Mark Divine  0:00  

This is Mark Divine, the host of the Mark Divine Show. Welcome. Thanks for joining me today. On the show I explore what it means to be fearless through the lens of the world’s most inspirational, compassionate and talented leaders. I speak to folks from all walks of life, monks and blockchain wizards, extreme adversity survivors, Stoic philosophers, and people who are really really steeped in practices of the Eastern traditions, as well as nutritional experts. And my guest today is both of those, what a amazing guy welcoming Angelo Keeley today to the Mark Divine show, he’s the co founder and CEO of Kion. Which is a supplement and functional food company dedicated to helping health and fitness enthusiast live long, active, joyful lives by providing clean energy enhancing solutions. Angelo thanks for joining me today on the Mark Divine Show. 

Mark Divine 0:50

Angelo Keeley. Thanks so much for joining me on the Mark Divine show. Super stoked to have you nice to see you my friend.

Angelo Keely  0:55  

Thanks, Mark. Thanks for having me, man. I’m honored.

Mark Divine  0:57  

Ya know, I’m super stoked. It’s been a while been wanting to get you on the show and big fan of, of you and your company, also co founded or at least I know my friend Ben Greenfield is affiliated with your company and, and involved in all the cool fitness stuff you’re doing. Anyway, so what are you up to today? Where are you right now?

Angelo Keely  1:17  

I am at our Kion office headquarters in Boulder, Colorado. 

 

Mark Divine 1:21

Right on.

 

Angelo Keely 1:21

I was just sharing right before we started, I went for a run, which I typically don’t do. I’m more of like a weight training walking rucksack guy, but I had a great run this morning. So I feel alert.

 

Mark Divine  1:30  

You might motivate me to get back out there and try out the old legs is similar to you. I haven’t run much in the last few years, but I ran like a madman for most of my life. So probably okay to give it a break. But I tell you what, though, after a long winter out there probably feels good to get out there and breathe in the fresh air and see the sprouting grass.

 

Angelo Keely  1:49  

Yeah, it’s typically a pretty easy winter here. It’s like Sunny, even if it snows it gets sunny again, you spend a lot of time outside but this year was pretty, it was cold. It was cold and it was greater than the normal. So I’m definitely I’m ready for the spring of the summer.

 

Mark Divine  2:01  

Yeah. Are you from Colorado or what? Give us a sense of your background and your life’s kind of arc, your journey?

 

Angelo Keely  2:08  

Yeah. So no, I’m not from here. I was born in a little town called Wimberley, Texas. It’s outside Austin. 

 

Mark Divine 2:15

Okay.

 

Angelo Keely 2:!6

I was born at home there, to hippy natural health fitness parents. 

 

Mark Divine 2:20

No kidding. 

 

Angelo Keely 2:21

Yeah. Yeah, they had a natural health food store, natural health food restaurant, I was pretty much immersed in that. And then, when I was one, we moved to Austin. My dad actually was partner in like the early Whole Foods restaurant business. I was raised very much in this culture of, of health food, whole food nutrition, but also of supplements. Never really went to a traditional doctor. And so I was I think I was like six or seven. I think I had to go get a physical, and I had to get my birth certificate to go to first grade. So yeah, we had a few acres. So I like I spent a lot of time outside and played and had a pretty, pretty sweet early childhood.

 

Mark Divine  2:55  

That sounds pretty epic. 

 

Angelo Keely 2:56

Yeah, it was good. 

 

Mark Divine 2:57

It sounds epic. No, I mean, I grew up in upstate New York. So it’s similarly I was outside a lot, we had tons of land, hung out at my friend’s farm dairy farm. So we used to milk cows and plea the hay fields, you know, pitching bales of hay and catching them and stacking them. And it’s pretty cool.

 

Angelo Keely  3:13  

I didn’t have that level of like labor.

 

Mark Divine 3:15

You didn’t have that.

 

Angelo Keely 3:16

It probably would have been good for me. I think, now I realized the amount of lessons I had to learn in adolescence and young adulthood. Yeah, just to learn the value of hard work and consistency. I think as a kid, it was a lot more play, and fun, which is great. I mean, I think it makes me who I am today. And that’s probably my top value is fun. Not my top value. But every single day, I’m trying to have fun, and I think it makes me who I am.

 

Mark Divine  3:37  

Well, the thing that’s good about that learning to be on your own outside is that work becomes play. That was back breaking work, doing the hay fields, but we just had an absolute blast, and we got ripped, you know, we were just in great shape. And we’re just like 15-16 years old. So kids, you know, who grew up in those environments know what I’m talking about. Anytime you’re, you’re outside and you do you’re working with your hands, you just learn that this can be really, really pleasurable and fun. You know, it’s not looked at as work. You know, we’ve gotten so far away from that, you know, society is just pushing us more and more into this kind of like mechanistic and digital world where you don’t learn that, you know, kids don’t learn that when they’re young. It’s unfortunate.

 

Angelo Keely  4:19  

I think work has a potential to be really its own mindfulness practice. 

 

Mark Divine 4:23

Right.

 

Angelo Keely 4:23

Maybe in today’s language around it. It’s like when you do something with your hands, and you’re really involved in it and engaged in it with your whole body. You’re going through the movements, you’re breathing, you’re, you’re kind of in a flow state that I think a lot of people miss out on now, if they’re just focused on a screen. 

 

Mark Divine  4:40  

If you do it enough, and you have the right attitude, then it trains your mind to be able to activate the flow state. It doesn’t happen to everybody. You know, it really depends on your orientation and your attitude toward the repetition of what you’re doing, right. When I started meditating when I was 21. I found it too. Be very easy, right? Whereas like when I teach meditation these days, most people think it’s like, it’s very, very hard to do and they quit. Or they just, you know, they need to use an external device, like an app to kind of guide them or hold their attention, which is really, it’s really a preparatory practice to meditation, I found it quite easy, because I would spend so much time, I had spent already so much time outdoors doing that repetitive labor. And also, you know, just like being alone and hiking in the Adirondack Mountains, you know, where I was from, I don’t know if you did much of that when you’re younger. But when you’re alone in nature, and you’re just, you know, you’re just moving through nature, you might have a destination. But if you begin to disengage from the goal of getting to that destination, and just start to enjoy the process, and you know, being in nature and being with your breath, and being with your thoughts, and eventually you get to a point where you develop a relationship with yourself, which is again, very, very profound, it sounds silly, but it’s very profound to develop a relationship with yourself, like, being able to talk to yourself and to be curate your thoughts and emotions be able to see, you see yourself almost as if from a distance. So when you sit down and meditate, you’re like, Oh, I already have this down. Right? I already have the kind of like, early stages of what they’re talking about down this metacognitive capacity to witness my thoughts.

