How a Conscious Relationship Can Foster Growth Across Your Whole Life with Hubby Jon [Episode #847]

This week’s topic is: How a Conscious Relationship Can Foster Growth Across Your Whole Life with Hubby Jon

I am so excited to have my amazing hubby, Jon Bier, back on the show, who is going to discuss with me growing in a relationship and building together. We’ve been on an amazing journey and we love to share about what’s really helped us in our relationship and how we continue to build our family life and projects together. It’s really exciting.

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Other Podcasts you may enjoy!:

• 8 Ways to Keep Your Relationship Alive after Children with my Hubby Jon
• How To Recognize and Free Yourself of Co-dependent Relationships in Life
• How to Trust Your Body’s Intuition in Friendships and Intimate Relationships in Life
• How Emotional Intelligence affects Personal Relationships in Your Daily Life

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Transcript:

Note: The following is the output of transcribing from an audio recording. Although the transcription is largely accurate, in some cases it is incomplete or inaccurate. This is due to inaudible passages or transcription errors. It is posted as an aid, but should not be treated as an authoritative record.

Kimberly: 00:02 Namaste everyone and welcome back to our Monday interview show. I am so excited to have my amazing hubby, AKA Papa bear back on the show today, who is going to discuss with me growing in a relationship and building together. We’ve been on an amazing journey and he’s been on the show I think three or four times, and we love to share about what’s really helped us in our relationship and how we continue to build our family life and projects together. It’s really exciting. So thank you so much, hubby for being back on the show today.

Jon: 00:40 Oh, well thank you for having me, mama.

Kimberly: 00:43 And before we get deeper in, I wanted to remind you that on our show notes, which are going to be posted@mysauna.com, we will have links to other shows I think you would enjoy, as well as articles, recipes, meditations. It’s also where you can submit questions for our Q and a podcast, which are always on Thursdays. So everything is always on my sauna.com. Alright, that being said, let’s get into our show today with my amazing hubby, Jon, who is right next to me. I have to say that it’s five 30 in the morning right now. We got up early to do this show. We have to fit it in the day. We’re really busy in the evenings, we’re tired. So thank you Papa Bear for getting up early with me.

Jon: 01:31 Well, it’s my pleasure. And today’s a big day, isn’t it?

Kimberly: 01:35 Today is a really big

Jon: 01:36 Day. Are we nervous?

Kimberly: 01:39 No, I think we are prepared. Do you want to share what’s happening today,

Jon: 01:43 Part of the

Kimberly: 01:43 Show’s theme?

Jon: 01:44 Yes. I’m from Canada and even though I’ve been here for about 20 years, 20 something like that, a little shy of 20 years, I don’t have a green card. I’ve been on visas and so today I’ll be getting my green card and I’ll be able to leave the country again, which I haven’t been able to do for two and a half years.

Kimberly: 02:07 Yeah, it’s exciting. We are having our interview today, so we had to get all this paperwork together. We didn’t get it together right away after we’d been married, we’re coming up on five years of marriage and then things were slow during Covid. So today we got a big interview,

Jon: 02:27 But so they give us a list of questions or at least my lawyers did, they

Kimberly: 02:31 May ask, and

Jon: 02:32 I’m like, I don’t know some of these. What type of toothpaste do you use? I dunno, we both use the same toothpaste, but it’s some organic fluoride free brand that I don’t know the name of.

Kimberly: 02:46 Some of the questions are really intense. I think it was like, do you sleep with the ceiling fan on?

Jon: 02:55 Oh, that one’s easy.

Kimberly: 02:57 Yes, in the summer, snow in the winter.

Jon: 03:00 Yeah, but I mean, yeah, maybe it’s not. I don’t know if I do you do? I don’t have a separate ceiling fan. If it was up to me bss, if it was up to me, we’d have a pitch dark room, cold, cold mattress, and a big gravity blanket on top.

Kimberly: 03:21 Oh my gosh.

Jon: 03:22 It’s be a cold cocoon and have it about 66 degrees in the room.

