REBBL’s Mission and the Hierarchy of Impact Messaging
So we’ll dive into REBBL, which is we did work on that together. And I want to talk about so, you know, REBBL functional beverages and really get into this, this messaging hierarchy piece, you know, these brands where they have an impact piece and they’re passionate about the impact. They want to talk about the impact. But impact isn’t necessarily the first thing that customers think about. And the first thing that you want to communicate.
And so could you talk a little bit about that, like how, you know, you think about the hierarchy and like when you’re messaging impact and when you’re talking about, you know, maybe other brand attributes or the reasons to believe. Sure. Yeah. How do you think about that?
Gagan Levy: 08:22
Yeah, I’ll just, just to put it in context, just for a second and then I’ll dive right into it. Is my transition out of music and into GURU was really looking at the world and thinking about what are the biggest challenges we face. And you know, what I what I came for me, it was climate action, mental health, healing food systems, and mostly through the lens of responsible business. And the reason food became such a big thing for me. You know, I really feel that both climate and mental health are, like, uniquely impacted by our food systems by like, if we can heal food systems, the way we grow food and the way we consume food and transport, you know, supply chains and all this, that has a major impact on climate.
And if we can grow healthier food, get, you know, kind of the, the stuff you want out of food out of it, you know, then that’s really what nutrition density, that’s what powers mental health as well. So it’s like, it’s food is like a major crux for GURU probably over the last, you know, 15 plus years, like maybe 75% of our clients have been somewhat in food and beverage. And we’ve worked with, like, you’re bringing up REBBL and we work with a lot of the bigger like systemic change movements in food like USDA Organic and Non-GMO Project and stuff like that, which we can talk about in a minute. But I just wanted to give that context. So that as I come into REBBL, the thing that really attracted me to REBBL as a brand, if you don’t know, they were started by a nonprofit called Not For Sale and Not For Sale was really a nonprofit established to try to help with human trafficking that was coming out of South America into the United States, and they were giving money and they were, you know, helping actually sex trade and human trafficking trade, both the sort of there’s a nasty kind of rubber trade down there as well.
And they were giving money. They were trying to help these folks. But then they stepped back the, the leaders of this nonprofit and said, well, how we could really help them was if we provided opportunity to, to, to try to help end human trafficking in South America. What we need to do is create a company that creates jobs and opportunity where, you know, those folks might pick this job rather than the, the, the other that I just mentioned. And so the first five years of REBBL was really it was born out of that thinking.
And they said, well, what’s down here that we can start to export? Well, we’ve got all these amazing herbs and medicinal plants and things like that. Let’s make a tea, let’s make a drink that we then bring to the United States, all sourced from the Amazon. So not only is it helping create jobs, but it’s bringing this plant medicine to the United States, and it’s helping heal the rainforest in a lot of ways. So the first five years was very natural shopper focused.
It was, you know, sort of the birth of it was kind of a hippie brand, a little, I shouldn’t say hippie, but very natural. You know, here in Marin, we’ve got like Good Earth even more, you know, it was it’s just a very sort of crunchy, impact focused brand and really well done by a gentleman who had, who had worked in ready to drink beverages in the past, and those first five years, it was all about impact. All the messaging was about impact. And so to come back to your messaging hierarchy question, you know, that’s when they what they came to GURU and a lot of brands do this. They built a cult following with around REBBL, and they had a lot of evangelists and die hard.
And, and, you know, heavy users were really heavy, you know, drinkers of REBBL, but now they were going to expand to target and they were going to expand to Costco and some other more mainstream avenues. And they knew that’s a different shopper. And so how do you take a brand with messaging that was very impact focused and bring it there? So they brought us in. We did some quantitative and qualitative research, and what we found was even though all their messaging and marketing was talking about impact, the reason people were first digging REBBL was taste the the reason they were becoming, you know, heavy drinkers of REBBL was functionality.
And then the reason that they were kind of badging themselves and telling their friends and, you know, things like that was about the story about the, you know, ending human trafficking story. So whereas so we had to completely flip that messaging hierarchy and really start with taste. Move into functionality. And then you could have, you know, impact in the right areas. And so, you know, as we look across that whole conversion funnel for, you know, that’s existed since the beginning of, of time when marketing, when, when cavemen were marketing, you know, on, on cave walls, getting people to come to their bonfire, you know, first starts with the awareness, education, you know, conversion and advocacy.
