A Greener Lifestyle for a Better Tomorrow with Candi Broeffle

Good morning and welcome to Green Tea Conversations, the radio show that delves into the pages of Natural Awakenings magazine to bring you the local experts who share their progressive ideas and the latest information and insights needed so you can lead your best life. I'm your host Candi Broeffle, publisher of the Twin Cities edition of Natural Awakenings magazine, and I'm honored to bring these experts to you. However, today we are doing something a little bit different in our studio today we have SchaOn Blodgett of Psinergy Natural Health. SchaOn is also one of the people who helped to bring the magazine to life for everyone and helps to make sure it's distributed throughout St. Paul and the surrounding areas. And he also does just a lot of behind-the-scenes work and volunteering, for the magazine to help us make sure that we are able to bring the magazine out to our readers. And SchaOn and I were talking a couple of weeks ago and we had been at a couple of expos and the Expos. We always have people come up and start to talk to us. And I've been getting some kind of questions about, you know, kind of trying to figure out who I am and why I'm doing the magazine and the curiosity around it. And SchaOn had said, you know, maybe we should do something where I interview you.

 

Well, actually, first they said maybe we should have somebody interview you.

 

Oh, maybe that was it. And I said, gosh, I have the perfect person. That would be you. And so, we thought today we're going to turn it around and SchaOn is going to interview me and kind of give you guys a little bit of background about who I am and what it is that I do, how I came about the magazine, that type of thing. So, I am turning the host duties over to SchaOn.

 

This will be fun and exciting.

 

I'm kind of scared because you prepared some questions that I haven't seen them yet. So, I always say I'm an open book, so, let's see how much I really am.

 

So, you've been in the kind of holistic health and green living lifestyle before you bought the magazine.

 

Oh, yeah, for quite a while. I don't, I'm not like a real die-hard person who's done this. So, I just want people to know, like, you're not going to come to me and get like all the advice of what you should do in your health and wellness. That's what our advertisers are for. That's what the professionals are for who do this every day. But most of my life has been spent around holistic health and kind of just different times of my life, growing up, I grew up with kind of a hippie mom who was always looking at how do we do things more naturally. So, I'm not going to get into too much of that. I'll let you ask some questions and then we'll see where that goes.

 

Okay. And so, I met you. It was, what, about three years ago?

 

Yeah.

 

Right before you had purchased the magazine and the previous owner of the magazine came up to all the different vendors at that expo saying the person that's going to be buying the magazine, she is going to be here today, she'll be walking around talking to you all. And so, when I first met you, I was like, this is the person buying the magazine because you look so mainstream in so many ways. And I was like, okay, this is interesting. So, now how have you incorporated more of that holistic lifestyle with being in the mainstream community because you worked in the college and stuff like that?

 

Right, right. So, my experience has been, like I said, you know, growing up with a hippie mom, she always was, we grew up on a farm, so we grew up in and had a lot of experiences. We can talk about those later if you want. But just from the time I was very young, I was looking for ways to stay healthy and well, that didn't involve traditional medicine. So, even today I don't take any medications, which I'm very fortunate about. But I was always looking for what are some things that I can do to really relieve stress. I've always had really high-stress jobs, that type of thing. So, massage was like a huge thing. I've done massage for, head massage done for probably thirty-five years. Even before it was in a way traditional in northern Minnesota. I think I went to one of the first massage therapists up there who got a lot of flack for starting, you know, it was seen as being something kind of dirty instead of something healthy. And now she's very mainstream up there. But it was that type of thing. It's always looking at what are some natural approaches that we can take, what are the healthy foods, growing our own foods, you know, just actually preserving our own foods, that type of thing. That's always been really important.

 

Now, growing up, did you how did you feel about growing up that way? Like the gardening?

 

I said it was horrible. And it was you know, it was so funny because now I look back on it and there are so many things that I learned from my parents. But back then it was like child labor. I mean, that's what it felt.

 

Right.

