July 21, 2022
Eddy Badrina
Connect with Eddy Badrina on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/eddybadrina/
Learn more about Eden Green Technology – https://www.edengreen.com/
Eddy Badrina:
Be impatient in the short-term but patient in the long-term.
Announcer:
Welcome to Agency for Change, a podcast from KidGlov that brings you the stories of changemakers who are actively working to improve our communities. In every episode, we’ll meet with people who are making a lasting impact in the places we call home.
Lyn Wineman:
I’m going to say two words you probably hear a lot these days, climate change. While it has dire consequences for all of us, one job that’s about to get a whole lot harder is farming. Scientists predict that the effects of climate change will result in more pests, frequent droughts, and flooding, all of which lower crop yields for farmers. For the rest of the world, this means food is going to become harder to find and harder to afford. Seems bleak, right? Yikes.
Lyn Wineman:
Well, there is some hope. Vertical farming is a new way of producing food in an indoor facility, where crops are stacked to optimize space, and special grow lights and controlled temperatures allow for uninterrupted year-round growth. It just so happens that today, you’re going to hear from someone who is part of a company working on this exact problem, and in the process, helping make farming more productive and more sustainable.
Lyn Wineman:
Hello, everyone. You are listening to the Agency for Change Podcast. I’m your host, Lyn Wineman, president and chief strategist at KidGlov. In a moment, you’re going to hear from Eddy Badrina, CEO of Eden Green Technologies, which helps cities around the world grow food via sustainable, vertical farming technology. Eddy, welcome to the podcast.
Eddy Badrina:
Thanks for having me. Happy to be here.
Lyn Wineman:
Oh, I’m so excited to discuss this topic today. To kick us off, would you mind telling our listeners about Eden Green and how it’s helping to improve food accessibility?
Eddy Badrina:
Absolutely. Eden Green is solving the distribution problem around nutritious, local, and affordable produce.
Lyn Wineman:
All very important things.
Eddy Badrina:
All very important things. We basically have a vertical, very high-density greenhouse. Think about the greenhouses that you’ve seen in pictures, or maybe you’ve been in one that are all flat-tray, one level. What we’ve basically done is used all of that volume and space, 24 feet up into the air, and then an acre and a half in dimension. In that greenhouse, totally full of these vertical towers full of plants, we grow about two million pounds of leafy greens in a year, over-
Lyn Wineman:
Two million pounds-
Eddy Badrina:
Two million pounds.
Lyn Wineman:
… in one year. Wow.
Eddy Badrina:
Yeah, so it’s about 12 to 17 harvests, depending on what we’re growing, yeah. All in an acre and a half.
Lyn Wineman:
More than one per month. I love that. I can’t wait to dig in more. Such a fascinating and important thing that you’re doing. Eddy, I also want to hear about you because I know you have an interesting past. Can you talk to me about the career path that led you here?
Eddy Badrina:
Sure. It is winding and sordid.
Lyn Wineman:
That’s the best kind of path.
Eddy Badrina:
Yes, right? I actually started in government. I had the opportunity in college and grad school to work for President Bush Sr. in his personal office in Houston-
Lyn Wineman:
Wow.
Eddy Badrina:
… and had a chance to go to his grad school. I parlayed that into working in government at the State Department, where I was an analyst both pre- and post-9-11, so some pretty … I didn’t know it at the time, but my wife and I were both in government and we look back on it and we realize, we were sitting in the middle of history.
Lyn Wineman:
Wow.
Eddy Badrina:
I had a front row seat into that particular part of history. I ended my time there by being President Bush 43’s Asian American spokesperson.
Lyn Wineman:
Wow.
Eddy Badrina:
I headed up the White House initiative on Asian American and Pacific Islanders. That was in ’04 to ’06 and then-
Lyn Wineman:
How do you get from government to-
Eddy Badrina:
I know.
Lyn Wineman:
… vertical farming?
Eddy Badrina:
My second chapter, the second act of my career was actually as an entrepreneur. I started a digital marketing comms agency called BuzzShift here in Dallas in 2010, and started, bootstrapped that with my business partner. We grew it to a size where we got some unsolicited offers to buy the company, so we sold it in 2016. Just to have bootstrapped something from scratch, have a business partner, have it last six years, and then to be acquired, we jumped a lot of hurdles that most entrepreneurs don’t make it over, so very, very thankful.