And they, we just really had to get more intentional about how we brought folks into that funnel. And so the campaign that we developed in partnership with you as well, but from the creative side, we really brought the taste out of the bottle to start. The interesting thing is if you’re there meeting someone in person, trying REBBL, you’ll love it. But 95% of people were meeting REBBL digitally. So how do you get taste across digitally was the first big question.
And especially with a bottle that you can’t see into it. And it’s got this really beautiful, creamy, colorful, sort of liquid based on the the functionality and flavor. But we had to find a way to bring that out. So the first thing we did was bring that splash, that liquid out of the bottle, bring the taste. We leaned into this word elixir, which sort of evokes taste as well.
And the combination of that with this liquid really leaned into this overall campaign of what’s your elixir? And a big, you know, built a whole influencer collective around them and launched that through that influencer collective. The second part of the campaign was functionality, right? So we started introducing mainstream folks to, I wouldn’t use the words plant medicine there, but the strategy was, how do you introduce folks to the power of these plants? That nature has the power to heal us.
And so we were introducing folks to things like Schisandra berry and matcha in really creative ways right now. Matchas, you know, all over the place, but you catch my drift. And, and so that sort of like deepened the story, right? Okay, I get the taste. Cool.
But what’s in it for me? Well, here’s some new ingredients, some new plants to add to your arsenal to keep you optimized and rocking, you know, during the day based on, you know, what you need. And then the last sort of piece of that messaging hierarchy being the impact story. And what we actually did, I went down to the Amazon. I shot a documentary.
You know, wrote and shot this entire documentary. And we you can see that, you know, online, maybe we can link it in the, in the show notes. But, you know, that really told the full story of, you know, how this is such a regenerative business and how it has how many thousands of people it’s helped out of human trafficking, how many millions of dollars we’ve contributed, how we built a vertical supply chain throughout Peru, how these plants really have the power to heal us. And really, we’re curating ancient wisdom of healing and bringing it, you know, so it’s available for you at your local, you know, store and whatnot. So I know that’s a little long winded, but I think it’s important to like, see the whole kind of transition because a lot of brands, you know, the first step is, is building that.
And I know we’ll get into this building that cult following. The second is how do you amplify that? You have to start thinking about other subcultures and how you expand and finding those deeper human truths that that people will resonate with.
Using Research to Shape Brand Strategy
CJ Bruce: 16:45
Oh that’s great. I think going into the detail is important. You said get the context and have the full picture. And it’s such a cool campaign and the evolution of it, like you said, just from the starting with the nonprofit and then that kind of being born, the business being born out of it, and then also just thinking back at how early days that was for all of these functional ingredients. And now it’s, you see it everywhere, the explosion.
So yeah, it’s very, very cool. I want to just just broaden that lens with, you know, impact storytelling for, you know, CPG brands overall. And so you talked about, you know, a lot of that came out of the research, you know, so the quantitative qualitative research of like, okay, well, what are people thinking about the different stages? So how, you know, when you’re working with brands or working with founders, how do you help them decide like when, when and where should those pieces come in? Is it always about the research or, you know, brands.
Yeah. I’m just curious how you approach that.
Gagan Levy: 17:42
Great question. I mean, for me, I am, you know, I mean, I’m a classically trained, you know, creative director and I mean, good creative comes out of good strategy, really. And good strategy comes out of really good research and data. And these days, it’s incredible. You know what you can what you can get.
So for years, you know, I would, I mean, we sort of have this first phase of work of research and immersion. And sometimes that includes, you know, us actually doing some quantitative and qualitative research. And sometimes the company already has that, or sometimes the budget’s not there. And we have to do our own sort of cursory research around the web to, to come to some conclusions. But that’s usually where it starts.
I mean, I, I sort of, you know, since the beginning of the agency, I really lean into four areas, you know, the, the company, like what makes them unique? What are the reasons to believe? What are the values? What is the value they’re offering? The world I’m looking at, obviously the customers and sort of the, you know, various target audiences, but also like the subcultures that are going to be attracted to this particular company.
