Ep #69: Turning Your Hobby into a Second Career with Greg Colden

You are listening to the Overthinkers Guide to Joy, episode 69. This is the one
where I interview someone very special who talks about reinvention, late in life,
and how it's never too late to follow your dreams. Let's dive in. This is a
podcast for overthinkers, overdoers, and overachievers who are tired of feeling
overanxious and just want to feel better. I'm your host certified life coach, Jackie de Crinis.

Hey there. Today I am having a very special guest. I know I say that every week,
but that's actually not true. This is really a very special guest and it's special
for a lot of reasons. But the reason he's on the show today is because his
professional life story is one that I share with a lot of my clients, maybe
unbeknownst to him. I don't know if I've ever told him that, but this is a story
about reinvention, finding a passion, and taking steps to pursue an interest or a
hobby, and then that passion or hobby leading you to a whole new chapter of your
life. And although this gentleman has never been my client, I have known him my
entire life, and his story inspired me in many ways to have the courage to do two
major shifts in my life. One was moved to Hawaii, and two was to start a second
career in my fifties. But today, I'm going to have him tell you his story and how
he became one of the happiest people I know and embodies the expression, "If you
love what you do for a living, you will never work a day in your life." And with
that, I would like to introduce the owner of the Handcrafted Soap Company, Kona
Natural Soap, and my brother, Greg Colden. - Aloha.
- Aloha. Hi, Greg. - Hi. - So Greg and I have to be very careful because we have a
very bad habit, even at our old age, of slipping into our childhood personas and
talking in this very strange voice. We kind of have our own language and always
have. We don't really relate to each other very often as adults, like as grownups
or professionals, we really, when we get together, we tend to talk as if I'm still
five years old and he's 10, which means he's five years older than me. But we're
going to try for the purpose of this interview to bring our professional selves to
this conversation.
Because his story really did inspire me, although I probably never told him that to
his face, but I'm telling him today for the podcast. So Greg, welcome. Thank you so
much. And I never heard that acknowledgement before. So wow, I feel so, my ego is
just so inflated now. I can't believe it. Well, you already have a healthy ego. So
we'll try and keep a parachute on that or a net. But I want to talk a little bit
about, let's start with who you are, where you work, what you own, what you do,
and then let's back into the story that led you to where you are in your life. So
start with your company, start with all the things. Okay. Well, basically, our main
project is Kokolakalani Farms. Kokolakalani Farms is a biodiverse farm.
Biodiversity is the integration of plant and different tree species as well as
animals to create a healthy environment. And we practice it on a five -acre parcel
of land that once was a part of a 26 -acre rock quarry in Hawaii,
on the island of Hawaii. And it was a major endeavor to make the shift from being
in the professional world to embracing the idea or the notion of possibly becoming a
farmer. - Okay, so with that, tell the audience what you used to do and where you
used to live and how kind of regular your life used to be and how sort of
extraordinary and different it is now. - Okay, well, so born and raised in in Los
Angeles, moved to the San Francisco Bay Area to go to college and went to college
for seven, eight years on and off, never really finding my path.
And following that, went to work in law firm administration and ultimately in
insurance. And subsequently, I started my own insurance brokerage,
which became relatively successful, and at the same time,
I wanted something a little bit different, something a little bit more exciting with
my life. I had a number of health challenges and realized that if I didn't create
not necessarily a work -life balance, but a gratification balance,
I wasn't going to live to be retired like most people. This stress would have just
tore me up. So I bought a five -acre parcel of land in Kona,
Hawaii in a little town called Hulua Loa, which is the heritage quarter, with the
intention that someday we would move here and retire.
My partner and I would retire. And we grubbed the land as we call it.
We had the land cleared. And I realized I didn't want to wait another,
at that point I was in my early 40s, I didn't want to wait another 20, 25 years
to make that happen or have it come to fruition. Because in the back of my mind,
I kept feeling as though I probably wasn't going to make it to that point. You can
only have so much money, but then your inner self kind of erodes.
And that was - Because you don't love what you're doing, yeah. Correct. And though I
had an incredible brokerage and some really great people working with me,
at the end of the day, I wasn't satisfied. And my place of peace, there's a word
in Hawaiian called Lua Kaha, and my place of peace was my farm,
Kokolay Kalani Farms, which means chocolate heaven. And so I started planting trees.
We built a duplex on the farm, and I would come over here every six weeks and
we'd plant trees. Half of them would die, I'd come back again, and the guy that
was supposed to be tending to them would show up the week that I came so that,
you know, it looked like it had been watered, but most everything was dead. And
then I plant some more trees and plant some more trees. And finally, I kind of hit
a wall and said, I don't know if this is what I really want. And I was starting
to have some more health problems. And I had gone to the doctor and the doctor
said to me, you need to give up this notion of this, it's a panacea.
