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Nicole McCann is Food Campaigns Director for Green America. Nicole oversees and acts as a spokesperson for the GMO Inside campaign, and has been interviewed and quoted by a variety of print and broadcast media outlets, including The Guardian, Food Navigator, Food Business News and The Examiner. She received her master’s degree in global environmental policy with a focus on sustainable food systems from American University. She has worked in the areas of plant-based nutrition, campaigning, community organizing, research and programs supporting sustainable food systems for 10 years. She conducted her graduate thesis research in the Eastern Coastal Plains region of North Carolina studying the impact of corporate industrial hog farming on the environment, local economics and state politics.

As a marketing specialist for Door to Door Organics, Lauren Engel manages the company’s presence throughout Chicagoland, coordinating and executing events, donations, partnerships and advertising. With a background in PR, marketing and health communications, coupled with experience working on organic farms in Europe and South America, she brings a well-rounded perspective to her role.

Cassie started her career in sustainable business by trying to answer the question of why University of Illinois U-C’s main street, Green Street, wasn’t very “green”. Through her undergraduate degree in environmental science from the U of I College of ACES, she, along with two friends, saw an opportunity to make a difference in one aspect of the triple bottom line — profit. From this, the Illinois Green Business Association was formed, where Cassie is Executive Director. As Executive Director, she is responsible for strategic planning, fundraising, outreach, partnership development and staff oversight. Cassie is a proud Champaign West Rotarian and volunteers with many statewide and local organizations. She is also engaged in the Green Business Engagement National Network, bringing national expertise to Illinois.

As a nationally certified fitness trainer, John Lewis has spent over eight years in the health and fitness industry and played Division I College basketball. John is highly passionate about not only his own health and fitness, but that of others as well. In addition to his extensive knowledge in body sculpting and contouring, what makes John one of the top national fitness trainers, is his creative ability to understand and live a “vegetarian/vegan lifestyle” while maintaining a physique that is commendable. In essence, he is able to cater to a diverse group of individuals and his services are highly sought after as he masterfully creates and develops personalized, unique and healthy nutrition plans. It is not surprising that given his unique abilities he has attracted clients from various industries, including actors, models and business professionals of all ages. John strives to educate his clients on living and maintaining a healthy lifestyle and he takes great pride in transforming individuals physically, mentally and spiritually. After all, it is said that 60% of one’s success is based on how one feels about themselves. John has appeared in multiple television shows, music videos and fitness magazines such as Muscle & Fitness, Men’s Fitness, Fitness Rx, Exercise for Men, Planet Muscle, etc., as well as Maxim and Sports Illustrated. You can also see him featured in the P90X television ads. Born in Little Rock, AR, in 1977, John grew up in St. Louis, MO. At a young age, he excelled in football and basketball. He continued his streak of athletic excellence throughout his high school and college years in McCluer Senior High and Harris-Stowe State College, respectively. Graduating with a bachelor’s degree in marketing, he later went on to pursue his M.B.A. from Nova Southeastern University in Fort Lauderdale, FL. He is now working on finishing his Master’s of Health Education to later go on to start his Ph.D. in holistic sports and nutrition. John’s education in business coupled with his love for health and fitness gave him the ability to start his venture, Bad Ass Vegan, a health and nutrition company that strives to educate individuals on plant based nutrition. John’s love for his community brought forth the brainchild of “BAD ASS VEGAN,” a foundation whose mission is to prevent obesity through education, physical activity and plant-based nutrition. Outside of health and fitness, John interests include reading, writing, brainstorming business ideas and most of all, helping others fulfill a healthy life.

James Wolf is Partner Network Manager for GoSun Stove, a leading global manufacturer of high-efficiency solar cookers. GoSun’s mission is to empower people throughout the world to utilize clean cooking technology to better their lives and the environments they live in. Launched on Kickstarter in late 2013, the GoSun Stove is a portable solar oven that can heat up to over 550º F, cooking a meal in just 20 minutes — using no fuel, only sunshine! GoSun has been working with the Global Alliance of Clean Cookstoves, a public-private initiative operating under the support of the United Nations Foundation. As a part of their efforts, GoSun has led a six-month pilot study in Guatemala to determine the best methods of introducing the practical solar cooking device into emerging communities. James leads sales and marketing efforts for GoSun Stove. In overseeing and executing the growth strategy, James works to open the door for new business partners, support the Partner Network, and provide fuel for international empowerment efforts. In addition to GoSun, James is co-founder and IT Director for Epsilon Nu Tau Fraternity, the nation’s first entrepreneurship fraternity, a dynamic group for college-level entrepreneurs and business-minded students. James also owns and manages a Web marketing agency in Cincinnati, OH, called Viral Wolf.

JOHN SHEGERIAN: Thanks for tuning into another episode of Green is Good Radio. Today we’re taping live with our new media partner, Green Festival, at their event in Los Angeles. We had the pleasure of meeting a few vendors on the floor of the event, and here are some clips from today’s adventure. Today we’ve got the owner and the founder of Badass Foods with us. Your name is? JOHN LEWIS: My name is John Lewis, owner of badassvegan.com. JOHN SHEGERIAN: When did you start Badass? JOHN LEWIS: I started Badass back in 2010, and this is my first product out now that I started in July of 2013. JOHN SHEGERIAN: And, what is your product called, and what is it made out of? JOHN LEWIS: It’s called the Badass Power Cookie. It’s made out of organic oats, raisins, sunflower seeds, pumpkin seeds and a little bit of spelt flour. It’s all organic, non-GMO, certified kosher as well. JOHN SHEGERIAN: How’s it been going since you launched Badass? JOHN LEWIS: It’s been going great. I actually got it approved for Whole Foods Florida region, so it should be moving over to the West Coast soon. I actually got my first NFL team that’s been reordering it, so it’s been going very, very well. JOHN SHEGERIAN: What team is that? JOHN LEWIS: That would be the Buffalo Bills. They’ve actually been reordering for about three to four weeks now. JOHN SHEGERIAN: Wow, so that’s just the first of many NFL teams and other pro sports teams to come. JOHN LEWIS: And, we hope that opens up the doors right there. JOHN SHEGERIAN: What is the URL for your company? JOHN LEWIS: You can find us at badassvegan.com. I have it right on the website as well, and I’m working on having it on quite a few more of the websites as well, too. JOHN SHEGERIAN: What made you start this business? Are you a vegan yourself? JOHN LEWIS: I actually am a vegan. I’ve been a vegan for 10 years myself. A lot of people don’t know I actually went to school for marketing, and then I did my master’s in business. It kind of sparked the whole thing for me to start the company. JOHN SHEGERIAN: I know our listeners can’t see you, but you’re a big guy. I mean, not only just tall, but also really built. This whole thing about being vegan and not getting enough protein and not getting enough energy to work out and stuff, that’s just not the case. JOHN LEWIS: It’s just a myth. A lot of people don’t understand. The things that they say, that you really can just get all the nutrients you want straight from your food, straight from plants. One thing that people don’t realize is that the funny thing about the industry is that plant eaters are not the ones filling up the hospitals. All the myths that people say that if you go vegan, you’re going to die, you’re going to get sick. If you really look at the numbers, that’s not the case. JOHN SHEGERIAN: What’s your dream with Badass? How big can Badass be? What other products do