Love not Antioxidants

In the cold late fall in San Francisco a few years ago, I was going through a season of doors shutting, dreams ending. If you've never lived in San Francisco you might not appreciate how damp and chilly it can be there. Let me assure you, even with the famed California sun, at times it can feel feel colder than a Midwestern winter, especially when going thru some heartache and disappointment.

My agency started working with a company named Sambazon a couple months prior, and my client was in town for something called Greenfest. Sambazon was started by some friends who decided to manufacture and market an exotic berry called acai that grew on top of palm trees in the Amazon Rainforest - and do it in such a way that helps protect the forest and improve the livelihood of the people that live there.

I was planning to visit my client at the show for some client service face time and fully expected to be there for an hour or two at the most, get the credit for the visit, turn around and go home and wallow a bit. Greenfest is self described as a 'conscious party with a purpose'. It's a gathering of people, products and companies in a community whose early treehugger roots began thirty plus years around around such hippie notions of organic farming, taking care of Mother Earth, a diet for a small planet and an overall philosophy of peace, love and understanding. I was used to working with much different types of clients - mainstream consumer products, retail chains, entertainment properties, spirits brands, cat food. I had never been to something called Greenfest before, and before the show, really hadn't spent more than a couple hours with my clients at Sambazon either.

The two hour visit turned into a weekend. In short, I fell down the rabbit hole. Besides the music, products, people, scents, sightings and discussions that were completely brand new to me -- I was amazed at the comaraderie and true sense of connection between Sambazon and other businesses there, and the feeling that flowed from company to company, to consumer and back. It was bigger than brotherhood or sisterhood, it was an overall vibe of positivity, and a sense of being connected to a larger purpose.

It felt the opposite of business as I knew it.

Sambazon and many of the companies there like Guayaki, Manitoba Harvest , Dagoba Chocolate, - and the natural products pioneers that came before them who wanted to change the world - were making products that they really cared about: Products that contributed in some way to health, planetary protection, nourishing body and soul - products that mattered, that people loved. Companies who were about giving and improving and helping in addition to - not instead of - being profitable. William Yeats wrote "How can we know the dancer from the dance?" Among these companies, the products they made seemed a natural output of the vision and original intentions they set up at the onset. All I knew was that I didn't want to leave. More than just opening up my mind, like the Grinch from Hooville with the closed off heart, my bruised heart grew 10 times that day...

I saw a documentary once called "The Complete Beatles" and John Lennon describes his first meeting with Yoko Ono. He was in an art gallery in London and there was a step ladder and a tiny piece of art on the ceiling and part of the installation is that you climb the ladder and look at the art through a magnifying glass. So John climbed the ladder and looked thru the glass and there was a tiny placard with a single word on it: "Yes." As John tells it in the documentary, it was this positivity - and hope - that made him fall in love with the artist, Yoko Ono.

Here's a link to a slideshow from my first year at Sambazon where I went to surf events, reggae concerts and food shows, The Sundance film festival, the State Department and the Amazon Rainforest, and moved down to live and work in a small beach town called San Clemente.

Can love exist in business? I am here to tell you...Yes.