 

And we were, I grew up very poor. So, my parents did it out of necessity. I mean, we grew up on a farm, and we had huge gardens and we always had animals. We always had different types of animals to either provide food or become food. That type of thing. But...

 

How big was your garden?

 

Oh, gosh. We had, so, I grew up with seven kids, seven kids in our family, and four boys. So, we had large gardens. We had five very large gardens all the time. So, we had a garden that was just potatoes and a garden that was just onions. And so, between preserving it and keeping root vegetables in a root cellar and canning and freezing and that type of thing, drying, we did a lot of drying, but we also sold a lot. It was one of the ways where my parents made additional money, was selling vegetables. Back then we didn't really have farmer's markets so much. But they would sell on, you know, just different events that were going on and that kind of thing. But yeah, it was a lot of work. Yes, a lot of work. I mean, every spring you're planting and then you're taking care of it. So, rock is a funny thing, because we, my parents never let us stay home from school ever, like we always had to go to school. And if we just wanted to take a day off and stay home, we could. But we had to take out so many five-gallon buckets of rocks out of the gardens if we did it. So, we just never did it because it stunk. That was a bad job.

 

Yeah. I also grew up with an acre garden while growing up, so, I definitely know the pain.

 

Yes, there was always rocks and weeds and different things that needed to be taken out. But we also had animals. So, we always at one point we had two hundred head of goats, which by the way, I love goats, I still love goats. But we, you know, we milked the goats and sold goat milk. So, this was back in the late 70s, early 80s. And people were just I mean, it was very little known as far as having any kind of problems with dairy or any kind of issues around like we hear of now. But people who did would seek out goat milk because it was something that they could tolerate. So, when we sold to different dairies to help, at one time we sold the Kemps. So, dairy goat milk has a lot of cream in it. So, they would use it for the ice cream and that type of thing. But yes, I mean, it was very interesting. Now I look back on it and I am just so very, very grateful for all the things that I learned on the farm. And there's so many other things.

 

What's one of the things that kind of sticks out in your mind that you learned as a child growing up? That isn't necessarily common today, but it was kind of common back then.

 

Common back then? I don't think it was even common back then. One of the memories I always have is coming home on the bus. And my mom was in the yard picking dandelions. And people were like, you know, kids on the bus were like, why is your mom picking dandelions? You guys hate dandelions that bad. And I'm like, no, she cooks them. So, she would make dandelion greens along with, you know, collard greens and spinach and everything else. She'd make big pots of greens. But then she also would deep fry dandelion heads, the flowers, which was actually really good. But it was really odd. And I didn't realize it was odd because we (10:01) and it was like, our friends are like, you eat dandelions? Yeah, we do. So, it's actually something now a little bit more avant-garde. So, she was way ahead of her time. We just didn't even realize that back then.

 

Right. Yeah. And so, you mentioned that you started getting massage many, many, many years ago before the turn of the century. And what other things have you been doing ahead of the curve?

 

Well, again, when I was growing up, my mom had us all getting chiropractic adjustments very early. Like, I think I was seven years old when the first chiropractor came into our town. And my mom was like, yeah, you know, everybody's getting chiropractic adjustments. So, we would, I don't know if they traded out or what they did in order to afford to do that, but all of us had to go in and get chiropractic adjustments. So, I've been doing that since, you know, she had us doing that early, early on, and I just continued to do chiropractic. But any kind of reiki, acupuncture, you know, just any type of I love what you do with the color puncture in the Karelian.

 

And so, we're going to have to do a transition to the next thing here. So, you can find the podcast of this show on AM950Radio.com, on Apple and Google Podcasts, and anywhere you get your podcast. You're listening to Green Tea Conversations on AM950, the Progressive Voice of Minnesota, and we will be right back.

 

And welcome back to Green Tea Conversations, where we delve into the pages of Natural Awakenings magazine and talk to the professionals who share their expertise on natural health with you. I'm your host today, SchaOn Blodgett, and we're talking with Candi Broeffle about how she got to where she is today. And in the previous segment, we touched a little bit about Candi getting massage ahead of her time or ahead of the time of the United States, really. And also chiropractic and being a natural health professional myself, I know that back at that time, chiropractic was seen not in the best light and the same with massage therapy. And so, Candi, what are some of the things that you've seen with the change of the perception of chiropractic care and massage?