you want to have? JOHN LEWIS: I’m actually working on a protein powder that should be out by the beginning of 2015, and I just want to take it global. I want to show people that plant-based items are good for you, nothing to run from, and they can have flavor and be good for you. JOHN SHEGERIAN: How’s it working coming to the Green Festival and getting your product out here at the Green Festival? Has it been successful in terms of getting visibility? JOHN LEWIS: Oh, I love it. This is my third city that I’ve done. I’ve done New York as well as DC. I’ll be doing Chicago as well as San Fran, and it’s been great. There’s been love every time we show up at every event, and people just come and tell me that I have the best booth every time. They love the cookie, they love the product, and they feel great when they eat it. That just warms my heart. JOHN SHEGERIAN: I ate your product earlier. I’m a vegan, and I just think your product is delicious. JOHN LEWIS: Thank you. That’s what it’s all about. I want to impress people and let them know that you can be vegan and be strong and be healthy and still give a damn about the rest of the world, and just keep on living. JOHN SHEGERIAN: You can be cool and you can be a badass and you can be healthy too. JOHN LEWIS: Exactly. That’s what it’s all about. JOHN SHEGERIAN: One more time, where can our listeners buy your Badass cookies? JOHN LEWIS: Check us out at badassvegan.com. JOHN SHEGERIAN: Perfect. Thanks for today, and we wish you luck in the future. JOHN LEWIS: Thank you so much, and you can also find me at Twitter, Instagram and Facebook under Badass Vegan. JOHN SHEGERIAN: Perfect. We’re here at the Bio-K stand, and we’re here with? STEVE TANEMAN: I’m Steve Taneman. I’m the Regional Vice President for Bio-K+ International out of Montréal. JOHN SHEGERIAN: So, tell me a little bit about Bio-K. Why is it important for our listeners to learn about your great product? I’m a true believer; I take it every day. What’s so important about your product, and what is it doing to revolutionize how people look at their gut health? STEVE TANEMAN: Probiotics, to go back, is probably one of the largest growth areas in the United States in supplements. It’s been double digit growth over the last several years. With that good thing is a lot of product out there, and for most probiotics, probiotic is a marketing term, not a therapeutic term. Bio-K firmly believes in clinical research and studies. We are one of the few products out there that actually conducts double blind placebo clinical studies on the finished product in vito, in hospitals, that get published in American Canadian mainstream medical journals. So not only are we the top probiotic at Whole Foods and Sprouts, but we’re also on hospital formulary. We’re also the only supplement in the entire world as of January for Health Canada, which is our version of the FDA, gave us the only health claim. Ours is for prevention of C-Diff, which is an antibiotic resistance superbug that kills 30,000 people in the United States each year. We have a 98% success rate against it, and we also have a 95% success rate against associated antibiotic diarrhea. One in three prescriptions for antibiotics will cause an adverse event, and this is to help to prevent that. That being said, Bio-K is for an everyday use. Probiotics is foundational. If you were to walk into a Sprouts or a Whole Foods, and you asked the staff, “I’ve never done anything healthy. What should I do?” They’ll say, “There are four things you should do that are foundational. It’s all universal. Take a superfood, green for antioxidant, take a good multiple vitamin, take a good omega or fish oil for your heart, but the number one thing you must absolutely do is take an efficacious probiotic.” The reason is, it’s about absorption, bacteria breaking down the absorption in your body to provide the nutrients. If you’re not getting well-absorbed, and none of us are if we’re doing well absorption, then you need to be on a probiotic every single day of your life. JOHN SHEGERIAN: How about for our listeners? It’s hard on our stomachs when you travel and you go on planes and get exposed to different germs and also drink water and eat food in different cities. What can our listeners do in terms of your great product? If they can’t buy the jar immediately when they land in a city, is there something they could travel with and still get their Bio-K every day? STEVE TANEMAN: Yeah, absolutely. Actually, we introduced in Canada, and we just introduced here, a product called Bon Voyage. You take that cruise, I’m not going to say the cruise line, but you don’t know when you’re coming home. Bon Voyage is actually Bio-K, but it’s at 30 billion strength, and it’s really travel insurance for that upset stomach. But the difference with Bon Voyage, it’s in blister packs. So, it’s shelf stable at four months in your luggage, as long as you don’t bake it in the car, and two years in the fridge. So, you can take your Bio-K with you. It’s in blister packs, so if you go to a humid climate, whether it’s in Florida or South America, the moisture, which is one of the three things that kill probiotics, it protects it against that. You are able to continue and travel quite effectively with Bio-K, using a Bon Voyage product. JOHN SHEGERIAN: Steve, where can our listeners at Green is Good Radio find your great Bio-K products online, and in what stores across the United States and Canada? STEVE TANEMAN: Well, you can always look us up at biokplus.com, but we really don’t sell online, except for maybe the 50 billion capsules. In Canada and as far as the United States, you can find it in all the Whole Foods, all the Sprouts, just about any A or B health food store. You can find it also in more and more pharmacies. Up in Canada, we’re actually in all the Walmart pharmacies and all the Costco pharmacies and the Rexall Pharmacy chains and Loblaw markets and everything. So, it is easy to find, and it is a life changing product. That’s why I work for them. I’ve been in this business for 25 years, and this is a product that people say, “Well, you’re such a good salesman of it.” It’s because I’m passionate and I see the life results it gives people who are suffering, and it’s life affirming. I always tell people, “Do you know what the most expensive probiotic is in the world? It’s the one that doesn’t work.” The one with the best value is the one that works. This is something you put your name and your stake on. In fact, I tell people do a 12-day challenge. I challenge anyone. Go buy a six pack, drink a half-bottle a day for 12 days, and stop for three days. Why do I want them to stop? JOHN SHEGERIAN: They’re not going to feel as well as they did those last six days. STEVE TANEMAN: Absolutely. You can actually see the result. Nine times out of 10, people say, “Oh my God, I didn’t realize I was feeling that bad.” JOHN SHEGERIAN: Speaking of results, Steve, we’re here today at the LA Green Festival. What do you feel the visibility has been for your brand here? Have you done other Green Festivals and are you going to do more in the future? STEVE TANEMAN: Oh, absolutely. This is our third year with Green Festival, and we do both San Francisco and LA each year. We think it’s wonderful because what we find is the people coming here are engaged. It’s not about how many samples you hand out or how much product you sell; it’s about engagement, one-on-one conversation. When we’re talking to a consumer here, you’re truly looking for people who are looking for something natural, something organic, but something effective. What we’re excited about and what people get excited about when they come to the booth is that, usually, if you look at the wellness market, there are two types of product. You’ve got either one side of the spectrum you’ve got pharmaceutical, which has a lot of science that proves it works but a lot of adverse events. By the way, death is an adverse event. There’s a lot of side effects. On the other side of the coin, you have natural products, which really don’t have an adverse event, but let’s face it, there’s not a lot of science; a lot of anecdotal and there’s some snake oil out there. What Bio-K is is that transition product. It’s changing the market because we are a natural product that has pharmaceutical grade research to prove we do. You know what the FDA disclaimer is on all supplement products. There’s a little note saying, “This product is not meant to cure, perform, or do anything it says it’s doing.” Bio-K, on our liquid, doesn’t have to say it. It doesn’t have it. We’re able to combine the science and the proof with a natural product. JOHN SHEGERIAN: Steve, thank you for your time today. We appreciate all that information. For our listeners out there, again, if they want to find and