#0 - Why ReGen Brands? Why Us? Why Now?

Episode Transcript:

Kyle Krull - 0:00:16
Welcome to The ReGen Brands Podcast. This is a place for consumers, operators and investors to learn about the consumer brand supporting regenerative agriculture and how they're changing the world. This is your host Kyle, joined with my cohost AC. Let's dive in.

Anthony Corsaro - 0:00:35
We're live. What's up, bro? Episode one. How we feeling?

Kyle Krull - 0:00:39
Episode Zero, bro. Episode zero? Yes, but feeling good. Feeling like ready to chat through some weekend stuff, man. How you feeling?

Anthony Corsaro - 0:00:47
Good man, had a good barefoot lift this morning. You know, it's a beautiful sunny day in Bend. OR how can I be in a bad place?

Kyle Krull - 0:00:54
Yeah, you know, it's it's the way to go. I also noticed, I think we might have matching headphones. Oh, maybe not. I don't know. They're close.

Anthony Corsaro - 0:01:00
That that you know that would align with the the way that you're not relationship has been going today. So that wouldn't surprise me at all.

Kyle Krull - 0:01:06
Right all thing matching.

Anthony Corsaro - 0:01:09
Yeah, yeah. All right. Well, let's get started. Welcome everybody to The ReGen Brands Podcast. This is episode 0. This is our intro episode with your host, Kyle and A/C. I really excited to have all of y'all with us. Today we're going to kind of share what the podcast is about, what we're going to talk about in future episodes, a little bit of overview on region at regen ag or regenerative agriculture, why it's important to us, how it's solving or can solve, you know, some of the biggest problems facing, you know, our society today. Kyle and I are going to share our stories. Just individually and kind of how we came to regenerative agriculture, while we're passionate about it, while we're credible in the space and the work and the work that we do in the space. So just excited to have all of y'all with US episode zero, we're fired up. It's definitely our first go around. So excuse us for any, any small miscues, but we're pretty pumped and and welcome.

Kyle Krull - 0:01:59
Cool. Right on yeah. So you know, what is the RETAIN brands podcast? You know, this podcast is basically a place for consumers, operators, investors to come in to learn about the consumer brands that are supporting regenerative agriculture today and how they're changing the world. Gotta make things better, right? So this is kind of stuff we're going to be going over in future podcasts like Anthony mentioned today. We're going to just be focusing on who we are and why we're doing this. So, you know, Anthony, why should people even care about Regent?

Anthony Corsaro - 0:02:29
Yeah, it's a it's a great question and you know Kyle and I are going to kind of go back and forth and tag team some stats to share with you all and and they're actually pretty scary. But you know the good the good news is that regenerative agriculture works on all these. But kind of starting out, you know almost 1/4 of the world's land area has been degraded over the last 50 years and the United Nations has reported that if the current rates of soil degradation continue all of the world's top soil is going to be gone in the next 60 years. So meaning we we literally would only. We have 60 years of harvest slip, so that's it. That's a pretty big issue there.

Kyle Krull - 0:03:02
Yeah, yeah, that's a huge issue. And just to, you know, touch on it real quick, the main driver for this land degradation right now is, you know, industrial agriculture right now, the, the main method of producing food is extractive. So we're taking nutrients out of the soil and we're not putting anything back in. And that's causing a lot of this land degradation and everything else that we're going to be talking about right now, which kind of brings us to our next point. Climate change is obviously a huge issue and everybody you know from. You know, Joe Schmo and somebody looking to just buy whatever they want. People are looking to buy more sustainable things today. And a big part of that is people trying to reduce their carbon emissions, right? So the agricultural sector is actually one of the biggest emitters of CO2, which is the greenhouse gas that is most responsible for the changes that we're seeing in the climate today. So if we can reduce the amount of emissions coming out of agriculture, that's going to make a big impact on the whole world. So a really important opportunity for us to improve our systems there.

Anthony Corsaro - 0:04:01
Yeah, and while agriculture is adding something bad like CO2, it's also reducing things that are good, I E biodiversity. And you know, if you're not super familiar with the ag space, biodiversity means the amount of diversity of biological life in a given ecosystem. And the world has seen, on average, a 68% drop in mammal, bird, fish, reptile and amphibian population since 1970. That is crazy, 68% drop. So, you know, most of that loss is caused by habitat destruction due to unsustainable agriculture or logging. And you know, it goes back to the thing that colleges mentioned, which are what we're doing right now is not giving us the outcomes that are basically sustainable or regenerative or are going to continue to be, you know, our sustenance moving forward as a society.

Kyle Krull - 0:04:48
It is insane. Just staggering figure, you know, and you know, on the note of unsustainability when we talk about like. Unsustainable industry farming is one of those industries. You know current farming doesn't really make sense or dollars. Farm profitability is at an all time low and farmers suicide. It's at an all time high. Farmers are more than 1 1/2 times more likely to commit suicide than the general population and approximately 1.2 billion jobs in sectors like agriculture, fisheries, forestry and tourism.

Kyle Krull - 0:04:55
Are dependent on the effective management and sustainability of healthy ecosystems. So if the people who are supposed to be stewarding this land are killing themselves because they're so depressed about their outlook, that doesn't really bode well for the planet.

Anthony Corsaro - 0:05:31
Yeah, that's, that's that's a wild stat and you know I think that's. Maybe one of the reasons why both of us got passionate about this was to support those folks and, you know, make it easier for those folks to transition to more regenerative practices or culture. Because, I mean, that's if if those people can't make a livelihood, like what are we? What are we doing as a society, right?

Kyle Krull - 0:05:50
Yeah.

Anthony Corsaro - 0:05:52
So another big, another big problem and part of I think what drives some of those farmer issues are we are super dependent right now on agrochemicals and agrochemical monopolies in our economic systems and in our farming systems and. You know, no matter what you believe on if we should use chemicals in our food system or not, the the fact of the matter is we use way too many chemicals in our food system. So whether you're kind of revolutionary and say we shouldn't use any or whether you say we just need to reduce. I mean it's really clear that we use way too many and you know, some crazy stats being one pesticide has been found in over 94% of water samples taken in EU S / 90% of fish samples from streams and 60% of shallow wells from around the US. So that's crazy. We're literally finding pesticides inside the fish, not just in the water, but inside the fish that are in our wild, you know, water and lands, which is insane. Yeah. And on top of that, you know, the good things or the OR the nutrients that we're putting in the soil that are also the chemicals like nitrogen and phosphorus. You know, these things are being used in excess and they're running off of the farmland and they're basically producing what we call dead zones and bodies of water. So like the Gulf of Mexico, for instance, there's currently a dead zone that kills all marine and fish life.

Anthony Corsaro - 0:06:36
Or prohibits kind of further marine and fish life and it's more than 6500 miles or 4,000,000 acres of habitat. I mean that's that's crazy. And basically, you know Kyle, you've you've traveled and been a dive instructor and you know how important those ecosystems are and you know, what's the world's, what's the world playing service, like 70% oceans or whatever. Like if we continue to do that we're, we're kind of screwed.

