascinating. So this, this hits a little closer than maybe even Levi realizes with me, because after, after my first business, I kind of found myself trying to find another one. And I started a cricket protein bar called wait for it, called Jump bar, and it was like a great branding tool. I'll send it to you. But the reason I didn't go through with it was because the the I had no way of guaranteeing, unless I raised them myself and processed them myself, that they wouldn't go do the exact same thing that I was doing. So there was two major locations, one in Ontario, one in Madagascar, same owners. And so I had a great recipe. It was a it was a good product, and I just kind of didn't feel confidence from my last business experience that I would be able to scale this without worrying about them kind of taking over the same market. But I had a fascination with crickets and and all the stats of like protein and emissions and all that kind of stuff is something that I cared deeply about and was fascinated with. I couldn't I couldn't seem to get past the the aftertaste. There was an aftertaste that you just I was having a really hard time getting rid of. But, I mean, that's probably a solvable issue, but pretty hot, pretty high protein. And, yeah, yeah. Anyway, I was doing that. And then the second thing. Was, I was going to work with this company in South Africa on doing a sustainable fish food product. And that was like a tilapia based, you know, vertical farming type situation. Because of my first business, I was working with phytoplankton, and we were going to start to grow the algae and turn that into pellets and all that kind of stuff. So I was, I was pretty into this for a while, but I haven't really been down the research. I haven't had a conversation like this since then, and that was, you know, eight, nine years ago. You were ahead of the curve. Yeah, maybe it was too ahead for the moment, because I went and did a presentation at my old high school in front of the whole school and and it was based around sustainability and things like that. And I had these kids come up and try it. Found out they didn't have any shellfish allergies, because apparently that's the only allergy you have to work worry about with crickets. Found out they didn't have that, and I got them to taste it and told them what it was after it was afterwards, in front of the in front of, you know, hundreds of people, and it was quite a hilarious reaction. But people's perception of that is very like, they're very uncomfortable with it, yeah, so, so that'll be the so that's why, that's why, you know, our plan is that initially, you know, it's just feeds animals, right? Yeah, now with, with the future, to feed to humans. You know, look, a lot of the people that are using cricket today in the human markets are typically, it's a meal or a powder. It goes into breads, muffins and things like that, cookies, protein bars and depending on the ratio of how much insect meals in it, you know, the flavors are more or less a thing, but, but, yeah, you could probably, I mean, I have not worked with crickets, but you could probably do Something to, you know, to overcome that, that after taste, yeah, yeah, it was fairly strong. And, you know, my poor parents, when I was going through that, I was using their kitchen to explore all this. Your parents, his wife, you know, poor, yeah, you know the there are still today, there are 2 billion people on the planet that regularly eat insects, you know, whatever diet. It's like, you know, and they don't, and it's not hidden in a flower. It's like, you know, the grasshoppers are this big, and they're, you know, 2 billion people now, today in North America, the hick factor is hard to overcome, but I think in the future, we'll figure that out. Yeah, mine is, if it's also a lower cost, that's going to be like, I think a food's only going up in price, too. So yeah, well, look the resources. Part of that's because the resource is needed, right? Yeah, with insects, the resources are dramatically lower. The amount of space you need to raise them, the amount of water you need to raise them. Typically, the what their diet is a is already a waste product. So it's, it's very low cost, if any cost. And so, and look, you're, you're, you're, you're closing that sort of ecosystem. Just so many good things about it right now. I mean, so you had a good, you had a good concern about, you know, whether or not somebody could cut low barriers to entry. The barriers aren't that low, really. There are lot. There are a lot of people that have tried to do this business and failed. There's some big, big companies right now in the world who who have gone bankrupt. And typically, in my experience, there's some reasons that we understand why they've done why they've gone bankrupt. We think that we've got that figured out so. So we think that we've got some secret sauce that we'll be able to make it work. My My friend in my EO bridge chapter group that I travel with he owns a fascinating company. I feel like it's called crop solutions. They're out of Ontario. Names ishtiaq. I'll make an intro for sure. But he's he's managing indoor farming with bugs so he finds the right bug to optimize growing this without any use of chemicals or anything like that. What's the bug? Is it? Is it as a What's that? Sorry, what's the purpose of the bug? Like, what's the inside it can it's it can serve many purposes, but it might be just like creating the right environment for no diseases or anything like that to you know, he's got a, I'm pretty sure he's a got some sort of doctorate and insects, but he's a fascinating person that I need to, I need to learn a little bit more about what, what exactly his business. Is doing, but he's scaling quite quickly. There's a lot of interesting stuff going on in entomology. That's the study of insects and genetics. So lot of cool stuff happening. Yeah, so a transferable question, because that's super fascinating. And like, that's like, the outcomes, both potentially financially, but also like, like, making real change and impact are really kind of the word I would use is probably distracting. We also talk about new and cool ideas on a very different scale, how, how do you is it discipline or routine? Or how do you make sure you keep your or do you keep your hand on the grim Ross ship when you have some of this other exciting thing going on. So, yeah, I mean, that has been the single biggest, you know, factor. I guess my father, who's also an entrepreneur, you know, his advice to me has always because he hears me talking about ideas all the time, and he's just constantly driving into me. Stephen, focused, focus, so that he's his advice to me, mostly