I’m looking at across the competitive landscape, and I’m looking at all of that within culture. Now, the interesting thing that’s flipped for me is for years, I always kind of put less stock in what’s happening in culture because it felt like chasing trends, whereas the other three, you know, company competition and customer seemed very much like we need to figure out what’s, you know, authentic to you, what’s differentiated from your competition, what’s resonant to your customer. I mean, that’s key all within this backdrop of culture. Nowadays, I’ve sort of switched my tune. What we, I, that, you know, has been based on sort of, you know, the concept of human centered design that, you know, again, since the beginning of marketing, people have been doing human centered design.
ID oh, very in a very smart way in the 90s, named it human centered design. And that’s sort of taking that research and developing marketing and campaigns out of it. What I’m doing now and what we’ve coined in the last couple years is something called culture centered design, where we actually I’ve worked with a dear technologist friend of mine where GURU has, you know, brought them in and invested in some technology to be built where we’re actually able to really look across culture and various subcultures and see what is resonating with them in real time. So it’s, it’s a very interesting platform that we just launched in the past six months. And it’s flipped my thinking to really have culture and subcultures start to now we can read the signals like we can get through the noise, read the signal.
So whereas before, maybe I was looking at like social listening with like a Sprout Social or a Meltwater or something like that. And I’m watching trends and seeing what’s happening in culture. And you’re kind of wanting to, you know, set your clients up to, to ride that wave to, to that, that trend. Now what we’re doing is it’s not just the, hey, there’s a trend happening. It’s like, why is that trend happening?
What are the those deep what I said earlier that deeper human truths within this particular subculture that’s causing a trend to happen. And so the way that we’re actually reading that is we have built this platform that can ingest and analyze short form video. So nowadays, you know, short form video is like 80% of all web traffic. It’s TikTok, YouTube, Instagram video. And so what we’re able to do is say for this brand, for REBBL, let’s say we can look across all of their social media content, all the videos, we can look across all their competitors videos we can look at across the whole category and see like, what is really resonating and why.
And we’re looking at that across like hundreds of different factors. I mean, from what’s the hook? What’s the coloring, the music, the messaging, the concept, the influencer, the, it really breaks down all of this. But when you start to look at that across hundreds of thousands, even millions of videos, it becomes statistically significant in that it can take the guesswork out of the developing the, the insights. And this isn’t just for developing social content.
These are the core insights that are driving my entire your brand strategy, your whole brand, platform and campaign. It will also drive. What’s the content we should be doing? Who are the influencers we should be working with? Stuff like that.
But at the core of it, these are the subcultures that are going to drive your brand, you know, and, and if you can figure out what is most resonant to that subculture. You can figure out how to get more, reach more relevance, and build more loyalty with those folks over time. So that’s sort of this, this shift from human centered design to culture centered design. And how I attack, you know, how to find those insights to develop a campaign like we did for REBBL.
Using CultureAI to Build Algorithmic Resonance
CJ Bruce: 22:51
Got it. Yeah. And is this CultureAI you’re talking about?
Gagan Levy: 22:55
Yeah, CultureAI is our partner. It’s within sort of our larger offering that I’ve been doing for, you know, half a decade. I call it big sister. So sort of, you know, the idea is like, how do we use Big brother for good, right?
Like, I mean, look, everyone’s being tracked. All your behavior is being tracked online, not, you know, and so we only work with these amazing purpose driven movements. You know, it’s sort of like, how do we use the force for good, right? So yeah, while I mean, a very acute example that’s interesting within this big sister CultureAI framework is like. You know, meta decide.
It used to be social media. I mean, you used to see what your friends put up. That’s the idea of social media. I want to see what my friends are doing, maybe not just what they ate for lunch and whatnot, but like, you know, what they’re interested in and stuff like that. And nowadays it’s moved more towards interest media.
And I heard this from Gary, Gary V, you know, and it was sort of resonated because it’s like you’re not being shown your friends content, you’re being shown content that the algorithms know you will resonate with period. And so they are basically looking across all these different themes and they’re going to surface content to you that you’ve shown that you’ve liked engaged with, shared in past ways, right? So, and then for, for brands, once you start the pay to play. I mean, you’ve got to you’ve got to just feed the monkey. You know, getting organic content to show is, is hard.