Kyle Krull - 0:07:28
Yeah, I mean, when you think about biomass on the planet, you know? Land, obviously there's a ton of life on land, but the oceans, just from if you just think about the top of the ocean, there's so much more space. And then you think about the depth of the ocean, if we're killing all of that biomass like that's screwing up ecosystems. Planet wide that we don't even have access to, we probably don't even know how detrimental these practices are to all of that life because it's it's impossible to measure, right, right. Yeah, it's just crazy. So one of the thing that, you know, we want to touch on is nutrient density in food. You know, we talked about industrial agriculture and the fact that it's extractive. So we're trying to pull these nutrients out of the soil and we're supplementing the lack of nutrients in soil with these chemicals that A/C was just talking about.

Kyle Krull - 0:07:44
And this leads us to our next one on nutrient density. So you know, preventable diet related chronic diseases are the most common cause of death in the world. Today. 75% of the United States $3 trillion annual healthcare expenditure is related to preventable lifestyle diseases including heart disease and type 2 diabetes. It's not crazy. You know, it's crazy. And a lot of this comes under the fact that people are eating calories but not nutrients, right? So the Western American diet is calorie rich and nutrient, you know, deficient.

Kyle Krull - 0:08:11
And this really comes down to how we grow our food. You know, we're not thinking about putting in nutrient dense food on the table. It's just about, you know, cheap calories and it's something that we need to fix.

Anthony Corsaro - 0:08:49
And you know what, we forgot to include in here a stat about kind of how the nutrient density of the food has has decreased. I forget the exact stat, but it's like, you know, an orange today has like 1/8 of the of the vitamins and minerals that it had 50 years ago or whatever.

Kyle Krull - 0:09:02
Right.

Anthony Corsaro - 0:09:03
Right now that that's not true across the board because there is still people growing very nutrient dense foods, but in our mass kind of commodity. Structure and system, there's definitely been a huge decrease there and the data really shows that and it's it's just, it's just wild. I mean that's why if you have to eat 8/8 of the amount they used to have to eat to get same nutritional value, you know that's that's a problem.

Kyle Krull - 0:09:26
Totally. When like from a nutritional perspective, it's like that's just to match the vitamins and mineral content, right? But the sugar is about the same. So you're eating the same orange, getting all that same sugar level without any of the additional, you know, vitamins and minerals that your body really needs to thrive. And this segues really nice thing to our next point, there's a study that came out recently which we should have had the notes in front of us, but it actually proved that fonts who are utilizing regenerative practices create more nutrient dense foods. So, you know, there's something we can touch on in a later episode. It's a really interesting study. But you know, believe it or not, regenerative agriculture addresses all of these things that we're talking about right now. And it's basically, it's a process of farming and ranching that can positively affect all the issues that we're talking about. So, you know, currently there's no singular agreed upon definition of what regenerative agriculture is. It's more of a farming philosophy and a system of principles and practices that are implemented at the production level. And it changes the way that we work with an ecosystem instead of against it to have a positive outcome for both our food and for the environment. And those kind of generally agreed upon principles are maintaining living root systems, basically keeping roots in the ground and don't follow your land.

Kyle Krull - 0:10:11
Which is essentially, you know, once the growing season is done and you've done your harvest just leaving exposed dirt to erode, that's what maintaining the new system is keeping those roots in the ground. Two is armoring the soil primarily with the use of cover crops. 3 is increasing biodiversity with either crop mixing or just lack of mono crop agriculture. 4 is limited disturbance, so that's low till or no till and a reduction in the utilization of chemical fertilizers and pesticides. The last one is animal integration, and that's just basically integrating animals into the production method in some capacity to maybe potentially replace fertilizers or something along those lines.

Anthony Corsaro - 0:11:20
And that I wanna, I want to key on that because I know you and I are really big proponents of that and yeah, I think a lot of people forget this. And and if you, if you talk to some Regent experts and some ecological experts and some agronomic experts that definitely know way more about this field than you and I, they will say you can be regenerative without the animal integration, but it makes it extremely more challenging and basically you're kind of stacking the deck against yourself. And I think that's super important to note because like what a lot of people don't know about America, if you live in America is the vast majority of the terrain in this country was native grasslands that had a diverse species of grasslands on them and were migratorily, if that's a word, grazed by bison, our chase.

Kyle Krull - 0:12:04
If it were packs, it's a word.

Anthony Corsaro - 0:12:06
Right by predators and moved according to you know the the natural way ecosystem abusive function and not just bison. There was elk and there was all these other ruminant animals that now basically we have a ton of cattle. On the land. But what a regenerative wrench is trying to do is replicate that and kind of move the animals in a very similar fashion. Then you know, the bison, the kind of game.

Kyle Krull - 0:12:28
It's a really good point. I want to spin on it just a little bit further and just sort of like we're getting a little bit into the weeds on regenerative agriculture. But if you take a step back, it's really about trying to emulate nature like you mentioned before with like, you know, the grasslands and the bison that we're migrating being chased by predators and if you think about any natural ecosystem. Animals are an integral part. You know, you have to have animals for an ecosystem to thrive. They all play their role in the food cycle. And what we gendered agriculture is trying to do is figure out, you know, how can we create a more natural ecosystem to produce food for the planet that benefits, you know, people and the earth and the wildlife. So just just a really great point you brought up. And want to expand on a little bit further, but yeah, dive in. You know what? What is it? What do, what do we call regenerative articles? What's our definition here?

Anthony Corsaro - 0:13:15
Yeah. And the other thing for the animals to cause, like it lets them have their natural expression that they would have in a wild, you know, like imagine if human beings were raised in feedlots and we couldn't ever be how human beings were supposed to be. I mean, that would be, that'd be terrible. So I, I, I love what you said there. And I just wanted to add that last piece.

Kyle Krull - 0:13:35
Yeah.

Anthony Corsaro - 0:13:36
So Kyle talked about practices and principles because we we still don't have that one agreed upon definition. We thought it was important kind of as a podcast to define what what we think regenerative agriculture was. And we've kind of taken bits and pieces from some other thought leaders in the space and just from our experience talking to a ton of people in the space. But we define regenerative agriculture as a system of farming and ranching principles and practices that have these outcomes. We've talked about practices, but what are the outcomes that regen ag should have. Enriches soil, improves watersheds, increases biodiversity, enhances ecosystem services and, and most importantly, and probably the biggest tie into why Kyle and I are passionate about it are it increases the nutrient density in our food. But you know, one other thing that's really important to note is like regenerative agriculture is not new. It's just a new name we've given it all the principles and practices for the most part are really based on indigenous wisdom and principles that have used for millennia but by the original or OG land stewards that kind of we're doing the right things all. Long and when we kind of came in and industrialized agriculture you know we we messed it up and it's so, so it's it's yes it's an innovative space there's a lot of emerging kind of momentum behind it but it really is a return to a lot of these things that you know we forgot how to do or we ignored that they were the right things to do and so we want to give that that acknowledgement you know as.