Kimberly: 03:28 Well, sometimes when people meet us, they still say, oh wow, you guys have such opposite lifestyle habits. It used to be people say, oh, you’re so opposite. But I just don’t feel that at all anymore. It’s funny because I feel like, which is part of the show today, we’re really coming together in so many ways. We’re going to share with you guys some of these projects that we’re working on together, which is really exciting. We’ve been married for five years and yes, there are differences. We eat completely differently. You’re carnivore based and you’re CrossFit and I’m more walking in nature and meditation.

Jon: 04:13 I have a potty mouth. You

Kimberly: 04:17 Like all your biohacking stuff. The cold mattress is my worst nightmare, whatever it’s called, the eight sleep best. But there’s been this melding, I was trying to explain to some of my friends that’s come together over the last five years, just almost like this yin yang, this shiva shakti, this divine feminine, this divine masculine really coming together, which took some years to get to and we really had to work out our own communication. We had to work out some of our own trauma. We had to work on our own selves and look at where we are now.

Jon: 04:52 Where are we a wonder?

Kimberly: 04:56 Well, in a couple ways. Number one, well first let’s talk about the opposites thing and then we’ll talk about some of the ways in which we’re working together, which I don’t think would’ve been possible earlier. Okay. So do you still think of us as opposites?

Jon: 05:09 No, I think we have vastly different interests and we look at the world, we have a few things that appear opposite. It’s not just eating habits. Right. You believe in non-violence. Yes.

Kimberly: 05:29 Not killing the animals.

Jon: 05:31 I’m a martial artist and I have a heavy meat diet, but I don’t think we’re that. I don’t also want to, I don’t believe in violence. I believe in knowing how to fight and I like the practice and the discipline and the art of martial arts and in of animals. I’d rather have a relationship with my food and know where it’s coming from than just go to the grocery store and pick out some meat in a styrofoam package. Which is different from your perspective, but it’s not as different as you might think.

Kimberly: 06:14 Well, yes, and I know for some people that’s a really big thing and food is a big thing for me, but with our values and love and how we raise our kids and being compassionate and spiritual, it just feels like we’re so aligned on so many other in all the ways that are really important day to day, that at first, and we found ways to work with the food. We are very blessed and lucky in that we have separate kitchens because the smells can be really intense for me and

Jon: 06:55 For me.

Kimberly: 06:56 So we can, you mean my food smells are intense? Yeah, the broccoli is too intense.

Jon: 07:01 The broccoli. I was going to say the garlic, but you don’t eat garlic.

Kimberly: 07:06 Yeah, well, lentil pasta smells like lentils. Yeah. So anyways, you used to say that all the time to people, but you’re like, we’re so different. We’re so opposite. You don’t say that anymore. I don’t feel that because I think now at this point we’ve just melded together so much in so many ways.

Jon: 07:30 Yeah, I would agree with that.

Kimberly: 07:33 So let’s see. Wow. So we’ve been married now and we’ve built this, we’re working on building this farm together in Hawaii. We didn’t plan it, but we wanted to get another property and we wanted to get another property together. And then we chose to get something tropical and we found this beautiful piece of land and then we had an idea to get cacao trees and honey, and then the next piece of land next to it came on sale. And so then we decided to get that. And now we have a pretty big, sorry, our three-year-old this year, whispering next to us. Momo, you’re awake now. Good morning.

Jon: 08:26 I thought you’re so cute that

Kimberly: 08:29 He’s so cute.

Jon: 08:30 There you go. He’s running back in the closet.

Kimberly: 08:32 He’s playing in the podcast closet next to us. So anyways, I got a little distracted, but we decided to, it’s a big deal putting a farm together. We have a beekeeper and we put a lot of work and with our hands in the land, we

Jon: 08:45 Planted every tree ourselves

Kimberly: 08:47 From seed through the nursery, from seed. So I feel like we’ve learned a lot from creating the farm together.

Jon: 08:54 Well, but also we met, got married very quickly, got pregnant right away, right away without planning for it.