 

Angelo Keely  6:16  

Yeah, I mean, I think that that value of the process itself, how you perceive the repetitions, developing the relationship with yourself, really is the heart of what we’re talking about. And it can come through work, I think, for me, it probably actually came through being just having a very unstructured, early childhood, just being outside and being in nature and being kind of okay, being alone. Like not going to a preschool not not being a lot of other people. But then I also relate it to, I’m a father. Now I have a 10 year old son and an eight year old daughter, and with my son right now, he is very interested in competitive basketball, which I loved basketball as a kid, but I’ve never gotten to like competitive sports in that way. And so this week, for the last few weeks, we’re working with them a lot on like his daily shooting practice. And I think in his mind, he thinks I want to make this many baskets. And the only thing I’m focused with him on is that every single day, he’s shooting 100 baskets, he’s counting how many makes he doesn’t make, one day he gets 70. The next day, he gets 55. And in that, when he starts to see his numbers go down, I can see inside of him, there’s a little voice that starts to panic, or critiques him or tells him he’s not good or whatever. And I’m what I’m working with him on is like the ability of just having that relationship with himself, to calm himself in that moment, to trust that the next opportunity that that next shot, is to be made a new, it doesn’t matter what happened before. Which for me, that’s fundamentally what meditation is. I mean, you’re sitting there in stillness, and you’re focusing on your breath or word, whatever your practice is, thoughts are rushing in, you’re releasing that thought, and you’re just kind of engaging in the next moment of the opportunity to practice that meditation. It doesn’t have to be a sitting thing. It can be a work thing. It can be sports, there’s so many different ways to experience it. And I do think it’s unfortunate that probably so many people today are not getting a framework through something like that. Whether it’s work, or sports, or yoga, or meditation or something that teaches them how to have that relationship with themselves.

 

Mark Divine  8:08  

Yeah, totally. And I think there’s a growing awareness of this need. And so I think, like our community, and, and Ben’s and, you know, other friends of ours are really intent on teaching people that life is a practice, and so that you can find this mindful awareness and this sense of presence and flow, doing whatever it is that you’re passionate about doing, just pay attention, just pay more attention. And so we teach them kind of like tricks and tools for how to do that. I love your description, and it’s such a gift for your son, wow. But this discussion, like people wonder why what is meditation and what you describe is perfect, because my experience is, once you can control and tame your thoughts, and you can begin to disengage for them, then you begin to notice Angelo a discrete qualitative difference between working from memory, or from expectation, and being just absolutely present. And 99.999999% of humanity is rarely has that experience of just being radically present, not operating out of memory, or some sort of future expectation or fantasy. But there’s through meditation and discrete awareness. Keep coming back to this moment of now, what’s happening now, what’s this experience now? You begin to experience that, that qualitative difference between this and thinking.

 

Angelo Keely 9:37

I can relate.

 

Mark Divine 9:38

It’s so simple but but hard to get there and also hard for people to understand the profundity of that. Like what what does it mean, to be able to experience that qualitative difference? It’s like means everything. Because in that, you experience the eternal nature of the human being, you experience that time and space are in the mind, but they’re not who you are, you’re not of time and space or something so much more. And all of that comes from just sitting and being more and more capable or skillful at operating outside of thought, and using thought effectively, but not, but not living constantly from thought.

 

Angelo Keely  10:19  

And I think the seeming paradox for many people, which is maybe why it’s hard to experience, to grasp, is that in doing that, you actually become a more engaged actor in the world. 

 

Mark Divine 10:30

That’s right. 

 

Angelo Keely 10:30

Like it’s not like you’re it’s some kind of disengaged spiritual practice where then you’re not as good of a husband or a father or…

 

Mark Divine 10:38

Yeah, well said.

 

Angelo Keely 10:38

Part of my path, I ended up going to school for religious studies. That’s why I went my bachelor’s degree.

 

Mark Divine 10:43

Did you? 

 

Angelo Keely 10:43

Yeah, so highly informed by both Western and Eastern religions. And, you know, it’s really interesting, I think the essence of the Bhagavad Gita, which people are not familiar is kind of like the New Testament for people who are into Krishna, or follow Krishna in India. It’s really the beginnings of the idea of yoga, not of yoga asana, but of the philosophy of yoga, which is fundamentally that you accept your role in life. And you live it out as fully as you can, and kind of a surrender to God in that language of religious context. And in that, in that surrender to the moment and being fully present. Now. It’s not like avoiding who you are, it’s not avoiding the gifts or avoiding the role you’ve been given in life. It’s fully embracing it, and releasing the expectation of who you’re supposed to be, right then. Like, so rather than me thinking for my son, oh, I need to, I really need to teach him or show him how to do this thing. I need to make sure he grows and develops in this way, and being really focused on kind of that end goal. Instead, it’s like, right now, in this moment, what is this boy for whom I am the father, what does he need right now? And that’s it. And it’s just being that right there, right then. I think it’s a very embodied, present, socially positive practice. At the same time, it’s just like, deeply personal thing with yourself.

 

Mark Divine  11:55  

It’s deeply personal, but the self expands beyond the limited egoic concept of I am this body, I am this name, I am this, you know, I have these degrees and you know, blah, blah, blah, blah, these expectations. And so, you release all that, this is the whole process of surrender, right? Like bhakti yoga, which you described, or, you know, Krishna talking to Arjuna is like, open your heart to who you really are. And then Karma Yoga is then then go do your destiny, otherwise, you will create more suffering, you go do it, right, fulfill your role as a warrior.

 

Angelo Keely  12:27  

And it actually happens at the same time.

 

Mark Divine 12:30

Right.

 

Angelo Keely 12:31

They’re not separate.

 

Mark Divine 12:31

They’re not separate things. 

 

Angelo Keely 12:32

Yeah, in that story, he’s afraid that he’s gonna cause harm, he shouldn’t be a warrior, it’s not the right thing. No, you fully embrace your karma, you fully embrace the action in the world. And you can practice that bhakti yoga that surrender at the same time, they’re not at odds with each other.

 

Mark Divine  12:45  

Karma and dharma from that tradition are hand in glove, it’s the Yin and Yang,they are the same. I love this conversation, because I’m also passionate about this. And I love relating it to like practical life, because people have a mistaken impression of mental development. And what the Eastern traditions have called a spiritual path, which I look at them as the same. Like mental or integrative development, which is what I teach. It’s been called a spiritual path. Well it’s just a term, spirit, is just a word, right? We’re really talking about is developing the capacity to integrate fully, and to open up to your full potential and capacity of human being, which makes, as you said, very well, it’s like, makes you more engaged, because you’re more present, you’re more aware, your heart is open, you’re more compassionate, and you bring more of yourself to the world at the same time you do it with a spontaneity and a light touch, a playfulness, even in the most extreme circumstances, right? That is profound, but it’s just who we are naturally, when we get out of our mental way. Right? 