Lyn Wineman:
Yeah, congratulations.
Eddy Badrina:
Thank you, thank you. Very thankful for that opportunity. We sold it and we thought we were done with it, but lo and behold, we had the opportunity to buy it back for a very, very low price a year later, so that’s what we did. I have the story of been there, done that, and gotten the M&A t-shirt twice for one company.
Lyn Wineman:
I love it.
Eddy Badrina:
Then from there, I actually took a step back from BuzzShift and was really trying to consider what I wanted to do next, and three things came to mind. One is I wanted to run hardware, software. I wanted to at least have a hand at or be a part of that. Two, I wanted to have an exponential impact via my level of effort, so for every one unit of effort that I put out, I wanted to see a 10 to 20X return on culture and society around me. Then the third is, I wanted to run what’s known as a redemptive organization.
Eddy Badrina:
Most organizations are exploitative. Leaders eat first, “I win, you lose.” Employees are exploited and treated unfairly. Then, culture and society is a net negative because this organization exists. There are some ethical companies, and ethical companies are to be celebrated. That’s where leaders eat alongside their employees, “I win, you win.” That’s where employees are treated fairly, and it’s where society and culture is advanced because of these ethical organizations.
Eddy Badrina:
The main challenge with an ethical organization is it’s led by an imperfect leader. The leadership team, depending on how it goes, will almost always shift back into exploitative tendencies. I’m not saying they are exploitive. I’m just saying because we’re human, we will shift into exploitative tendencies, unless we have a structure in place that doesn’t allow us to shift, that’s foundationally more than even ethical. That’s were redemptive foundation comes in, a redemptive organization, and that’s where leaders are eat last. They’re sacrificial. By sacrifice, it means something dies.
Eddy Badrina:
In this case, the leader dies. In servant leadership, that’s sacrificial. The leader dies so, “I die, you win.” Employees are not just treated fairly, they’re treated generously. Culture and society is not just advanced or renewed. It’s actually restored and redeemed to a baseline that may not even have existed before, a new baseline. That’s what we’re trying to build at Eden Green. That’s what I wanted to do, and I found the company that allowed me to do that.
Lyn Wineman:
Eddy, you are my new hero. I love everything you just said.
Eddy Badrina:
Thank you.
Lyn Wineman:
That is an amazing journey. I have to ask if you are referring to one of my favorite books by Simon Sinek, which is “Leaders Eat Last.” I love that whole concept of servant leadership and making sure that the team is elevated.
Eddy Badrina:
Absolutely, absolutely.
Lyn Wineman:
Fantastic, fantastic. Well, now that I know your history in digital marketing, I’m not surprised that you guys have some great videos up on YouTube showing the technology and what you’re able to do. We’ll make sure to put a link to those in the show notes for the episode. For someone who has never been in a vertical greenhouse before, can you tell us a bit more about what we will see?
Discover Eden Green on YouTube – https://www.youtube.com/c/EdenGreenTechnology
Eddy Badrina:
Yeah, absolutely. When you walk in the door, the first thing you do when you walk in our greenhouse is you wash up. You put on a smock. You put on a hairnet, which looks lovely on me.
Lyn Wineman:
I love the hairnets.
Eddy Badrina:
Especially the green ones, right?
Eddy Badrina:
You step on a mat that has cleansing chemicals in it to clean off your feet. Then you walk in through a vestibule that’s air locked to keep bugs out. Then from there, you go wash your hands, dry them off, and then you’re ready to begin the tour. That’s just a commitment to food safety that we have that’s not just a program. It’s actually a part of our culture, so everyone, top to bottom, does that. Vendors, everyone.
Lyn Wineman:
Quite a bit different than outdoor farming.
Eddy Badrina:
Just a little bit. When you walk in, what you’ll see first, if you go through the life cycle a plant, you’ll see what we call our propagation area. That’s where seeds become seedlings. We put them in a, it’s a hydroponic system. It’s actually patented for us. It’s the NFT, not non-fungible token. The NFT, which is nutrient film technique. It’s a certain type of hydroponics, but it’s a vertical NFT, so it’s top-down.