Kimberly: 09:04 Bought this house, bought

Jon: 09:05 This house, and a year later on a whim, unplanned. And we’re abundant people, but we’re not wealthy people. This was everything that we purchased was like, oh God, how are we going to figure this out? How are we going to figure

Kimberly: 09:26 This out? It was leaving onto that willy

Jon: 09:28 Pat. And then a year after that we bought the second property, the third property, but the second Hawaii property. And those were all the right decisions. Those were things that it was like, Hey, let’s figure out now how to build our businesses, make more money, become more abundant and pay for these things. And now I can honestly say that we have our properties no matter what happens in life from here on out, I don’t need anymore. I don’t need a different property. I don’t need to live in this giant house. I never want to live. I don’t live value living in a giant house. I do value living on a sprawling piece of land. I love that. Being able to drive a vehicle on our land is a real dream of mine that we’ve been able to achieve. But I would never want to live in a giant house.

Kimberly: 10:31 So you’ve taught me a lot about abundance and not being, it’s not irresponsible, but there’s this idea of stretching and then stepping up. So first I was like, wow, okay, we’re going to get this other one and we’re just going to have to figure out, we’re just going to have to grow things to be comfortable within those two mortgages. And then when the third one came, I felt it going into savings to pay for the down payment. And then the monthly, there was a bit of a squeeze, but we had to really step up and you’ve really stepped up in your business since we’ve been married. I think when we started you were what, three or four people and now you have 55. So there’s been this explosive growth which coming together I think as a family, like you said in the beginning, we fell in love.

11:32 We got married in two months, a couple months after that we got pregnant with Moses. And so there was this sort of whirlwind of, hey, all this stuff’s happening. We bought our house I think a month after we got married or something, or maybe before we got married. It all just sort of happened. And then there was this melding and settling in and just really like, oh wow, we’re doing this now we’re five years in. And it’s like, wow, we’re coming together more and more. There’s that passionate wild love that we always felt and we still feel, but there’s been this more deeper day-to-day integration. It’s hard to put into words, but where we’re really coming together as a couple. I feel like as a family, that takes time.

Jon: 12:19 We spend a lot of time together.

Kimberly: 12:21 Yes, we

Jon: 12:22 Do. Covid where we didn’t leave the house for a year and a half really. And we also had a baby in that time. So we were extra cuddled in together, which was for me, for us. And having that time with Moses when he was born was a really special time. And it’s taken its gears to almost reintegrate and start venturing out a little bit more. And to this day, and I think forever or forever is a long time, but we often go to the meditation center, we go to SRF on Sundays. And I often notice and not because, because I feel like I have to stay in because I don’t, but I often notice that I haven’t left the house since the previous Sunday where we went. And it’s not because I don’t want to, sorry, it’s not I want to, and I don’t really content here. And also I don’t feel claustrophobic here. We do have land, we do have lots of people coming to visit. We have created our lives where I can work from here, I can train from here, which is the bulk of how I spend my time. I have family, I have training and I have work, and I can do most of it from here really comfortably.

Kimberly: 14:04 And Saturday was a great example where I had a friend come over and I spent the morning with her and who were the kids? And then you hung out with us and then the afternoon your best friend came over and we were able to hang out with him. And so people do come to visit us and we have this really nice, just kind of secluded mountain feels really nurturing environment. And then both of us we’re doing the podcast. You have a podcast as well one day with John Beer and you are on Zoom all day and I’m on Zoom with sauna. So we’re interacting with people, but we have this really supportive space. So yeah, we bring people to us. We don’t leave all the time, but we’re very productive. We’re creating a lot during the day without having to leave all

Jon: 14:58 The time. It feels like a real luxury.

Kimberly: 15:02 So wow. I was thinking about Covid. It was wasn’t was an interesting time. I think it was because we had this land and we had this space. It didn’t feel as claustrophobic as we had friends in apartments and lots of people in cities. It must’ve been really tough. But for us, we sort of kept that really close space to this day.

Jon: 15:32 I mean, there’s nothing else that if I want to go do something I’d do it. It’s just that I don’t like being in crowds. Yesterday we went into Venice. Oh

Kimberly: 15:46 My gosh, it’s like going to the big sea.

Jon: 15:48 We went to the grocery store in Venice and I was like, get me out of here. It is just not where I want to be right now. I want to be in small groups and I want to be in nature and I don’t want to go to the amount of live music and stuff that I get invited to and that I say no to because every time I go, it’s just not my truth. I just do not like being in crowds almost ever.