 

Angelo Keely 13:54

Absolutely. 

 

Mark Divine 13:55

When we let go of attachment to the ego and to you know, having to be the best. I loved sports when I was kid, but now I’m like, you know, I see that that’s just an obsession of our egoic, a culture that you know, has to be the best or believe in the best or it’s a craving, it’s a mental delusion that that isn’t really good for us. I hate to say that, right? It’s okay to strive to improve yourself. But there’s no best, right? In anything really. There’s just what happens now. And sometimes, you know, as an athletic team, or an individual will triumph in the now and other times they won’t. But it doesn’t make them any better or worse of an individual or any team or sport or nation better or worse than others.

 

Angelo Keely  14:36  

Yeah, I think it’s if you can enjoy, if you can fully embrace and enjoy the process of competition, 

 

Mark Divine 14:42

The process, I love that.

 

Angelo Keely 14:43

And the seeking of winning, and yet at the conclusion, when you win or you lose, again, you can start fresh and you just want to do it again. And that’s that you love that process that you’re not you’re not judging your worth, or the value of your life or your time about whether you won or not. It’s really that process. And now I think it can be beautiful, it can be very helpful for people.

 

Mark Divine 15:05

For sure. 

 

Angelo Keely 15:05

If you get attached to the end, then it’s, yeah, it’s disruptive to happiness, because you can’t win all the time.

 

Mark Divine  15:11  

That’s right. You can’t, I’ve done a lot of podcasts with, you know, champions of this, and people who have conquered that, you know, and they say the same thing is when they finally gave up in the pursuit of that excellence, or that that same goal, right like that no human has ever done this before type of goal, when they finally gave up the attachment to achieving it, and just kind of surrendered to just one more step one more, you know, let’s just do, just do the best I can. They often achieve where they maybe wouldn’t have achieved that excellence or that goal. And they recognize that it wasn’t the target of the goal all along, that was important. It’s the journey, not the destination, you know, in life is that what were your like, challenges, you know, your young childhood was sounds pretty idyllic and cool, but you know, nobody’s life is perfect, you wouldn’t have become the person you are today without some significant, you know, kicks in the Jimmy.

 

Angelo Keely  16:06  

I think the frame I presented earlier of my family was accurate. And I think in that family, my parents were both entrepreneurs. They’re both very, I would call them eccentric, loving people, and just eccentric and bold. And so as a child, that was really kind of the only examples I had was these very bold people, it’s probably in my genes to some degree to like, have to learn all my lessons very hard on my own. Even at the dinner table, just having to explain myself figure things out. Like it was a bunch of individuals in a family. I think that context. And as I’ve gotten to high school and started to kind of experience adolescence, I definitely pushed away from them very hard, and wanted to do everything on my own and figure out everything on my own. And that took me down the path of drugs that took me down the path, different types of social situations, I’ve gotten to quite a bit of trouble by the time I was 16. But when I was 16, and a half, I took too much LSD one evening. And I inadvertently, with no intention, provoked to fight with people who are much more hardcore than me, I’d say, they stabbed me twice in the back, they stab me in the knee. So where I was stabed, I had to have emergency abdominal surgery assumed I was dying, and my patella tendon was severed completely. And then I was beaten very, very badly to where I didn’t wake up four days later in the hospital. 

 

Mark Divine 17:17

Wow.

 

Angelo Keely 17:17

And that experience, I think, the honestly, probably the some form of psychosis or psychotic break even before the trauma of the physical altercation. But then that combined with the physical altercation was a very deep wound, it was a very deep impression. And that happened when I was 16 and a half. It has, I’m now 39, and it’s certainly been something that I’ve worked with ever since. In a very big impression on me at that time, though, and I think it initiated for me the beginning of it was very much my transition into adulthood into realizing that my life was fragile, that every decision that I made, or decisions I didn’t make, would impact me going forward. Yeah, just how important my health was like I think I was raised in this family were health was important, but I don’t think I didn’t understand it yet, as my own person. And so that really kick started for me, very deep dive in nutrition into physical practices, not just like playing sports, but like things like cold therapy, and I was really like barefoot running, going back to the running thing. Like I was like, he in acupuncture and yoga, and also like spiritual seeking. I got emancipated when I was 17. I had that I was like, I just got to figure this out on my own. I got emancipated and 17 started supporting myself. 

 

Mark Divine  18:29  

By the way, how long did it take you to heal from that incident? Because that sounds pretty profound, like your near death?

 

Angelo Keely  18:34  

The physical healing?

 

Mark Divine  18:35  

I guess, physical and psychological. What was a little bit about some of it?

 

Angelo Keely  18:39  

I’m still healing from it psychologically.

 

Mark Divine 18:40

You are, right.  

 

Angelo Keely 18:40

I mean, physically, it took me about a year.

 

Mark Divine 18:44

Okay.

 

Angelo Keely 18:45

Just with a patellar tendon being totally severed, like to be able to like, run again and play sports again. I mean, it was six months, I was bounced back pretty quickly. But I’d say about a year. And that really kick started for me in college, I just became very interested in meditation at 16. I became very interested in these things. I think, other life events later in life provoke that kind of interest. And I was like, I want to do meditation, I want to do yoga, I want to figure out what’s how to heal myself, I want to do talk therapy. And so I became very engaged in these processes. And then when I went to college, I discovered like, you know, I want to study philosophy, psychology, religious studies, like I was a seeker.

 

Mark Divine  19:18  

Yogi’s philosophy say it takes 1000 lifetimes. 

 

Angelo Keely 19:20

Yeah.

 

Mark Divine 19:21

To find yoga. So you know, you were ready for it? Right? I guess. Yeah. Are you are a yogi in your last life? Yeah, for sure.

 

Angelo Keely  19:28  

So yeah, I mean, I think that those college years really were a very profound healing process for me. And, you know, actually, so through that experience, I went to a Catholic University, and there were brothers that that live their brothers and priests. So actually live with them for like a year and a half. And through that process, there was like a lot of like, just built in daily meditation and prayer, but I was also very into yoga and my own meditation practice, etc. I think that was really fundamental. I did a lot of multi day meditation retreats, I think just kind of helped heal me. And then when I was 21, I went to India for summer, and half of that summer was doing volunteer work at an orphanage run by that Catholic group. And then the other half was to do intensive yoga study at an ashram up north. 

 

Mark Divine 20:10

Wow. 