Kyle Krull - 0:14:55
A so important to acknowledge that.

Anthony Corsaro - 0:14:57
Yep, absolutely. So you know. We're obviously very passionate about the space, but who the hell are these two guys on this podcast? Who, who are us? If you know us, you kind of know a little bit about maybe one of our stories but probably not both. And if you don't know us, you know, we wanted to take this time to to really introduce the listeners to who we are, why we care about the space, what we do in the space and and why we wanted to to make this, you know, this podcast, like I mentioned with the nutrient density piece, you know, Kyle and I both have a pretty significant health story or journey that led us to being really passionate about returning about. And let us to want to work in the space and and we both work in the space pretty significantly every day. But all that Kyle kind of take the mic and share his story and how how he you know got got to be passionate about return of agriculture and what's happened in his life that brought him there.

Kyle Krull - 0:15:48
Cool. Appreciate that, man. See you. Let's rewind back to my first job ever. I think I was 1415 years old and I was working at lamppost pizza, so that was my first job. And I've been working in food basically ever since. So I'll sneak it up on 20 years in the food industry, which is kind of wow you go to.

Anthony Corsaro - 0:16:06
Pizza to take home at night, you pepperoni guys.

Kyle Krull - 0:16:08
Sauce and cheese. Actually, we used to make this thing called Taco Pizza, which sounds insane, but it Taco pizza is where it's at. So instead of like, just regular tomato sausage. Half tomato sauce, half salsa, throwing mozzarella and cheddar cheese with some seasoned ground beef fajita vegetables, then some crunched up tortillas chips when you pull it out of the oven, fresh avocado, a little bit of fresh lettuce and some hot sauce and boom.

Anthony Corsaro - 0:16:33
Dude, we're doing, we're going to do that fast casual chain. We're going to take over the world and it's all going to be regen 100%. So that's incredible.

Kyle Krull - 0:16:40
Regen Taco Pizza the future? So you know I'm pretty passionate about food. I love food. Eating, food, selling food, whatever, anything food related. So anyways first job might post pizza. After that worked at in and out sees candies, PF Chang's. I've been selling food for a very long time. You know I worked at restaurants all the way through college and you know as I'm in my senior year of college trying to figure out what am I actually going to do with my life. I didn't want to work as a waiter forever. I was at an ugly sweater Christmas party wearing candy cane, thigh highs and.

Kyle Krull - 0:16:43
Yeah, I.

Anthony Corsaro - 0:17:13
Bet you. I bet you looked incredible too.

Kyle Krull - 0:17:16
I wish I still had them. I went into this podcast, but I don't, unfortunately. So I'm having the classic college conversation you have. Like, hey, what's your major? What do you do after school? What? I'm talking to girl. And I was like, oh, I'm comp studies that graduate, you know, spring. I have no idea what I'm going to do. And she's like, oh, you know, my sister just graduated with comp studies degree. And she has this great job where she sells organic food and she gets free food all the time. I was like, I love food. This sounds awesome. Like sign me up. So I got a phone number, the sister and give her calls, like, hey, I'm Kyle, I want to work for your company. And she said, leave me alone. There's an internship, apply online, come talk to me. I said, OK. So a couple months later, apply online.

Kyle Krull - 0:17:27
End up getting in an interview, get the internship and I was basically is. This is my first foray into the natural food space and I was working for a national broker as a beverage intern in the Orange County area. So I had a portfolio about 25 to 30 different ready new beverages. And I was just hit the grinding, you know, driving to different natural food stores every day, talking to grocery managers, trying to improve our space and selling these products that I didn't even know existed. You know, aloe Vera, juices, kombuchas, not kombuchas, you know, bhakti Chai, beverages, all sorts of stuff. I I fell in love with the industry. I fell in love with learning about food.

Anthony Corsaro - 0:18:34
And what was like a new product that you tried early on that you like, you hadn't had that you're like damn like this is like, this is very.

Kyle Krull - 0:18:40
Legit the aloe juice was the real deal, really. Looking back, I probably wouldn't consume it today because it's like 30 grams plus of sugar per serving. Yeah, but yeah, it's like there's incredibly sweet sugary juice with these like little chunks of alavera in there and. Yeah, that was fantastic. I think the company was aloe Coco, yeah, if memory serves correct.

Anthony Corsaro - 0:19:00
It was chocolate for me. It was like once I tasted like OK, like legit chocolate. That was like organic, fair trade, regenerative whatever. Versus like Hershey's bar. I was like, Oh my God, this is not like, this is not the same thing here.

Kyle Krull - 0:19:13
And a C's not kidding. We had did it the other night and he breaks out his chocolate bar. It's like, yo, dude, go and cross the chocolate bar. Alright, let's go. And of course it is alter eco. It's regenerative. Yes. Now. So, you know we're doing it right? Let's go. But yeah, he's he's not kidding. So anyways, the first job in the natural food space and it was just super fun, really enjoyed what I was doing. I kind of just fell in love with the industry. From there, I got a job with another broker and I was representing, I think around 50 to 60 different brands in every category you can think of olive oils, shelf stable, tofu, sauerkraut. I mean, I got super familiar with a variety of categories and it was really interesting for me to learn like what differentiates these products in different categories. Why? You know, X brand of olives is better than Y brand of olives and that was the first one. I really started thinking about food at a nutritional level and also know where the food is coming from and what sort of impact they can make. And I remember Guayaqui was one of the brands I represented and they put on this incredible campaign that talked about how much.

Kyle Krull - 0:19:54
Every, you know, bottle sold contributed to X amount of shade grown Monte in the Amazon and they're basically like trying to save the rainforest. Yeah, like selling guayaki. Yeah. And that was a really meaningful campaign to me that made me feel like, you know, as a consumer you can choose to make an impact and a positive impact based on what you choose to buy and consume. So really powerful experiences in that job. And then either took another job. Of course, moment fishing bar company got a lot more experiences. Was great.

Anthony Corsaro - 0:20:38
When you were in that role, what was the hardest category in grocery? Like or the most annoying or like had the most difficult buyers or was the slowest? Like what was like? I'm always super curious in the CBG space, like in grocery like what? What do you think about just different categories?

Kyle Krull - 0:20:53
I mean at the time, and this may have been because I was not very stimulated by the product and it was very unique. It was a shelf stable tofu company. Yeah, and I don't want to name names. It's really hard. But what's ironic is there's this misconception in the industry about if something's parable. It's, it means it's better, it's fresher, it has less preservatives. But in this particular case, this company had a shelf stable variety that was higher quality than all the perishable ones. And that's the they had a hard time telling that story. Yeah. And because most shoppers associate tofu with the perishable category, they're going to the refrigerated section to try to buy these products. Yeah, not the shelf stable section. So that was like an.