has been one word focus, because he knows I've got all these ideas. He actually thinks this is a good idea and and so it is the chance, so it's so I'm right now. I'm going through that transition phase. I'm right now trying to have grimros in a place that it can operate without my full attention. So I'm in that that transition phase as we speak, that is, that is what keeps me up. Keeps me up at night. That's what I think about when I'm driving home after work, I think about how I'm going to navigate this, this phase of my career, in this phase of my life. I don't know that I'll ever I mean, people talk about, you talk about work life balance, I don't. I don't see it like that. I don't. I don't think about retirement at all like I really don't. I mean, I think that maybe what I think about is that I want to be able to be in more control of my the hours of my days, and I want to be able to do what strikes me as interesting at any moment. So that's kind of how I think, yeah, I've got a lot of interests. This is a big interest. In the last two or three years, I've been reinvigorating my back to my my old days of staying in shape and yeah, yeah. So I the problem, not the problem, the journey you're currently in the middle of, and have dabbled with that whole transition of like being able to safely or trusted Lee take my eye off the ball. In my business, that's the problem that our company was kind of designed to tackle. We don't always sell it as that, but that would be the one common element of every client we have ever is that that's why they're doing smaller things. Like, I want the CRM, or I want these processes document, or I want these improvements in the way we run and we stop saying, like, so you can sell, so you can retire, unless that's very clear, because then we try to match language to their goals. But for the most part, it's around the word dependence and independence. Create independence, or lesson dependence is really kind of where we focus on and so every step doesn't mean you can't do it. It means you don't have to do it. And what are those mechanisms, or that internal knowledge base or that intellectual property, or those systems in place? And it's, and I just be clear, it's not about like, here's the big tool, or here's the AI. It's like a lot of this is checklists. Checklist is the most powerful process on Earth, but it's just taking the time to think through it and understand what should be done and what's a role look like, and what the Pro. So that's the, I mean, it feels so much less than you're changing the world on waste, but it is a fascinating challenge that and we know, but it's, it's underpinning the whole, the whole, you know, infrastructure, I mean, with house so, so I guess I'm struggling now with, here we are, interestingly, having this conversation, but I'm struggling with what it is that you guys help With. Sure, maybe we should have a conversation offline, but, but, yeah, I mean, we struggle with having that conversation. So that's it's like, a lot of the times the like, you know, an example of a question is, like, what would have to be true for me to be able to check in with this business twice a week and it still function? And like that being the goal, rather than retirement. It's like, you know, is it a combination of upskilling the people that I have? Is it a new hire? Is it, you know, new tools, new processes, whatever it might be, yeah, it results in very tactical things. Like, there's there's strategy, and there's understanding, and there's understanding the gaps. And you can have all the fancy words around. But it does come out into very tactical things, which, yeah, I'd love to chat through a deep even your perspective, because when I hear you talk the way you approach solutions, like, I think I might have mentioned this, but if not that, it's really funny that you keep using the word. But like, our core role in our company is called solutionists, and we call ourselves a solutions agency and and it's just this whole like we're not here to deliver a website. We're here to solve a problem. And if a website happens to solve a problem in your organization, let's build a website. But nobody should just build a website for building a website safe or introducing AI is a very clear one, because most companies probably aren't digitally mature enough to really reap any benefit. So our goal is the solution to the problem, not any one of the particular things we deliver as a service, which makes it very complicated for us to understand, but like the language, internal has been very validating and encouraging for our team. Like we're solved problem solvers and solutionism and solutionist and solutions agency is all through everything. And then you just kept hammering that word. Oh, it's been a lot of fun. Well, interesting. Yeah, so I mean, and you know what? I started using this word after I read a book by solitaire Townsend, and she's an author that wrote a book called The solutionists. I recommend it if you're because, well, I sounds like we probably should read it. You should read it. It's called the solution. People might infer we're using it as our branding. Anyway, Solitaire Townsend is a name, and the book is she interviews a lot of very successful, you know, entrepreneurs who have built their business around solving, you know, real problems. And so listen, I think that, to me, it's astounding when people say, Why did I don't know what kind of business I should start, or, you know, there's just nothing out there. There are so many problems in the world today, and problems need solutions, and solutions can be monetized. And so there's just, there's no end, there's no end to problems to solve. And yeah, those are all businesses and, and so, yeah, just open your eyes. There's just so many and something that this struck me as you were talking about, you know, solutions, and, you know, business problems is that I just had a discussion with my team yesterday, and we were talking about social media and marketing and and so part of so it came to a point where I just said, Look, you Know, so the conversation was such that we were hitting it from the wrong side. I said, Look, what are we trying to achieve? You know, what is our goal? So let's not talk about, you know, a social media strategy based on, you know, social media tactics, what are we trying to achieve? And then, then we can start talking about what kind of messaging, where it should go. You know, how the message should look? You know what we talk what, how we engage with people? If we if we just want to get brand awareness, that's one thing. We want to bring people into our tap room. That's another thing. If we want to make people aware that