 

Angelo Keely 20:11

And at the end of that yoga study, I was in a bus in the foothills of the Himalayas, and my bus collided with another bus, the other bus went off a cliff.

 

Mark Divine 20:19

Oh, my goodness.

 

Angelo Keely 20:21

And there’s no rescue efforts there. So the beginning of your question was, what kind of has made you who you are? And they had a follow up question of like, how long did it take you to heal from that first thing.

 

Mark Divine 20:29

Right.

 

Angelo Keely 20:29

You know, this was like a whole new trauma that was not me being wild and crazy and provoking these very dangerous things. I mean, in some ways, it was I was like a 21 year old traveling in India alone. But, you know, suddenly, I was involved in a situation where I was in a rescue effort, you know, for a day basically trying to rescue people off of this cliff, and many people dead and dying around me, which I had not been exposed to before. And at the end of that day, I went back to the ashram, I laid down, and I just started shaking pretty violently. And in my mind, I was like, Am I making this up? Am I like, why am I doing it, like what’s going on? Because I didn’t, I didn’t know at that time, things that I now know about a natural trauma response actually being an animal’s to shake to release that from the nervous system. So I’d say to some degree between being stabbed on acid 16. And then that bus accident five years later, I clearly had integrated an amount of the learning and done some form of practices to where, when a new type of trauma arrived, that I intuitively knew, or intuitively trusted, or reacted in such a way that I handled it, I think, in a more not mature way, but there was some intuitive sense, you know, to do that, the natural sense. So clearly, I think I’d reached some kind of stage, then, you know, but then over the next 18 years, I did different forms of therapy, and meditation, etc. And things have continued to emerge. And you know, I think, really, honestly, just in the last since 2020, I committed to a pretty intensive three times a week psychoanalysis, which was pretty transformative for me, I think that not even trying to go through some kind of treatment plan to like heal you.

 

Mark Divine  22:05  

You weren’t identifying anything in particular you’re doing it for, for transformation?

 

Angelo Keely  22:09  

Yeah. And I think just for for naming what comes up, like what comes up in the moment, and when you talk enough, three times a week about whatever’s up in that moment, whatever led to me kind of provoking the situation when I was 16. And how that emerged in my life, there are patterns that have existed in me that I didn’t even know were still there, that I was finally able to uncover and to address and these last few years, and so I think I feel much more healed now than I did probably five years ago, and integrated. And, yeah, and it’s an ongoing process. And I’m continuing. I know, I’m not done, I’m not done cooking, yet.

 

Mark Divine  22:39  

There is no there, there, when it comes to your own evolution. But what an extraordinary story and, you know, when I look at you at 39, I, you know, you’re a young man, still.

 

Angelo Keely 22:49

Thank you.

 

Mark Divine 22:50

You may think, Wow, I’m going to be 40 Soon, I’ll be 60 soon. And I feel like a young man. And, you know, and I’ve had a similar kind of like, intensity of desire to be whole. You know, do whatever possible, to uncover the karmic drives and, and conditioning that could potentially hold me back from being a whole person and from fulfilling my, my calling. And it sounds like, you know, for whatever reason, you had that, whether it was the accident that opened that up to you. And there was something that opened it up to me, because I certainly wasn’t this way, until I started meditating when I was 21.

 

Angelo Keely  23:27  

But 21, that’s pretty young, to engage, I think in a contemplative practice.

 

Mark Divine  23:32  

Yeah. And I think anyone listening, like the sooner you start a meditative practice, the better. And at the same time, there’s preparatory work to do like you are an athlete and night, and we’ve spent a lot of time outside and a lot of people just don’t succeed, because they don’t recognize that the way these practices were taught in other traditions, you know, like yoga, or any of those Eastern tradition was there’s like a wax on wax off period of preparation, right of both physical, physiological and psychological foundation building. And if you don’t do that preparation, then you don’t really get to skip the line, you’re going to have trouble with meditation. Furthermore, if you have a serious ego development issue, which there’s a ton of that going on in our western world, like narcissism, or borderline personality, or, you know, something that’s like, really puts you on that edge, and most people are, of course, are unaware of that. And if you take up meditation, or you do psychedelics, and you have a fantastical mystical experience, the ego will Co Op that you take on a god complex. So we have a lot of spiritual bypassing going on as well. So that’s why it’s important to have these conversations and also to, to understand that often, you know, a good teacher is really valuable when it comes to development, right? Because you could easily trap yourself in a spiritual bypass situation, you could easily do some harm with psychedelics, right? By not having the space you know, properly protected, you could easily get trapped in what we kind of referenced earlier in this sense of disattachment or detachment from reality. Because you have these, you know, experience of kind of like bliss or unity. And you think that that’s where you’re supposed to be like that there’s an over there, not recognizing that there is no over there. It’s all right here, right? So you can get trapped in that as well. These are all pointed to by Patanjali and his yoga sutra, these obstacles, right? You know, everyone needs to know, like, hey, everyone’s journey is different, right? Everyone’s journey can be different. But there are some contraindications. There’s some preparatory work, you know, pay attention and listen to a teacher.

 

Angelo Keely  25:37  

I think you so succinctly named though that paradigm of maybe someone having a susceptibility towards borderline personality disorder, or some kind of narcissistic tendencies, and then engaging in some kind of mystical experience. And then it actually accentuating that and further hardening it. I actually haven’t heard someone describe it the way that you did so succinctly. And I think that is really, it’s very onpoint. And it makes me wonder sometimes, like, Why did I say this with humility? Like what, you know, why did it kind of work out for me, like, you know, I think I have a pretty real relationship with my wife and with my children and with my family, and with people I work with, like, I think, I don’t think my idea of who I am is, like, totally different than who they think their idea of me is. And I’m not like,

 

Mark Divine  26:17  

You’ve gotten your ego out of the way. That’s the whole thing. You’ve surrendered enough to that, right. So especially these challenges you had right? Meditation and Spiritual and especially silent meditation, and spending time in an ashram, it’s humility, building, right? It’s like, there’s nothing more humbling than just sitting in silence and looking at the crazy cacophony of your mind, and just not being scared by it, but just sitting with it. And then all of a sudden, recognizing that that’s not you.

 

Angelo Keely  26:43  

I think that might be actually the advantage, potentially, of what I might call slower practices. Like psychedelics can have this amazing influence on people. 

 

Mark Divine 26:51

Sure. 

 

Angelo Keely 26:51

And yet the dose of time and space and lessons and light, like it’s so much all at once, like when I had that experience, 16, it was too much. It was too much for me. So then when you asked how long did it take me? I mean, it’s taking me like 20 years, just integrate it. And that’s through a lot of things like meditation and yoga and mindful exercise. 