Eddy Badrina:
You walk in through propagation, and propagation is done in trays and in lights. It’s because these seeds really need this intense amount of light and a lower level of humidity in order to grow well. Just like any sort of animal, what comes in the first seven to 10 days of this seed to seedling is going to determine 50% of its success in the growth cycle, so we really try to, no pun intended, we try to baby these seeds-
Lyn Wineman:
I love it.
Eddy Badrina:
… for the first seven days, seven to 10 days. After that, they’ll be put into your system, so the next part of the greenhouse you’ll see is actually our patented system. It’s 18-feet high. The towers are 18-feet high. The greenhouse is 24-feet high. The towers are 18-feet high, and there are about 110 rows in a greenhouse. It extends for about 400-feet down, so all in all, you’re getting around 62,000 square feet of 18-feet high, just vertical towers as far as the eye can see.
Lyn Wineman:
Wow.
Eddy Badrina:
They are all full of greens, but because we only can plant, call it three rows a day, which is thousands of plant spots, but by the time you plant rows one, two, and three, and then you keep on going day, after day, after day, by the time you get to rows 36, roughly, it’s time to start harvesting the first ones, because we’ll harvest every 21 to 28 days. Actually, about row 60. If you just look down the row, if you can imagine, you’ll have small, big, bigger, huge, empty. Small, big … It’s this continuous harvest that we have-
Lyn Wineman:
Fascinating.
Eddy Badrina:
… inside the greenhouse so that every day, there is some portion of the greenhouse that’s being harvested, some portion that’s being cleaned, and some portion that’s being planted. That’s where our continual harvests come in. What that results in, the net-net of that is that we have workers in there every day, so no more migrant workers. Full-time, living day’s wage with benefits, because we’re harvesting and planting every single day.
Lyn Wineman:
Right.
Eddy Badrina:
Right. One of our greenhouses can employ up to 30 full-time people, and we love that. We’ve actually been very judicious about automation because while automation ups your profit margins, it lowers the amount of people that you can employ, right?
Lyn Wineman:
Yeah.
Eddy Badrina:
A lot of our competitors have to use automation because their margins just don’t work otherwise. On the greenhouse side, it’s one of the problems that the industry faces as a whole. On the greenhouse side, you’ve got big tracks of acreage. Greenhouses, in order to be economically sustainable for investors, they’ve got to be built in 60 to 120-acre increments. That’s a lot of-
Lyn Wineman:
That’s a lot of land. A lot of space, yeah.
Eddy Badrina:
A lot of land, and so it doesn’t solve for the supply chain issues that we’re seeing right now. You still have to truck it in from 100, 200 miles away, and that’s considered local, by the way. Anything within a 400-mile radius is considered local.
Lyn Wineman:
Wow. That’s a six, seven, eight-hour drive from …
Eddy Badrina:
It is, absolutely.
Lyn Wineman:
Yeah, that doesn’t sound very local to me.
Eddy Badrina:
Yeah. It can be. The problem is, all that trucking still costs money and in today’s environment, it costs more and more money every day to truck. We have a lack of truckers and rising fuel costs. Greenhouses are economical but they’re still, far away, they don’t solve for the distribution problem. On the other hand, you’ve seen, we’ve all seen in Wired Magazine and on websites these indoor vertical farms. They’re basically bunk beds of greens, all under lights. They’re really, really sexy looking.
Eddy Badrina:
The problem is, you look at all those lights, they’re immensely expensive to build and they’re immensely expensive to run. That’s a lot of electricity running through there. No one in the vertical farming industry, indoor vertical farming industry will admit to it, but you’re looking at power usage on par with data centers, so all-
Lyn Wineman:
That’s a lot, yeah.
Eddy Badrina:
That’s a lot. It’s four to five million kilowatt hours a month to run an acre and a half vertical farming. All your ESG components just go flying out the window when you simply ask, “How much electricity are you using, and where are you getting that electricity from?”
Lyn Wineman:
Mm-hmm.
Eddy Badrina:
Right?