there are restaurants in, you know, the local area, that's another thing I just want to tell you so, so what are you trying to achieve? Then you start looking at how to build a solution to solve that problem, or the road map of solutions in order. That's where it gets even more, you know? Yeah, yeah. And by the way, that's fun, like that's, it's sort of like a game, right? But, but things become very intimidating and not fun when you don't know how to connect the problem with the whole bunch of potential solutions. You got to identify this good articulate this problem really well first, then you can start to design solutions. And there could be a dozen solutions well, and whether there's, if there's a dozen solutions, there's 185 people trying to sell you their solution, regardless, right solution fit. So yes, it's the the people you can go to advice often sell you a thing like, what? And again, this is turning more of it into the sales, but it's just an interesting fit of our conversation. But like, what we are doing, I think, is that we're trying to not approach it from a it's a human side, really. It's not about the technology. It's, you know, agnostic of the software, all that stuff, because at the end of the day, we need to understand the true need, and then we'll go find whatever the solution is. But it became, what's that? I've got a question for you. So when you're talking to people about business solutions and your talk, and I assume that it often ends up into technology, you know, because there's a reduction of movement of or additive, yeah, yeah. Mean, you've got everything from email to, you know, works, you know, work, you know, like Office products to communications tools to, like, you said, AI. And then I think, because I'm a bit of a contrarian, I think that's the right word. Like, for example, I've been using Linux for a long time now I'm not using it right now for work because the platform was not compatible with some of the software that I had already been using. But how often do you end up working with people, or, I guess, how often is the literature the right question? How to ask the question I'm curious about how many people are interested in just following a single, recurring theme of solutions and technology. Oh, yeah, no, I think similar to what you said earlier, for us, it's all around like we have to keep coming back and keep coming back and keep coming back to what you're actually trying to do. And why? Yeah, and because we because contrarian is actually a good word, because your contrarian is, like, non popular, you know, off the shelf systems, you're looking for more control and whatever reason. But then we have some people are just anti technology, or contrarians on any number of factors. But like, we need to know what you're trying to achieve and why, but then we also have to understand where you already invested, and you know what are going to be barriers to change? Because change management will probably be the strongest definition of what the process is. Yeah, and there's, and it's not just the key owner. Like, if you have a whole team of people who like the like, we had one client who's like, I need a CRM, for all the reasons that most companies should have some type of CRM client information in one place, because there's so many reasons a whole separate conversation. But then, like a traditional CRM doesn't work for a company. When you're Salesforce, the people doing sales are all on the phone or in the door all over the age of 60, have never used a smartphone, and it's like, well, there's nothing wrong with that. It's just like, you're not gonna be able to pull a CRM off the off the shelf. Like, the end result is you want client database and information so that when you go to sell your business or transition it, all the relationships are owned by the company and not by the individuals. Yeah, you can forecast sales. Like those are the and then it's a very fascinating conversation around, how do we how do we solve the problem? Although, if you Google that problem, everybody comes up with HubSpot or Salesforce or whatever. So yeah, it's a lot of human discussion. Happy to go outside and happy to Colby and I have actually decided to have, like a just a solo podcast for us to talk about some of the specific how we do things, because we do get some questions. It just feels like we like these conversations to not necessarily be about US selling ourselves. But I was going, I did have one little tangent there I wanted to go for double click on is, and I've lost it. I do kind of want to bring it to the health side, though, like if you have any so I'm going to start with the vulnerable. Share first, and you, because you COVID, you are the guy who goes to the gym and does the sports and he's a nutritionist and all those things. So it's like watching you guys, two members of a choir geek out on your next song. So, but from my point of view. I've never ever enjoyed the gym or exercise for exercise sakes. I've never enjoyed a team sport, although I like hiking and skiing and mountain biking and those things. And so I've made the decision. And you know, it's not the first time, but so far, I'm a month in, and I'm trying to treat it serious for similar reasons of like, Oh, this isn't good, but my physical fitness was always a function of what I did. I was healthiest when I was a line cook, and I was pretty healthy when I worked for tourism, and when I was a business owner in a local food and organic food store, I was pretty healthy because I was on my feet all the time, and I was in the kitchen and I was eating and promoting like I wouldn't allow myself to eat McDonald's because it was off brand, like I was always a function. And now I love what I do, but I do it mostly by sitting at a desk in long times, thinking and talking to people in this kind of and so I've had to shift, and I have. So there's two sides of this. It is coming to a question, I promise. One is, I'm going from little understanding, and I don't take advice well, and I'm trying to kind of solo the journey a little bit to get to a little better, because I get frustrated at the gym, and so I love you, like, as you started back or from your kinesiology, like, what are there some any recommendations on starting it out? But second is this, I have a mental break around and I grew up with it. I thought about this a lot of the last month I grew up, and the idea of you having to go exercise is because you don't work hard enough. I don't know anybody in any of my extended family who would have gone to the gym or exercise, because we all worked in jobs or in lifestyles that were this. Ago, and so I realized there's a real mental block there around, like, the