 

Mark Divine  27:13  

I think you’re right. I think that like the psychedelic movement of the 60s, you know, a lot of people had that they got really damaged by it, because they just couldn’t handle it.

 

Angelo Keely  27:22  

Well, I have that same concern for people today, like that are going

 

Mark Divine 27:27

I do to.

 

Angelo Keely 27:27

Like going these plant medicine journeys. And I’m not saying anything about them, because I actually don’t know I’m not them. I’ve never gone on those, but I hear people doing it, and they come back and they feel so much. And I’m like I don’t I don’t know. Like, there’s no free lunch. There’s no it’s like, same thing with like, business, there’s no way to just like make tons of money in the super easy way. Maybe like out of luck. But like it same thing with health. There’s no like a magic secret to health.

 

Mark Divine  27:48  

It’s been a painful process for me, you know, people look, it’s like, it’s it all looks good from the outside. But from the inside, it’s sausage making and, you know, I’ve lost millions of dollars, far more times, and I’ve earned, you know, whatever I have right now. And so it’s you’re right, there’s no, there’s no free lunch and a free lunch with development either. And I agree with you, I share your concern. This is why I’ve been bringing up lately a few times, with psychedelics, I am a big fan of psychedelics for healing, especially with from trauma, like promote it for vets, and I’ve done work with it myself, but only in the care of a very experienced healer, who understands how the plant medicines work, and who can do the pre preparation and holding the space during the experience. And then the post experience integration you got to look at is a long process, right?

 

Angelo Keely  28:39  

I was gonna say I would assume that post is pretty important. And I’m not an expert in this field. But my understanding is even like the studies they did at John Hopkins with cancer patients, it was the psilocybin facilitated experience. And then it was like eight weeks of CBT.

 

Mark Divine 28:51

Right.

 

Angelo Keely 28:51

You know, so there was there was a program that followed up after it to help integrate it I’m not I don’t know that CBT is the right combination.

 

Mark Divnie 28:58

It’s something.

 

Angelo Keely 28:59

Some kind of psychedelic, I actually remember the first time I went to a Vipassana course, I must been like 18 or something and my friend freaked out and he’s like, we gotta get out here. And we left in the middle. You know, I had been five days of no talking, no reading, no writing 10 hours a day meditation. And we like left in the middle and I was like, ripped open, it was not good to leave in the middle. I needed to like be through the whole thing and have them bring me through the end of the process in some form of integration. It’s like, you know, I think just kind of blowing up your mental space. It’s not enough. You need to consistently build it and nurture it and support it.

 

Mark Divine  29:32  

There was a Harvard psychologist, I think his name was Angle, you know, was a Buddhist meditation practitioner. And of course, Buddhist psychology is the psychology of the mind. So he began to bring these practices to his patients and he worked with, you know, a lot of people with ego development issues and, and he found very quickly that this was not going to work. And so one of his quotes I love and I’ve always kind of reminded me that there’s preparatory work to do back to and why we’re having to conversation. And he said, you’ve you’ve got to be somebody before you can be nobody, which means that the ego has to get strong enough in order to recognize itself that it’s bullshit, right? So the ego has to recognize itself as a story, in order for it to let itself go, if the ego thinks is the center of the human, you know, which happens with, you know, with the adults who don’t have full and healthy ego development, now they have some sort of trauma or something less radically unnurturing happening as a child, then the psychedelic experience or the mystical experience from meditation, the ego isn’t strong enough to recognize itself as the story. So it takes that story on and says I am that.

 

Angelo Keely  30:42  

I really relate to that man, you’ve said so many things today, mark that feel so succinct, and like just precise, what you’re saying to right now. I’m like, just starting to get. Like, even after those other experiences, my 20s and my 30s, I was just like fighting, trying to like, make myself something in the world and figure something out. And I’d have these experiences, and I was practicing spiritual stuff and trying to do things, but I was still just grasping all the time just grasping at these things. It’s like, literally just in like the last year, I’ve settled, more. And that’s like, from someone who’s been working so hard on it for I get, I think I’m still a very young person, and not even 40. 

 

Mark Divine  31:20  

Here’s another insight, because I did the same thing is like, we think that our own growth comes by adding meditative practice by adding the ability to concentrate more by adding concepts. So it was study Advaita, we study Vedic texts, and Patanjali and yoga sutras. You’ know what I mean. And all these things, whatever, or Western psychology, you know, and I’ve done tons of that, and EMDR. And so you go into that, and you just, you’re just out there grabbing, grabbing, grabbing. And then you get to this point where things start to get a little bit clearer, because you’re now able to have the experience of reality, in your everyday life through when I mean reality, it’s like, right, where we were what we were talking about at the beginning of this recording, like the reality of just pure radical presence, beyond the concepts beyond the thinking, and then you a shift happens. So this is the shift that you’re going through the shift happens is that holy cow growth doesn’t happen by adding things, it happens by subtracting things. And then you enter the process of surrender. That’s the turnaround point, in the seekers journey, when they stop trying to seek to add things to their life, or to think that there’s something more that they don’t have. And so they’re going to go to this teacher or go to that retreat, I’ve stopped going to all retreats, I used to be a retreat junkie, just like you. I just stopped at all because I realized that wherever you go, there you are, you’re not going to…

 

Angelo Keely 32:51

Yeah.

 

Mark Divine 32:52

It’s I’m not going to get any better, stronger, faster, smarter by going to another retreat, what I need to do is sit and just begin to subtract concepts and identity structures and subtract all the conditioning of your life to give back to your raw, natural nature.

 

Angelo Keely  33:10  

You’re right, that was another good one was another very, I think, precise and succinct lesson on the stage of development.

 

Mark Divine  33:17  

Yeah, what else we share, and Ben Greenfield, my buddy. Also, and this is missed a lot also in development is that the body is really important to bring along with you. This is something that never really got taught well. It’s the reason why Asana exists in yoga, right is one of the eight limbs, right? Because the yogi’s understood that the body needs to be really, really healthy. And pure. Saucha, right, it needs to be pristine in order for the brain to be able to experience the higher states and stages of consciousness for evolution to occur to it happens faster. If your body is strong and pure. You have that foundation.

 

Angelo Keely 33:56

It’s a limiting factor, if not.

 

Mark Divine 33:58

That’s right, it will be a limiting factor if not, and so I love that you’re like you’re into fitness, I’m into fitness, but I don’t do it because I it’s enjoyable to move functionally fit. It’s, it’s great. But I also do it because I want the the body brain to be healthy so that the whole mind can flow through it right, or work with it effectively. And one of the things that I don’t know a lot about, but I want to learn from you is I do supplementation, and I take Kion literally every day in my smoothie, but I don’t really understand what it does. I just trusted Ben. Ben says, take the stuff that’s great for you. And I’m like, okay.