Lyn Wineman:
Mm-hmm.
Eddy Badrina:
You’d be hard-pressed to find someone who is using 100% renewable energy into four or five million kilowatt hours a month and making it profitable. It just doesn’t happen. They could be, “Yeah, we’re using 100% renewable energy.” “Okay, so what do your profit margins look like?” Not good. Not good at all, so that means-
Lyn Wineman:
You found the magic, the balance between-
Eddy Badrina:
We found the magic. Right.
Lyn Wineman:
… between the two.
Eddy Badrina:
By combining the economics of greenhouse with the density of the vertical farm, that’s us. If you think like, “Well, why doesn’t everyone do that?” It’s because we’ve patented the technology to do that. It’s patent-issued here in the U.S. It’s not even pending. It’s patent-issued here in the U.S., in the EU, and in a number of other countries as well. We’ve got what, we call in the business, a defensible moat that’s only widening because of our patent portfolio.
Eddy Badrina:
Really, at the end of the day, what that does is it makes it really affordable to grow, cost-effective to grow, which means it’s affordable to the consumer. That really is the most important thing because you can do indoor farming, you can do greenhouses, but they have to sell it at such a high cost, so it’s fixed price, ultra-premium, whether it’s in the Whole Foods of the world, or the high-end restaurants, high-end hospitality and food service, but that’s just the high-end. No one else has access to that because they can’t afford it.
Lyn Wineman:
Right.
Eddy Badrina:
What if you could make that affordable? What would that transform? It’ll transform the industry when you have hyper-local, within 100 miles, hyper-fresh, from harvest to shelf in 48 to 72 hours, and then accessible year-round. All of a sudden, that increase in inventory makes it really, really affordable for people because there’s just more of it and it lasts longer. That’s where we’re at.
Lyn Wineman:
I’m glad you explained that because in the intro, we talked about how climate change is making farming more difficult. As farming becomes more difficult, food becomes harder to find and harder to afford, so having a solution to that problem is really a great way for you to have that 10 to 20X that you want to on the community and the world.
Lyn Wineman:
Hey Eddy, let’s take a quick break because I want to share something fun with our listeners. Have you ever wondered about the inspiration behind board games like Outburst or Taboo? Maybe you have a fascination with the supernatural, like how come ghosts never have feet? Or hey, maybe you just enjoy hearing interesting stories.
Lyn Wineman:
Then you should totally check out Good People, Cool Things. It’s hosted by Joey Held, author, podcaster and a guy with a real soothing voice. Good People, Cool Things interviews business owners, authors, musicians, and other creatives. They talk about their careers, their worst moments, offer advice and so much more.
Lyn Wineman:
And as a super fun bonus, every episode ends with a corny joke. One that you should tell your dad, I think, because we could all make a few more people groan in life. So listen and follow at Goodpeoplecoolthings.com or wherever you’re listening to this podcast.
Lyn Wineman:
Alright, Eddy, let’s jump right back into our conversation.
Lyn Wineman:
You’ve talked quite a bit about how vertical farming stacks up against traditional farming. I’m curious. How much space does to take to grow the same amount of lettuce in a traditional farm as you do in a standard vertical farm?
Eddy Badrina:
One of the secrets of the industry is that … It’s not a secret, but no one really digs into it, is that 90% of the lettuce that we eat is only grown in two areas of the United States, the Salinas Valley in California, and in a certain part of Arizona. That’s it. The chances that if you ate a salad today and it wasn’t from your garden … I ate a salad today for lunch. It came from 2 to 3,000 miles away.
Lyn Wineman:
Wow, yeah. That’s why it’s in a little plastic bag with an expiration date on it, right?
Eddy Badrina:
Exactly. Right?
Lyn Wineman:
Yeah.
Eddy Badrina:
In those fields in Salinas Valley and in Arizona, 40 acres, 40 to 50 acres is roughly the equivalent to one of our acre and a half modules. That’s how much produce-
Lyn Wineman:
One and a half acres to 40 acres.
Eddy Badrina:
Yes.
Lyn Wineman:
That’s amazing.
Eddy Badrina:
It’s incredible. In those 40 to 50 acres, they’re going to waste around 800 to 900,000 gallons of water a year.