Kimberly: 16:22 So one of the things Yogananda talks about is the importance of environment on our spiritual growth and our happiness. And he says, besides meditation, that’s the most important factor. So you and I both used to live in Venice, and if you’re in that environment and you’re around Abbott Kinney and you’re going to all these stores, it’s like this. It just keeps feeding that sensory part where, oh, I need to buy more clothes and I need to be seen here. I need to go to these restaurants. But once you’re out of that environment, like yesterday we went and looked at it, it’s not appealing anymore, but there was a time when we were both in it and just part of that and environment shifts as you go through different phases and life and it’s really powerful to make an environmental shift and notice for us simplifying life, and I talk about this a lot in the show, how a simple life does in many ways breed a healthier life, a happier life.

Jon: 17:16 Do you think we have a simple life?

Kimberly: 17:19 I think we’ve simplified our lifestyle. I think we’re busy, we’re creating, we have businesses, I am writing the books, we have kids. But I think as far as taking out a lot of the layers on top about going out a lot and having to go to a lot of events and going to a lot of restaurants and shopping a lot and buying a lot, I think we’ve simplified tremendously, tremendously. I think about where you were when I met you and you were bachelor and you were going to air one twice a day and you were going to all these events all the time, as was I. And of course if you’re a single person, you tend to be going out more, which means there was a time where I was going to a lot of red carpet events, which means there constantly thinking about what you’re going to wear and shopping and planning ahead and what are the shoes and it’s more stuff.

Jon: 18:16 Yeah, there was definitely a lot more travel and a lot more doing things. I mean, I also, I used to own that ghost town and I would go there every week. It’s a four hour drive each way every single week and then to be there and it’s a lot.

Kimberly: 18:35 So now we’ve created so much closeness and one of the things we’ve done other shows about is how a conscious relationship and our marriage has been a mirror to each other. So in the last few years we’ve done so much work on ourselves and seeing, wow, these are patterns that I didn’t even know were there.

Jon: 18:59 Yeah, I think we have to explain what conscious means to us. I think that’s a term that gets thrown around a lot and I think that it just think it requires some kind of definition from our perspective.

Kimberly: 19:20 Define it my love.

Jon: 19:22 So for me, I think above, and I’m open to, I’m expecting to have a conversation around this, but for me conscious really means trying to be as honest as possible. And that’s really challenging because it’s not just about not lying. We lie to ourselves all the time. And so having a partner that’s a mirror to yourself and having conversations that are uncomfortable that you could just omit. And I think that’s been a big part of it, is an omission is a lie. And by the way, we all do it. We do it from time to time because sometimes it’s just, I don’t want to have this conversation right now and this is a nothing thing and I’m going to, but you try not to do it and you don’t do it most of the time. And sometimes when you do it, you might come back to it later or something like that. But I think it’s really having a relationship that is the priority in your life and trying to be as honest as possible and upfront as possible, not just in your relationship but to yourself.

Kimberly: 20:54 Yeah, I think that there’s different pathways to spiritual growth. And in the householder pathway, if you pick a partner that is your equal and that is your true partnership allows you to open in consciousness, which means awareness. So for me, our hearts, we just fell in love and that love was so strong. And this is one of the things I talk about in the next book, the relationship between the heart chakra and the third eye. It can open up your vision. So vision is clarity and part of that vision is seeing yourself and the other person in the world. But the part about seeing yourself is what a conscious relationship can really do, which means that you can see your patterns and you can see your tendencies and trauma that came from childhood. And I always say this to you, the depth of our love is something I had never felt before.

21:58 So it brought up things and it brought up seen this and abandonment and other trauma issues. And so the conscious relationship brings forward this greater vision. So the more you can see, the more you can heal, the more you can grow, the more your heart continues to grow, the more love continues to grow. So like you said, it’s very honest. You don’t get to that level of closeness. And now what I’m trying to put into words, five years in, we’ve grown so much individually and we’ve grown together because that level of closeness doesn’t come if you don’t see yourself. And it’s very easy to numb in our world, it’s very easy to just keep a more surface relationship and have things on the side. I hang out with my friends and then we come together and we watch TV or we drink wine, alcohol, we smoke weeded together, but we’re not really seeing everything. So there’s levels of it, but we’ve chosen this really conscious path and there’s been times it’s been really challenging because we’ve really had to work on our own stuff and it’s hard to see ourselves. But the gift of a conscious relationship is that deeper vision, that incredible growth and that honesty.