 

Angelo Keely  34:41  

Well, sometimes it’s that simple, and that easy, you know, that could be a good on its own. If it is indeed that good. Right, then do you need to know? 

 

Mark Divine 34:48

Well, I know. I’m curious though, like.

 

Angelo Keely 34:50

Yeah,

 

Mark Divine  34:51  

I’m curious. You know, like when I talked to my friend Daniel Schwarzenberg. I also take neuro hackers stuff every day because it’s, I think it’s brilliant. 

 

Angelo Keely 34:57

Yeah.

 

Mark Divine 34:58

But I don’t really understand the science behind and all their supplements, but I believe them. So like I believe you, and I believe Ben. So what’s the science behind your amino acids and the other stuff that you do at Kion.

 

Angelo Keely  35:09  

So I think at the fundamental level of amino acids, the product that you’re talking about is Kion aminos. And it’s essential amino acids, it’s all nine essential amino acids. In a very specific formula. The underlying principle of essential amino acids is probably best understood when thinking about protein, the way that we typically get essential amino acids in our diet is through protein. And the reason why this is so important is that unlike the other two macronutrients, carbohydrates and fat, were their primary role, not only but the primary role is energy, you consume these carbs, and then you burn them, they’re converted into ATP, and you use them as actually energy to fuel your body similar with fat, the role of protein is a little different, it can be used in that form. But the more primary role is to actually replace the proteins in your body. So it’s actually to help rebuild your body not to fuel your body, but to rebuild your body.

 

Mark Divine  36:00  

Because why bodybuilders are so big on protein, they think that’s like the only thing?

 

Angelo Keely  36:05  

Well, yeah, cuz they’re literally trying to increase the mass of their body, right? They’re trying to increase the mass of their muscle, you need carbohydrates, etc, for this, but, protein is the thing that literally gets converted into new muscle tissue.

 

Mark Divine 36:17

Right.

 

Angelo Keely 36:17

Like it is the raw material of that. So I guess going to the heart of like, well, why, how does that work, the proteins in our body are in a constant state of what we call a muscle protein turnover. And what that means is that the proteins are being broken down into their individual parts. And when a protein is broken down, it gets converted into amino acids. These 20 Little amino acids are the building blocks of the protein. And then those amino acids are used again to help rebuild new proteins. And the reason why they get broken down and then rebuilt are for a myriad of reasons as to in some ways, there’s half life, certain proteins like they just, they need to be broken down and rebuilt, because like refreshing them in a way, sometimes though, you need additional proteins and other parts of your body, there’s other priorities happening. So you’ll break down one supply another one other place in your body. When they get broken down, you cannot reuse all of the amino acids that make them up. Some of them get converted into urea and you pee them out. So you must consume protein, exogenously to help replace the proteins in your body. 

And when we talk about the proteins in our body, yeah, bodybuilders think about muscle, but we’re talking all of your vital organs, your liver, your heart, your kidneys, etc. Proteins also, and the amino acids that make them up are the precursors of your neurotransmitters. So literally the stuff that makes your brain work, your emotions, your mood, which are existing within these neurotransmitters, in a way are derivatives of this protein. So many times when people actually die of chronic illness, it’s because they have organ failure, that they literally don’t have enough of the raw materials anymore, and the parts of their body no longer work. So protein plays is very, very, very, very, very different role in carbohydrates or fat during the body. Than when you look at protein. And you’re consuming different types of protein to help support the rebuilding of your organs of your muscle, etc. There’s a key element to distinguish between essential amino acids and non essential amino acids. Typically, what’s much more known within the realm of nutrition science is that essential amino acids are the ones that are quote essential, because your body cannot synthesize them, your body can actually convert essential amino acids into non essential amino acids. But your body cannot convert non essential amino acids into essential ones. So you literally must eat proteins. When you consume different types of protein, they’re made up of both essential and non essential, for example, very high quality animal proteins like whey protein, or egg white, or chicken. They’re like 40%, the protein portion of it is like 40% essential, the other 60% is non essential. And that essential, you must get them right because even if you only eat those, your body could make the non essential that doesn’t mean you want to do that, but you must get those. But maybe the the more very interesting, very fundamental part about essential amino acids is that they are 100% responsible for muscle protein synthesis. So we’ve done studies, where we give people only essential amino acids, only non essential amino acids, or combination of essential and non essential in proportions that are similar to like steak. And we’ve clearly seen that the essential amino acids create all of the new muscle protein synthesis. So when consuming them, that’s what actually tells your body oh, let’s build new proteins, let’s build new muscle. The others do not they get the non essential get used as raw materials to help rebuild some of that muscle and to rebuild some of those proteins. But you actually don’t use them all. Again, they get converted into urea and into sugars via gluconeogenesis. But it’s really the essential amino acids that kickstart that process. So when you know all that, if you just say I don’t want to supplement I just want to eat high quality whole foods. How should I think about this? Well, you want to look at protein sources that are high in protein, first of all, typically, and that would be tends to be mostly animal proteins that can be vegetarian, but animal proteins are, as foods sources are higher in protein like grains, quinoa, that are things like that have protein in them, but there’s also lots of carbs, etc. 

Next, you’d want to look at that source and say, well, even in the protein that’s in that food, how much of it is essential amino acids, because that’s the key component that my body really needs, it’s not even going to use all the non essential ones, and all proteins are not created equal. So you’re gonna look for that one. And then if you look a little bit deeper, you’d look at actually, this is getting pretty nerdy and sciency. But what’s the proportions of those unique essential amino acids relative to each other, because there’s certain ones that your body wants more of. Going back to the idea of the limiting factor of the body. Like if you don’t have enough physical, if your physical body is not healthy enough that may limit spiritual or mental or other types of development. If you don’t have amounts of certain amino acids, it will limit the amount that all the amino acids can work together to build new proteins. There’s qualities of the protein. And what I would just say right off the bat is that you can absolutely consume only whole foods, and I think live a pretty good life. I don’t think people have to choose supplements, I think supplements should be supplementary.

 

Mark Divine 41:08

It’s an insurance policy to me.

 

Angelo Keely 41:10

It’s insurance policy. Yeah. So now here’s why they’re especially important, I think they are very relevant probably for you. Essential amino acids taken in a free form supplement, instead of taking as part of a whole food protein, because they’re concentrated, and because they’ve already been broken down, they stimulate new protein synthesis at a much higher degree than a whole food protein would.

 

Mark Divine  41:31  

I don’t have to use energy to break down the protein from the whole food, yeah. 