You need to give up this notion of a farm. It really doesn't make a lot of sense.
You've got this great career, you've got this great business, but the satisfaction
wasn't there anymore. So he says, you've got to make a decision one way or the
other. So what do we do? We sold the big house in the Oakland Hills and I sold
my insurance business and we moved here and I spent two years planting trees, 2 ,000
trees. And that was my self -satisfaction. That was the,
there's another word in Hawaiian called your kuleana, your obligation. And that was
my give back to the Aina, to the environment. And it reinforced my core values.
And it was a really, really, really scary time 'cause money just kept flowing out.
Because if anybody wants to get rid of a lot of money, you just buy a farm and
you dig holes in the ground and you throw money in it. And that's what I did. But
then it sort of turned a corner. And I was fortunate enough to learn soap making
on the mainland from an incredible environmentalist named Allison Kiplinger in her
basement in Oakland and my partner Marty came up with the idea of why don't we
create a soap business? I'm like, you're kidding. And he goes, no, he says,
you know, I used to buy natural soap at the health food store and I think we
could do this. So I went through numerous maturations of formulas and whatnot and
catalogued everything in books and research as much as I could. And we embraced the
method of making soap using vegan oils and essential oils.
But then we took it one step further and we said, well, maybe we could do things
like chocolate soaps since we grow chocolate. So there were some interesting processes
along the way and we started making chocolate soaps which were embraced by many
people. And then we developed the Kona Natural Soap Company. - And how many years
ago is that? How old is the Kona Natural Soap Company? - The very first batch, I
never sold a bar of soap because I was in development stage for many, many years.
But the very first batch, it's actually in a newspaper article above my head in the
factory here. And it was October 5th, 2005. And I made my first commercial batch of
soap. And that was the start of the company. And in those days, we were making
three, maybe I was lucky if I made 300 bars of soap a month. Wow.
And now we make over 3000 bars of soap a month. And I can barely keep up.
Well, and to differentiate between what is a commercially produced soap. Every bar is
made by hand and every bar is sold by hand. That is either in person on your
tours or in the local shop that you have in the farmers market or on the internet
when you ship them worldwide. Those are the three ways to buy your soap. Correct.
What now does the Kona Natural Soap company, and the five -acre former rock quarry
house. In other words, what has happened to Kona Natural Soap, and what is it from
then, that first 300 bars, to today? So we grow chocolate.
We entered a competition. Chocolate is a brand new industry in botany in Hawaii.
It was only-- the very first trees were planted in 1981. Well, explain to the
layman, so chocolate doesn't grow on trees, cacao grows on trees. Correct. I'm sorry.
Yeah. So the cocoa beans or cacao grows on trees and that's what you grow on your
farm. That's principally what we grow. We grow chocolate, we grow coma coffee,
citrus, papayas, mangoes, bananas, pineapples, avocados, coconuts and a bunch of weird
exotic fruit as well, onesies and twosies and stuff. But principally, we grow
chocolate. And what's so exciting is to see somebody who is never known,
and myself included 20 plus years ago, I didn't know that chocolate grew on trees.
No, we thought it came. We had thought it came in a Snickers bar at the grocery
store. Exactly. And the peanuts were my protein for the day, you know, right?
Which is why I look the way I do. But, you know, it's a magical tree.
It's not just Willy Wonka. It's truly a sustainable and agribusiness that is so
important to Hawaii. And the fact that they didn't even realize to plant the first
trees until 1981 is astounding because cacao dates back centuries.
The origins of cacao or central in South America. And what's so gratifying to me is
we have seen so much progress in the four decades of cacao for all of the islands,
for Kauai and Oahu and now Maui's even growing it. But Hawaii Island was the first.
And we've had our trees genotyped. We were part of a project,
the trees are starting to morph, they're becoming their own unique genetic signature.
And in 2019, we entered an international competition called the Cocoa of Excellence
Awards. We actually won best chocolate in the world. And you went to France to
collect your award. Of course. Well, that was kind of a holiday thing, you know,
this one. Yeah. So that's amazing. Okay. So again, Artisanal soap, cacao,
coffee, farm tours. How long have you been-- And we sell our chocolate. We sell our
chocolate. And you sell chocolate. And then, of course, you sell t -shirts and hats
and all the things, all the stuff. Oh, all the swag. You've got to have a logo.
On your farm tours, how many people are coming to your farm off the cruise ships
on average per week and season? That is cruise season.