Lyn Wineman:
Ooh. We don’t need that either, do we?
Eddy Badrina:
No, no.
Lyn Wineman:
Especially in Arizona and California.
Eddy Badrina:
That are already going through a super drought, right?
Lyn Wineman:
Yeah.
Eddy Badrina:
That’s not the water they use. That’s the water they waste. Because remember, plants transpire water so they’re using way more than that, but they waste a ton of water. If it was organic, that’s just regular runoff. If it’s conventional, it’s pesticide-filled, contaminated runoff. 800 to 900,000 gallons of pesticide contaminated runoff. Not a good-
Lyn Wineman:
That sounds very sad. As a matter of fact, very sad indeed.
Eddy Badrina:
It is very sad. It gets even sadder. They grow all that in a field over however many days, probably 35, 40 days. Then when they harvest it, on average, there’s 30% waste.
Lyn Wineman:
Wow.
Eddy Badrina:
They literally do not harvest up to 30% of the crop because it doesn’t meet spec, or it overgrows, or there’s something wrong with it, so that’s what’s left on the field. Then it sits in a truck or in the distribution system for about a week to a week and a half, so there’s more waste there, spoilage. Then it gets to the shelf, probably some spoils there.
Lyn Wineman:
Mm-hmm.
Eddy Badrina:
You buy it and you have about four days to eat it.
Lyn Wineman:
Yeah. There is, you’re racing the clock, “We have to eat this tonight because it expires tomorrow,” yeah.
Eddy Badrina:
Exactly. I just described a ton of waste and environmental concerns, and I didn’t even tell you how much diesel it took for that truck to get from that field to our distribution center, or how many pounds of carbon dioxide that were put in the air by that truck, or the fact that there’s usually, right now at least, there’s stoppages and there’s delays along the way because of the lack of truckers. Man, I don’t know about you, but that’s just unsustainable.
Lyn Wineman:
Yeah.
Eddy Badrina:
That’s just for lettuce.
Lyn Wineman:
That’s just for lettuce.
Eddy Badrina:
Think about all the other produce, all the other produce out there that’s coming from more miles away. Lettuce in itself is an $8 billion industry here in the United States.
Lyn Wineman:
Wow. You’re growing lettuce in vertical farming. What else can you grow in a vertical greenhouse?
Eddy Badrina:
We’ve grown around 200 varietals of lettuces, leafy greens, herbs, tomatoes, some fruiting crops, peppers. From an economic standpoint, we’ve identified about 75 varietals that we know we can produce and have a positive economic return, long-term economic sustainability for each of our greenhouse units. The thing that we’re focusing on right now are lettuce, herbs, and peppers.
Lyn Wineman:
You know what I’m going to say? There is nothing better, I think, than a fresh tomato. A tomato that’s come from 800 miles away, and sat in the truck, sat in the store, sat on the shelf, sat in your fridge, it doesn’t even taste like a tomato, so that in itself is very exciting. I’ve heard that, and you’ve mentioned that produce grown in vertical greenhouse is more nutritious. I’m curious. Why is that? Are there other benefits for the plants, in addition?
Eddy Badrina:
Yeah. I’m a realist, and so I would say the produce grown out of vertical farms, and these hydroponic greenhouses, and us are as nutritious as what you’re going to find out on the field. Could they be more nutritious? I think so. It’s a really broad, sweeping statement, so I’m reluctant to say that.
Lyn Wineman:
Okay.
Eddy Badrina:
I do think they are as nutritious. I know they are. We’ve done the tests. They are as nutritious. The reason is, is because, at least in our system … It differs in other systems, but in our platform of growing, the plants get the maximum amount of water that’s filled with the ideal, optimal balance of nutrients. They get fed it 24/7, and our water moves so fast in our system, it’ll go from a pump an acre and a half away to the plants, and back to the pump in 90 seconds. The water’s flowing that fast. When you have the water flowing that fast, full of nutrients at a temperature that is optimal for plant growth and minimizes and mitigates any sort of bacterial growth because it’s oxygenated, what you end up getting is just this all-you-can-eat buffet for the plant.