 

Angelo Keely  41:35  

You don’t have to use energy to break down the protein. And because the proportions are specific, and because it’s not just the energy use, like literally because it’s immediately enters the blood basically.

 

Mark Divine 41:43

Right.

 

Angelo Keely 41:43

It immediately goes into the muscle, it stimulates a greater muscle protein response. On top of that, it is only the essential amino acids. So in a young, healthy adult, one gram of essential amino acids in an ideal proportion, compared to one gram of a whey protein powder, which is kind of like the gold standard for sports nutrition and muscle protein synthesis, the essential amino acids is going to contribute two times the amount of muscle protein synthesis as the whole food protein. Because it has two times the amount of essential amino acids. And that’s immediately available. If you give that essential amino acid one gram, and it’s not one gram, you actually need to consume like five grams at a time or, you know, 10 grams of protein. But just for the simplicity of the one gram to one gram. If you give that to an athlete, before they do resistance training, it’s three times the muscle protein synthesis as the whey protein. And that’s because of how the amino acids enter the blood, enter the muscle tissue support the training process. But here’s where it gets really interesting. As you age, starting at age 30, your body’s ability to break down proteins to break them down and get the essential amino acids out of them. And then the sensitivity of your body to prioritize new protein synthesis is reduced. So every decade at 30, the efficiency and the effectiveness of the essential amino acids in a supplement become more and more powerful than the protein. So by age 40, it’s probably three times as effective as a whey protein, by age 54, as you get older and older becomes five, up to five, six times more more efficient at stimulating protein synthesis than a whole food protein. 

So if you’re a 60 year old athlete, it’s very, very, very relevant for you. That’s because it’s going to be more efficiently effectively using your body as an athlete’s going to support you. And as you’re aging, the risk of muscle loss, due to the fact that your body cannot digest the proteins as well, and you’re less sensitive to stimulating new muscle protein synthesis has reduced the value of those essential amino acids greatly increased. So if you’re a 25 year old, and you’re not really that active, you walk, you eat minimal calories, you’re not overweight, you’re not really trying to be super fit, you’re not really investing in trying to build more muscle yet, you don’t need to take these. The more that you’re interested in being an athlete, and you want more out of your athletic endeavors, you want better recovery, and we can go into more of the reasons for that. And the more that you age, the more important it becomes to supplement with something like essential amino acids or to be extremely strategic with your whole food nutrition diet. 

Mark Divine  44:12  

Yeah. Which takes a lot of energy and time and, you know, research and blah, blah, blah.

 

Angelo Keely 44:17

Yeah.

 

Mark Divine 44:18

How much do you need, like for me, like see, I’m not, you know, spending hours a day training like I used to, but you know, an hour so.

 

Angelo Keely  44:25  

Yeah, this is what I would say. It depends on how much lean muscle you want to maintain as you age, and how active you want to be. One serving of Kion aminos gives you five grams of essential amino acids. There is a linear impact, a linear increase of impact up to 15 grams. So if you take three servings at once, you will get that much more muscle protein synthesis. After 15 grams. It reduces an impact. It’s similar to the way protein works if you eat a whole food protein, you’ll get real value out of that protein up to like 40-50 grams after that. You still use the protein, but it gets used as an energy source, it gets used more as like a sugar to give you energy, it’s not being actually used to help you build muscle, or to maintain proteins in your body to maintain protein synthesis in your body. So up to three servings at once creates a maximum protein synthesis spike in your body and supports new protein production. 

In terms of how often to take it once you consume essential amino acids. That’s the truth of it. Once you consume essential amino acids, either as a supplement or as a whole food protein, your body enters a process of muscle protein synthesis that lasts about three hours. It depends based off of how quickly the protein is breaking down, whether it’s a free form supplement, whether it’s you know, whey or casein like there’s a variety, let’s say it’s about three hours, after which your body goes into basically net muscle loss, you start to break down more proteins than you rebuild. So that’s why bodybuilders consume protein or some type of essential amino acids supplement like every three hours, that’s why they would wake up in the middle of the night and eat chicken breasts, because their goal is like I want to build and maintain as much muscle as possible. If you’re older, like let’s say someone’s 80 years old, you might engage in that kind of thinking around like, hey, I’m gonna take essential amino acids, or I’m gonna eat protein every three hours not to get jacked and ripped, but to just maintain lean muscle as you age, because you’re in a different phase of life, and it’s that much harder to maintain it, etc. So outside of exercise, that’s what I would say is, you can basically do it every three hours. But if you’re already eating a protein rich meal, it’s redundant. You don’t necessarily need to do it then. In and around exercise is your primary workout like a CrossFit workout right now. 

 

Mark Divine  46:40  

Yeahish, yoga and a high intensity WOD every day pretty much.

 

Angelo Keely  46:44  

There are benefits to taking essential amino acids before that type of exercise during and after. Taking before will increase the effectiveness of the new muscle development, and will help you prevent getting like tired during it. Taking it during will help you keep from getting as tired and it will support the muscle development, and taking after while it still supports the muscle development. It really supports the recovery. So you could take you know, a scoop before scoop during and a scoop after or you could only choose one of those. It’s all kind of dependent on again, like what your goals are, and how important these things are to you. As I’ve picked up Muay Thai kickboxing this last year, I hadn’t really been doing that kind of HIIT type workout before I was doing more like walking and resistance training and doing that I take some before I take some during and I take some after. And in that way, I just I don’t get sore. Because it prevents muscle protein breakdown as well. I really don’t get sore. It has really enhanced the muscular gains from something that’s not like lifting really heavy, but I’m still training my muscles, it’s really improved my endurance. And I you know, I have like an unlimited supply. So. But yeah, for me, like the way I take it, I take some first thing in the morning because I like to be fasted in the morning. But I’m not trying to tax my brain by not having access to amino acids. And I’m not trying to like lose muscle in the morning or get like grumpy or something. So I take amino acids until I eat, and then you know, take it before, during after training. And that works for me. And I’m 39 I can imagine, as I got older that may shift or change depending on what my goals are. 

 

Mark Divine 48:15

Mhmm. That’s fascinating. 

 

Angelo Keely 48:17

So taking your smoothie every day is great. 

 

Mark Divine  48:19  

Yeah, I don’t think I’m using enough of it. Actually, I was only putting one scoop in the smoothie. I think I’ll bring some down to work and start you know, maybe having some like after my workout. And later on, and I oftentimes don’t eat lunch. And so I’ll go without protein, you know, for a long period of time, like that’s what happened today. I haven’t eaten anything today. It’s like three o’clock in the afternoon.