So the way that you get organic content to show is if you build it in ways that the algorithms read it as resonant to certain audiences. So what we have now is sort of an algorithm outside of the algorithms, if you will. You know, before we launch a content into Instagram for one of our brands or TikTok for one of our brands, we know it’s going to land. We know the algorithms are going to reward it. So it’s not just about paying to get that amplification.
It’s about how do you light a bonfire, an organic bonfire and use the paid for gas on that bonfire, but know that it’s already going to catch. And that’s sort of what we’ve unlocked right now, which is it’s just been incredible these past six months, seeing the efficacy of it.
Data-Backed Content Strategies for Food Brands
CJ Bruce: 25:21
It’s really cool. I wonder if you could, if there’s any like examples of that kind of path. I’m just thinking about yeah, we talked about REBBL does need to be REBBL could be another brand or it could be if you can’t say specifics about a brand like something that was discovered through that thinking about like digging through the layers, right? Like, yeah, like I see, oh, you know, this Japanese mayonnaise is trending on TikTok. Okay, well, why is it trending?
And then what are people thinking about it? And then what does that tell us about their psychology or something like that? Like, I’m curious if there are any examples to bring it home a little bit.
Gagan Levy: 25:52
Yeah, I mean, I’m. So I’ll just speak sort of, I’m not going to use a brand name, but there’s, there’s like a couple food brands that are, one is a multi national conglomerate and one is a small upcoming brand, but in a similar category. And what we found, for instance, in general in natural products are things like a recipe. If you’re doing a recipe using less than like three ingredients rather than like a complicated like five plus ten ingredient recipe gives you like a 50% lift on your video content, right? So it’s like, okay, that’s interesting.
Like, I mean, you know, so and then there’s examples showing like, I mean, that’s looking across hundreds of thousands of recipe videos and seeing like, what are the ones that are, you know, what’s the correlations, right? That are working better? There’s, there’s ways to shoot videos, right? Food, there’s that have a, a way of piercing through the algorithms with overhead versus other ways of shooting. There’s the idea of bringing in hacks instead of a how to you bring in sort of like food hacks and how you do certain things rather than.
So all these are sort of like I’m just pulling out like some little nuggets from, from food brands that we found. But each of these have like data driven, like percentage lifts for the food brands we’re working with. So we’re literally doing a B testing and you can see the lift off of this, you know, and then there’s sort of like the deeper stories we’re finding. I mean, the, for instance, you know, brand Marianne’s that that is doing like beef tallow and avocado oils and stuff like that incredible brand. They, you know, for us to develop the brand platform and the strategy, I mean, finding insights like, you know, for instance, where we ended up going with them was the fact that a lot of times for people, oils are like an afterthought.
It’s, it’s sort of, that’s just the thing that’s going to like cook all my ingredients in, right? People don’t think of the oil as an ingredient. It’s the. But really, it’s the first thing to go in the pan. It’s.
It sets the mood. It sets the vibe for everything else. It brings out the flavor in all the, you know, veggies and everything that comes after it. It’s like the music at a party. Right.
It it also, when you, when you. The. So that’s there’s a whole insight there that we found. And, and you can see where I start to go creatively, you know, it can be functional, right in that it lets ingredients shine, but it can be aspirational in that you’re setting the, the vibe, the mood. And there’s a whole joyful act of cooking, like when you really are intentional about it, not just like, you know, not just, you know, cooking to get it done, but there’s people who want to like, you know, be in their kitchen intentionally cook like that.
There’s an intention to that oil that you choose and how different oils do, right? Avocado oil is a high heat oil. So if you’re going to cook certain things, you know, so there’s sort of like the joy of cooking. And so the tagline that that for Marianne’s is feed joy. You know, and, and which works on a few levels.
But then there’s on their website, we, what we found through our, our research as well is like, you know, people want joyful connection with a brand as well. So like while you’re cooking, what’s your playlist? We’ve got a joy feed on the, on the website that’s like music, you know, playlists and all kinds of other ways to feed your joy while you’re cooking or while you’re eating or serving other people. So we sort of like we’re doing the same thing we’ve been doing since the beginning of GURU, you know, in terms of like, it’s a bunch of, you know, agency expats from places, you know, where they were getting grinded, maybe not loving what they were working on, working on stuff that we love working on. And we and, and it’s, you know, very playful community still whatnot.