 

Well, and I and I look back to that time. Like, I said, I was probably eight years old when the first chiropractor came into our town and people just really did not understand what it was that he did. It was seen as being kind of like a medicine doctor or something, you know, I mean, like something that was seen as being kind of a farce. And so, people it was really hard for him to be able to grow his business. Luckily, we had a very good health food store in town that was owned by a woman who people really highly regarded. And so, she brought in a lot of expertise and a lot of knowledge to people to help them and really helped him to grow his business. Now, in that same town, I would guess there's probably 15 chiropractors. And that's in it's still a small town. I mean, I grew up in a small town in northern Minnesota, but now there's 15 chiropractors, probably 25 massage therapists, that type of thing. But the first massage therapist in our town, and she's a very good friend of mine. Her name is Terry Kirchhoff. But she, at the time when she started, she was married to a lawyer in town and she had known what the benefits of massage were for a long time. And so, she had done the training and had come in and started her own shop. And she was doing it out of her home. And for her to try to get it approved through the city council was, she had people protesting and, you know, calling her very vulgar names and...

 

Because the massage at that time was seen as...

 

Sexual in nature.

 

Right, exactly. And it still sometimes has that connotation even today.

 

Yeah. And unfortunately means sometimes you see things on the news that do that and you think, oh, you know why that's so bad? Because it's setting things back in a way. But yet I think today people understand the health benefits more of massage and understand that that's kind of an outlier now or something. You know, you just have to be careful of that when you're seeking out.

 

Right. And massage has been practiced, well over 5000 years at this point. So, I mean, it is one of the core bases of natural medicine.

 

Well, when you think about it, how you nurture your children, how you nurture. Your babies, when they're born, you know, it's all about the touch and all about the, just having that closeness and that as well. So, yeah, I mean, she, you know, she really went through the wringer for many years before she finally and her husband, her poor husband at the time, you know, he was really a well-known lawyer in town. And he had to, you know, help defend her to make sure people understood it wasn't like they were, you know, running a house of ill repute out of their home or something. And but she really helped to her and the chiropractor. And for some reason, I can't remember his name, but they both really helped to bring natural medicine to the small town. And the first person was Linda Dahl, who owned the Cloquet natural health store at the time. And she really helped people. So, I think, you know, now people see there are so many different types of chiropractic care to know that people can do. Back then, it was very much, I remember there was a technique called the pretzel. You called it the pretzel. And they actually just kind of contorted you and then cracked your back and it scared the bejesus out of me every time I had to have it done. And now I think back to how gentle chiropractic care is, compared to back then. I mean, there are so many advances that have been made as far as even the tools that chiropractors have now compared to back then. And so it's really come so far in the last 40 years since I've been introduced to it.

So, growing up with a more natural lifestyle after getting through high school and everything like that, what did you go into after that?

 

Well, when you say growing up in a more natural, healthy lifestyle, I have to let you know. I mean, my mom was kind of cookie. She was she's a wonderful person. She's got Cookie. So, I grew up in the 70s and 80s and graduated from high school in the mid-80s. And everyone around us, you know, was head MTV and all that kind of stuff. We didn't own a TV. We didn't own a phone. We cooked on a wood-cook stove. We had, you know, only wood for heat. She, like, wanted us to have the most simple of lives that we could. So, it was we were kind of an odd (21:03) that our friends would be like, you know, this is kind of different. Yeah. We don't have a phone, you know. No, you can't call your mom. You have to go to the neighbor's if you're going to call your mom. But she just really wanted to make sure that we didn't have a lot of that distraction. And she just liked the idea of living that kind of simple life. So, when I went away, it was like, oh, freedom at last. You know, I don't have to do I can go and buy anything I want as far as buy things that are already prepared. And needless to say, it probably wasn't the best thing for my health, looking back on it now. But back then, I, you know, I went away to college and I decided to go into cosmetology.