more learn more about your Bio-K product, it’s www.biokplus.com. STEVE TANEMAN: Correct. Thank you very much. We’re also on Facebook. Follow us on Twitter. JOHN SHEGERIAN: Thank you again, Steve. Thank you. I’m glad you’re all joining us at the Green is Good show. Today we’re highlighting the exhibitors from our media partner, Green Festival, at their event in LA. Here are some of the additional vendors we visited. GO MACRO: A lot of folks have never heard of us. A lot of folks have heard of us. Go Macro. We’re spreading the word about no-soy protein bars. JOHN SHEGERIAN: I’m enjoying one of the bars as we talk here. It’s a great product, and your products are vegan. GO MACRO: Yes, they are. Vegan, gluten-free, kosher, non-GMO certified, sugar-free, and there’s also love in every single package. JOHN SHEGERIAN: Where can our listeners find your great bars online, and in what stores are they around the United States and beyond? GO MACRO: We are sold nationally through Whole Foods, Bristol Farms, Sprouts and hopefully soon, eventually, maybe Target. JOHN SHEGERIAN: What is your website address? GO MACRO: It is www.gomacro.com. JOHN SHEGERIAN: How long has Go Macro been around? GO MACRO: About 10 years now. It was started by a mother and daughter. The mother had breast cancer. She beat the breast cancer by taking on a macrobiotic diet, and created these bars. JOHN SHEGERIAN: And, they still own it and run the company. GO MACRO: They do. It’s still a very small business, family owned. JOHN SHEGERIAN: What city is Go Macro out of? GO MACRO: We’re based out of Viola, Wisconsin, but we have a lot, obviously, in California as well. JOHN SHEGERIAN: Any last words for our Green is Good listeners around the United States and around the world? GO MACRO: Yes, go macro. JOHN SHEGERIAN: We love it. Thank you so much for taking time with us today. GO MACRO: Thank you. JOHN SHEGERIAN: Hi, we’re here at Green Bark Gummies, and we’re speaking with? LINDA MATTHEWS: Linda Matthews. JOHN SHEGERIAN: Linda, tell me the story of Green Bark Gummies. Who owns the company? How did you start it? How’s it going? LINDA MATTHEWS: Green Bark Gummies is a family-owned business, and we have a lot of veterinarians and nutritionists in our family. They, actually, realized that they were buying so many products to give their dog patients the proper nutrients they needed, not only food, but supplements. So, they decided why not make a treat that is extremely healthy? They came up with the formula themselves. We are the owners. No one has a chia formula infused with fish oil like we do. It offers the most omega-3s available to dogs. We have three formulas, skin and coat, healthy digestion, and hip and joint, and we have a new formula coming out in a couple months called health and vitality. JOHN SHEGERIAN: What year did you start Green Bark Gummies? LINDA MATTHEWS: We started developing three years ago, but we’ve only been selling for six months. JOHN SHEGERIAN: What’s your online website? LINDA MATTHEWS: Greenbarkgummies.com. JOHN SHEGERIAN: And, where can our listeners find your great products for their dogs? LINDA MATTHEWS: We are in 600 stores. I won’t give you the list, but I can tell you, if you go to Google, you’ll find a very lengthy list. You can also buy us on Amazon, numerous online dog stores, and if you go to your own dog store and ask them to get it for you, I’m sure we’ll be happy to provide it. JOHN SHEGERIAN: Linda, where are you guys out of? LINDA MATTHEWS: South Pasadena, California. JOHN SHEGERIAN: Is this your first Green Festival? LINDA MATTHEWS: Yes, it is. JOHN SHEGERIAN: And, how has the response been to your products here at the Green Festival? LINDA MATTHEWS: It’s overwhelming. It’s a much bigger response. We’re actually running out of things. We didn’t expect this crowd. JOHN SHEGERIAN: Are you going to be doing other Green Festivals in the future? LINDA MATTHEWS: Absolutely. JOHN SHEGERIAN: For our listeners out there that have a product that they want to get visibility for, would you recommend coming to the Green Festival? LINDA MATTHEWS; I would recommend coming with a lot of product, absolutely. JOHN SHEGERIAN: How about for just our listeners out there that want to get exposed to more green products and just learn what’s going on in the sustainability world? Is the Green Festival a good cross-section of products to come and get exposed? LINDA MATTHEWS: Well, I’ll tell you, I’ve learned a lot. This is such a variety of vendors here. I’m much more educated than I was when I walked in the door. JOHN SHEGERIAN: That’s wonderful. Thank you so much. We wish you a lot of success with Green Bark Gummies. We ask our listeners out there to go online and check it out. Again, Linda, tell us where to check out your great product again. What’s the website? LINDA MATTHEWS: Greenbarkgummies.com. JOHN SHEGERIAN: Thank you so much for your time today, and thank you for truly being living proof making green is good. SELENA: I’m Selena, and I don’t know. I just kind of like it here. It’s just nice to have the food around here. JOHN SHEGERIAN: Is your mom and dad a visitor here today or an exhibitor? SELENA: I’m not here with my mom. I’m here with her and her mom. JOHN SHEGERIAN: What’s your name? KARMA: My name is Karma, and I’m really big about solar panels and stuff like that, so I really just like that people make a good effort to be very earth-friendly. That’s why I like coming here. JOHN SHEGERIAN: Are your mom or dad selling solar panels, or are they just here visiting all the stalls and enjoying the Green Festival? KARMA: Actually, my mom is here with Antioch University. She comes here very year, and I like to come with her. JOHN SHEGERIAN: How old are you young ladies? KARMA: I’m almost 10, but still 9. SELENA: I’m 10, turning 11. JOHN SHEGERIAN: Is sustainability and green and making a better and cleaner world important you young children? KARMA: Yes. Yes, it is. SELENA: Yeah, of course, if we didn’t have good oxygen or good Earth, then you wouldn’t be able to live. JOHN SHEGERIAN: Is this something that they’re teaching you nowadays in school? Are your friends talking about it? Are you seeing it on television or online more? Where are you talking or learning about this stuff the most? SELENA: At school. KARMA: Pretty much at school, yeah. Basically, even when we’re on the road, I can just tell that the Earth isn’t doing well. JOHN SHEGERIAN: What are you kids thinking about now? What do you want to be when you grow up? Is there anything that you’re thinking about, or is it still too young to be thinking about those things? KARMA: I’m really interested in science, so I wanted to be a biologist. SELENA: I don’t know. Right now I just kind of want to be in Italy and I want to be professional water polo player. JOHN SHEGERIAN: Beautiful. Any other last things you want to say before we say goodbye today? KARMA: Sure. I want to suggest about solar panels because there’s lots of people here that do suggest solar panels, but people just ignore them, and I don’t like the fact that they’re ignoring them. They should get them. JOHN SHEGERIAN: Thank you, ladies, for your time today. We appreciate you taking the time to speak with us today at Green is Good Radio. SELENA: Thank you. KARMA: Thank you. JOHN SHEGERIAN: Today we’re highlighting the exhibitors from our media partner, Green Festival, at their event in LA. Here are some of the additional vendors we visited. We’re here with Green Foods, and your name is? MARISOL: Marisol. JOHN SHEGERIAN: How’s it going at the Green Festival with your Green Foods brand? MARISOL: It’s going very well. A lot of people are liking our products. A lot of people think that they don’t like the taste of wheatgrass, and when they actually taste it, they say, “Oh, it’s really good.” JOHN SHEGERIAN: What are the core products that you sell? MARISOL: Green Magma has been around for 45 years, and then we have protein shakes, green teas, a lot of variety of products. JOHN SHEGERIAN: Where can our listeners at Green is Good Radio find your products? MARISOL: Any natural products store. We’ve been around for so long that we’re in pretty much every store. JOHN SHEGERIAN: And what’s your website, Marisol? MARISOL: It’s greenfoods.com. JOHN SHEGERIAN: And have you been going to the Green Festivals since their inception, or is this your first Green Festival here in Los Angeles? MARISOL: It’s our first year in Los Angeles, but we’ve been to San Francisco Green Festival a couple of times. JOHN SHEGERIAN: Are you going to be at other ones later this year in Chicago and San Francisco? MARISOL: We’re hoping to be in Chicago, and definitely San Francisco. JOHN SHEGERIAN: Perfect. Any last words? MARISOL: No, thank you very much for having us. JOHN SHEGERIAN: Thank you so much, and continued success