Jon: 23:10 Yeah. What part I really appreciate is we get into bed early, which we do most nights and we have that time together and it feels like we’re in mission control and we’re lying next to each other in bed and we’ll talk about various things. What do we want to do with the bathroom? What are we excited about in our businesses? We are mirrors to each other for different things that we’re struggling with in business, in our relationships with other people, and we’re planning our next steps together.

Kimberly: 24:01 I think the time that we have together is really sacred and people talk about carving out date night and going out, and sometimes that’s a feeling to us, but most of the time I just want to be with you. And we love to cuddle in bed for hours, we love to touch and I find the touch very nourishing and important and I don’t really want to always be in a more public space. Hold on a second, here’s little Momo. There we go. Real life here with our kids and it’s still dark out. And I love, another thing that’s really shifted is I think when you’re single or in our last life living in Venice, there’s a lot less than New York, but there’s more night stuff now. We are early bed, very early morning people like you say, I don’t want to go out at night. I want to cuddle with you and get up at five in the morning and get the day going.

Jon: 25:01 Oh yeah. My ideal situation most of the time doesn’t happen at this in terms of bedtime, but it often happens in terms of morning. But my ideal situation is in bed by eight up by in the fours. If I am up later than four 30, I feel like I’m slacking a little bit. But I work New York hours, so my team is already up. I still like to be up before them, but my team is up three hours earlier and I like to work out in the morning and I like to have all the time in the world. I don’t like to be rushed in anything that I do. And so being early for me is a real solution to that and is a real luxury. I sometimes will do a one hour workout in two hours because I can, and I’ll listen to podcasts and I’ll take longer sets, longer rests in between, and I’ll maybe stretch longer, do something else that I wasn’t going to do. Maybe I’ll take a sauna that it wasn’t planned. But I like that time.

Kimberly: 26:16 But that’s part of what I think we were saying about simplifying life. There was more stuff, you’d be up later, you wouldn’t be able to do that. And for me, it’s like having space to just sit out in the nature. I take my walk sometimes I do meditation when I’m walking because there’s less stuff that we’re trying to pack in day to day.

Jon: 26:35 It’s one of the real reasons that I love Hawaii so much is that there’s a real time hack there for someone who doesn’t value evenings anymore, but really values mornings that extra two or three hours a day that Hawaii. Hawaii, if I wake up at four in Hawaii, it’s nine or 10 in New York, I can fully start my day and work and done and then crank and everybody’s up and then by one o’clock everybody’s done.

Kimberly: 27:08 And then we have a day

Jon: 27:09 We can hike to a waterfall, we can garden, we can farm, we

Kimberly: 27:12 Can, yeah, we plant our trees,

Jon: 27:13 Do those things. It’s one of the things that I love most about Hawaii.

Kimberly: 27:17 It’s amazing. It’s amazing. It’s powerful to shift time in that way because that’s one of the biggest things I think people struggle with is time management and feeling a scarcity of time. But some of the things that we felt like we couldn’t give up, it just dropped away all these events and doing and shopping, it just completely went away.

Jon: 27:41 I would say I still shop. I’m a bit of a consumer. I just do it online,

Kimberly: 27:45 But it’s different than living in it. It is just a different environment we’re in. So one of the things, oh, what I wanted to go back to just for a second, we were talking about the conscious relationship is that in the past I’ve done it, you’ve done it. I think most people do it where it’s easy to run away when things get challenging in a relationship because things come up and you’re like, me, this isn’t the right person or whatever, it’s this other person. But when you are in the love is so strong. When we met and the love was so strong, we couldn’t run away from each other. So it was this power of forcing us to see ourselves. And that is one thing that I’m so grateful for in our relationship. I never saw some of this past trauma or these tendencies until we’ve been together. And it’s grown not only our relationship, but all my relationships with friendships and or colleagues and just my day-to-day experience, feeling so much more peace and lightness. And that’s the strength I think that a conscious relationship can give is it changes your whole life experience.