idea of going to exercise is like, because I'm not a healthy lifestyle, but the whole idea of works change. And I was just wondering if you had any thoughts, or in your research, or, like, any thoughts around that difference, there's a lot of questions. Throw it all at you, beginning on the wall. We could talk here for literally days like, yeah, literally easily. So it all boils down to to something that Warren Buffett said. Ironically, what Warren Buffett does not seem to be all that fit. And Warren Buffett also always has a bottle of Coke, you know, when he's talking and he eats can he says, So Warren Buffett doesn't seem to be the right kind of person to give the advice I'm about to share. But he was speaking to a group of, well, this is what you know, the meme is, anyway, that he was speaking to a group of students and and he said to them, to tell you what. And I'm paraphrasing, he said, tell you what I'll give. I'll buy anyone, if I'll buy anyone of you, or all of you, a car, any car, any car in the whole wide world, he said, and you can have that car, he said, but there's a catch. If you take me up on this, he said, it's the only car you'll ever get for the rest of your life. And these are kids and and so his message that he said later was that, you know, if you're going to only have one car for the rest of your life, you're going to really take care of it, if you think about it, you're going to take really good care that you're going to get to the best boil. You're going to treat it well. You're not going to abuse it. You know, one would hope so. But a whole bunch of things we do to abuse ourselves, everything from eating poorly to sleeping poorly, to parting too much. There's all kinds of things we do to abuse our bodies and our minds when they're connected. And so that is the foundation for it all. For me, is that we've got this one body from the time we're born until the time we die. That's it. There's no you can't swap out halfway through. Not today anyway, something in the future that might be possible, but today, just parts now. Yeah, that's right, yeah. I studied, in my working on a Master's at the institute biomedical engineering. I studied total neoproplasty, knee replacements. So I'm a bit informed on that space, too. But so, yeah, so we get this one body, so look after it. And there's a whole bunch of things you can do to look after it. There's, there's mental, spiritual, there's, there's diet. What goes in, you are what you made. You know, you are what you eat. You know, staying hydrated and sleeping well and eating well and exercising, moving your body. And so when I think of moving your body so, you know what? So when I was building, and so I built a small house recently, and because we bought some land down by your neck of the woods. And so I went in there, and I had to clear the land first. And so I had to cut the trees down, I had to move the trees, and I had to, you know, so there's a lot of physical work, and this was in the winter time, and so, and, you know, so I had a chainsaw, and I had an ATV with a lark. I mean, I was doing really hard, heavy physical work. And you're moving big, you're moving trees around in the winter time on a hillside. That's not easy. So at that time, I was getting a lot of physical activity, and not so much aerobic, little bit, because when you've been trying to pull a tree outside of a hill for 15 minutes, you know, it's a roller but there's a lot of aspects, you know, to if you want to optimize, then you need to look at all the parts you need to look at, all the muscles in the body, right? Because, usually, when you're doing certain types of physical activity, it's great that you're doing physical activity, but you're usually not doing comprehensive, you know, it's like going into a business, you know, are all the parts the business working well, you know? Or if you if you're focusing on just one part of the business, like your body, my own words against me. Look at that. Yeah. No, yeah. I guess this could be marketing, but, you know, it's analogous, right? So yes, Levi, you may have been doing physical activity, but were you doing as much as you could do for all the part no, and then, and if you want to talk about, you know, physical fitness, there's a whole other realm to talk about, other types of mental and spiritual fitness and wellness. Then you think, if I were to you, there's, there's, there's different aspects of so if you have. There's a whole bunch of things I want to say all the same time, so they're all getting clogged with the ballpark here. But there's, there's the strength, the endurance and mobility are some of the most important parts of fitness, right? So, and interestingly, and I've read a lot of research on this, and not not popular publications, but scientific literature. And so if you were to focus, if someone said to you, Levi, you can only work on strength or endurance or mobility, strength is probably the one that you want to work with, because it does a whole bunch of things all the same time. But really you want to work with all of them, and that's what I try to do today. And you think about it, if you're, if you're 90 years old, you know, can you reach up to grab? You know, what you want on the top shelf is your Do you have the mobility in your spine and your shoulder and, you know, strength? There's a guy by the name of Peter Attia, a YouTube celebrity, and he talks a lot about a lot of different things. And one of the things that he has created for himself, that I thought was really interesting, he created something called the centenarian working veterinarian workout, is is, let me paint this picture. So there's a concept called sarcopenia that you you you lose muscle capacity. You know, as you age, you know, you gain that up until that sometime in your 20s, and then you, then, over time, you lose it, right? So imagine the graph. You know, you're up here at your peak, and then even if you maintain a healthy lifestyle, you're going to lose it. You know, you're going to lose strength? Well, you strength is the Merck for having right now. But there's also endurance mobility you're going to lose over by the time you're 100 you're going to have lost some right? You're not going to be the same physical specimen you are when you were 25 and so what he did, you know, so we're how high, and of course, you know, not everybody the 20s are same level of fitness, right? Strength, endurance, mobility. And so what he did is, he said, but where do I want to be when I'm 100 centenarian? He said, so. And when I'm 100 I want to be able to lift 35 pounds over my head, the weight of a toddler, a grandchild. I want to be able to get up off the floor. Sorry, I