with Green Foods. Green is good. MARISOL: It is good. Thank you very much. JOHN SHEGERIAN: We’re here at the Hawaiian Moon booth at the Green Festivals in Los Angeles, and I’m speaking with today? ELIZABETH: Elizabeth. JOHN SHEGERIAN: Elizabeth, who is the owner of Hawaiian Moon? ELIZABETH: Shannon Seymour. JOHN SHEGERIAN: And, where is it out of? ELIZABETH: Portland, Oregon. JOHN SHEGERIAN: So, tell me how’s it been going today here at the LA Green Festival with your Hawaiian Moon products? ELIZABETH: It’s been going really well. We’re almost sold out, so we don’t have a lot to take on the plane, thank God. JOHN SHEGERIAN: You just were kind enough to give me some to put on my hands. Explain to our listeners who don’t have the benefit here of being with us today, what is Hawaiian Moon? First of all, what is your website? ELIZABETH: Our website is aloecream.biz, and Hawaiian Moon is an all-natural aloe vera. We use a certain strand called barbadensis. It’s the highest medicinal grade of aloe. Aloe is a carrier, so it gets carried right into the skin, opens up the capillaries, and supports circulation. It will stay in eight to 12 hours. It’s an excellent healer. JOHN SHEGERIAN: Today you’ve been here and you’re almost out of product. Have you exhibited before at other Green Festivals? ELIZABETH: We were here last year, and we’re going to be in San Francisco in November. JOHN SHEGERIAN: As an exhibitor, you’re very happy with the turnout and what the experience has been, and with the response from the crowd that’s come here. ELIZABETH: Absolutely. We did really, really well last year. We did even better this year, so it looks like something that we’ll be doing every time we get a chance. JOHN SHEGERIAN: Where can Green is Good listeners find your Hawaiian Moon products besides online? Are they at retail stores also? ELIZABETH: It’s based out of Portland, so we have one retail location in the Washington Square Mall in Portland, and other than that, we do have a really strong online presence. JOHN SHEGERIAN: Got it. How many products do you have? It’s just one product, or is there a line of Hawaiian Moon products? ELIZABETH: It started out with just the cream, and that’s been a staple, so everything is based off of that. Last fall, we launched a line. We have body wash and a face wash and an eye serum now, only available online. JOHN SHEGERIAN: Again, for our listeners out there, your online website is? ELIZABETH: Aloecream.biz. JOHN SHEGERIAN: Thank you for taking the time to speak with us today, and continued success. Thanks for tuning into another episode of Green is Good Radio and sharing our experiences here at the Green Festival in Los Angeles. Check us out next time, as we explore the great windy city of Chicago at another great Green Festival event. Also, upcoming events in 2015, visit the Green Festival website at greenfestival.org, and be sure to tune in next week for more visionaries paving the way, and truly proving that green is good.

JOHN SHEGERIAN: Welcome to another edition of Green is Good. We’re so honored to have with us today Steve Vahidi. He’s the President of MPG Car Rental. You can find them at mpgcarrental.com. Welcome to Green is Good, Steve. STEVE VAHIDI: Thank you, John. JOHN SHEGERIAN: Hey, Steve, before we get talking about your green rental car company called MPG Car Rental, can you share a little bit about your journey? How did you even come up with this idea? Share a little bit about your back story leading up to the founding of this car rental company. STEVE VAHIDI: Sure. Twenty years ago, my family started a car rental company called California Rent-A-Car. We’re based out of West LA. When I finished college, I kind of came onboard and helped the family business out. It’s been about 10 years now. A few years ago, I came up with the idea of going green. We turned one of our California Rent-A-Car locations into an all-green location, and we called it MPG Car Rental. We just wanted to make renting green cool and affordable because most places were charging $120 a car for a Prius, so we came up with the idea of how can we make this affordable for clients? What we started doing was using these Priuses and hybrids that we had for California Rent-A-Car, and slowly, after a year, year-and-a-half of using it, we put older model hybrids at $30 a day, $25 a day, to make it affordable for clients to rent green cars. As time went on and our first 24 months, it took a lot to figure out what our niche is. It’s been so responsive. We’re the highest-rated reviewed car rental company in Los Angeles on Yelp, for example. People have just been excited about it. I have people e-mailing me all the time asking me when we’re opening up in San Francisco and Dallas. We’re still growing, and it’s still the beginning parts of expanding the business, but we love the idea, we love the concept, and it’s been good. JOHN SHEGERIAN: Mom and dad must be proud. STEVE VAHIDI: They are. They are proud. JOHN SHEGERIAN: That’s awesome. This is great. You take their original concept and you grow it into one of the hottest spaces in the world right now, sustainability. Good for you. We’re here at the Green Festivals today, taping the show in Los Angeles. Your MPG Car Rental is in West LA also, correct? STEVE VAHIDI: It’s not. It’s actually in Venice, California. We’re linking to Venice, which is a pretty green part of town. We’re technically in the city of Venice. JOHN SHEGERIAN: Gotcha, but it serves the LA region. Whether you’re in Santa Monica or downtown, it’s accessible to your car rental company and people can rent your green cars in the greater LA area. STEVE VAHIDI: We actually deliver cars, so if someone needs a rental car in Hollywood or needs to be picked up from LAX, we actually do provide a service for that. JOHN SHEGERIAN: That’s wonderful. That’s a real service. STEVE VAHIDI: Yeah, people love the free pick-up and drop-off service. JOHN SHEGERIAN: Wow. I’ve never heard of that, actually. What other things make your car rental company different from others out there? STEVE VAHIDI: We only rent hybrids, electric cars and clean diesels. We’re a little limited on the inventory that we have because we’re staying so true to being green, carrying cars that are non-green. If we carry an SUV, it will be a hybrid SUV. If we carry an electric car, we have the Tesla, we have the Chevy Volt, the Nissan LEAF, We’re just trying to figure out what’s cool out there and what’s good for the environment, and do a lot of research on what types of cars are coming out. We just got a BMW i3, and that car, I think, has 25% recyclable goods inside of the car. That’s the way they created the BMW i3. We have the Tesla Model S. We were actually the first car rental company to get the Model S. We were Tesla’s guinea pig on seeing if the Tesla would be a good rental car. It’s been great. Tesla, at one point, was just directly referring clients to us for them to test drive it and see if people like the experience of driving a Tesla for a few days. A lot of people would go and test drive for the weekend and go out and buy one on Monday or Tuesday and put an order in. JOHN SHEGERIAN: You put a big smile on Elon Musk’s face, huh? STEVE VAHIDI: Absolutely. JOHN SHEGERIAN: That’s awesome. How many cars are in your fleet? STEVE VAHIDI: We have about 100 cars in our fleet. We’re continuously growing. We’ve doubled our fleet every year for the last four years. JOHN SHEGERIAN: You know what the typical lease rates are since it’s a family business and this is in your blood. Are the cars staying at the industry average leased enough, or is it above average or slightly below? What’s the average? How are you doing in terms of what industry averages are for your fleet to be leased? STEVE VAHIDI: We sit at 85 to 90% utilization. JOHN SHEGERIAN: That’s high for the industry? STEVE VAHIDI: Yeah, that is very high for the industry. Most companies are at 65 to 70%. Again, we just keep on buying cars and clients keep on supporting us. It’s been great. JOHN SHEGERIAN: What are the hot cars on the lot right now? What are the two or three hot cars on the lot right now that you’re getting lots of calls and e-mails about? STEVE VAHIDI: Electric cars are really growing, especially being in the Santa Monica/Venice area, a lot of people love electric cars, they love going green. We’re in the right target market for what we’re doing. The Tesla Model S has been a great car and people love it. The BMW i3, again, another electric car that’s been great. The Chevy Volt actually, another electric car that also qualifies for the carpool sticker, so a lot of people that are doing long distance traveling like to rent that car and drive to San Diego and back on a one-day trip. It just makes commuting a little bit easier. JOHN SHEGERIAN: Let’s talk