Kyle Krull - 0:21:05
Interesting dichotomy and a really challenging thing to try to sell. Yeah, despite it being a really, you know, high quality product. So yeah, it was crazy. So he's got got another job in the industry and I really want to take the company this direction, this CEO want to take the company a different direction. And so I decided now I'm kind of like, I'm really frustrated. I'm just going to change pace a little bit and I'm going to move to Thailand and become a dive master.

Anthony Corsaro - 0:21:57
Let's go.

Kyle Krull - 0:21:58
You know, if if it's like, well, what's the phrase, you know, do what you love and never work a day in your life or something like that. I was like, I'm gonna be that guy. Like I'm gonna believe my friend. And so moved to Thailand, became a dive master, was working on dive, but had you 3.

Anthony Corsaro - 0:22:12
Had you dove a lot before, or was it just totally random?

Kyle Krull - 0:22:15
No, I mean, I I I was a scuba diver. I was diving probably every other weekend. I was really into scuba. And had you been to Thailand?

Anthony Corsaro - 0:22:23
Had you been to Thailand?

Kyle Krull - 0:22:23
I had not been to Thailand. No, just.

Anthony Corsaro - 0:22:25
Send it. Let's go.

Kyle Krull - 0:22:27
Just go, man. You know, it's like whatever, roll the dice, see what happens the time. So got this dive internship and we were working on boats taking people diving. And what was the reason I chose this outfit is because they were very eco driven. They wanted to reduce the impact that they had on the reefs that they were diving on. So they use pH neutral soaps. They didn't serve any fish on the boat because sustainable fishing like doesn't really exist in that part of the world. I mean there's still dynamite fishing taking place in Burma at this time where sometimes our divers could actually feel the repercussions of dynamite.

Kyle Krull - 0:22:31
In the water, that's great, which is just insane. Yeah. So that was a really cool experience for me because I got to learn a lot about the fishing industry. And it was my first time where I chose as a consumer, like, I'm no longer gonna buy any fish because I don't want to support this industry. And it's really hard to trace where fish actually comes from. And I'm not trying to advocate that everybody needs to do that, but that's what I felt called it.

Anthony Corsaro - 0:23:21
Yeah, just part of your time.

Kyle Krull - 0:23:23
Exactly. So that was that was a really cool eye opening and experience for me. After that I moved to Thailand and got a job in import and distribution of natural food in Australia, did a small sales consultant, sent in New Zealand for a paleo and gluten free red manufacturer, really great experience and came back to the US and worked in the natural food space again. Yeah. And you know, I, you know, worked with a merchandising company, did that for, you know, about two years, three years or so and then got an opportunity to work for killing the fire who I work with now and. I think somewhere in that time from like the merchandising company to Kettle on fire. Yeah, I was exposed to regenerative agriculture for the first time and my first exposure was the movie The biggest little farm classic and I remember.

Anthony Corsaro - 0:24:06
Classic.

Kyle Krull - 0:24:07
Oh man. He's like, it's like the gateway drug in the region. Yeah, right.

Anthony Corsaro - 0:24:11
That kiss the ground, you know you're not watching those, I mean.

Kyle Krull - 0:24:14
Yeah, yeah. You know, kiss the ground was definitely the followup for sure. So solid big farmer we actually like I wouldn't saw in theaters, I was like so pumped about this movie.

Anthony Corsaro - 0:24:24
Let's go.

Kyle Krull - 0:24:24
And yeah, yeah, this wasn't like a Netflix and chill. This was like, let's go buy a ticket, you know? So. I see this movie and I was blown away by like just thinking about like the before and after what that land looked like when they bought it. And you couldn't grow a weed in that dirt. It wasn't soil. And then the process to turn that into like, usable land and how they use like the Ducks to get rid of the snails and truly, like, created this ecosystem of, you know, I can't even talk about it. Incredibly powerful movie. And this one was like, OK, I really want to support.

Kyle Krull - 0:24:33
Regenerative brands and learn more. So I kind of like dove down the rabbit hole as you've done and tried to learn as much as I can about regenerative agriculture. And then kettle and Fire decided to launch some regenerative bone brass.

Anthony Corsaro - 0:25:14
Let's go.

Kyle Krull - 0:25:14
So I was like, OK, this is like the perfect intersection of I want to do good for the planet and I know how to sell food. And now if I can combine these two things like that is the perfect alignment of my professional skill set and my desire to do good. So after learning all about that and these these products coming to market, I thought you know, OK, if we're going to bring region products to market today, how are we going to message this because there's not a lot of awareness around regenerative in the CP space right now, especially at retail level, right. You know you walk into a store, you can see organic tags, you can see non-GMO tags, you can see gluten free, but there is nothing for regenerative. So I thought if I could create a coalition of brands who could all work together to unify a message to try to. Increase the awareness around regenerative agriculture at retail specifically then we could get more people on board with this movement, right. So that's that's exactly what I did. I started this smaller group of brands called the Region Coalition and that's what we do is we approach retailers and say, hey, we want to have an end cap here at this store, yeah, we're going to promote it this depth and this is what we're going to do and that's how.

Kyle Krull - 0:25:58
We touched base for the first time, yeah.

Anthony Corsaro - 0:26:22
Dude so I'm I'm 28 year old male in LA for a week in air one see a region end capped an end cap and I of course buy some white leaf provisions, baby food and just smash that like the next day at my like little we work desk and like people are looking at me like is this dude like just crashing a baby food pouch? Like what's going.

Kyle Krull - 0:26:43
On just get a giant baby like what's the deal? It's going why do you cross your baby? So, so, yeah, that's how, that's how we touch base. Yeah, you know, go, keep going.

Anthony Corsaro - 0:26:53
Yeah, yeah. And you know, you, you talked about kind of all the work stuff and seeing bigger solar farm, but I know there was a significant health event that really kind of made the whole thing, I, I would say maybe a lot more powerful or a lot more influential. So can you touch on that for the audience?

Kyle Krull - 0:27:08
Yeah, yeah, for sure. So as as we're bringing these products to market, I'm going through my own sort of weird health stuff and I'm, I'm the young dude, healthy dude. I've always been exercising a lot since working in natural food industry, primarily like organic natural foods. And I was having some serious health issues and I like couldn't carry a basket of laundry up the stairs without catching my breath. Like feeling like I was out of breath. Yeah, I noticed that. I went to run a mile. So just to be like, OK, maybe I need to do more cardio, I'm just gonna go run a mile. And it took me, I think it was either 12 or 14 minutes. It took me over an hour to catch my breath. And I was like, OK, I need to go to doctor. There's there was something wrong with me. So I go to the doctor and it turns out I was extremely iron deficient to the point where the doctor was like, I don't even know how you're exercising right now because your iron levels are so low, your hemoglobin cannot carry enough.

Anthony Corsaro - 0:28:00
Oxygen to your muscles like humble brag.