don't know how to I don't know how to get to the it. Now, there we go. So, no, I answered it. So, so he plotted where he wants to be at 100 to do all these different things, get up off the floor, lift the toddler off over his head, you know, etc, etc. And so knowing what the slope of the curve is that the typical human being, you know, male human being, loses, you know, strength and mobility over time, you can plot where you need to be to be over here at this end, right? Sort of like a cash flow, or, you know, growth curve, or whatever, right? And so, which I thought was really fascinating. So, so he, he started to tailor his workouts to be able to make sure that he was able to do those things at 100 which is one way to look at it. But I don't know if that answered your question. But it started just just to think about that for a, you know, the majority of people, that is significantly less than people think they need to do, like to get to that 35 pounds overhead by the time you're 100 like that, that might mean 135 right now, but, yeah, yeah. But they the, you know, it, it's similar to the business questions is, like, what is the end result that we're looking for? And why? Like, what does that actually mean to you? And I've come to the recent conclusion that this is more of a psycho psychology game than a approaching it from like, oh, I need to do this workout. I need to follow this diet. Let's start with, why are we doing this? And viscerally understand it, and because long term goals, I find, if they're not attached to a really, really good why? Then it's just, you know, it's like saving money. It's like, it's like anything. It's like, you know, when you talk about compound or you talk to a 30 year old, a 20 year old, about compound interest over time, that's not very exciting. Yeah, yeah. So, you know, creating some excitement around the why, you know, and winning some of those short term goals and understanding what those might look like, I think, is a is how I've been, because I've been in the fitness world for, you know, since I was like 15, and thought about it a lot, and now I'm more thinking of it as like a psychology thing, because they're, you. Know, to get up and do the thing consistently. I think it's probably a good place to start is like, why are we doing this in the first place? I don't know why, but until this conversation, I've never directly correlated getting fit, going to the gym, physical health, to everything I know about change management, and it's, I've just never, ever connected the two until right now. So listen, so one of the, one of the really important things is, is, it's, it's about, so change management and so, so I think of change management from a behavior perspective, like habits, right? So Cal import wrote a book called Tiny habits. I think that's an even book, yeah. And so I recommend it. And so it's, it's all about tiny habits, one little step at a time. And so, like, two and a half, three years ago, I was out of shape. I was four. I've lost 45 pounds, 45 pounds heavier with fat, my mobility was declining. I just I wasn't sleeping well. I was eating too much. I was drinking too much, everything. I mean, it was all not good. And I made a pact with myself that I was going to change. And I read the book tiny habits by Cal import, and it is true. So I started making little, tiny changes, like I would buy Harrison dirty laundry here I would buy every Friday I had a habit on my way home, I'd stop at the grocery store, and amongst other things, I'd get two bags of chips. Or, actually, I'd get a bag of chips and a bag of corn chips, or cheesies, one of the two. And I like the jalapeno chips, by the way, they're the best. And so anyway, I'd get these two bags of chips and and, and I'd have so many beers, and I have so much food anyway. And so what I did is I just one of the many, many small habits I started with. I said, Okay, you know what? Heck that bring that I'm going to shoot. I there, I'm gonna so I said, I'm gonna stop, I'm gonna cut back. So I would only get one bag of chips. So look, that's not perfect, but it's one bag less. And the the the chips were, these are not the right numbers. The chips might have been, you know, 500 calories a bag, and achievement, and the corn chips were like, 700 calories a bag. So I dropped the corn chips anyway. So then, you know, then I started going to gym, you know, maybe two, three days a week. Oh, my goodness, it's a different I oops. So, yeah, tiny habits and so, anyway, look, so it's change management. It's all about tiny habits, and you start to build on success. And I remember, oh my god, first day I started going to the gym. I was standing there, and I had been quite fit, right? So I was weights that I was lifting. You think back to what you were lifting, and you want to start there, right? But no, you can't do that. So I started, I was lifting. I was doing some curls, and I'm standing there by the bench, and from there, and I was doing curls and and I started, like Steven started lighter than you need to, but because you're going to get hurt. And because I'm 60, I was 58 at summer, and I looked to the my right, and there was a girl. She might have been 95 pounds, and she was lifting more than twice what I was lifting, doing the same thing. So demoralizing. You know, my ego took but I thought it's okay. We're talking about the long term here, and and so stuck with it, and three years later, it'll be a pretty good place. But change management. Tony, Alex, it's funny how, it's funny how this like, you know, I've tried every sort of workout routine and different diets and have taken it more seriously, and to the point where I've taken it so seriously, where it hurt my relationship, yeah, and finding that balance. You know, when I was doing nutrition school, you know, we were, I was eating like an insane person and only organic. I was doing juicing fast. I was doing all this stuff, and that was not a fun person to be around. And kind of, yeah, once again, going back to like, why am I doing this? And like, what's important to me? And working that whole health journey into that equation now, not just business goals, all that kind of stuff. It's like, it just becomes to it becomes more clear a. Little a little sooner. And even the stuff that I'm doing now, because I also work at a desk most of the time, and I'm driving a lot sitting. And something I'm trying to do now is every hour or so, I grab a kettlebell or go do some squats, just do 1015, come sit back down, get the blood flow going, think clearer. And so I'm trying to add, like small things, not to be, not be so hard on myself that it has to be a perfect workout every time I go, or do I have to go