 

Oh, fine.

 

Yeah. So, I went to St. Cloud and got a degree in cosmetology and hated doing hair.

 

Okay, so why did you go into cosmetology.

 

Because my friends were. It was just a great idea. You know, my friends said you should do this with us. And I said, okay. Because I figured I could go into business afterward and I could work my way through business, through university as a cosmetologist. But I didn't like doing hair. And then I also, you know, things changed. I ended up getting pregnant when I was in cosmetology school and moved home in order to have my child. And so my parents just helped me. They helped me raise my son. And then things just kind of changed. I mean, once you have children and that type of thing, everything kind of changes. So, I ended up not going to college.

 

So I do have to ask, did you have like an at-home childbirth at the time?

 

No.

 

No, okay!

 

She wasn't that much of a hippy. No, I think that would have been wonderful. She would have loved that. I mean, she was always like she told me I was going to do cloth diapers, you know, everything was going to be very natural. And she would have loved me to have a water birth. But I was like, no, I was eighteen. I was scared to death. So, I just wanted to be a doctor.

 

It's kind of cool too that, there was the water birth stuff back then. So, and when we come back, we're going to talk a little bit more with Candi about how she transitioned to more of the business side of things, having such a hippy upbringing. And you can find podcasts of AM950Radio.com on Apple and Google Podcasts, and anywhere you get your podcasts. You're listening to Green Tea Conversations on AM950, the Progressive Voice of Minnesota, and we'll be right back.

 

Welcome back to Green Tea Conversations where we delve into the pages of Natural Awakenings magazine and talk to experts who share their expertise and natural health with you. I'm your host today, SchaOn Blodgett, and today we're talking with the normal host to Candi Broeffle, producer of Natural Awakenings magazine and also the Green Tea Conversations. And before the break, we were talking to Candi about her having her first child and moving back home after going to cosmetology school. And so Candi, after you had your first kid, did you go back to college? What happened after that?

 

Yeah so, I think I was always interested in going to college. But at the time, you know, you're just trying to survive. I mean, as bad as that sounds, it's like just trying to find a job and trying to (28:24) provide.

 

That was in the mid-eighties or late eighties?

 

Yeah, that was mid-eighties, late-eighties. And so, I was working different jobs. I was actually a makeup artist at the time. So, I was doing that for a while, which I liked. But then my grandparents got sick and so, my grandfather had been ill for many, many years and he was quite a bit older than my grandmother. And he was pretty much what we called back then, bedridden. So, he was unable to care for himself. She cared for him and she ended up going into a diabetic coma and having a massive stroke. And she was no longer, I mean, overnight, no longer able to care for him. And she was fighting for her life. So, I had moved in with him to take care of him while she was in the hospital. And then several months later, she got well enough that she could come home, but she could never take care of herself again. She had had a lot of, you know, stroke and some other things that had happened. And so, I knew what I was going to have to take care of them both and I wanted to take care of them both.

 

So, why did you know that you had to take care of them?

 

Well, other people in our family just were not able to do it. They, you know, they had responsibilities as well as far as a lot of people in my family had farms and that kind of thing. I didn't. And so, I had already been living with my grandfather and working and just having people come in and help while I was at work. And many years prior, my great-grandmother had done what was called back then a board and care home. And so, my grandparents had moved in with her to help her with the business and to help take care of her as she got older. And so they had done it as well for several years. But it had been they hadn't done it since I was a small child. And I had said to my grandfather, I don't know what I'm going to do, but I need to make a living and I need to be able to take care of you guys. But I'm not sure how I'm going to do that. And he said, well, why don't you start a board and care home? And so, I thought, well, let's see what that means. So, I contacted, at the time we lived in Carlton County and contacted them and they said, well, we don't have those anymore, but we do have what's called adult foster care homes. And so, I started an adult foster care home, took care of my grandparents, and it was going to be kind of a temporary thing. My son was four at the time. And this was in 1991. And so, it was going to only be temporary until my grandparents had passed away or, you know, no longer needed my care and then I would go back to work somewhere else. Well, that was twenty, going on twenty-nine years.  And my husband and I still do adult foster care so we take care of people in our home. We have three people who live with us, three adults who live with us, who we care for, and provide all of their daily care. Our clients live with us full time, and they live with us long term. So, one of our clients that we have January 1st, yesterday or Wednesday, we just celebrated twenty years that he's lived with us.