I mean, 90 and 200 people. - So you are hosting 90 or 200 individuals,
giving them farm tours, letting them taste your chocolate, your coffee, take a sample
of soap home, buy your soap, buy your t -shirts, buy your hats, buy your artisanal
ceramic mugs that you make in your pottery barn, which is something that you started
when you were 14 years old. And I think you should tell that story too, because
that kind of led to the making of the soap, which is the story I tell my clients.
So at a very early age at 14, I went to a pottery studio and I'd take the bus
on Saturdays and I'd go and I learned how to wedge clay and hand build things.
And then I learned how to throw at the wheel. And that was My zen,
I finally figured out it was taking out aggressions 'cause I was not a nice
teenager, as some people know. I was angry at times.
And it was a method in which that I could channel my anger or frustration or my
inadequacy by wedging clay.
And so throwing was just this zen thing that would happen. And I've gone in and
out of it my entire life, never thinking that any of it was of any value,
that I had no talent. And I did some amazing pieces, some large vessels and
whatnot. But most of it, I just felt what I wasn't worthy. And of course, later in
life, I went to community colleges, where of course, it's important the way that the
professors are there because they're accomplished potters with,
you know, masters in fine arts. And of course, their idea is not to teach,
but to malign or to put down, I'm trying to think of the right word, but. - Okay,
to judge. - To judge. And just not just critique, but actually I can't tell you how
many times this particularly one Professor actually went over and I thought I had
done something beautiful and took the wire tool and split it in half and went Look
at this take it back to the wedging table and re -wedge it. It's terrible. Wow It's
so demeaning. So again, it says saying encouraging It's that demeaning nature that
basically makes you feel that you're not worthy. And so seven years ago,
I had a very severe neck injury, carrying one of my dogs and went through intensive
physical therapy. And the physical therapist was incredible and encouraged me to start
baking bread. And I'm like, what the hell are you talking about? And he says,
baking bread, you're kneading the dough. And I said, oh my god, because my ulna
nerve was damaged from my neck. And he says, kneading dough will rebuild that nerve
trunk. You know, all the acupuncture in the world isn't going to fix it. You got
to do this. And I said, oh my gosh, that's wedging clay.
And I said, "Okay." And so that was the start of me going back into doing my
pottery again. And I joined a co -op, you know, we have an incredible number of
people who were environmentalists and farmers and artists here on the island. I found
this co -op of these very accomplished artists. I applied for the co -op, I was
immediately accepted. And for six months I worked in the co -op and I learned more
about not just making clay, but the firing process, glaze compositions,
all these other things. And eventually we built my studio at the top of the farm.
What you refer to as the pottery barn? The pottery barn. And now you cannot keep
those artisanal coffee mugs on the shelf because when they come, the 100 people come
every week off these buses, these cruise ship buses, they grab them and they
basically, your shelves are bare week after week. They buy all the soap,
they buy all the mugs, they buy all the hats, the t -shirts, the coffee and the
chocolate. - The chocolate, my God, the chocolate. We had a wonderful man who was
making our chocolate here locally. He said, I can't keep up the production that you
guys need. So we now use a large artisan chocolate maker in Oahu who does an
incredible job. And we just came out with our new chocolate packaging. We hired a
graphic artist and it's so gorgeous. And right now it was in a plain sleeve with a
couple of stickers on it. and I'm like, oh my gosh, are they going to be able to
keep up the production? Because people love our chocolate. So it's very rewarding.
And had I stayed in the insurance business, I would have been long retired by now
and sitting with my feet up, you know, on a chaise lounge or in a hammock on the
lanai. But if you could live that long, as you said, because the boredom and the
stress of the mundanity of it and the soullessness and nothing against insurance and
nothing against being a traditional business owner, but your passion wasn't there. And
the fact that you now work six and a half days a week because you choose to,
because you love making soap, you love throwing pottery, you love your cacao trees,
You love planting trees. You love meeting with the clients who come to the farm.
You love going to the farmer's market and selling the soap. You love spending time
with your partner and your dogs and your chickens and your cats. And you love your
farm and you love Hawaii. So you're surrounded by love and you have created love
everywhere you look because it's anything you love to do so it's not work.
One of the things that's the most gratifying in the world is the validation I get
from guests that come to the farm. They go, "Oh my gosh, this is something I've
never experienced in my life." And the takeaway, the impression that some people get
is so awarding for me. And what's really neat is when they stay in touch and six
months later, they send me photos of something that they completed, or they write a
little story in a card and say, you know, I'm now involved in my community doing
this and doing that, whatever it is that they're doing. So one of the things that
we talk about, one of the many exercises or tools we use in coaching is future
self. And what that means is when we talk to a client, whether it's on a consult
or it's at the beginning of a relationship or it can even be in an older
relationship and coaching, we're always looking towards what are your goals?