anywhere at all. You know, how can I set up more wins more often throughout the day? I i read a fair I watch a fair amount of podcasts like this, I guess. And yesterday, I watched one by Chris Williamson. You may have heard of Chris, yep. And, and really, the whole thing was about be kind to yourself, you know, and we're, you know, ironically, we are among the hardest on ourselves. We have a more negative, more, you know, difficult opinion of ourselves than anybody else, like we're harder on ourselves than anybody and and, and, and we shouldn't be. There's no need to be. And then in this, in this video, he was, he was, he was interviewing somebody who I read is a book about his writings. Really incredible guy, naval Ravikant, is I recommend, you know, following him. And anyway, he said that we don't spend enough time thinking about the big questions. But I think the big questions are the big questions for good reasons. It sounds kind of funny, but, you know, yeah, people talk about the meaning of life with these big questions, right? Well, we don't spend a whole lot of time because they're almost like, thought of as cliches that are really just sayings. But, you know, they're the big questions for a reason, and they deserve the attention that they, you know, they propose to have. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. It's funny that even even when it comes to things like meditation and taking that time for yourself, to really, like decompress in the day. And I got thinking, because I know, I know a fair amount of smokers in my life, and I started to think about smoking a little bit differently when they go out for a smoke break. That is time that I wouldn't necessarily have have taken to go. You don't even realize maybe you're looking at the trees, maybe you're looking at the sky, maybe, or whatever. But like that 10 minutes that you're out there like, I wonder you know, because, because your body doesn't you know, when you stop eating chips, your body doesn't reward you. It's just that you're not adding more damage to, like, the thing that you're doing. And I started thinking about things like, you know, those bad habits, like the drinking and and smoking, but like, what are the benefits of of doing those, those some of the benefits of my bad habits. I'll just write the book. It's true, though, if you're all of a sudden, uh, not social, going out on the weekends, and you're not laughing with that same group of friends, what's the health toll on that, you know? What's the what's the health toll, the stress of of needing to hit a perfect diet. And, you know, it's just some some weird rabbit holes to be able to go down when you're thinking about this stuff. But like, I think that's where, like, you know, balance and following a few easy pillars consistently is a bit of a now, you hit a really good you're these are all really important thoughts. And same thing applies to fitness, right? You can go overboard in fitness and diets and so, yeah, everything to everything in some it's an overused saying, but, you know, everything in moderation, it's somewhat true. However, I'll say this one of the things that people in North America have, a tendency, tendency to say they talk about average they talk about, you know, average health, and comparing yourself to the average health typical North American male or female. That's not a good standard, right? So you know, if you talk about eating well and exercising well and treating your body well, yeah, I agree with you 100% that you can overdo it, very, very, very few people overdo it, yeah. Now, what do. Does happen, though, and I think you're really important to acknowledge, is that there's a pendulum, and we have a tendency to do not enough and too much. Not enough, too much. And very rarely do we find that optimal point, but, but it's, it's, you know, it takes some, some effort to push yourself hard enough to get up out of bed and go for that walk at, you know, 530 or six or whatever, or whatever it is that you're going to do in life, it takes effort. It's yeah, you gotta it's work. Yeah, that's life. That's life we're gonna be dead. It's life we're gonna be dead for all of eternity. Well, so that's a really interesting thought. But so this book that I'm reading currently called irreducible, by Federico Faggin. He's a, he's a Italian physicist, and he's, he's the founder of the of the microchip for Intel, the first the microchip, the 4004, and anyway, brilliant physicist and and he's been doing a lot of work in quantum mechanics lately. And so in quantum mechanics, there's all kinds of really weird shit that's happening in quantum mechanics, by the way. And some of the most incredible minds in the world, you know, like Rob, like Feynman, which Richard Feynman, you know, some of the reddest physicists in the planet. You know, are confused by the quantum you know, quantum studies, quantum physics, quantum mechanics, anyway, so, so he talks about, so if you've ever thought this, sorry, this is gonna sound way too philosopher, way to out there who, but we did Buddhism in our last episode, and it was fantastic deep. I would think of myself as a bud if I'm leaving so anyway, so, so he talks about So, I have always been I've always thought of myself as an atheist, or, at a minimum, and agnostic, because I can't prove there's no God. I can't prove it, although I believe that there's no God in the concept that that, you know, that man has created, in the dogmatic structure created, right? Yeah, so, but so anyway, so when I and then I've had conversations like I just said, I said, Well, you're gonna be dead. You can live life now, because you can be dead forever, for all of eternity, for trillions and trillions and trillions and trillions of years and and then for the first time in my life, I think that maybe that's not true. So Federico Faggin in this book, so you can you can see him on YouTube, phenomenal interviews that he's had. So one of the reasons why I thought we were dead forever is because, you know, it was like a reducible type of concept. Because, you know, I believe that consciousness arose in the mind. You know, we've got this, this, this, this neat package that that has all this electrical signals going on in it. You've got these neurons and connections in the brain, and that this, this is the mechanism that's in here that creates consciousness. And then when they when all these, you know, electrochemical signals stop and disintegrate, then it's gone. But he produces some pretty interesting evidence to suggest that that is not the case. That we are a quantum. We have a we have a classical quantum, which is the physical structure, the physical universe. But there's also the