Eddy Badrina:
Then when you combine it with our patented system of controlling the climate … We call it our microclimate technology. We’re the only ones that can control each individual climate around the plant spots. What you get is perfect amount of CO2, airflow, air temp, humidity levels. What you then get is this climate that’s perfect for the plant to grow quickly and be filled with the nutrients that it needs to be just really healthy for the overall consumer.
Lyn Wineman:
I’m just picturing these happy little plants in spa-like conditions, right?
Eddy Badrina:
Oh, they’re treated way better than we are in our HVAC houses.
Lyn Wineman:
I love that.
Eddy Badrina:
That brings up a really good point. One of the ways we are also really efficient and environmentally friendly is when you’re only controlling … We do control the ambient temperature, but it’s a very secondary concern for us. When your primary concern is just the 12-inch radius around each plant spot, what you end up getting is, you only are really controlling one-fifth of the entire volume of that greenhouse.
Eddy Badrina:
It would be as if you and I are sitting in our offices or our homes right now, and there was no HVAC. There were only personalized backpacks that kept the three-foot radius around us at 67 degrees, and then everywhere, it was 85 or 90. Unbelievable energy savings. Unbelievably uncomfortable for everyone else in the household, but for plants … If we just all wore little backpacks, it would be a really interesting experiment on how much energy we could save. I could tell you right now, in our greenhouses at least, because we’re not really concerned with the overall ambient temperature, we’re not having to control it like these other greenhouses that they have to condition 60 to 120 acres of greenhouse under roof, or in the case of a vertical farm-
Lyn Wineman:
That’s a lot of conditioning.
Eddy Badrina:
A lot of conditioning. Again, so that’s where electricity comes in. That’s where a lot of the waste comes in. We don’t have to do that.
Lyn Wineman:
That’s amazing. Eddy, you’ve mentioned a lot of different ways Eden Green’s technology is positioned to help cities deal with climate change. Anything else out there under that umbrella that you haven’t had a chance to mention?
Eddy Badrina:
Oh, man. Besides 99% less land.
Lyn Wineman:
Yeah.
Eddy Badrina:
Oh, we only waste 90,000 gallons of water a year, compared to the 800 to 900,000 gallons for a conventional farm. Just to give you perspective on what 90,000 gallons of water a year means, one of our households will waste 45,000 gallons of water.
Lyn Wineman:
Whoa, so that’s like just two houses.
Eddy Badrina:
You got it, so-
Lyn Wineman:
Two houses.
Eddy Badrina:
We will waste two households worth of water to grow two million plants, two million pounds of greens. It’s pretty-
Lyn Wineman:
That’s for everyone who leaves the water on while they brush their teeth.
Eddy Badrina:
Exactly, yeah.
Lyn Wineman:
All right. Eddy, by the time this episode airs, I understand that construction could be wrapping up on a pretty big project for you. Can you tell us a bit more about that and what makes this accomplishment so special?
Eddy Badrina:
Sure. In 2017, we had our 4,000 square foot pilot facility built. That was a great technological proof of concept, and we’re actually producing out of it now for a label, a retail brand here in Texas. The demand has been so great that we realized we’re now in growth stage. One of the pieces of growth was to build a full, 62,000 square foot facility with a packhouse attached to it.
Lyn Wineman:
Wow.
Eddy Badrina:
That’s what we embarked on in September, so golden shovels turning dirt in September, and we’ll have our first harvest out in exactly one year from that time.
Lyn Wineman:
That’s amazing.
Eddy Badrina:
We’re excited about that because it’s really a commercial proof that we cannot just do it operationally, but that it’s profitable from a unit perspective. I know the entire industry is watching because we’ll actually be able to produce numbers that show, “Hey, we’ve got a 30% profit margin off of growing lettuce.” In an industry that prides itself on anywhere from 2% to 5% margins, that’s pretty amazing.
Lyn Wineman:
Yeah.
Eddy Badrina:
That’s why we’re excited, because it really is going to disrupt the marketplace in a good way.
Lyn Wineman:
Wow. That is great. It all comes down to a huge goal of eliminating food insecurity. I’m curious. What other goals do you have in your future, and what do you see for the next five to 10 years? You’ve already accomplished so much.