Kyle Krull - 0:28:03
Right. Yeah. You know, it's got a, but I think it was, it was a slow decrease overtime. So my body just got accomated to using less oxygen. Yeah. And so we do a bunch of testing stuff and I end up having to get like an endoscopy and a colonoscopy because they're trying to figure out if I have irritable bowel syndrome or Crohn's disease. And while they do that, they end up finding a massive tumor in my large intestine. And this, by the way, was on my 31st birthday, which is April Fool's Day. And the doctor told me you have colon cancer. And I was like, you've got to be kidding. There's no way. And he's like, yeah, you do. So had a massive surgery. They removed 75% of my large intestine that had an 11 centimeter tumor in my body and the like. The surgery was scary for sure, but the scariest part was being in the hospital and having the doctor tell me.

Kyle Krull - 0:28:32
There's a chance you have more cancer in your body. You need to do chemotherapy.

Anthony Corsaro - 0:28:59
No.

Kyle Krull - 0:29:00
You know, because for me, like, surgery is a physical thing. Yeah. And you can know, I I, in my brain is easy to overcome physical hurdles. And I don't mean to diminish anybody else's experience, but to me, that was like, OK, I can do this. Yeah. But having to take chemical pills that are, like, designed to destroy your body was a mental thing that I'd never done before.

Anthony Corsaro - 0:29:18
How much did they have to cut you up to get all that, to get all that shit out?

Kyle Krull - 0:29:23
So. It's laparoscopic surgery, OK, but the the largest incision. Originally he told me he was going to be like this big, but because the tumor was 11 centimeters, they had to cut 11 centimeters just to get the tumor.

Anthony Corsaro - 0:29:36
Out. Damn.

Kyle Krull - 0:29:38
Yeah, so, so you got a I got a gnarly 11 centimeter scar. Let's.

Anthony Corsaro - 0:29:43
Go. Let's go.

Kyle Krull - 0:29:45
So. Yeah, yeah. And it took a while to heal. Yeah. So anyways, had to start doing chemotherapy and I'm doing chemo at the same time. I'm learning about region and they're like the most opposite concepts in the planet. You know, because region is like the antithesis of industrial agriculture, which is about dropping these pesticides and herbicides and killing all this life and hoping that the crop will continue to grow. And I realized that chemotherapy and industrial agriculture are very similar because it's basically dropping these chemicals on your bodies. Yeah. It's like kill all this bad stuff and just hope that there's something good left to survive. Yeah. And so that was like, mentally, really.

Kyle Krull - 0:30:00
I don't want his. It's difficult, it's hard, it's confusing to to be doing these things at the same time you're feeling really passionate about regen. While I was like industrial agriculturing my body. But, you know, Long story short, actually this month I'm one year chemo free. That's gone healthier than I've ever been. So you know, super stoked, feeling good, feeling really good. And yeah, that's that's my story and that's part of why I'm so passionate about regen is number one. It's like doing something good for the planet.

Kyle Krull - 0:30:28
Doing doing something incredible for everybody's health. And another one of like the big wake up calls was you know, I was in the hospital for like I think 9 days after my surgery and this stuff they feed you in the hospital is the stuff that puts you in the hospital. It's straight poison. So gaining market share for regenerative products is something I'm extremely passionate about for the health of People, planet, wildlife, everything. And that's that's why I'm here to do this podcast. I want want everybody to understand what region is yeah, so that they can choose whether or not it's something that they want to support.

Anthony Corsaro - 0:31:27
Yeah, love that, you know?

Kyle Krull - 0:31:29
So that's that's my health story. That's why I'm here today. But A/C, I know that you've got a crazy history with food and your own health journey. So let's go ahead, let's dive in. You know how did?

Anthony Corsaro - 0:31:38
You end up. Yeah, absolutely. Before we go there, man, I just want to thank you for sharing all that, especially on the health sides. I know you haven't shared that with a ton of people and it's, it's, it's. It's awesome, dude. Like, it's very powerful. And I think people can learn a lot from from what you said and hopefully kind of be inspired by it because I'm definitely inspired by it. And I was inspired by it the first time we met and that's why we're we're doing a podcast together now, right? And I, you know, I.

Kyle Krull - 0:32:00
Appreciate that, man. Thank you.

Anthony Corsaro - 0:32:01
Absolutely, bro. And when you were talking about kind of the chemo thing and made me think of, I think it's the quote from like, gay Brown, where he was basically like, I used to walk outside every day and like, try to figure out what I could kill and now I walk outside and like try to figure out what I could help, like live. And it's like that's such a paradigm shift and that's what we need, like, in this space.

Kyle Krull - 0:32:19
100%.

Anthony Corsaro - 0:32:20
Time.

Kyle Krull - 0:32:22
Yeah.

Anthony Corsaro - 0:32:24
So, so many similarities, you know, it's actually actually kind of crazy. That's the other thing we've kind of bonded over. Definitely very different on the specifics, but. Just kind of a similar arc and a similar tie on the on the human health side and being passionate about region I I was born and raised in Indianapolis IN in a fresh produce distribution family business. And I remember very vividly kind of going to the warehouse with my dad and and helping him and just having a ton of fresh fruits and vegetables around and and having a bunch of good healthy food when I when I was young. I would say that our family still fell victim to a lot of the late 90s early 2000s. You know food. Mistakes of eating a lot of fast food because we played sports and we're always really busy drinking a lot of Gatorade, you know, sugary fruits.

Kyle Krull - 0:33:07
Hamburger Helper family, like Hamburger Helper, was a good dinner.

Anthony Corsaro - 0:33:10
No not not that bad. I think our pro like we had we had bomb fruits and vegetables clearly cuz we had a great source for those. I think our protein choices we're not the best and just you know some other things but I don't, I don't blame my parents that they were doing exactly what was like being told to them as like. The right thing to do at the time? Totally. And we were all healthy, you know, 2 two siblings. We were all good growing up. So like there was no really red flags. But, you know, I, I played football in high school and college. And then when I was in high school, I got told that I have an autoimmune disease called hidradenitis suppurativa. And basically that disease affects your skin.

Kyle Krull - 0:33:46
Not a term you hear every day, I know. Not a term you hear every.

Anthony Corsaro - 0:33:49
Day it's a mouthful and so I call it kind of HS for short, but basically, you know, for. For the first ten years of having it, from about age 14 to 2425, I didn't really know to do. You know, I went to a lot of dermatologists and I got put on antibiotics every day. You know, I was playing football, so I wasn't really concerned about it, but I was so symptomatic and it was still affecting my quality of life. But I couldn't really find any answers. And if anything, the things that I was doing, we're making it worse and so.

Kyle Krull - 0:34:19
So when you say does that mean like the the doctor like prescribed medicine that would like further irritate your skin in ways so?

