4 posts tagged with "Paleo Treats stuff"

In the vein of continually getting better, I just started sending out a "pre-interview" request for the Paleo Treats podcast.  This one went out to Gavin McClurg, a paraglider.  They'll probably change as I go along, but I thought you'd enjoy it. *******BEGIN PREP EMAIL ******** Gavin, Tomorrow we are going to spend an hour or so on Skype having what is literally a contrived conversation. For both of us it will be a relatively tame adventure, but it is, as of now, an unknown. We've never met and yet I'll be asking you to share some of your private thoughts and life with me and more importantly, my audience. In order to make this conversation between us better, and deeper, and more effective, I'd like to make a few requests. First, whatever your "go-juice" is in the morning, drink deep. Whether you're a coffee snob or a cocaine freak, load up. No half-measures please, no holding back. Finish the dregs, drink to the Lees, snort like a bull 'til the end of line. If you're not a substance abuser, knock out a hard workout with heavy weight, the kind that has you prowling around the house looking for phone books to tear in half. I want the best, the fullest, the most intense version of the Gavin McClurg experience possible. Second, about 5 minutes before we get on, pull up a video online or from your computer that makes you laugh hard. I'm a fan of the ol' Butter Floor Prank, but anything that makes you guffaw is good with me. Third, just before time starts, take a look outside, breathe deep from wild and fresh air, and remember one of your best moments. Could be totally public, could be intensely private. I won't ask you to share it, just to remember it as intensely as possible right before we talk. Ok, I know those are a bunch of weird requests and probably intrusive. Hell, some of them could be downright insulting, especially if you think I'm serious about the coke. Still, do the best you can and know that on my end I'll be doing the same. Coffee is my drug, max bodyweight squats my workout, and the clean sea breeze just sniffable from my rooftop in San Diego my final breath before coming in to my sound room. Ultra fucking stoked! NFH *********END PREP EMAIL******

Man stands in an empty ball field at home plate. It’s night. Half a moon, maybe less. A few clouds scud across the sky. Dull glow on the horizon, some distant city. Enough light to see, but barely. The wind moans through the batting cages. Lonely. The man holds an old, well loved wooden bat in his right hand. Work boots, well worn jeans, untucked shirt, forearms scratched with many cuts, t-shirt flecked with dark slivers of glass. Stubble, un-combed hair. Skin creased. Eyes intense. Behind him an enormous pile of lightbulbs. All the way behind him to the fence, twice as high as he is, they flow down to his feet, perfect in their manufacture. The ground directly around him covered with shattered white glass and the metal screw bottoms of broken bulbs. Thousands. Holding the bat loosely, he turns and steps back. Shoes crunching on broken glass in the quiet. He leans and reaches for the pile of bulbs, picks one up. Steps back to the plate, faces the mound. Turning the bulb in his hand, he inspects it. White glass, perfectly complete. Flipping it in his hand, he catches it by the bulb. In one smooth motion, he lightly tosses it up, brings the bat to his shoulder and swings mightily. The bat catches the bulb perfectly. In slow motion the bulb shatters, filament giving off the briefest small spark that dies in the night. The metal screw bottom flies crazily into the blackness. A slight stagger as he follows through the swing. Glass crunches again. He pauses, breathes, wipes his mouth. Turns, and selects another bulb. Repeats process. This time a tiny sliver catches him under the eye. It bleeds, but not much. Pulls out the sliver, smears blood. Wipes his fingers on his jeans. Turns, selects another bulb. The stars swing ‘round overhead. The mound of bulbs shrinks and moves and grows like a breathing being. The man swings again and again. Glass shatters, screw bottoms veer unsteady into the night. The moon begins to set. The broken glass around him ever deeper. Over and over, they break, unable to stand up to reality. Over and over, he swings. The lights of the city sputter in the distance. Light is not unavailable to him, but it is his own light that he seeks. The man swings, the bulb explodes, again and again. A thousand times. Ten thousand. Ten thousand and more. He turns again to the pile, selects a bulb. Holds it, inspecting. Perfect white bulb, perfect screw bottom metal. He spins it in his hand, holding the bulb. Pauses, breathes in. In one smooth motion, he lightly tosses it up, brings the bat to his shoulder, and swings mightily. The bat catches the screw metal bottom perfectly. Sharp, grunting exhale at contact. The connection, the angle, the power, all in alignment. Slow motion, the bulb shivers but holds, arcing away, racing off toward the fences. The man watches, mouth open, hoping. Intense silent prayer follows the arc. As it flies, the bulb tumbles, the screw bottom metal now leading the way. The screws catch the air and it begins to spiral, to spin. We see its destination now, in the distance but closing rapidly. A row of black poles, sentinels at the far edge of the field. A socket looms on some far lamp