 

Oh, wow. So how are your clients that live with you? How do they feel about you having this Natural Health magazine and the more natural-health lifestyle?

 

Well, you know, I'm always using, you know, helping to make sure that they have good nutrition, good vitamins, any kind of pains that they have we use a lot of essential oils, that type of thing. Our clients are mostly developmentally disabled. So, they don't really understand that I own a magazine they don't care probably either. But they just know that they're being taken care of and they're safe and that type of thing. So, it's really they've been with us for so long, they just become a big part of your family. And that's what I do. I mean, that's one of the things that I've been able to do with our clients, is to provide them some natural, holistic approaches with the approval of their families, with the approval of their doctors to help to alleviate any kind of pains and help them to stay healthy and, you know, maintain their health as long as they can.

 

Right. So, having a very, taking care of three other people, that's definitely a lot of work. So, do you have gardens today or do you practice gardening?

 

Well, actually, I just, we just moved down here, as you know, just moved down to the Twin Cities and but in the home that we lived in before, yes, we had gardens. I've always had container gardens, basically, because I've always lived in town. So, I didn't have huge gardens. And I love container gardening. I love canning. I love taking care of the food that way, which is funny because I rebelled against it so much when I was a kid. But you go back to it and it's just such a great way to be able to provide for your family. So, yeah, I use a lot of container gardening, a lot of the things that my parents taught me when I was young come back into. I still have a lot of my mom's books from Rodale Press. Different books that she had on gardening that she always used. And so, yeah, I try to uphold that.

Yeah. What is your favorite thing to can?

 

Tomatoes. I love. I don't know why I love canning tomatoes, but they always taste so great and they're easy to can. And I just, I love having them on my shelf.

 

Yeah, and they're so versatile.

 

Yeah, you can use them for everything.

 

Yeah. So, I do have to ask you, now, knowing that your mom was kind of a hippie, growing up and so like that, was it just that the time period that she lived in that she was more of the hippie, or were your grandparents also a little hippier as well?

 

You know, my grandparents weren't as hippie as she was. My mom was very much like she taught us, you know, you talk to plants and plants have energy and you want to be able to talk to your plants. And that's how you have healthy, you have more nutrients in your vegetables. And you, you know, you have to be careful when you're working around their roots because that's where all their nutrients are coming from. She was very much about energy where my grandparents weren't so much. But they did gardening and that type of thing, too.

 

Well, it's kind of cool now, today, in the last, like I would say, what is it, last eight or ten years, we're actually now starting to get studies to show that plants actually can hear the sounds and actually make sounds.

 

I've always, like, people didn't realize that, huh?

 

Right.

 

And, you know, I think about things like forest bathing. We did forest bathing way before that was ever even a thing. It was like when we were stressed out or things are happening or people were arguing, my mom would be like, everybody, let's go out to the woods. And so, we'd be traipsing around the woods trying to find different, you know, herbs and plants and different things for whatever ideas she had at the time. And it was like just she knew that that was the way for us to come down, to kind of connect again, to get grounded. She was always vague about grounding that kind of thing. But, you know, going back to the adult foster care. So, we've been doing that a long time. But along the way, I have also always had other jobs. So, after I started doing the adult foster care, I decided I did want to go back to school. And so, I did end up going back to college when I was twenty-eight. So, I never ended up getting a degree until I was in my thirties. And I went to a local community college in our town and just loved it so much. I loved learning. I loved being in the environment. I was really lucky. The college that I went to is called Fond du Lac Tribal and Community College. So, it had this really nice mix of traditional native ways as well as just, you know, mainstream college. And I loved the college. I loved being there. I loved the energy. I loved everything about I love the people who were there. I loved what was being taught and so really wanted to stay in that environment and ended up getting hired to work there as well.