Jon: 28:59 Yeah, it’s very easy when you’re not committed and maybe even the appropriate thing to do because you’re not committed for a reason, but every relationship at some point has real challenges. This is not a honeymoon. A honeymoon situation does not exist beyond the beginning and it’s not all flowers and date night and all of that stuff in any relationship. And when it gets hard, you can turn inward or turn outward, and I always turned outward. I wasn’t in it. That was the right move for me in those times. That was almost one. I wasn’t necessarily there, but two, I didn’t want to be, I turned outward because yes, because it was easier, but also because I was like, this isn’t my thing and so I’m not going to not worth it right now for me to invest in this thing that is difficult when I’m not in this relationship and I needed something that was worth the challenge. It is a challenge. It’s always a challenge. Our relationship now, as much as we’re partnered and we have this amazing thing, of course it’s challenging. That is one of the, it’s not supposed to be not challenging. It’s supposed to be challenging. And we work on it.

Kimberly: 30:40 And so it’s given birth now where I just feel like, oh, I watch myself. And then you watch yourself and it does get easier in a way where a lot of our old habits continue to melt. Whether this tends to see to get annoyed at something or angry about something, it just starts to get, it’s still challenging because it’s two people thrown into a pot living daily life, but the edges get smoothed. The roughness gets smoothed more and more. And then we started to create now. So the farm I think was our biggest first thing coming together. We’re excited to grow our business, we’re going to sell the honey, we’re going to sell the chocolate eventually. And then one of my editors came to me who’s now part of a children’s book imprint and said, Hey, I want you to write a children’s book with me.

31:31 And I said yes. And then I kind of didn’t feel fully inspired at first when I was starting to write this book. And it was a real struggle to come together and even come up with an idea. And then I felt really inspired to talk to you babe about it. And I was like, will you write this book with me? And then we came up with this whole idea about we won’t give it away too much, but it’s coming out in a few months based on the characters. The characters are based on you and ee, our older son. And it was a big deal because I’m like, Hey, this isn’t like a hobby. I am an author. This is one of the main things I do for a living. And we went back and forth if we were going to do this project together. And then we decided to, and then the story just blossomed. And my editor just remember, he wrote us in all caps, this is a real moment. And it was amazing.

Jon: 32:31 It also came through really easily. We would bounce drafts back between each other and there would be real additions made on each side really, really quickly. And then we would come together and then we’d figure out a bunch of things together. It happened really easily. Also, we’re very lucky because you’re an established author, we can get a book deal for this right off the bat without really even having an idea. They were like, we want you to write a book, which is pretty cool. It’s a pretty good opportunity.

Kimberly: 33:17 It was this evolution of the idea. And then the characters came to be, or I’ll do an E, there’s a little picture of me and Momo on the side, but it was really about this wise gorilla teaching this excitable lemur, lanky lemur about how to navigate big feelings. And so there was this heart and soul that came into the book. And so it was funny because when it came to making the cover, it was like my name because they’d done the book deal with me, and then they put your name smaller and then we were like, hold on. But we wrote the book together. And so there was this weird, wait, it looks like he’s the ghost writer or something. So then it was like this back and forth saying, well, there’s the illustrator, but, and we had that conversation with them that we’re doing this book we’re equals.

Jon: 34:15 Well, there was a couple things there. One is I just want the book to succeed. So if it says New York Times bestselling author Kimberly Snyder in big letters and my name isn’t on it, that’s cool. As long as that’s better for the book and that’s going to sell more copies and get more people excited about it. If we’re trying to create a series that is a family book, it makes sense to have a husband and wife who are the co-authors on that cover because that’s a family book for families. And if my name is smaller on it,

Kimberly: 34:57 It was not the right authentic

Jon: 34:59 Thing. I don’t need to be on the book. It’s like either let’s do it as this family book where we wrote this book together, which is what happened, or let’s throw everything to the established author who has a fan base, who has a pedigree there to do that. But that middle, it’s not like I’m dying to have my name on a children’s book covered to have that for my ego. Just I want the book to be as successful as it could be.