post. The bulb flies closer and closer, riding the curve of its arc, dropping out of the sky toward the socket, sliding through a perfect trajectory. Still spinning, it closes through space to the socket, halving the distance infinitely. At 1,000 frames per second we see the puff ring of dust pushed out of the socket as the bulb enters it. The spiral motion forces it to seat itself, the bottom makes contact. The bulb blazes brilliantly, reflects off the cloud of dust motes shaken loose by impact. Temporary victory, heralded only by the screaming lonely night. The far off seething city knows nothing. To the left and right of the blazing light stand more socketed and bulb-less posts, black in the night. They stretch all the way around the ball field, to the edge of the world, each empty. Back to the man. He sees the light in the far distance, his pupils widen then constrict back down. He smiles crookedly, raises a hand to his eyes to shade them. Turns back to the pile, selects a bulb. Trust me kid, you’ll never run out of bulbs. Just don’t run out of game. NFH

I've had a couple people ask me for business advice lately, and I was taken aback by how little I know about business as I tried to come up with an answer. It didn't jibe with how successful Paleo Treats has been; you'd think I'd know more.   In 3 and half years we've grown from making batches in our kitchen and selling them at the 2009 CrossFit Games to being one of the bigger Paleo food companies in the business and selling not just throughout the U.S. but internationally on a regular basis. As I racked my brain for what "secret formula" there is for success, I kept coming up against the basics, nothing fancy, nothing exotic, just the basics.  They are summed up in my head as the pursuit of perfection combined with plenty of joyous work and just enough luck to get you over the occasional hump. Whether you're starting a business (and I recommend everyone start at least two) or starting a workout program or just trying to get through the holidays without eating every last cookie and piece of cake shoved into your face, success seems to come from those three things. First, the pursuit of perfection.  It's not whether or not you achieve it, but the pursuit itself that's important.  Aside from the obvious benefit of coming up with top quality products, it draws others into your circle who are following similar goals, who walk similar paths, and that leads to joyous work (more on that later.)  The old saying that birds of a feather flock together is just as true of folks seeking perfection as it is a bevy of quail.  It's a hard road, the path to perfection, and there are an awful lot of exits you can take.  It's much easier to stay the course if you're surrounded by good friends with the same intentions, and if you just put your head down and slog it out with them at your side you'll find that you hit what you thought were impossible goals and only notice it when you're a few miles beyond where you thought you'd ever be. One of my favorite stories about this can be found here. In the case of Paleo Treats we're after perfection in a Paleo dessert.  We haven't found it yet, at least not in any one dessert, although our Mustang Bar comes pretty close; I've heard it referred to as a "Paleo-gasm" (thanks Heidi F.)  Still, it's the pursuit that matters, and it shows up every time we see someone take a bite of a Paleo Treats sample; they always seem to expect mediocrity and are so surprised and stoked to find that the people that made this treat actually give a shit about taste AND health. The second key to success is plenty of joyous work.  I don't mean by this that you love everything you do; some tasks just suck and there's no way around it.  What I'm talking about is probably best shown in an old Gary Larson Far Side cartoon.  It's a picture of a guy wheeling a heavy wheelbarrow up a steep path in Hell.  It's hot, the wheelbarrow is loaded with bricks, he's scrawny and sweating, everyone around him is miserable.  Incredibly, he's whistling away, shown so cleverly in just a few musical notes and his pursed lips.  The Devil is looking on from the side of the path, and he turns and says to his minion, "We're just not getting to that guy."  Whatever else that guy did to get to the hot place, he understood the value of joyous work, of being able to be stoked with whatever you're doing, whether it sucks or not. We take that joy pretty seriously at Paleo Treats, so whether we're out hustling to sell cookies at a sample sale or rocking out newsletters or just shipping out box after box, we remember that joy is what YOU make, not the job you're doing, and if we're stoked to be doing whatever it is we're doing that somehow seems to translate pretty consistently into success.  I think that joy comes through every time we talk to folks, and maybe that's why I get asked for business advice; folks want to know not just the secret of success, but the way to make that success be so much fun. The final ingredient to success is a tiny helping of random luck.  Sometimes it's bad luck, and you learn some huge and awesome and valuable lesson by zigging when you should have zagged.  Mostly though, it's just a little good luck; knowing the right person, being in the right place at the right time, or just plain getting lucky.  This last "lucky" piece isn't something you have control over, although it seems that the more joyfully and the harder we work, the luckier we get. Still, there's that undeniable element of luck in every venture; the weather window that opens up at just the right time, the Oprah show that stumbles upon the Paleo diet right after we made a huge batch, the passing acquaintance from years ago you run into at the airport who is perfectly positioned to give you a boost right when you need it, the phenomenally gifted employees you hire who are better than you could have asked for had you designed their lives yourself. So that's it: The pursuit of perfection, joyous work, and enough luck to get you over the humps. That wraps it up for my holiday wisdom, feel free to drop us a line via email or phone. Cheers, NFH Paleo Treats