Eddy Badrina:
Well, we are just getting started. Our vision is to have a mesh network of these greenhouses all around the United States, right next to distribution centers. Because when you put them next to distribution centers, you eliminate virtually all of the supply chain costs involved in produce. When you eliminate those supply chain and distribution costs, that’s around, I’ll call it anywhere from 5 to 8% of the cost of your retail bag that you’re seeing. That’s significant. That is a significant cost savings that the grocer will pass on down to the consumer.
Eddy Badrina:
Why that’s important is because it, all of a sudden, becomes very, very accessible to consumers to have local greens in their fridges and on their plates. That can only be accomplished with a mesh network of greenhouses, so we actually, in seven years, we’re planning to have 80 of these greenhouses up and running all around the United States.
Lyn Wineman:
Wow. That’s just great. I don’t know about our listeners, but I am hungry for a big, fresh, leafy green salad right now.
Eddy Badrina:
As you should, as you should.
Lyn Wineman:
Eddy, I’m going to ask you a different question. It’s my favorite question. Everybody who listens to the podcast knows I love this question. I am inspired by motivational quotes. I’m hoping you could give us a few of your own Eddy Badrina original words of wisdom.
Eddy Badrina:
The one that has really struck with me now is, be impatient in the short term, but patient in the long term, so-
Lyn Wineman:
I love that. Can you talk more about it?
Eddy Badrina:
Absolutely. I have a bias towards action, and I think most entrepreneurs do.
Lyn Wineman:
Yeah.
Eddy Badrina:
That impatience to do something, even if it’s wrong, even if you fail, you fail fast and you do something else knowing that you learned from that. At the same time, you have to have a fixed, enduring vision of what you want and what you want the outcome to be. You have to be patient in seeing that vision come to a reality. You’ll have ups and downs, lefts and rights, tailwinds and headwinds, but you have to keep your eye on the prize, on that long-term deal. The only way you’re able to keep that eye on the prize is if you’re patient.
Lyn Wineman:
Yeah.
Eddy Badrina:
It’s two contradictory ideas, but they do make sense when you really think about the day-to-day versus the five to 10-year plan. Be patient in the short term, but patient in the long term.
Lyn Wineman:
That is great. I would have to say that fits my own entrepreneurial journey as well. Sometimes, it’s easy to get distracted. Sometimes, it’s easy to be fearful and want to wait, and so this blend of going fast and going slow is an important combination for success.
Eddy Badrina:
Absolutely.
Lyn Wineman:
Eddy, for our listeners who would like to learn more about your work, what’s going on at Eden Green Technology, how can they find out more?
Eddy Badrina:
On the web, it’s just edengreen, like the Garden of Eden, edengreen.com, super simple.
Lyn Wineman:
I’m so happy that you got that good URL.
Eddy Badrina:
Yes, yes. Then on social media, everywhere, it’s edengreentech.
Lyn Wineman:
Okay.
Eddy Badrina:
You can find it on Instagram, and Facebook, and LinkedIn, and all that good stuff.
Lyn Wineman:
Fantastic. We’ll have a link to the website for everyone, and also those great YouTube videos that we referenced earlier. Eddy, I have really loved this conversation. I feel like I’ve learned so much from you. As we wrap up our time together today, what is the most important thing you would like our listeners to remember about the work that you’re doing?
Eddy Badrina:
I would say, at the end of the day, it comes down to people. Be kind to yourself. Especially as entrepreneurs and leaders, you have to be kind to yourself, and be kind to others. It’s really what it all boils down to.
Lyn Wineman:
Wow. Eddy, you’re a great businessperson. You’re a great speaker. You have these great concepts on leadership. I fully believe the world needs more people like you. Thank you for taking the time to share with us today.
Eddy Badrina:
Thanks for having me.
Announcer:
We hope you enjoyed today’s Agency for Change podcast. To hear all our interviews with those who are making a positive change in our communities, or to nominate a changemaker you’d love to hear from, visit KidGlov.com at K-I-D-G-L-O-V.com to get in touch. As always, if you like what you’ve heard today, be sure to rate, review, subscribe, and share. Thanks for listening, and we’ll see you next time.