about that. I just learned about that this weekend. My 21-year-old son just got a Ford Fusion Energi, the electric version. He taught me about these stickers that I didn’t even know anything about. If the sticker is on the car, tell the story, Steve. STEVE VAHIDI: You can drive in the carpool lane by yourself. JOHN SHEGERIAN: And, also park in Santa Monica and other cities? STEVE VAHIDI: There are some cities that allow free parking. JOHN SHEGERIAN: Unbelievable. STEVE VAHIDI: LAX, at one point, was offering a month of free parking with the Tesla Model S. If you own a Tesla and you do a lot of traveling, literally go and drop the car off at a parking structure that normally costs $30 a day, and you get free parking at LAX. You can charge your car, so when you come back, you can just hop in your car with a full tank of energy and drive home and it won’t cost you a dime. JOHN SHEGERIAN: And, you can do street parking by meters in Santa Monica for free. STEVE VAHIDI: Absolutely. JOHN SHEGERIAN: Unbelievable. That is just so great. For our listeners who just joined us, we’re so excited to have Steve Vahidi with us. He’s an entrepreneur and he’s the President of MPG Car Rental. You can find them at mpgcarrental.com. Let’s talk a little bit about the Green Festivals. Is this your first Green Festival? STEVE VAHIDI: I’ve attended, but this is the first year we’ve actually sponsored and had an exhibit here, but it is our first year as a business to come and exhibit here. JOHN SHEGERIAN: Talk about two sides of that coin at the Green Festivals. For our listeners out there that want to come to other Green Festivals, is it fun to go as a consumer? And, then also talk about it as an entrepreneur. Has it been valuable for you in terms of visibility, as an entrepreneur trying to get more visibility for your services and products? STEVE VAHIDI: I’ve been walking around the last couple days just munching at things and looking around and seeing different exhibits. It’s just so interesting how people are innovating their own twists on how to go green. It’s great. I think it’s good for the environment, it’s good for the economy, it creates jobs. It’s really a win-win situation. As a person that’s displaying here for the first time, we’ve had an amazing response to what we’re doing. People have come up to us and tried to create partnerships. There was actually an organization that I talked to today about planting trees. We’re thinking of partnering up with this company, and they’re actually called Trees for the Future. What we’re planning to do is for every rental that we have, we want to donate some money to put a tree in. We’ve met a lot of partners, and it’s been great. It’s been very responsive. JOHN SHEGERIAN: What a great story, in the city of cars, to have the largest green hybrid rental car agency out there. Let’s just go over this again. Your service is not only cool and green because of the cars that you rent, but for our listeners who just tuned in, you’ll also deliver the cars to them if they’re in a hotel or at the airport or something like that and they want to hire your service, you’ll deliver the car to them. STEVE VAHIDI: We’re 3.5 miles away from LAX, so we pick up clients all the time from LAX. They just land and call us, and we’ll send a driver to go pick them up. It’s a lot easier than hopping on a shuttle and going to a big national chain, and it’s a lot more affordable because when you go green, not only are you saving money on the rental, you’re also saving money on the gas. JOHN SHEGERIAN: Speaking on the rental, let’s go over the price range again. Is it relatively comparable to renting traditional cars, less or more? How are the prices of your 100 or so fleet? STEVE VAHIDI: When I started this concept, I wanted to make it affordable. If it wasn’t affordable, it just wouldn’t work out. We are actually, at time, less expensive than the big national chains are with their compact and mid-sized cars. So, you can rent a Prius C, for example, at $35 a day from us. Most national chains charge about $30 to $40 a day for that same exact category car, but not a hybrid. So, we’ve made it affordable, and that was my ultimate goal, was to be able to lower prices so more people can go green and rent eco-friendly cars. Affordability is very important to us. JOHN SHEGERIAN: Steve, you’re a young guy, and I’m sure when you go to bed at night, you have some big dreams. Where are you going to take MPG Car Rental? STEVE VAHIDI: I would love for this to become a national chain. I would love to be able to offer green cars to every city in the world if I could. Ultimately, I would like to keep on growing the business and give people the opportunity to go green. Again, I’ve had people e-mail me and contact me, asking me when I’m going to open up in San Francisco and when I’m going to open up in their city. It’s been really good. JOHN SHEGERIAN: And, why not you? And why not MPG? STEVE VAHIDI: Why not us? Absolutely. JOHN SHEGERIAN: You should. Steve, thank you for your time today here at today’s Green Festivals in Los Angeles. We wish you continued success. Thank you for starting MPG Car Rental. For our listeners out there who would like to find or rent a car from Steve’s great company, you go to www.mpgcarrental.com. Steve, thank you for making the world a better place. You are truly living proof that green is good. STEVE VAHIDI: Thank you, John.

JOHN SHEGERIAN: Welcome to another edition of Green is Good. We’re so excited to have with us today Dave Goodman. He’s the founder and owner of Coco Jack and coco-jack.com. You can find him and his products at www.coco-jack.com. Welcome to Green is Good, Dave. DAVE GOODMAN: Thank you so much. JOHN SHEGERIAN: It’s always great to have a native New Yorker on the show with me. Dave, we’re here today in Los Angeles at the LA version of the Green Festival. Before we get talking about the Green Festival and before we get talking about Coco Jack, I want you to talk about Dave Goodman and the story and the journey from New York to an eco-preneur and founder of the Coco Jack. DAVE GOODMAN: That’s a great question. Thank you. It’s great to be here for me, too. I was born and raised in New York City. I was born on a cold, windy day in January. I went to prep school and I became a class musician when I was 14 years old. I don’t look like it anymore, but I went to Juilliard and Curtis as a musician. I quickly wasn’t satisfied with the options for me there, and so I decided to start my own orchestra as an orchestra conductor. I was sort of a prodigy orchestra conductor in my teens, and built an orchestra in New York City. We traveled throughout the Northeast, and it was very fun. It was like building your own company. I put everything together, I produced it, I did all the back office work, as well as the conducting, which was a lot of fun, but I was very passionate about it and I burnt out pretty hard. When I was 24, I got my driver’s license because I’m a New Yorker and you don’t even think to ever leave New York, and I got on the road and made it out to California. I decided to start working on my health because I just wasn’t well. I spent a good amount of time working on my health and studying politics and studying economics and studying raw foods. Eventually, I spent a year getting my pilot’s license in Colorado. When I got back to New York, I wasn’t in good shape. I wasn’t healthy, I wasn’t feeling good, I was overweight like I am right now, but I was overweight, and I was going to the gym every day and it wasn’t working. A buddy of mine, who is probably 21 to 22 years old, literally just died of a heart attack. I was mortified. I said, “Gosh, I’m at this stage of my health. I’m 24 years old.” This is what happens. You start going down and down and down and down until the grave. I said, “I’m not ready for that.” When I got back to New York, a buddy of mine, they were going to take out part of his colon. He was in his 60s, and I saw him after two years. He looked great. He lost 20 pounds, his skin was glowing, they weren’t taking out his colon. I said, “Man, what are you doing? You look great.” He says, “Well, I’m drinking this green juice.” I said, “Well, I don’t know what that is, but give me some because I feel like crap.” I started drinking the green juice. I went right into a cleansing reaction immediately. I spent two weeks in bed sweating and shivering and shaking like I’m in detox. I probably lost 20 or 30 pounds of body weight in a couple weeks. My skin changed, my mind changed. All my friends said, “Dave, you look like a different person.” It became this sort of transformation for me that I just became hooked on. I got big into raw foods. I met these raw foodists back in the ’90s. I said, “You guys are insane, but that’s really interesting,” and that was