White knuckled Paleo Treats for the tree climbing cliff jumping vine swinging hirsute and horrible ancient Homo Paleolithus and his beautiful, wiser and better half, Fem-Paleolithas.  Known for incessantly lifting tremendous weight, feared the world over for the worthy war cry springing from the depths of dark and dangerous gyms where (gasp) free weights are thrown around, where boxes and stumps are jumped upon, where bags are smashed, pig iron flies, and the only humidity control is the sweat floating in the air.  This is Paleo town. How many times will you see those monsters growling and bending, ripping away with rugged fingers and grasping hands at the heaviest piece of 1970's weight room furniture they can tear free from it's moorings?  Men and women alike, ripped and hard, tatters of clothes, who cares about fashion when you can move?  When anything that needs to be lifted is at the mercy of your group, your clan, your tribe.  When unstoppable is your life, when never-ending is your quest, when twisted cables are your arms, when clear and bright far-seeing lights are your eyes, then you begin to realize the true power that has always been yours. HEY!  YOU!  How long can you watch before you join in the ancient dance of work, pure and clean and hard and simple.  Will you watch with wide eyes, scared at the dancing of the flames deep in the eyes of a being totally and completely dedicated to performance through utter dedication to an unpolluted goal; work in its most physical sense.  Or will you join? This is YOU calling, this is your human spirit screaming to be let free, this is your battered and primitive age worn soul, pulsing backwards through countless eons, begging and blustering and beating it's hairy and heavy chest, yawping with a fearful wildness to be let free, to let you see just how strong you can be, to see how much weight you can throw, to embrace totally the full potential of power you have.  We're not talking "open yourself up Lance," we're talking heart-bursting power, capable at a moments notice of running down any 4 legged creature on the planet over unending savannah miles, capable of dropping onto an elk's back from 20 feet up, dropping through the air and mingling with gravity, landing with a heavy thud and ripping through the tough and protected neck skin with obsidian-sharp rock to get at the bright red arterial iron rich blood deep beneath, to feed directly from the circle of life, to get the hell away from all plastic and processing, to never again set foot in a grocery store where eating is too easy. This is you calling, your old caveman self, your old fire-burning stone-smashing true love, the wild and primal side that you feel on those early cold mornings when the sun has yet to rise and the sense of warmth is only within you.  This is your life.  When will you see with you own eyes the meaning of being fully responsible for what you eat? Hunt it.  Kill it.  Eat it.  Don't ever look in a mirror, you already know what you are.  More human than human. Uncontaminated with the trappings of a modern gym, using only iron sticks and steel stones, rough ropes and thick logs and ancient heavy weights and crackling red-blue lighting burning bright in every heart. Blended with technique honed over many moons of the same movement practiced over and over.  The quick twist of the hands, the graceful and deadly curve of an throwing arm, the twisted and compressed and deadly accurate power of a panther's leap, all coiled up in a thigh muscle. The lithe movements of the strong and flexible, the cunning and wisdom and experience rolled into that 3 pounds of grey fatty tissue a-top a machine built to live self-reliantly.  This is you.  This is the gift you've been given, this body, this mind. How will you treat it?  Will you learn the best ways to use it, to move, to run, to jump, to lift?  Will you memorize your owners manual, will you try new movements, will you jump that log, sail off that cliff to the far side tree, will you grasp and windmill and grab and keep gripping and grasping until you come to a heart pounding stop? Will you eat clean and pure, feeding this holy machine of yours the best ingredients you can find?  Will you shoot straight, tell the hard truth over the easy lie, will you run when you can walk, will you stand when you can sit, will you climb when could crawl?  What will you do? You want pristine food, pure and unmingled with the everyday additives, undefiled by artificial sweeteners, immaculate in its Paleosity, virtuous in its total embracement of whole food, nothing more, nothing less.  When you're ready, you'll find us.