quantum, the irreducible quantum of the human mind, that it existed before our bodies did and will exist after and that everything has consciousness. Now this is going to sound, this sounds really Google, I know, but everything has conflict. Your dog has consciousness, you know, you know, the ant has consciousness. The tree has consciousness. Everything has consciousness, but it sees the world through different filters, and our brain is a filter. But so I now am at least uncertain as to whether or not my money dies. Will I be gone forever? I'm uncertain. I'm only a third of the way through the book, so I one of the things I love about having a platform or a reason to have these types of conversations is I, because I never come away with less curiosity. I get questions answered, I ask questions, but I only leave every conversation with more things I want to know more about. Yeah, I just like, it's this, like the purpose of an interview is not to solve anything or or, like, checked on. Yeah, very, very fascinating. This is something I've not specifically what you're well, in the same vein of what you're speaking about, something I've struggled with since about 16 years old. And you know, not any closer. To solving it. My the most recent conclusion is that, with all the religions and, you know, different perspectives, I feel like we just got it wrong as a as a human race, and yes, maybe most likely there's, there's something else, but we just didn't quite get it right? Your brain, your brain, has so much capability, right? Your brain has evolved to a certain level. A dog's brain so we are a dog's brain is what it is. An ant's brain is what it is, and you perceive the world through our brains. You know, through the ability for it to process information and make sense of the world around us. Our brains, our human brains, do not have anywhere near the capability to understand the world in the universe as it exists in today. We are so in the dark. We're as much in the dark as the ant is about this conversation today. Yeah, we're that far away from understanding reality. I think, Yeah, agreed. It's 1d You know, I don't know how many you know, degrees away from reality that we can understand, but it's we're nowhere near, I don't think where we need to be, and that Stephen, that that's, I think that's where some of my, and this is some work that I need to do on this, but like, that's where a lot of my deep frustration with religion comes from, is the sheer confidence in the way that they Speak. It about answers to very complex things. If there wasn't that level of confidence, I would be more interested in in, you know, exploring more more ideas around different religions. And that's the thing that really turned me off, is like, how do you how are you standing there saying, saying this with such confidence, I don't understand where it comes from. And I'm like, like, I wish I could just crawl into your brain for a second. And the evidence is so, so Ricky. I watched an interview with Ricky Gervais and Stephen Colbert, yeah, I've seen that. Yeah, that's great. And he says he's so and Stephen Covey is, if people realize is actually quite religious. Yes, here's a is a known, you know, atheist to the extreme and, and he made a really interesting comment to Stephen Colbert. He said, Well, look, he said, he said, you're an atheist like I am. You know, in many, in most situations, he said, there are over 3000 religions in the world, and he said, You only believe in one of them, so you don't believe in 2999 so you only don't believe in one more than me, I saw that. Wow. Yeah. Isn't that amazing? So yes, and yeah, there you go. Fascinating. Yeah. What a word. Yeah. We we hit these. This is like the fifth time we hit these points in a conversation where I'm like, All right, so like, all the other things I was gonna mention on my list are, like, gonna take us from deep and philosophical to shallow and transactional. Uh, comment on that. This is the reason I will continue to not write questions down prior to, prior to doing these interviews, because, like, it always goes this way. And this is why I love it. I like to be prepared. I'll always make notes. But I was like, I Yeah, it's, it's fascinating, and is there anything in your world you want to talk about or share or ask us that we haven't explored Stephen, we kind of scratched our own itches. I feel like it's a very selfish process. I'm, you know, I'm, I'm, I'm interested in so many things like I there's almost nothing that I'm not interested in. When I came back from out west, so I'm Don and I moved out west after I graduated, and out there, I managed Canada's first national altitude training center, training center for lead athletes, union Bedard, prior to her two gold and one hammer, trained with us. Her whole team went over there, you know, weeks in the head, and she stayed with us, and she got two gold. Just obviously, it's because she was my pen pal in grade school. Really, small, cool. And when I came back, I we came back because my first daughter was born, and we realized we want we thought we were going to live in BC forever like that. That's we thought the Okanagan Valley was beautiful. Lifestyle is amazing. But as soon as we had our first child, both of our families are from here, and we realized we wanted to bring her up close to families. We parked up and moved to them. I didn't have a job. I ended up getting a interim job managing the town of natwick's recreation department. And And why am I even saying this? I'm not even I've lost interested in lots of things. That's where you started. Oh, and so. And I remember, I remember when I was there, I said, what? I'm not from that work. I mean, I know a few people because I live close, but I'm not from that work. And I thought, How am I going to get to know the community? Because I'm Recreation and Parks director, and community is what I'm here to serve. And so right across so my office was in the arena, and on the other side of the parking lot was the town Community Center, I guess. And every I don't remember what day, but let's say it was every afternoon the women, most of them were older women, would get together and they would have a quilting bead. And so I went, you want to talk about interesting? I went over, so I decided I'm going to go over and introduce myself. And I did, and they said, Well, have a seat. And I sat down, and I they said, well, here, make yourself useful. They gave me a dealer thread. And so I started quilting. And so here I am. I wrote this big quilt. And, you know, I don't know how long was I there I was. This was back in 1994 and 9596 something like that. And so I'm there. I'm quilting. And my god, do you learn a lot, you