 

Very well. Now, where did you go to college for the second degree?

 

Well, the degree I had before wasn't really, I mean, it was Cosmetology. So, that's more of like a trade. And then the college I went to the community college, I got my associate's degree and then I went on and got a bachelor's degree in Organizational Management. And then I got a master's degree and I got an MBA.

 

Oh, nice.

 

So, I've always been really interested in business and owning businesses.

 

And it's probably helped you to juggle all the different things that you've got going on, in the magazine and then the adult foster care and then also being a business coach as well.

 

Well, yes. And the business coaching came after. I mean, that was quite a while later. But when I started at the tribal college, I worked in their Workforce Development Department. So, I worked with business and industry, helping them train employees, getting the skills that they needed, leadership training, team building, that type of thing. And just have always been really interested in how organizations can do more in a better way, how they can be more productive and effective and treating their employees, you know, just getting the most out of their employees and helping them to grow their employees. And part of that then became coaching, like you started to hear more and more. I was at the college for fifteen years, so, had started there in the, I think 2000 and then, so, over the years, coaching became more mainstream as well. So, in the beginning, you didn't really hear a lot about coaching and then that started to come into business and industry more. And now today it's so widespread. But it became something that I was interested in and decided to go and get a coaching certification as well.

 

Oh, cool. So, where did you go for the coaching certification?

 

I went to a program called IPEC, which is I think it's the International Professional Excellence and Coaching. It's a program out of California, but they do classes all over the United States. So, they came here to Minneapolis and it was like a year program, a year-long or a year and a half long program, excellent program.

 

And so, we've been talking with Candi Broeffle is the normal host for the show about her entire life and what's brought her here to Green Tea Conversations. And when we come back, we're going to talk a little bit more about where Candi has taken all of this stuff and what she's doing with it today. You can find a podcast of the show on AM950Radio.com, on Apple and Google Podcasts, and anywhere you get your podcasts. You're listening to Green Tea Conversations on AM950, the Progressive Voice of Minnesota, we'll be right back.

 

Welcome back to Green Tea Conversations, where we delve into the pages of Natural Awakenings magazine and talk to the experts who share their expertise on natural health with you. I'm your host today, SchaOn Blodgett, and we're talking with Candi Broeffle about her entire life. And in the last segment, we were talking about her going to college the second time. So, trade school and college. And I'm wondering with all of this stuff, how did you get to decide to or get to the point to decide that you wanted to own a natural health and wellness and Green Products Service magazine?

 

Well, I had no intention of ever owning a legacy. Let me just start with that. You just never know where your life is going to take you. But when I was at the college, I also ran, also helped to develop some programs, and helped to kind of run some of the programs that we had that were around sustainable energy and home efficiency.

 

So, that would have been the early 2000s then?

 

Yeah, probably more in the mid-2000s that we started. So, we ran some statewide programs on weatherization and helping weatherization programs get certification in home auditing. So, doing home energy auditing, that type of thing. And we also had it was a very, Fond Du Lac Tribal and community college is a very forward-thinking college. And so, and it's all around, you know, really basing around our environment and how we can be better stewards of our environment, better stewards of the world that we've been given. And so, they were ahead of the game when it came to any kind of renewable energy programs, that type of thing. And so, I got introduced to those as well. And, you know, then looking back, going back to having solar panels when we grew up and  I mean it was...

 

They actually made solar panels back then?