We’re and developing the campaigns, developing the media, but we are have these amazing insights to build that on. Now it’s like, and I think this is kind of the promise of AI in some ways, you know, I know no conversation is going to go without mentioning AI. It’s like how I’m using it. I mean, it’s kind of in a couple of ways. It’s like one, I want to get more efficient with our systems and be able to save our clients money by being able to do things more efficiently.
And two, I want to get better data driven insights for my work. I want to take the guesswork out and use AI to get really smart about where we need to go. You know, with certain things. What I’m not doing is relying on AI to, to, to, you know, produce, work, right? Or write for us and, and things like that.
Because I think there’s so much AI slop out there that’s being produced. But the but but sure, I will play with, you know, Claude and and other, you know, AI to come up with, you know, creative ideas, be thinking partners with that sort of thing. But at the end of the day, I think this right now is like, we are at such a juicy moment where for marketers, where you can get these incredible insights that can drive your entire programs and really, you know, have sort of this data backed like resonance or relevance with, with subcultures out there drive the reach of your campaigns.
Growing Conscious Brands and Transforming Food Systems
CJ Bruce: 31:56
Yeah, yeah, no, I love it. I mean, there’s so many, so many good things in there. And I think the yeah, the AI piece, I agree with everything you said. I think like just on the, on the cost reduction, something else that we’ve been thinking about too is it’s, you know, we worked on these campaigns in the past where people would spend, you know, a quarter million dollars to build a landing page for one campaign. And now it’s like the cost of building those things goes way down.
And so the ideas of what’s possible and who can execute on these things just expands. And it’s that’s a really exciting time. I do want to I do want to touch on another project you worked on that I think connects into this food system piece and completely agree. Also, I feel the same way. And that’s part of why we’re focused on food and beverage, like the, the areas of impact and like the different parts of people in the planet that it touches.
And, and also just the emotional element, I think that comes in and creates all this great storytelling opportunity. But Patagonia Provisions. So. And regenerative agriculture, I think this is a, you know, a huge area of impact and regenerative agriculture, especially, there’s a lot that goes into it. There’s a lot of detail and it can be tough to communicate.
And I feel like we’re, you know, we’re at this place with regenerative in general, but the regenerative organic certification and educating consumers about it. So can you talk a little bit about that work and also just how you think about, you know, packaging and communicating and ID like that out in the world.
Gagan Levy: 33:17
Yeah, yeah. So like I mentioned earlier, sort of our theory of change here at GURU really has two major levers with food. How do we work with the most conscious brands in a certain vertical and help them grow? Because if we can help, you know, a Traditional Medicinals grow market share in the T space, you know, they’re taking care of women farmers, they’re taking care, they’re doing wild cultivation, they’re taking care of herbalists. Like it’s, it’s so it’s such a conscious company.
And when we came into Traditional Medicinals, for instance, like five years ago, the brief was, hey, we’re the number three tea company. We’ve been that for 30 years behind Bigelow. Get us to number two. For us, I’m not just shouting about impact. We are growing market share for them.
They passed Bigelow last year and became the number two tea brand that that pushes impact. The other area of impact we push is systemic change in food. How do we heal food systems? So, you know, we’ve worked on 1% for the Planet where we are the agents for Non-GMO Project, USDA Organic or Organic Trade Association, all these different things. And five years ago or so, we were so honored to be asked by Patagonia and Dr. Bronner’s to help them develop and launch this regenerative organic certification, which has become one of the fastest growing certifications in food.
What it is just at the top is it brings together three ideas of regenerative agriculture, organic and fair trade or fair wage into one aspirational certification. So this one marque stands for those three things. There’s different tiers of it, but it’s so aspirational that when Patagonia put it out and Bronner’s, they couldn’t even, you know, they couldn’t even certify certain certain products could. But as companies. So, you know, they came to us and it was like, how do we launch this to the world?
First, we’ve got to get farmers on board. We want to we want to move farmland to regenerative AG, but we also need brands to commit, you know, because farmers, it’s expensive and they need to be subsidized. And, and so the brands need to come in and subsidize those farmers. So first things first, there’s like a few groups that were launching this too, right? When you think about how to launch something like this, and this is a basically we call it like a love mark.