Kimberly: 35:32 No, the right thing to do is to put both our names on. We created the whole thing together. There’s so much love in it. And that was the energy that fueled the book. One of the books that we read together as a family of the Berenstein Bears

Jon: 35:44 Books, Stan and Jan Berenstein,

Kimberly: 35:46 They have the same last name. We happen to have two last names, but it is this family couple coming together, E’s clothes were part of the sketches and your Hawaiian shirt is very family and there’s some pictures of our family in the back. So it was just really fun to do that project together and to see it come to life and to be able to give that to families everywhere and be part of bedtime, this message that we want to impart to others and share about how we can navigate big feelings and find that peace and love in our hearts and that calmness. So it’s really amazing that we were able to create that project together. It’s coming out in May.

Jon: 36:29 Oh, I think it’s going to be an enduring project. I think it fits really well, the big picture concept for a whole series. And that’s really exciting.

Kimberly: 36:40 It’s really exciting. And then again, we keep saying we’ve come to this place where we’ve melded together or communication, we feel more integrated. And so another way we’ve come together. So we started the farm and it’s just within the family, but then your company, Jack Taylor PR does wellness pr and of

Jon: 37:01 Course

Kimberly: 37:01 I have a wellness brand named Saluda. And at first we are working with these publicists that you had introduced us to that used to work for you. And then that sort of played out and we decided to go in different directions with them. And then we’ve just been sitting here figuring out next steps. And then it just sort of organically came together where we’re like, whoa, we should work together in this way.

Jon: 37:29 Yeah, it’s a weird thing because,

37:37 And I hope this doesn’t sound to egoic, but I don’t care. My agency is the best agency in the world at wellness related things and we’ve helped grow a lot of the most innovative brands in the space over the last 15 years. And that’s just a fact. It’s the truth. And we’re different and we’re better. And so I see you and I talk every night in our little mission control in bed and I’ll see where your brand is. And not because I’m your husband, but because I’m a professional, I see the opportunity of having someone like you at the helm of a really innovative brand in the category with a lot of, it’s really helpful to have a credentialed, established effervescent human at the helm of a brand like that. And it’s very rare, and I’ve always given advice, but steered clear of offering to do your PR just because I didn’t want to add that layer of complexity to our relationship. But

Kimberly: 39:01 Yeah, we wouldn’t have been ready for it before.

Jon: 39:04 But am I the best person agency that you could possibly be working with to do that? Definitely. I, it’s, I wanted to make sure that it didn’t edge dress to our lives and we’re early days. I don’t know that it won’t. I don’t think it will, but I’m certainly excited about putting our stamp on that.

Kimberly: 39:37 Well, I think again, it wasn’t something that we considered before because we didn’t want to. I think the whole working together thing is different for different couples. I know the Ames family that designed all the EAMS chairs and all the furniture, they designed every piece together.

Jon: 39:56 Oh, I didn’t know that.

Kimberly: 39:56 Yeah, my friend Ted went to the museum the other day and she said she learned that they did every single thing. How cool as a couple. And then there’s some couples that run pizza shops together. They’re in it every day cooking together, working together. And we both have a lot of energy and we’re together a lot like we said, and we’re raising these kids and we’re homeworking. So now we’re starting to say, Hey, we’re going to write this book together and hey, we’re going to do this PR together. And I just think we’re at this point where we’ve grown. It wouldn’t have been possible without the self-growth. Like we said, with the conscious relationship, seeing ourselves getting past a lot of the daily BSS that in other relationships, you don’t want to see, Hey, you can really dig in here or you can be really rigid or you focus on these little things that don’t really matter.

40:44 Whatever it is that we had to see first that had to get swept away. And then we did this call with your team and you were on it, but everybody else was these amazing, powerful women. So you carefully chose it was all women, which really works for me and Saluda and it was amazing. I just think it’s really cool that in all these ways we’re starting to, it had to come internally. We had to integrate in ourselves and now outward facing, we’re going to have this brand that’s going to be for the farm and all these things are offshoots and all these things are being created. But the exciting thing is, and this is the big message, is it just doesn’t happen overnight. It’s been five years now. We’ve been married, we continue to work, but that individual work, that conscious relationship is what has made this possible.