Back then, way back, I'm not that old, SchaOn. But you know, we had all of this type of technology that just keeps kind of coming into my purview. And then when I left the college, I ended up working for a nonprofit in Duluth as a business advisor. So, I worked with small business owners to help them grow their business, to help provide them any kind of support that they needed for growing their business, getting maybe lending that they needed in order to expand, helping them be more efficient in their business, that type of thing. So, I did that for a couple of years as well. And love working with small business owners. Absolutely love working with small business owners. And I knew I wanted to do it on kind of a bigger level, even like something kept drawing me to doing something more than what I was able to do even at the nonprofit. And the nonprofit that I work for was wonderful. They do great work in Duluth. I'm going to give them a little propo, which is it's the Entrepreneur Fund in Duluth, and they do great work with small business owners up there. And I learned a lot while I was there and learned a lot of information that I thought I could share with other small business owners as well. And so I just didn't quite know what that meant. I had gotten a certification to be a coach and I liked business coaching, like to working in that arena, but just didn't know maybe how I was going to be able to affect, help people to affect change, help people to grow their business in a different way.

 

That is actually kind of tough in that particular in smaller businesses, it's a little bit tougher, it seems.

 

Well, you know, people are working day-to-day just to try to grow their business. They're in the depths of everything. And so, they're not necessarily thinking about business coaching. A lot of people do, which is great. But it's like, okay, so, how can I kind of reach out and be able to help people in maybe a little bit different way? And then a friend of mine had come across the magazine when she was in the cities and her and I had talked about doing something together. And so, she came across the magazine when she was down here doing some training for an organization and found out that it was for sale. And she contacted the publisher and said, tell me about this. And then she told me about it and she had decided she was going to buy it and she was going to she was gung ho about buying it. And I'm like, I want to do it, too. So, she said, yeah, let's do it together. So we purchased the magazine together and then it just kind of went from there. She does training for organizations throughout the United States and her business exploded. So, she just couldn't stay in it as long as she had thought she could. And so, I started doing it on my own and have loved it. So, it's just the ability to be able to work with people, work with small business owners, but then to be able to work with small business owners who are making really great changes in this world, who are really helping to affect sustainable change, to make this a better place for us. And that's what I find so exciting about it.

 

Awesome. And so, what are some of the things that you've brought to Natural Awakenings that have helped some of the small businesses in that community?

I guess, you know, some of the things that we're doing and you and I are doing together as well is, you know, offering lunch and learns that has been a big thing, for our advertisers to be able to come and connect with one another, having that networking ability, but also be able to learn about something in their business. So, whether it's, you know, something that will help them grow their business or marketing or advertising...

 

Like the one that I love from the (50:14) last year that you did was the business planning one.

 

Yes.

 

It was a completely different way of looking at it. And I was like just excited and charged up. And I went back to the office. I was like, Andre, let's work on this. And he's like, you're really hyper. And I'm like, this is just awesome information. And putting it in such an easy and approachable way that's easy for a small business to incorporate in and not overly taxing at all.

 

And I really look at the magazine as being it's a great resource for our readers. It gives them information. I just want to say, I think going back to my college, working at a college, information is really important. But letting people make up their own mind is also really important. So, I try to always have make sure the information is good information that people are getting, but that they can make up their mind what they want to do. My job as the publisher is to help our businesses be successful, help our advertisers be successful.

And I think you're doing a really good job at that with giving all these different tools and all the experience that you're bringing forward it's really kind of cool.

 

Well, then the partnership here with AM950 too and having Green Tea Conversations, this has been a huge, huge thing for our advertisers to be able to come in, let people know what it is that they're doing and even a different way.

 

So, is there anything else that you want to share with the listeners?

 

Just look out for 2020. 2020 is going to be an exciting time all the way around.

 

Would your mom have anything to say about that? 2020?

 

She would say it is, there's something about having a perfect vision in 2020. My mom has passed on, so, she's with us every day. That's nice.

 

And so, we've been talking today with Candi Broeffle, the normal host of the show, also publisher of Natural Awakenings Twin Cities magazine, which you can find at NaturalTwinCities.com. Thank you for joining our conversation today as we awaken to natural health. You can find a podcast of the show on AM950Radio.com or Apple and Google Podcasts. You've been listening to Green Tea Conversations on AM950, the Progressive Voice of Minnesota, and Candi and I are wishing you a lovely day!

 

Great job SchaOn.