all I thought about it. And then once I started drinking this green juice, I remember I had a chicken from Fairway, a rotisserie chicken in my refrigerator. I bought it and said, “I’ve never eaten these things. These are delicious.” Next, I started drinking the green juice, and I had about half the chicken left. The next day, I ate the rest of the chicken. I said, “This is disgusting. I have no desire for this chicken at all.” Then I said, “Oh, I see how you can become a raw foodist. The way I feel now, I see how you can do that.” I started getting more into it and drinking more green juice and detoxing and doing cleanses and colonics and the whole nine yards about getting healthy. I lost 100 pounds of body weight. My skin was glowing and I felt younger than when I was 16 years old, and I was hooked. The story goes on and on, but for our purposes, part of the raw food diet is young Thai coconuts. I would go all winter eating nothing but coconuts and oranges one time. I would come back with nine or 10 coconuts in my bag and with a cleaver or a knife, I’d say a little prayer and start working on the coconuts with the knife. I said there’s got to be a better way than this. I was a musician, and a lot of my friends are musicians, and it’s not worth risking your finger or your hand over a coconut. Eventually, like most people, I stopped buying them. I stopped drinking them. I tried the stuff in the box, and it wasn’t right. The fresh thing, you can’t replace it. So, I had this idea in my head, it was the Coco Jack. It was a very primitive Coco Jack in my head, probably in like 2005 to 2006. I just said, “Huh, that’s what I should invent.” I didn’t have time. I was still dealing with my health, so I just put it on the shelf and I figured someone’s going to come up with this at some point because it needs to happen. For years, I’d walk into Whole Foods and say, “Someone must have done it by now,” and they didn’t. In 2012, I saw my partner in New York City because I was traveling so much and staying in these motels, and the chemicals in the sprays in motels, because I was so sensitive from all the cleansing, I couldn’t stay in the hotels anymore. JOHN SHEGERIAN: The VOCs were killing you. DAVE GOODMAN: Horrible. I would wake up, if I could sleep at all. I’d have the cover over my head so I couldn’t breathe, be covered in pimples, and I wouldn’t sleep well. I went out to sleep in my car half the time. It wasn’t comfortable, so eventually I said, “Well, shoot, if I’m going to sleep in my car, I might as well be comfortable,” so I bought a van and I threw a bed in the back of the van, and I was never happier in my life. I drove and I said, “Wow, I can sleep wherever I want.” It was a blast. That’s when I realized I don’t need my apartment anymore, so I sold my apartment in 2012 and I bought four RVs, two Airstreams and two vans. One of the Airstreams is also a van. It’s a beautiful Sprinter van. One of them is in Texas, one of them right now is in a Brooklyn parking lot, and two of them are out here. I’m living in one, and the other one is our cargo van. We’re using it for expos and stuff like that. Now I can live full-time on the road. So, I sold my apartment and I had some money. I was driving down on my way to LA, and I stopped through Austin for, literally, an afternoon, and two-and-a-half years later I’m still there. I fell in love with Austin. It just sucked me in. JOHN SHEGERIAN: Very green city. DAVE GOODMAN: Absolutely. You can’t swing a dead cat without hitting a vegan food truck or something like that. That’s the non-green version of that, but it’s an old expression. It’s a very green city. The green belt runs through the middle of it. Whole Foods began there. It’s an amazing oasis and I love it badly. So, I was there. I said, “I’ve got all this money from my apartment. I’m living very cheap, and I want a new project. I’m ready for what’s next.” So, I found a blacksmith. I had a friend of mine drop drawings for me back in New York of the Coco Jack as I envisioned it in my head. I brought it to a local blacksmith. I said, “Make me one of these. First, sign this nondisclosure agreement and all that, but make one of these for me.” So, we made one. It didn’t work. I said, “What if we did this? What if we did that?” He and I probably went through about 20 different versions of the Coco Jack. They had really big teeth on them. On our website, we’ve got some videos in the About Us section with all the early prototypes. They were scary. They looked like medieval torture devices. They had big teeth on them. They were just made from junk metal on his floor from the blacksmith forge, and they kind of worked, they kind of didn’t work, and I couldn’t figure out why. I would ask these engineers, “Why isn’t this working?” They would look at me and they said, “I don’t know. It’s a coconut. There’s no science on coconuts. No one knows how they open.” So, I just kept experimenting and sticking with it. We got smaller teeth, changed the size of the teeth, made tiny teeth, got rid of the teeth, and eventually, the Coco Jack formed. JOHN SHEGERIAN: How many prototypes? DAVE GOODMAN: About 100. Looking back at them, you’d say, “Dave, you must have been an idiot. How could you not have thought of that?” But you don’t know. Hindsight is 20/20. I cut myself on them because of these big, sharp teeth. We went through 100 prototypes. With that guy, I went through about 30, and then I got the hang of it, and I got into it with real metal shops to do a stainless steel version because our versions were made out of just scrap metal. The stainless steel version got online early in January of 2013, and I started doing market testing. I started bringing it around to people and saying, “Would you buy this?” You make sure it’s viable. I thought we’re going to sell millions of these, but actually, I didn’t. I thought I’d invented the tool for 20,000 to 50,000 raw foodists in the Bay Area, in Venice Beach. But then when I started shopping around, the people said, “No, Dave, you don’t understand. Your market is everybody, Thai restaurants, Vietnamese restaurants, Filipino. People love coconuts. Paleo people eat these coconuts. Crossfit people, mixed martial artists eat these coconuts, tiki bars, bartenders, everybody eats these coconuts. JOHN SHEGERIAN: And, it’s gone beyond the U.S. DAVE GOODMAN: Oh yeah. We’ve sold in over 20 countries and all 50 states, including Alaska. We’ve sold multiple Coco Jacks. I don’t know where they get their coconuts out there, but they buy the Coco Jack, so I’m not going to ask any questions. We’ve sold in Switzerland. Same thing, you’d think coconuts in Switzerland, who knew? And Sweden, Denmark, all over the place. Of course, Hong Kong, Singapore, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, Africa, United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, everywhere. These coconuts are huge. I’ve realized I’m onto something here. It’s not just the raw food scene. JOHN SHEGERIAN: And, this was about a year ago? DAVE GOODMAN: This was just about a year-and-a-half ago; early 2013. I shopped around and said, “Would you buy this?” They said, “Yes.” Well, what would you want to pay for it? I needed to find manufacturers. I was looking in the USA for manufacturers, and I figured out about what I had to charge for it, so I went about looking for someone who could make it for less than that, ideally, a quarter of that, so you could do a nice retail markup. It was very hard. I talked to 300 manufacturers in the U.S., and two of them could kind of make the price. It was good enough for a 1X markup on our website, but it wasn’t enough for retail. We launched anyway with that. JOHN SHEGERIAN: How long ago did you launch? DAVE GOODMAN: December 1, 2013. That was our first sale. JOHN SHEGERIAN: For our listeners who just joined us, we’re so delighted to have with us today Dave Goodman. He’s the founder of Coco Jack. You can find his great products at www.coco-jack.com Talk a little bit about the last nine months. How have the sales gone? DAVE GOODMAN: Do you want numbers? JOHN SHEGERIAN: How much does it cost online? DAVE GOODMAN: Sure. We’ve been as aggressively as possible bringing our prices down. Right now, these two tools, which are the Coco Jack and the Coco Mallet, these two are $36.95 on the website right now. Then we have a Coco Scoop that comes in a burlap sack called the Coco Pack. That’s our most popular item. That’s $49.95. We have also some extra tools. We have glass straws we sell. We partnered with Simply Straws to sell glass straws. We have a little mat to put it on. We have a tool for making noodles, and we have also the “Coconut, the other white meat” t-shirt, which is very popular. JOHN SHEGERIAN: All made in America? DAVE GOODMAN: Right now it is, yeah. We’re starting