 

Angelo Keely  48:38  

Yeah, just having that you know, midday, see, see how it affects your energy levels. It’s not like a caffeine type energy level, but it does, it helps regulate your amino acids and your blood, which then become the neurotransmitters for your brain. So I think it generally helps regulate mood, it helps prevent additional muscle breakdown to supply your blood with those amino acids. And most people would just feel like general improvement in wellness energy levels mood.

 

Mark Divine  49:02  

Would someone use it in lieu of, let’s say a protein. Let’s say they are kind of like, I am already spending $100 a month on a protein, you know, blah, blah, would you do this in lieu of a protein? To save money or both?

 

Angelo Keely  49:13  

This what I would say is I said there are two different tools. And depending on your age and your goals, etc. You decide what works for you. You know, I think people who really focus on protein nutrition, they might have beef jerky that they snack on, they might take a protein powder, they might like you know, they might think about things in a certain type of way. I think that essential amino acids are a very, very efficient tool that you can consider. I haven’t like given up protein powder, you know, but like, I don’t take it as much. But some people do. You know, I mean, I think you’re gonna be a typical day for me, I wake up in the morning I take essential amino acids, because I don’t want food and like like a whole protein powder type experience, you know, it’s much lighter. The essential amino acid experiences much lighter experience. Then later I have, you know, maybe later in the morning I just have protein, like I have a protein shake, and then I’d have salad with meat. And then later if there’s some kind of like snack that I needed, or I was like, have protein shake, or have essential amino acids, I think they’re lighter, you can take them as capsules, or you can take them as these fruit flavored powders that we make. Yeah, they’re much more efficient, I think another thing to think about is, if you’re older, they’re going to be much more effective than a protein. At my age, it’s kind of like, you know, it’s in the middle, you know, it’s like, if I take, I’m not going to take protein before I go workout, like, I’m gonna drink, I’m not gonna be drinking protein powder before I go workout and do I’m working out, I, you know, I might do it afterwards. And so it’s like, I just I converted to the essential amino acids, they’re more efficient, they’re more effective. And actually, even when you examine it from a price comparison, they basically end up being more affordable, particularly as you get older, because there’s so much more efficient and effective. Like, you know, 10 grams of essential amino acids could be worth 40 grams of protein for someone who’s 50, you know, and if they’re exercising that much more.

 

Mark Divine  50:57  

It’s such a different experience to I mean, the amino acids dissolve, and you’re just drinking little flavored water. 

 

Angelo Keely 51:03

Yeah.

 

Mark Divine 51:03

Whereas a protein shake is like a big kind of, sometimes you eat with a spoon.

 

Angelo Keely  51:08  

Kion, we have a grass fed whey protein isolate, that is awesome, I can tell how much time is spent taste testing every single raw grass fed whey protein isolate that we could get like, it’s the best one. It’s amazing. We flavored it with, you know, only organic chocolate and vanilla. And then like a little bit of like Himalayan pink salt. Ones, not good ones not bad, they’re different. You know, one is much lighter. It’s fruit flavored, it’s kind of more efficient. And I think too, if people are really interested in kind of a lighter load, the caloric efficiency of the amino acids is greater. It’s just super condensed. It’s like super condensed muscle protein synthesis.

 

Mark Divine  51:46  

That’s cool. 

 

Angelo Keely 51:47

Yeah.

 

Mark Divine 51:47

Thank you for explaining all that. We’re gonna wrap this up. We’ve been going for a while here. But what’s next for you? What’s the big project on your, your horizon?

 

Angelo Keely  51:54  

You know, in terms of Kion, it’s um, I started from a more entrepreneurial, eccentric kind of family thing. And that’s been a lot of the ways in which I’ve, I’ve been successful in life. It hasn’t been through like a really traditional disciplined practice and consistency, kind of work ethic. It’s been a ton of work, but it’s been just like, explosive work, like I just nonstop go, and more of like, yeah, just visionary, eccentric manic type. And as I’ve aged, I become more of a father and better husband, and have built this company. I’m learning more and more about focus, consistency, doing less, like you said, removing things. 

Originally, I think the idea was like, we’re gonna make all these products and do this and that, and that it’s become really clear that it’s do less, and do it better. 

 

Mark Divine 42:41

I love that. It’s a great mantra; do less better, do less better. 

 

Angelo Keely 42:44

You know, it’s like,be great. Greatness comes through like this, doing less and doing a better.

 

Mark Divine 52:50

Focus and simplicity. Yeah.

 

Angelo Keely 52:52

That’s my hope is that in everything, you know, I can be a better husband, I can be a better father. And that in Kion, what are like little consistent tweaks we can do to better make customer service better, to make communication and marketing on the website clearer and better, to make the products better, to ensure that we have even, you know, better explanations of the science that we educate that we support people that everything gets better and greater, versus some new, fresh, cool, exciting novel thing. My goal is for us to be great.

 

Mark Divine  53:23  

That’s awesome. What a great place to kind of pin this. Do less better, focus and simplicity. But simple is not easy, as you know. So it takes a lot of discipline. It’s been a great conversation. Really fantastic. Thank you very much, Angelo. Really appreciate you.

 

Angelo Keely  53:36  

Thank you, Mark. 

 

Mark Divine  53:37  

Yeah, Well look forward to seeing you again.

 

Angelo Keely  53:38  

Thanks for the lessons you shared with me today.

 

Mark Divine  53:40  

Hooyah! Well, that was a very surprising conversation with Angelo Keeley. Very, very cool conversation about the different nuances of meditation and spiritual practice, like who knew so cool. And we had a deep dive on amino acids and their importance and a difference between protein supplementation and amino acids. Very, very cool conversation. Thank you so much, Angelo. Really appreciate you and your time today. Shownotes will be up on MarkDivine.com. You can find the episode also on our YouTube channel. You can reach out to me on Twitter at Mark Divine or on Instagram and Facebook @ Real Mark Divine or on my LinkedIn profile. If you’re not on my newsletter, distro list please consider joining to receive Divine Inspiration every Tuesday into your email inbox, where I disseminate my most top of mine learnings from the week, the show notes from the podcasts, blog habits to inspire you and practices in a book. I’m reading all sorts of cool stuff, go to Mark Divine.com to subscribe. Thanks so much to my awesome team of Jason Sanderson. Geoff Haskell and Catherine Divine who have produced the show, bring incredible guests like Angelo to you and get the newsletter out every week. Ratings reviews are very helpful. So if you haven’t done so please consider doing so. Wherever you listen to it helps other people find it keeps us at the top of the rankings, and it’s much appreciated. Thanks so much for are listening for being part of the Mark Divine Show. Please share the show with your friends we need to bring more positive energy and light into the world to push back against all that craziness. So thanks for doing the work and being part of the change that you want to see in the world, Hooyah, till next time this is Divine, out.

 

Transcribed by Catherine and https://otter.ai