You need to build trust in a, in a mark like this, just like we did with 1% for the Planet, which, you know, and so you got to get the farmers on board, you got to get the brands on board, and then you’ve got to get the consumers on board once we get enough critical mass, right. So our overarching campaign that we launched with them was farm like the world depends on it. It’s one of my favorite lines I ever wrote, honestly to UN humbly give myself a little pat on the back. And, you know, and, and as we sort of launched that, we did it at the biggest, you know, natural Products Conference in the world, which I know, you know, Natural Products Expo West, we had the CEO of Patagonia do a big talk and it was this massive launch. Now, five years later, it’s amazing.
You go into the Fresh Ideas tent, which is all the new stuff, and every one of them are launching with regenerative organic certification. I think now it’s over 500 brands. It’s over 65000 acres of of farmland has been transitioned to regenerative through this. It’s just it’s been an incredible success to date. It has been mostly bringing farmers and bringing brands together.
And now what we’re doing is we’re actually moving into launching a consumer facing campaign. We were just tapped to launch this in the fall. So and the cool thing is we’re using what everything I just talked about with CultureAI and this to develop this campaign. So I’m looking at doing a big study right now on with a couple other partners that we’re calling the new story of nature. And we’re really looking at climate action and specifically young like Gen Z.
And that, folks, is like, how do we move from apathy to agency? How do we, how do we help folks start to consume with their values? So what is the word regenerative mean? Right? Like, how are these folks shopping out there in the world?
Does regenerative agriculture come into their thinking around that? So GURU, both in in January, we did a conscious consumer, a full like human centered design, quant and qual research study on the conscious consumer. And we have a bunch of findings which you can find on our website coming out of that. And right now, we’re deep in this study of where we’re working with groups like Earth Guardians and BBMG and GlobeScan and CultureAI to look at sort of, you know what will move the needle? Like what’s the messaging and what’s the vibe that is going to move these folks to really start to think about regenerative when they’re, when they’re buying products out there.
Our findings. So I can’t talk about it yet because we’re releasing the findings at Sustainable Brands on June 10th. Which Sustainable brands is one of the bigger sort of like do good, you know, business conferences and natural products? But what I’ll say is it’s pushing me to know that we need some that that people have had enough of sort of the soft pedaling of this regenerative movement, the sustainability movement, like, hey, it’d be good for the world. You know, it’s like people need some grit.
They need to know it’s time. It’s time to be bold. It’s time to stand up for this, like let you know and get a little more activist. And so it’s, but it’s tough because when you do a big multi-stakeholder campaign like this where we’re going to invite hundreds of brands to be putting this out. And retailers, Whole Foods, you know, target all these brands to be putting it out.
You if you go to bold, you can scare some people away, right? So we just did launched a massive organic campaign over the last year, which I know we’re working on with you, which has been extremely successful, getting underserved communities specifically to think more about organic and bio organic, which and I’m very proud of that campaign. But this one is leaning from a creative standpoint, kind of where I’m going is like rock regenerative organic certification. Just to give you a little preview, I’m thinking of like that CEO that picks this path. Like it’s not easy.
Like they chose the harder path, you know, and so we’re kind of going a little punk. It’s like think like big, like a zine, like Matt punk magazine from like the 80s or 70s like rolling Stone style with like rock star. And so rock, rock star. And so you see kind of these CEOs and these farmers positioned black and white rock star full bleed wheat paste posters, you know, chose the harder path, led the way, you know, and really being bold and writing it in sort of like if you were writing about, you know, your favorite rock star. That’s how I’m thinking about these CEOs that are that are, you know, and, and that, and now we’re inviting the customers to join the band, you know, like join us and be a part of this thing.
So it’ll be gritty. And yeah, I’m really excited about where it’s going.
Building Cult Brands Without Losing Their Soul
CJ Bruce: 40:40
That’s amazing. Super excited to see that come to life. I think before we wrap here, we gotta talk about cults. So everyone’s favorite topic cults. Know, so you have a, you have a book coming out, Start Your Own Damn Cult and you know all about, you know, building devotion, not just followers.
And I know you talk about cults in your business as well. So let’s talk, let’s talk a little bit about, about cults. Yeah. Tell us about the book and where the idea came from.