Anthony Corsaro - 0:34:27
It depends. Basically a lot of the dermatologists would kind of just say like hey, you have this, it is what it is. Like, there's nothing that we can do. Like some of them would say like hey, bathe better. It's like do not. I'm very hygienic. Like I'm the cleanest dude, you know. It's like not a it's not a hygiene problem. In college, I got put on low dose antibiotics every day, like 100 milligrams of Minocycline for like and I was on that for five years and so.

Kyle Krull - 0:34:50
Whole.

Anthony Corsaro - 0:34:51
It's impressed the the majority of my symptoms during that time window, but basically my gut was just destroyed. My micro bomb was.

Kyle Krull - 0:34:57
Destroyed. Just wiped.

Anthony Corsaro - 0:34:58
Out so very similar to like your chemo parallels like it was my parallel to just like bombing out crops with with chemicals right like that's what I did to my body thinking it was good thinking it was it was great but. Basically, I told myself growing up, I was never going to be a part of the family biz and I ended up taking a couple jobs out of school. I actually ended up working for a really good family friend and a great organization down in South Florida called produce global. They're like an executive search firm, recruiting firm in the CBG space. But I was, I was a little homesick and I went back to join the family fresh produce distribution business for three years. And so my core food system experiences is running the sales and marketing team at that organization. And so that organization is a rather large.

Anthony Corsaro - 0:35:12
Dsd retail distributor. So we sell everything to, OK, the grocery stores that you find in the produce department and you know, all the big chains of the world, they can call dole directly or Taylor farms or organic girl and they have their own warehouses and their own trucks. But you know, the smaller chains or the individual mom and pop kind of stores, they need a middleman like us. So it was really fun to work in that side of the space because those retailers are kind of a forgotten category, but they have great businesses and they do great things. Probably similar to kind of your experience starting off in the natural channel, but I just started to learn a lot about the food system. You know, like I started to see, hey we buy all the salads from the same small area in California and we truck them three days over to Indiana and then we send them to 20 different states from our one facility which there's there's pros and cons to to all of that. But it was just a very eyeopening experience. You know we were rather large operation, we had about 2500 retail door customers, 20 state distribution radius.

Anthony Corsaro - 0:36:12
And, you know, one thing I realized when I was working there was like, I knew so much about distribution and logistics and how to like, distribute food, but I had no idea about growing food. You know, I think I had been.

Kyle Krull - 0:36:53
Right. Pump on real quick pause. Yeah, when I see a similar question as yeah, like from a selling perspective like what was the, what was like the most difficult produce product to sell?

Anthony Corsaro - 0:37:04
In today's world, you know, I think the biggest mistake retailers make is they, they raise the bottom. So Dollar General comes into town or Walmart comes into town or Kroger comes into town and they're like I'm way more expensive on this commodity or that commodity. And yes, you got to be competitive, you got a price parity. But the hardest challenge. But the most important thing that we did was always try to convince our retailers to to be premium suppliers. So can you carry a higher spec? Can you have better quality, can you have higher service? I mean there's kind of this, this. There's like this triangle in business. It's like price, quality and you know speed or service. And it's like you can't be, you can't be great on all three and know which two of the three you're going to be great at and which ones are different than your competitor. So that that was the biggest challenge was always just getting people to do things a little differently than they maybe have done for a really long time and. Maybe. Maybe the other challenge was I had a dad who was a huge part of that business for a really long time and my brother was a part of that business and and both are studs. And so following those footsteps and just wanted to live up to to the hype and being in, being in charge of cultivating some of those relationships that my dad had you know, busted his ass for like 40 years to to work on that was you know that was a big responsibility that I didn't take lightly.

Kyle Krull - 0:38:19
Yeah, 100%. And I'm just reflecting on the challenge of selling an unbranded product. It's so easy to go in with a brand and a story and a selling point versus an apple or an organic apple, right? So I can see how that would be really difficult to try to maintain that premium level when everybody treats it like come on.

Anthony Corsaro - 0:38:36
Yeah, yeah. And produce is getting more branded, but like on an apple, you know, it's on the box, but it's not on the actual Apple, right, right. But it's, it's crazy. I think there's going to continue to be a lot of kind of brand. Momentum in that space, because if you kind of go see the value added sets, all the bag salads, all the processed items, they're all branded now. And that's a huge, that's a huge piece because lazy millennials like us, you know, they don't want to chop their own onions, they want to just buy something that has them already chopped for them. So true, yeah, but it's it's a different.

Kyle Krull - 0:39:08
You know, back to your back to your health journey. We can digress on the food specifics. I'm trying to really hard to not talk about branded meat. We'll get there one day, yeah. I go so, So what was your health like during this time period in the working, in the produce?

Anthony Corsaro - 0:39:22
Yeah. So my health has always been OK like I don't have a debilitating issue. Like it doesn't make it so I can't get out of bed or do things like, you know, you were kind of mentioning. But it was always something that was very unesthetically pleasing to myself and always very unnatural. And they, they are very painful, the the lesions that they kind of show up and so. It was more of a mental struggle. And just like, I know this isn't right, I know this is not OK like why? Why is this happening to me? I felt kind of like a leper honestly, more than anything. And I and I just wanted to solve that problem. So I actually had started working with a couple of naturopathic inductors, and my connection to food or food as medicine was really like that became the foundational piece to me, improving my health.

Anthony Corsaro - 0:39:42
My health, excuse me. And you know it's crazy how many people I talk to every day like in food system change work or regenerative agriculture that say like I had some health connection that that brought me to this work. So I'm definitely in that camp and. 2020 is happening, covid's happening. The pandemics happen in our businesses through the roof because obviously all the, all the volume is shifting to retail from food service. So we're very busy and just trying to scramble to get product for our retailers so they can, you know, feed their customers. So very stressful time. And I was just kind of having a health inflection point myself as the world at large was having one for sure.

Anthony Corsaro - 0:40:19
And so I decided to take a step away from the business and take a health sabbatical. And so I took five months off. I moved to bend OR for the first time and I got asymptomatic from the disease for the first time. And there were three big components. Yeah, there was a mold component, a stress component and A food component. And the mold and the stress components were kind of the two final frontiers. But the food component and continued to kind of be consistent. There has been a foundational piece to kind of any improvements that I've seen and had over the years.

Anthony Corsaro - 0:40:45
So when I was on the health sabbatical, I didn't know what the hell I want to do new next. I looked at a bunch of different things. I mean, I looked at, I looked at everything you can imagine from a business standpoint to just try to like, reimagine my professional career. I was just very open to it, to whatever possibilities and checking a bunch of things out, right? And I heard this podcast that Zach Bush did with rich role in like Q1 of 2019, like one of my best friends, Eddie Shmaehall sent me it. And I listened to that podcast and I was like, Oh my God.

Anthony Corsaro - 0:41:15
Like, what is regenerative agriculture? This is the craziest thing I've ever heard. And I felt guilty because we were a great supplier of organics. So like, I knew about organic, I ate organic food, I ate Paleo. Like it was all great. But I'd never heard of region. Like I didn't know what regenerative agriculture was. And I was like, dude, we've been in the food business for almost 100 years. Like, why do I not know what this is?

