It's All One Thing

In 2016, at the National Association of Corporate Directors Annual Summit, I had a clarifying moment in my executive career. Raj Sisodia, one of the founders of Conscious Capitalism, spoke to the need for integrating values, purpose, and people into our ways of making profit. I was about a year into my executive coaching practice, where my headline program was helping early stage company CEOs find work-life balance. I have a clear and total sense-memory of his message sinking in; it's integration, not balance.

It's All One Thing.

From that point onward, my coaching practice and my life practice have been about getting increasingly clarity on that One Thing, arranging all parts of my life to support that One Thing. The more I do that, the greater my sense of fulfillment and peace of mind.

Ralph and I started Wild Type Ranch in 2005. My two boys were small. I was burnt out from founding two investor-funded animal ag biotech startups. Ralph was recently arrived from Tasmania, fresh out of the aquaculture industry. A grass-fed beef ranch was a crazy dream and we had no idea if we could make a living. One thing we were clear on was our foundational values, and every production decision was made keeping three principles in mind; environmental stewardship, animal welfare, and product quality.

Nineteen cycles of season later, we've been through a lot. A 4-wheeler accident crushed Ralph's vertebrae and left him lucky to be able to walk. A change in child custody meant my boys spent little time on the ranch once they were teens. We expanded, then downsized, the beef business and I began to spend more time in the corporate world. But our values never changed.

Through working with my own coach, I've gotten ever clearer on my One Thing. Everything is pointed toward my own spiritual integration; from my corporate associations, to my horsemanship, to music and my own health. The two most important things are my relationships with family and the land. That understanding of "It's All One Thing" fuels my passion for regenerative ag. For me, building a multi-generational regenerative farm with healthy soils, healthy animals, healthy food and healthy relationships is the epitome of integration.

Today, I was reminded of my own ‘aha moment’ by a 2019 podcast; "Everything is One"with Ray Archuleta, one of the founders of Understanding Ag. Ray covers a lot of ground in this podcast, including basics of regenerative ag. I'm featuring it here because of his own aha moment; once he understood that the soil was alive, he saw the interconnectedness of the whole system, from soil microbes up through the health of our human communities.

This podcast is included as reference material in Understanding Ag's Soil Health Academy Regen Ag 101 course.