to bring over imports because they couldn’t make them cheap enough or fast enough. I drove around the country visiting all my shops in person because I wanted to meet the people and say, “What’s going on here? Is this going to work?” and sell the idea to them. The numbers were very hard. What America is manufacturing, first of all, it’s not dead. I would write shops, and I wouldn’t hear back from them for months. They’d say, “We don’t have time for you. We are so busy, we don’t have time.” I got that probably from over 100 shops that wouldn’t even return my calls. It’s not dead at all. What they’re making, though, is big, big stuff where you have one of them. I would see big fracking drills and things like that or bombs. I’d go walk in one factory and I would say, “Is that a bomb?” And they would say, “I can’t tell you.” But don’t worry. If people ask what the Coco Jack is, we’ll tell them we can’t tell them what it is either so it’s fair. But they make very, very expensive but very, very small volume things here. In Asia, they make the little tchotchkes. We sort of found our niches. I was very relieved because one of the shops I talked to in St. Louis, this guy was growing 50% a year. He said, “We’re looking for more work,” but he said he can’t hire guys fast enough. So, that was really encouraging to hear that U.S. manufacturing is alive and well. I read the papers and heard all the stories about everything closing and closing. Well, whoever’s open, they are roaring. My guy in Texas, same thing. He’s bringing a lot of business. Mexico is coming across the border a lot because all the gangs have made it impossible to work in Mexico, so a lot of the work is coming here, too. When I looked overseas, I didn’t feel badly about it. We work with a couple of partners who source for us. You hear horror stories about making stuff overseas, the parts are junk, there’s slave labor. I wrote to them and said, “Look, I cannot have anything like this going on for my product. You have to guarantee me.” They said, “No, no, we’ve been doing this for years. We check every manufacturer ourselves, make sure the working conditions are sanitary and safe. We’ve double-checked the materials to make sure they’re not giving you lead junk in your tools. If the quality is not what you expected, we’ll pay for the tools. You don’t own them.” I said, “Wow, that’s a guarantee that I can live with.” We’re not going to go overseas and make some junk product. There are junks shops overseas, and there are fantastic overseas. The parts we’ve gotten from our overseas manufacturers are unbelievable. They’re beautiful. We’ve tested them rigorously to make sure they hold up, and they’re really good. It was a difficult process for us to go through because I want to go up to your shop, drive to my guy’s shop in Texas, and say, “Hey, where’s my order?” I’m not going to fly over to wherever, Shenzhen, and do that. So, it was an issue, but I’m very happy with the way things have turned out. JOHN SHEGERIAN: Dave, we’re broadcasting and taping this show at the LA Green Festival. Is this the first time you’ve ever exhibited at a Green Festival? DAVE GOODMAN: No, we did the one in New York, I think it was March, and it was a zoo. JOHN SHEGERIAN: Talk about your experience there and here. How’s it going? DAVE GOODMAN: First of all, the people who run it are awesome. That’s number one. Christian has been our contact here, and she’s just been dynamite. They’ve made it really easy for us. Bringing in the coconuts, it’s a lot of logistical stuff, all the hand washing stations and this kind of thing. It can be a nightmare. We’ve had a few where it’s been really a nightmare, and it’s been great working with the people here. It’s been awesome. The other vendors, we’ve met a lot of people where there was a natural synergy with us anyway, like Vitamix, of course, is a natural partner. We’d love to connect with them and do more things with them. We met the people that make this wonderful turmeric water and others. It’s just a natural niche for us. The vegans, that’s where I came from. I was a raw food vegan, and so the vegan yoga people, this was our world. This is why I invented the tools. The bartenders came later. The Crossfit people came later. This is where our heart is as a company, and this is where our core market is. JOHN SHEGERIAN: It gives you the right kind of visibility with B2C and also B2B. DAVE GOODMAN: Correct. JOHN SHEGERIAN: You’re going to eventually take it into stores, I take it. DAVE GOODMAN: Definitely. Whole Foods found us after two months, and they said, “We want to take you national” after two months. I said, “Wow, I’m honored, but we can’t make them fast enough.” This is what I was saying. We couldn’t make them fast enough here. We couldn’t make them cheap enough and we couldn’t make them fast enough. I said, “Give us a few months. We’re just born here. We’re not going to go to college.” So, we’ve been working as hard as we can, and now we’re in all the Whole Foods in this region, the Southern California region. They all use Coco Jack in their kitchens. When people come and say, “Can I have a coconut?” they’ll use the Coco Jack to open them. There are co-ops in San Diego and Texas, Erewhon Market, a wonderful health food store in Los Angeles, all had safety issues opening coconuts. JOHN SHEGERIAN: So, they use it in the back kitchen part. Are they going to be selling it eventually? DAVE GOODMAN: Hopefully very soon. Now we know we can make $200,000 a month, which means we can keep up with the demand. But I knew the demand was going to be huge, so I didn’t want to go blasting out there when we could only make $500 a month, and then we’re backordered for half a year. I wanted to be ahead of the curve with our manufacturing, and now we’re right there and open for business to really blow it out there. JOHN SHEGERIAN: What’s your dream? What’s the vision here, Dave? DAVE GOODMAN: There’s so much. One thing I’ll say for Coco Jack, we’ve had some wonderful partners. Tom’s, the wonderful shoe company that does One for One, they found us at the Yoga Journal Expo we did, and we did a little happy hour there at their amazing office in Marina del Rey. One of the things I learned in the process of this was every raw foodist, every vegan, everybody who loves coconuts, who drinks coconut water, is going to have a coconut. That’s the obvious vision. What I’ve discovered over the course of this was a buddy of mine who works at Sage and Café Gratitude, the vegan places in LA, he said he wanted to invent something like this for years because he was traveling in Africa and Asia and India, and he saw all these women and children who were starving because all they could eat was coconuts, but they were missing their hands. They were missing their fingers and they were missing their arms. They’re starving. All they can eat are the free coconuts that fall out of the tree. All they have is a big machete, so your 6-year-old kid opening coconuts, the law of statistics is going to tell you that it’s not going to end well every single time. He said there’s a huge, I don’t know if you call it an epidemic, maybe it is an epidemic. I don’t know enough, but it’s a huge problem. It already works in the green coconuts, but we’re going to adapt it so it specifically works for the green coconuts. We’re going to partner with Tom’s, who has this network all over the developing world, so they can bring Coco Jacks out to people where it’s not just a vanity thing, but it’s actually keeping people from getting literally maimed. That was really exciting. Like I say, I thought my market was 20,000 to 50,000 raw foodists in Venice Beach. I thought that was it. As I got into it, it’s sorority girls, it’s mixed martial arts wrestlers and killers. JOHN SHEGERIAN: Correct me if I’m wrong, but the guy who first brought coconut water to America, I’m forgetting his name right now, a wonderful guy, he was on the Green is Good radio show five years ago or so, and when he came on the show, he educated us that day and our listeners that coconut water back then was on such a trajectory that it was the fastest growing non-alcoholic drink in the world. I believe it. That was when he was the only one on the shelf. Now, with everything you see on the shelves, I believe. So, you went from being what you thought was a niche market, really the world is your market. DAVE GOODMAN: It’s really true. There’s coconut water sold in gas stations. I live all over the country. You can go to Idaho or you can go to Oklahoma, you go in the gas station, and there’s a bottle of coconut water right there. It’s all there. They’re going in the direction of mixing like coffee. Actually, we put espresso in our coconuts, and it’s pretty darn good if you’re into that. We just bought some macha powder