What's your vision for yourself? And those visions sometimes are physical,
like somebody wants to lose weight. Sometimes it's about earning enough money to be
able to travel. Sometimes it's about buying a house. Sometimes it's about being
married. Sometimes it's about getting a dog. Sometimes it's about having a new job
or their own career or their own business. But we ask the client to sit and close
their eyes and imagine what their ideal life could look like.
And then we give a timeframe. Like, is that three months, six months, a year, five
years? And it really doesn't matter because it just depends on how lofty the goal
is. When did you buy the rock quarry? We bought the rock quarry in 2003. OK.
So 20 years ago, did you have a vision of something?
Oh, gosh, it moved really fast. But you. But when you bought five acres of raw
land, no home, No pets. No trees. Just rock. Yeah.
What was the next rung on the ladder, if you will, for you with that five acres
of rock? Plant it. Plant it. That was it. Pure and simple. Plant it.
Okay. And then eventually build something on it so that we can come and stay here
intermittently. Okay, but so that's the beginning of the vision. Here you are 20
years later. It's planted. You live on it. You make a living on it.
You bring in hundreds of people a week to enjoy the farm tour,
to buy the products you make with your hands. You built it. It's literally like
Field of Dreams. If you build it, they will come. Mm -hmm. You have five acres of
field of dreams So for me, that's the takeaway for What is possible and that's a
thing I talk about a lot and coaching which is like What's possible for you and it
starts with a dream? It starts with an idea It's all about starting with the
thought. Oh Of course, of course Yeah. And too often,
people stick with the thought, and then they pontificate what it's going to be like
to do this, that, and the other, and I call it the Mai Tai sunsets of Hawaii.
Yeah. You know, there's the people that come here for two weeks, and they sit on
the lanai, and it's like, "What if we did this, and what if we did that?" It
doesn't work that way. No, you got it. I mean, metaphorically, you got to dig holes
and plant trees. That's exactly it and it's backbreaking work. Yeah,
but that's the difference and that's what we're talking about. It starts with a
thought and then it starts with action and it's baby steps. It's literally planting
seeds. It's interesting. There's so many metaphors in what you talked about with the
failure of coming there and planting and every six weeks coming back and seeing that
everything died because you have to till the soil. You have to water the plants.
You have to watch it grow. You can't stand over and watch it grow, but you got to
keep going. And I think so many people get lost in, like you said,
just the dream, or people get lost. They plant the seed, but they don't water the
garden. And you have to do all the steps. And then the final step,
of course, is be patient because it didn't happen overnight.
It happened over two decades, but it incrementally did happen overnight because you
planted the trees, the trees grew, you built the house, you lived there, you built
the soap factory, and then it became five other products, and then it became farm
tours. Then didn't you win an award or some kind of identification for the most
popular tourist destination for cruise ships? Oh, yeah, we,
TripAdvisor, were the number one destination. Number one destination for?
Number one shopping destination. On TripAdvisor. On TripAdvisor. That's amazing.
So again, five -acre rock quarry to number one destination on TripAdvisor.
I mean, pretty incredible. All right. So for all of those who are listening,
how do people find your website? Tell them how to be able to shop your products
online. Super easy. Remember,
Kona soap .com Everything's on the web the chocolate the coffee the soaps the cacooly
oils the swag Everything's there. The only way to buy the stoneware is to come to
the island in person and get it of course Okay, and if they come to the island
and meet me Yeah, so and if they come to the big island if They're on a cruise,
they can obviously sign up through the cruise ships, but if they are not on a
cruise, how can they take a farm tour and meet you and see your farm and buy all
your products? On our website, there's a drop, again, Marty, you know,
Mr. Brilliance over there, the wizard behind the bamboo curtain. He has a section
that says tours, you drop down, it takes you right into Viator, which is TripAdvisor
and you book your tour. - Well, Greg, I wanna thank you for doing this interview
and I'm super happy that we didn't slip into our five and 10 year old selves that
we could get through the whole interview like adults without teasing each other and
bringing up like all the horror stories of when we were kids and used to fight
pretty much nonstop. - I think we've all become better friends. We've gotten older.
I've gotten older, but it's still fun to regress a little bit now and again. Yeah,
but not for the purpose of this 45 minutes. No, not at all. All right. Well,
thanks, Greg. I love you and I thank you for sharing your story and I hope it
inspires others who have been thinking about opening their own business, moving to a
new location, or just having a second chapter in their life, because that's what
it's all about.