Gagan Levy: 41:06
And yeah, I mean, you know, look, you’ve known me long enough. I, I like to be provocative. Right? And, but really, when I looked at what we’ve been doing for the last 20 years and it’s, we’ve been building cults. I mean, these are conscious cults, you know, and I love taking back words to, you know, I mean, really a cult.
It comes out of the word cults and which means devotion to something to, to, of meaning. So, you know, even some of these words that have been taken and kind of, you know, stigmatized and stuff like that, it’s like, really? When I think about, you know, some of the amazing brands we’ve had a chance to play with, like think of like a Yerba Madre. It used to be guayaki. I mean, they’ve got ten 000 ambassadors like that are willing to do anything for that brand.
Like they host events in their local communities and bring Guayaki and Yerba Madre and, you know, that sort of stuff. I mean, that’s a cult brand. You know, you think about Patagonia, that’s a cult brand. And we got to launch the food brand for Patty, you know, Patagonia Provisions and all that. So when I really started to think about it, I’m like, what are the commonalities here like between these cult brands and how are they able to get first to that cult sort of creation, but then extend beyond that and start to amplify?
Because that’s a lot of times when they bring GURU in, it’s like, hey, build the cult, like crystallize the soul of this brand, align my stakeholders into a flow, state my team, like that’s the, the cult forming, but then you amplify it to the world. And then it’s like, how do you scale cult without losing the soul, which is tricky, you know? And so for us, yeah, I’m, I’m just having so much fun, you know, doing that in this agency for the last however many years and five years ago, I started writing this book and really thinking like, what have been the commonalities that have worked? Like, how have we done this successfully for things like destigmatizing psychedelics with MAPS working on Obama zero eight, Working with Patagonia like working with 1% for the Planet. Non-GMO Project where like, you know, we were able to significantly build these things not.
And the brands that I’ve mentioned as well. So reverse engineering that. What was it? And so in this book sort of has, you know, some of that, some stories, some and some it’s a workbook. You know, it’s something where you can actually work with your idea or your nonprofit or your business.
And it’s got a framework with, with reflections and practices that you can actually work with to build your own. And, you know, and then I guess the other piece to the book that I’m really proud of is, you know, every one of these businesses or nonprofits, you know, or as I’m calling them cults started with a founder that that clarified their purpose and got like and knew it was theirs to uniquely bring forth out of like the zero point field, like this is mine uniquely to bring into the world. And maybe it’s an invention, a nonprofit, a cause, a movement, a business, something. And they and, and you birth it into the world. And, and then you need to build a team around that to, to start to, you know, maybe grow it.
And, and I see a lot of leaders with amazing, like the what is amazing, but the, how they do it, you know, can burn people out and can burn themselves out and might be out of integrity with their values, with the world. And so being introspective for a second and kind of vulnerable, you know, with GURU, you know, and you were, you’ve been along the ride with me. So you know this as, as much as anybody, like in those first years of GURU, very proud of the what we were working on. I mean, very devoted to these causes that I’ve talked about. But it was another agency.
I was still grinding people. The how we were doing it was still we were, you know, and, and, and it wasn’t until I’d say five, six, seven years into this that I realized the how we do it is just as important as the what and my own leadership and how we intentionally build from the inside out. I needed a framework to start to work with, to hold myself accountable, to build the kind of culture that I wanted to build from the inside out at my own agency. Right. And, and then, you know, vis a vis do that with the companies that I’m doing.
Applying the Eight Limbs of Yoga to Leadership
So in my, you know, you mentioned this at the top of the webinar, I mean, of the podcast, but, you know, I am, I, I’ve studied yoga throughout my entire life, have done many trainings. And Ram Dass, who wrote the book Be Here Now has been my teacher. I’ve been lucky enough to have him as a teacher and actually sit on his board for the last 15 years. Spent a lot of time with him before he passed. And he I really learned sort of the eight limbs of yoga.
You know, it was it’s a framework that was brought to this world by Patanjali 2500 years ago in India, and it’s been integrated into Buddhism. It’s probably it’s a it’s a framework that has probably helped more humans find contentment and fulfillment on this planet than maybe any other framework in the history of humankind. And a lot of people think of yoga in the West and you think of, you know, you’re on your mat, you’re doing yoga, you’re doing downward dog. And that is part of yoga. That’s one limb of yoga.