Anthony Corsaro - 0:41:44
Right. And similar to you, the rabbit hole just grabbed me and you know I've called, I'm called region like positive quicksand, you know, on another podcast because basically you put a toe in and before you know it your neck deep and it's and it's, you know, very positive experience. But I just.

Kyle Krull - 0:42:18
Couldn't you know my girlfriend hates me because we can't talk to anybody without me bringing up region about your culture and stuff capacity, you know, it's just like as soon as it comes up, she just rolls her eyes. Like if you just do your do your monologue, your soapbox, and then be done.

Anthony Corsaro - 0:42:31
That's like. It's like the beam of like the the Pablo Escobar. No, it's like the Pablo Escobar and Narcos were like sitting on the bench and he's all sad and like, I've seen the meme on Instagram where it's like when you go to a party and no one wants to talk about soil health of you so.

Kyle Krull - 0:42:47
True. It's so true. Which is probably why we dragged up so well. It's like, OK, we're super learning itch. Both active lifestyle dudes and like be able to talk to somebody else, like within our peer group in the same town. Not on a zoom call about Regent Ag man. Just the most exciting one.

Anthony Corsaro - 0:43:03
100 percent, 100% and basically. I ended up back in Indianapolis after the five months kind of health sabbatical. Like, all right, what the hell am I doing here? And I just couldn't stop working on region. And so I told myself, like, I think you know what you're doing, what you're going to do here, buddy. Like you're going to work on regenerative agriculture. You just don't know what it's going to look like yet. And so.

Anthony Corsaro - 0:43:07
Basically that interest and desire is kind of manifested into three things. When I when I first learned about the space, I started Angel investing in some ag tech companies, some consumer brands that we're definitely going to have on the pod, some distribution businesses, but basically all different early stage equity investments throughout the the supply chain and food that are all have a regenerative lens or sustainability lens or have basically some sort of mandate to improve human and planetary health. But I was looking for connections, I was looking for deal flow, I was looking for other opportunities. I was looking for, you know, other investors to like chat with and network with and I really couldn't find much. Then I stumbled upon Rfsi, which stands for regenerative food systems investment. Which was started by Sarah de Levesque a while ago and basically it kind of started as this marquee event, this in person event for investors and activators of capital in the regenerative food system. And it's blossomed into this crazy cool media and events company that we have a newsletter, we do content, we still have that marquee event, we do virtual events. But basically I'm the director of business development there. So I spend all day long talking about the current investment landscape in regen ag. So that's everything from those early stage equity investments to Lake stage equity.

Anthony Corsaro - 0:44:07
Like venture capital makes on either side there, it's working capital and better debt financing for our farmers and our operators and our food system processors. It's CPG brands, it's distribution, it's ag tech. It's, you know, it kind of runs the gamut.

Kyle Krull - 0:44:51
It's all of it. It's every.

Anthony Corsaro - 0:44:52
Yeah. And so it's super fun. I kind of consider myself an expert generalist on the space, because I know. A lot about, I know a little about a lot right and then I know a lot about some very specific niches and verticals within that. So super fun there. And then the individual investing which is part of the presenting crew for The ReGen Brands Podcast is called Outlaw Ventures. So that's the, that's the family office that kind of I lead for our family's efforts to invest in those early stage equity investment opportunities that yes have the the possibility of producing great financial returns, but they have a mandate. Improve, you know, planetary and human health, which I think is is crazy important and super important to our family and to me. So I'm just stoked that, you know, I've been kind of given some capital and some responsibility to do that from from my family.

Kyle Krull - 0:45:43
That's awesome. Yeah, super cool. They're prioritizing, you know, utilizing funds in that way, right? Yeah. As we talked about earlier. So desperately needed. Yeah. And so.

Anthony Corsaro - 0:45:52
Regent AG is a hot air space, and I mean that with the utmost respect to a lot of people because there's a lot of people that put their money where their mouth is. But there's also a lot of people that talk a lot better than they act in this space, in my opinion. So I didn't want myself to be one of those people. And so in a very short amount of time, I've invested a lot of capital into the space because I think that's important to kind of walk the walk. Just talk the talk and then.

Kyle Krull - 0:46:17
100% and it's got to be so difficult for these early stage region brands, which is no obviously I coming from the feed CPG space that's like the easiest thing for me to focus on. But it's got to be so difficult navigating these environments right now and to have somebody you know believing in them and investing in them and helping them get through you know their first retail, you know big distribution wins and all those things like that's that's huge super.

Anthony Corsaro - 0:46:40
Yeah. Thank you. I appreciate that. Yeah. So those are the first two things I do in space, rfsi and I love ventures. And then the last thing is the shirt that I'm rocking right now, regeneration nation. This was kind of like my entrepreneurial baby that I started to develop. Right at the beginning of my Regent AG love affair I went kissed the ground then biggest little farm so opposite of you, but that was definitely part of the part of the tipping point and what they showed. What they showed more than anything was that you could advocate for regenerative agriculture in more ways than just serving people Regent food which is super important. And I wish I had a bat main utility belt that I could just flip out like medium rare grass fed beef regen burgers to people so they could like taste it and like that like we would have them converted immediately.

Anthony Corsaro - 0:46:54
Right. And I didn't see, I didn't see a ton of people in the space in my opinion using you know apparel or swag in a cool conducive way to that. And apparel definitely has its own sins and sustainability issues. So I wanted to also be cognizant of that and having garments that were sourced, you know, regeneratively or as close to regeneratively as possible in that space. But basically I decided like hey, let's leave the the Greenpeace roots love trees Kumbaya behind, which is all great and I'm super big fan of all that. But let's give this like a Moto chic, all black edgy vibe and let's see if we can get some people at the farmers market or the grocery store the library or the coffee shop that see a shirt that says soil and regenerator die on the back. You know, to care more about about region act and so.

Anthony Corsaro - 0:47:44
We sell, right. We sell garments that raise money for a lot of those great nonprofits doing this advocacy work. We've done something with the Rodeo Institute and the Saver Institute, but it's fun, it's cool work, and I think it will develop into more than just a payroll eventually. But that's kind of the, the first medium that we chose. And, you know, it's just another one of those things that. Allows me to advocate for the space. And This is why we're doing this podcast as well. You know, we're focusing on CPG brands and kind of that landscaping region. But there, there's so many, there's so many pieces of the food system and, you know, consumers and consumer advocacy and people voting with their dollars is is not the only thing we need to change, but it is an important thing to change. So it's kind of another piece to play on in that.

Kyle Krull - 0:48:54
Right, 100%. And now, so just so everybody else knows, I think I've been if any what three or four times in person now.

Anthony Corsaro - 0:49:00
Yeah, yeah.