know, sitting around a quilt with, you know, a whole bunch of older ladies in the community. So you ever want to learn about a community and who's who and who's what and where things that's that's where you go. And so my ex Mike, so what that taught me, in addition to how to learn more about the community, and then, of course, because I went there and they like the communication hub, right? So everybody knew about me, like that afternoon or that evening and so, but what I learned was that there's always open yourself up to different perspectives, like talk to people that you don't agree with and like, really listen, like, really work at listening and trying to understand. Because if I hadn't gone and talked to those ladies, my life would be different today, honestly. So yeah, I think there's so much and this, I'm sure, for you guys, as part of that right is talking to different people, because just talking to different people and letting it go free form, where this has been pretty much today, is important because so I'm a one of my favorite words. Donald Trump loves the word tariff. So Stephen Dixon loves the word serendipity. I just love SERENDIP. You know, the serendipitous thing. Like most of my life has been serendipitous. And here's the, here's what, here's what serendipity is to entrepreneurs, entrepreneurialism and success. So serendipity and success. In entrepreneurialism, you're connected in the in that, and a good entrepreneur who's who is aware, looking for ideas and understands. You know, business markets and demand and opportunity and exploiting, that's not a bad word. You know, this serendipity is that you when something comes something comes into your life, recognizing that it's an opportunity is is the challenge is being able to pick up on those things and seeing it as an opportunity when nobody else does, and driving on to it right away. And so that's a big part of entrepreneurialism, in my view, is understanding how to identify opportunities that serendipity drops in your lap, you probably have an opportunity drop on your lap at a minimum, once a week. Yeah, at a minimum, maybe every day. Yeah, yeah. And the momentum around serendipity, right? It's like a you can create momentum around that kind of stuff if you're if you're looking at life similar to a golden retriever, where every interaction is something positive, or could be something positive, I get is that, is that? Is that a, is that a backhanded way to call me a dog? I mean, you know what? He is, self describing, describing. I often refer to myself as a the attitude of golden retriever, where it's just like, well, I could look at it differently. You know, like every there's an opportunity everywhere and, and I'm more of a terrier, I think, yeah, that's fine. That's fine. Yeah, we live our lives like our strategic plans we have to had. We're having them more frequently now because we were annual, and it's like, we there's this fine. 10 tensions. Probably they're not alive. It's the tension between new and exciting and get far enough into the what we had said we were going to do and like, it's just the tension between is where we've seen success. But it needs, like, I'm not interested in ever owning a business on my own again, because I don't trust myself to not have that tension within my own multiple personalities. So that's very effective to recognize. And by that, you know what? I believe that moving forward, and you know, if some of my new ventures, you know, pan out the way I'd like them to, I'm similar to you Levi, is that I would like to have somebody else working with me as a partner, because I think that there's so much joy in sharing the excitement, sharing the education, and just in sharing the success. There's nothing more lonely than, you know, being a CEO of a company without a partner. And I believe I belong to a business organization of CEOs and entrepreneurs and and we have a cohort and, and that is probably the single biggest value of this group, is that it's lonely. When you're at the head of a company, nobody really wants to communicate with you the way that you want to communicate, right? Yeah, and because, you know it's going to say the wrong thing to you, they're going to be guarded always. So having a partner and says smart the fuck up, you know what? What were you thinking? You know, having somebody that can speak freely, openly and get excited with you is really, I think fun. Yeah, that's why I'm completely Another side effect of these conversations is typically, we create those moments, yeah, inside of our peer groups. And one fun new metric that I've been really excited about, because we've gone through some tough times, is our ability to go through tough times together and and we've kind of seen the worst, and I would say, not the worst situations, but like in each other, like, we know, yeah, you know what I'm saying? Like, it's, it's, it's, I'm more excited about knowing that we can go through hard things, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, wow. I, I kind of feel like we're coming to an organic, like endpoint. I just like, these are like, I'm gonna create the checklist of meaningful topics we talked on you actually mentioned Trump. So we got politics in there. We got religion, we got philosophy, business, we got the next episode, we'll explore consciousness of Layla. Is Layla a golden doodle? Or wish he's a sleepy cockapoo at the moment? Yeah, yeah, yeah, not in her brain. Great. Well, thank you so much, Steven. I managed to have this conversation a little bit differently in a couple different times, and we don't spend enough time together, but I love that we were able to have this today. I also love that I was able to bring you two together, because it's really funny how much you have in common on a we talk a lot about how complementary skill sets, but aligned values and those kindred spirits out there that you can have meaningful conversation around. So the very least, my good deed for the day is done. We can go to the gym, do a workout, and I'll be on the other side of the gym doing my own thing. All right, we'll make it happen. Good, great. Well, thank you very much. We'll stick around for a sec, but we'll call this episode and end. Thank you. Thanks, David. This episode of built to last is brought to you by Iron House Pro, your behind the scenes partner in building organizations designed to thrive. We specialize in solving the big challenges, the small annoyances and everything in between. So while you're out there dreaming big, we're here making sure your systems processes and people are ready for tomorrow. Iron House Pro driven to create lasting organizations. Learn more at Iron House pro.com you.