from one of the other vendors here, mixed the macha in the coconut, delicious. Spirulina, wheatgrass, smoothies of course. There’s so much to do with a coconut, it’s not even funny. Zyco is one of the big ones. The woman who founded them, we sat down and had a talk maybe six or eight months ago. She’s fantastic. I said, “You set up this whole market for us,” because people are familiar now with coconut water, but most of them never had a fresh coconut. I’m not going to diss the competition, but you can’t beat fresh. You get the meat, it’s fresh, and it’s not expensive. You’re probably not going to go and carry them around and buy half a dozen coconuts in your backpack because they’re heavy. You probably get the boxed stuff for that, but a lot of people like fresh-squeezed orange juice. They want to have fresh-squeezed orange juice like they want to have fresh coconuts. The market is really huge, and we’re just excited to be out there. Then, yes, the charity wing and the philanthropic wing, that’s incredibly exciting to me to partner with people who have the reach. We don’t have the reach in those countries, but Tom’s does and some other NGOs do as well. To partner with them, to be able to give Coco Jacks to people who genuinely need them. JOHN SHEGERIAN: To save these kids’ hands and fingers. What a bottom line. It’s not only a great business you’re creating here in the United States and jobs here and also a great product that makes people healthier, but there’s a huge give back on human rights for the kids around the world. DAVE GOODMAN: It’s really exciting. I had no idea going into it, and it’s just moving that that’s in the works, something that’s so simple. JOHN SHEGERIAN: We’re lucky to be introduced by the Green Festival folks, so talk a little bit about, for our listeners out there that are thinking just as consumers to come to the Green Festivals, share what you’re seeing out there on the floor and what you saw in New York. DAVE GOODMAN: It’s a smorgasbord here. If you’re into healthy living, there’s a lot of food here, too. I was going to have breakfast before I came over here this morning; I didn’t. I said there isn’t going to be enough here for me to snack on. I’ll be very full by the time it’s lunchtime, and I am. I think a lot of it is the staple people who created the industry, I forget the woman’s name with the Berkeley kale chips. She makes the kale chips here. I bought them when they first opened like 10 years ago. I said these are the best kale chips I’ve ever had. She’s amazing. She told me this is her favorite festival. She doesn’t do a lot of the expos anymore; she always does Green. The people who really built the industry, they’re here, but also there’s a lot of new companies and things to try and things to taste, and it’s cutting edge. There’s people here you haven’t heard of. I just had this macha powder. I wish I had the company’s name in front of me, but it was delicious. I bought two packs. I think it’s a really fun place to get to know the community, to meet people. There’s lectures going on, there’s all kind of information, there’s products. If you’re a natural living person, this is like your something I can’t say on the radio, but it’s a feeding frenzy. JOHN SHEGERIAN: Thank you, Dave. For our listeners out there, to buy Dave’s great product and to enjoy the safety of it and both the quality of the products that it creates, please go to www.coco-jack.com. Dave Goodman, the founder of coco-jack.com and the Coco Jack, you’re going to be able find it in Whole Foods and other stores around the United States and around the world eventually. We thank Dave for his time today. Thank you, Dave, for making the world a better place. You are truly living proof that green is good. DAVE GOODMAN: John, thank you.

JOHN SHEGERIAN: Welcome to another edition of Green is Good. We’re here in L.A. today with Dr. Corinna Basler doing the overview of how the Green Festival went in Los Angeles. Doctor, this is the third or fourth time you’ve been on Green is Good. How is the festival today in Los Angeles? Are you happy with the results? DR. CORINNA BASLER: Yes, we’re very, very happy. JOHN SHEGERIAN: We got to meet so many cool vendors and so many cool advertisers of yours. Tell our listeners and viewers a little bit, give them a little taste. When I say a little taste, I mean a little taste because there was so much great food here today for all sorts of taste buds. I don’t want them to get too much in their mouth. Give them a little taste of what happened today in Los Angeles. DR. CORINNA BASLER: Thank you so much, John. We have something for everyone. We have so many exciting vendors and products and exhibitors and sponsors and partners, so we believe that the Green Festival is the perfect marketplace for everything that’s related to green. We have so many options and products and brands to offer. For example, we have Daiya; we have Clif Bar. Daiya, for example, has a great vegan pizza offer. It’s fantastic. JOHN SHEGERIAN: It was delicious. I tried some. DR. CORINNA BASLER: And, for the first time ever at the Green Festival, we had a BMW there, where our attendees can go outside and can go and drive the new green BMW. That’s actually very, very exciting. JOHN SHEGERIAN: When you say something for everyone, what I saw today was not only new and exciting and delicious food products, but also services. I saw in Los Angeles a green rental car company that was one of your exhibitors, and there were other people with services in Los Angeles, from yoga to holistic medicine to all sorts of wonderful other types of products. Talk a little bit about something for everyone with regards to the vendors. How many did you have, by the way? How many advertisers and vendors did you have? I saw hundreds of booths. DR. CORINNA BASLER: We had nearly 300 booths and partners and sponsors and exhibitors. Actually, we’re sold out. There were no more booths available, actually. We had to increase our online pre-ticket sale by nearly 300%. JOHN SHEGERIAN: Three hundred percent. Wow. Now we’re going to be moving on. The next city we’re going to, and I know we’re both going to be there together, is Chicago. DR. CORINNA BASLER: Can I mention, in L.A. our news coverage, basically about our media? We’re very pleased about the media coverage here in Los Angeles. The L.A. Daily News, we’re on the front page promoting the Green Festival, promoting the BMW iDrive. We’re very, very happy. We believe that this really helped us to drive traffic to the event as well. JOHN SHEGERIAN: The media supported you because the local media is excited about your Green Festival coming to their great city. DR. CORINNA BASLER: Yes, absolutely. It was such a beautiful day here in Los Angeles, and we are always competing with these wonderful beaches. We’re really pleased to see so many people coming here to the show, walking the floor, tasting, sampling, listening to the wonderful speakers, because we at Green Festival believe that you can make a difference. The consumer has the biggest power. You can increase the demand for a greener life. You can increase the demand for greener products. This is what we really want to show and make sure that people are aware of it. JOHN SHEGERIAN: For our listeners and our viewers who haven’t heard yet of the Green Festivals, where can they go online to learn more about where the festivals are going to be and, if they’re a vendor, how to sign up and reach your people that have the vendor relations, so they want to come and exhibit at your festivals all around the nation? DR. CORINNA BASLER: Thank you so much for asking that, John. I really appreciate it. Please go on our website, greenfestivals.org, and there you’ll find all the dates, the venues, and our schedule for next year. Green Festivals 2015 will be very exciting. JOHN SHEGERIAN: As for people that want to come and enjoy the festival, that’s for people who want to show their great products or services at your festivals. DR. CORINNA BASLER: Absolutely. There you’ll find our contact information. Our sales team is ready to take the booking, and we’re always looking for exciting new brands, new products, and the latest green offerings. JOHN SHEGERIAN: Dr. Corinna Basler, another great successful day here in sunny California in Los Angeles at the Green Festivals. Thank you, and we look forward to seeing you in Chicago. DR. CORINNA BASLER: Thank you so much, John. I really, really appreciate our cooperation. That’s such a wonderful fit, and it really makes a difference. Thank you. JOHN SHEGERIAN: I agree. Thanks for tuning into another episode of Green is Good Radio and sharing our experiences here at the Green Festival in Los Angeles. Be sure to tune in next week for more visionaries paving the way and truly proving that green is good.