Kyle Krull - 0:49:02
Almost always all black. Always. I mean, maybe maybe a shade of Gray here or there, but it's primarily all black. However, on his Google Docs he prefers highlighted yellow A/C yellow, as he specifically called it. That's.

Anthony Corsaro - 0:49:15
Right. That's right. Hey, you've got to be consistent and you got to have an aesthetic and you got to have a brand. I'm a big brand guy. I've always been a big fan of, I think, people that brand and market themselves well. And I think that's super important for the region movement and super important for individual actors within the movement for the brands that we're going to. To talk about it's not a it's not a shocking surprise that my favorite place to invest money is in the brands, because they're tangible and they're fun to support and they have kind of a personality and a persona of their own. But I'm still looking for I'm still looking for my first CPG investment that has an all black, black, and white aesthetic, but that might be a tough one.

Kyle Krull - 0:49:52
You'll get there, you know, and I'm grateful that Anthony's so focused on, like, the personal brand side of this because I'm not. That's just, you know, like, I thought about like, combing my hair before this. I was like, you know what, I'm just going to be me and wear this hoodie, which by the way, on the point of, you know, apparel for good. This is a brand called packa that does regenerative alpaca. I don't work for them. I'm not affiliated by any types of the imagination, but love supporting these guys. Um, many ways. We've gone full circle. We've gone on our rambling stories. And just want to bring it back to, you know, we shared all this to talk about, you know, why we're doing this and why you might be interested in learning about our perspectives. And what we're most interested in is bringing other regenerative brands into this podcast to talk about their perspectives on some of the the hot button issues in the region space right now because it's kind of the Wild West. So that's who we are and you know, our vision for this podcast is really. You know, like, like we just talked about bringing those brands in, talk about content, talking about like the region, current events, if you will. Like what's happening in the space right now? What are the primary certifications that are available? Why would you choose one over the other? What are the challenges associated with achieving those certifications? You know, talking to the brains about their journey, how they first learned about regenerative agriculture, why it's important for them to support it, what challenges they face and what's on the horizon in the future for them. What are they trying to achieve long term? So that's what we hope to cover.

Kyle Krull - 0:50:46
On future episodes of this podcast, when it's just A/C and I, you know, talking about ourselves, it'll be a lot more fun later on. For sure. Yeah, and yeah, that's that's that's what we're going to try.

Anthony Corsaro - 0:51:23
Yeah, we're definitely going to do a lot more listening than talking that that is hard for me. But I'm going to do my best and I'm going to be accountable to making that happen. But yeah, we, we really want to create this for multiple different people. So if you're just a passionate consumer of these brands or the region movement overall and you want to learn more about these brands and how to support them. Or their journeys and stories and obstacles. You know, I think it'd be a super cool way for for those people to engage. If you're an investor that wants to know more about these brands and you know potential deal flow in the space or early stage, late stage, whatever brands that are investment opportunities or other enabling spots in the food system to invest, I think this podcast is for you as well. And then the brands themselves and the people working inside the food system or in the region movement, you know we want to be a space for those folks as well because community is super important and. One thing that definitely triggered when you were talking earlier, Kyle, I forget the exact topic, but like Regent Ag, people working in regen ag is the most collaborative like industry I think I've ever been a part of and people just love to work together. It was, it was the region coalition, right? Like that's a perfect example of usually Cbd's pretty cutthroat and competitive from what I understand from a brand by brand perspective. So the fact that you've got.

Anthony Corsaro - 0:52:14
That group and like it's legit brands, it's not some Foo Foo brands like in your group, you got those folks to row the boat together. Like that's the perfect microcosm example of like the type of collaborative spirit that we have in this space and so.

Kyle Krull - 0:52:52
So true.

Anthony Corsaro - 0:52:53
Yeah.

Kyle Krull - 0:52:54
Yeah. And I mean every day I get to connect with a new regen brand. It's like we just have these incredible conversations. So to your point, it's just these people who are also passionate about wanting to make the food system better for planetary and personal like people health. And it's it's I'm really excited to like have these conversations in a public forum to share everybody's experience and dedication to trying to to turn this movement into something real, right.

Anthony Corsaro - 0:53:17
Yep, it's.

Kyle Krull - 0:53:18
Going to be exciting.

Anthony Corsaro - 0:53:18
Yeah, and I think people are going to 1, they're going to learn something every time we we have a we have an episode. And two, they're going to have some real, like insights and actionable items to take from the episode. Like, those are the two most important things to us, and that's definitely what people will get out of this podcast. From a pure logistical operational standpoint, we're going to try to keep it like 30 minutes to an hour for each episode. It will primarily be those CPG brands with regenerative supply chains or folks supporting regenerative agriculture in some way. We might sprinkle in some other folks, you might sprinkle in some some kind of service provider investor, different people within the CPG landscape that are very tied into the region movement. So be on the lookout for that.

Kyle Krull - 0:53:56
Maybe even some farmers and lasers to talk about what is the production level like we want to run the full gaming here.

Anthony Corsaro - 0:54:01
Especially especially those folks that have their own brand or are kind of breaking into the CPG space because I think that's an important piece as well that's going to, it's going to carry this thing and I know you, I know you talked about Brandon me earlier, we could definitely have many many episodes about that because I think there's there's definitely some opportunities in that category for sure a.

Kyle Krull - 0:54:20
100%.

Anthony Corsaro - 0:54:20
Yeah, cool. Well, look, Episode Zero in the books. What do you think, partner? I think it went.

Kyle Krull - 0:54:26
Pretty well done. I think 1, great. Yeah, I think, well, I mean you didn't do the closing line, so I don't know if you want to. I was.

Anthony Corsaro - 0:54:35
Just waiting for you to TV back up for it, man. Just, you know, relax. I got you.

Kyle Krull - 0:54:39
Well, well, thank you for tuning in. Thank you for listening. We're really excited. As you can tell we both are super passionate about through generative space. We're looking forward to learning more from others and sharing what we can learn together so that we can all, you know, make choices that benefit, you know, people on the planet.

Anthony Corsaro - 0:54:55
So that's why we're here. Hey, man, brother. Hey, man. Brother. All right. Well, everybody, thank you for tuning into The ReGen Brands Podcast brought to you by The Regen Coalition and Outlaw Ventures. We hope you learned some of the new in this episode and it empowers you to use your voice, your time, and your dollars to help us build a better and more regenerative food system. Love you guys. For show notes and more information on our guests and what we discussed on the show, check out our website regen-brands.com that is regen-brands.com. You can also check out our YouTube channel, Regen Brands Podcast for all of our episodes with both video and audio. The best way to support our work is to give us a 5 star rating on your favorite podcast platform and subscribe to future episodes. Thanks so much for tuning into The ReGen Brands Podcast brought to you by the Regen Coalition and Outlaw Ventures.

Anthony Corsaro - 0:55:18
We hope you learned something new in this episode and it empowers you to use your voice, your time, and your dollars to help us build a better and more legitimate food system. Love you, guys.