It’s called asana, asana, and it means it actually means comfortable seat. It means take your comfortable seat. So when you get in that position and you get comfortable. That’s your. All right.
And so but there’s there’s seven other limbs of yoga and it kind of works as a ladder. And so the download that I had was I’ve been using these eight limbs of yoga to be a better dad and be a better partner and be a better human walking through this world. Why don’t I apply this to my business? Why don’t I apply this to my leadership? And so I kind of went through this thought leadership.
I mean, this thought experiment of could I apply the eight limbs of yoga to business and to leadership? And it mapped incredibly well. And, you know, I won’t go through all of the eight limbs, but like the first limb, for instance, is all about kind of your interaction with the world around you. One of the principles of it is called ahimsa, which you might have heard of. It means do no harm.
So, for instance, in the book, you know, this is the book and it comes out on Tuesday and I guess it got kind of blurred. But you’ll I’m sure you’ll have it in the show notes. You know, the first piece of this is like foundational leadership. What’s your integrity with the world around you? So Ahimsa being, you know, your how do you do no harm, take harm out of your system with the people that work with you.
How do you do no harm to the planet? And so there are, you know, first there’s kind of an explanation of what that means for your business. How do you think about that in terms of like ESG, there’s reflections, there’s practices to move through to hold yourself accountable in some way to, to, to starting to understand, you know, your interaction with the world around you. And then you move into other things. Like, you know, I mentioned asana and that would be like how you actually position your business, how you position your leadership, how do you embody leadership?
But it can even be your mission statement and your positioning. So does it feel comfortable or does it feel markety? You know, the next limb after that is pranayama. Pranayama means life force. It’s literally breath.
And so how do you regulate both literally your breath like coming into a meeting, but also the central nervous system. How do you regulate the central nervous system of your business? How do you, you know, and these are reflections and practices to do that. So as you build your team, you start to build this from the inside out. And it’s a map that helps you learn eight different forms of leadership.
You know, I call them codes and I call it the Cultivate Codex. And these eight codes help you really become a better leader. And ultimately at sort of this eighth code, it’s really a ladder towards liberated leadership. It’s it’s it’s a map that gets you to a place to move from founder to follower of this cult that you’ve created. And it’s just, it’s, you know, been working with this framework for years.
It’s incredible to see some of the even very successful leaders that lean into aspects of this, how it can bring, you know, more fulfillment and contentment to themselves, to their team, how it it then fuels better work, creativity, innovation, you know, because their team is really aligned on purpose. There’s coherence between their personal purpose, the mission of the company. There’s alignment in how they’re asked to work with their teammates. And ultimately, it helps you scratch at those deeper truths that become design principles for how you amplify your cult to the world in a bigger way.
CJ Bruce: 50:56
Well, I yeah, that’s, that’s really cool. That’s such a feels like a, you know, a natural evolution just of all the things that you’ve been doing, like getting put into this book. So yeah, I’m excited to, excited to check it out. All right. We have, I have a bunch of other questions that we didn’t even get to.
There’s so much that we could talk about on the list here, but I wanted to thank you for being on. And I also wanted to point people to, you know, to, to connect with you and follow up afterwards. So what do you go to the website? weareguru.com for the agency and then where can people find. I know it’s coming out.
It’ll come out after the podcast is released, but where can people find the book and connect with you?
Gagan Levy: 51:35
Yeah. Thank you. So yeah, weareguru.com. You’ll, you’ll find our way to the book, but it’s /cultstarter is the full URL and the book’s available, you know, in bookstores, but also, you know, easily on Amazon Kindle. You know, Barnes and Noble, that sort of thing, or, or obviously want to support Indie bookstores as well.
And yeah, you can, you can find me through that. And the like I said, the book is meant for kind of a DIY right to, to, to do this, to reverse engineer for any folks that are interested in, you know, my own, you know, coaching retreats, workshops, or working with the agency, you can reach out to us at connected. weareGURU.com.
CJ Bruce: 52:27
Amazing. Thanks so much for being on the show. Be sure to check out the website, check out the book and really appreciate you, man.
Gagan Levy: 52:35
Thanks so much, brother.
Outro: 52:37
Thanks for listening to The Missing Ingredient podcast. We’ll see you again next time. And be sure to click subscribe to get future episodes.