Jon: 41:37 Yeah, it’s really exciting because just on this call, think about how many businesses we’ve talked about that we have and we have the farm together and we have the products that will come from the farm, which is two kind of very separate things, right? Two

Kimberly: 41:57 Big. Yes. Running the farm

Jon: 41:57 Is different. Those are two big projects. You have your business, I have my core business. There’s side businesses that I talk about all the time that I either invest in or that I am excited to start. And there’s the book, there’s a lot of, we are serial entrepreneurs,

Kimberly: 42:19 We’re entrepreneurs through and through

Jon: 42:20 And we’re just warming up. And when you’re dialed in like this, for me, I can be, I can’t do something that I’m not all in for. I can’t do a business that I’m just like, oh, this is a cool idea, but I can be all in on a few things as long as it’s very aligned with my truth and I have the right team and I have the right, because I am not operating, I’m doing what I do for all of these businesses. And I think our relationship is just allowing me to clarify what those things that are important to me, what I want to put that energy into, and allowing me to actually be all in on those things. And it’s super exciting because things just keep popping up and it’s like, is this too much? Is this too much? Is this too much? But it isn’t

Kimberly: 43:19 So baby. I do think you’re in a position sometimes you think, oh, you say to me, I dunno if I can give advice about this and this. You have a lot of experience now. You have a lot of ideas and advice to give. So let’s say someone’s listening to this and they’re like, yeah, I want a conscious relationship. I want to grow with a partner. I want to create these things. What advice would you say to that person in the first place?

Jon: 43:41 Really putting me on the spot here. I think I go back to some of the things that we’ve talked about, which for me it starts with real honesty. Honesty with yourself. Is this the relationship that you actually Yeah, versus

Kimberly: 43:58 In picking

Jon: 43:58 The person that you actually want. When you want to turn away and run from this because it gets challenging, does something stop you and say, no, this is that thing. I’m going to invest in this even though it’s difficult, I’m going to invest in that and I’m going to be honest with myself and I’m going to be honest with that person. I’m going to be vulnerable. Which we didn’t really talk about. That’s a big part about being honest is being vulnerable and allowing someone to see you not at your strongest, allowing you to be weak sometimes allowing you to be sometimes the version of yourself that you don’t want to look at, that you don’t want other people to see. And showing that person and knowing that you’re still going to be held in that moment and you’re still going to be loved. And that’s rare and that’s powerful. And if you have that thing and you know that you have that thing, it kind of helps make you not turn the other way and go to that other new shiny thing that is date night and flowers and the excitingness of something new. So I think that’s a big part of it. The other thing I would say, and there’s a few things, but the other thing is time. These are things that take time that you have to spend a lot of time on that is this the priority in your life above all other things, those other things. I think you two is better than one. That’s I think like a

Kimberly: 45:29 One plus one is

Jon: 45:31 Five. Yeah, that’s a really powerful thing. And so all your other things, when you invest in the things that are really essential can multiply drastically if you’re on that team. And so you’ll be able to do those other things. But the relationship is my priority. The family is my priority, and as a result, the businesses flourish. My personal growth flourishes. Everything else becomes a lot more manageable because I am aligned in what’s important first. And when you have a strong foundation like that, everything grows.

Kimberly: 46:11 Beautiful. Baby. I just want to add one last thing, which is staying open in the heart. Right? When you’re open in the heart, it’s saying open to feeling. When we met, it was such a strong draw beyond he eats meat or he seems different. It goes past the surface ways that I think can block people, whether they’re meeting in person or people you might not be open to online if you’re doing online dating or whatever, we have to stay open to that energy in the heart. The heart has a higher intelligence than the ego can block. The mind can block. And also the openness in the heart allows us to see those patterns about ourselves that our partner may bring forward, that the mind may say, no, this is actually your problem, or I don’t think so. It can be painful to see these truths about ourselves, to see that vision, but when we’re open in the heart, it can melt away. That rigidity, it leads to deeper growth. And we’ve both had to go into our hearts to grow in this relationship and in life. And it keeps, the benefits keep just expanding more and more. It’s really amazing.

Jon: 47:19 Amazing. Is that a sticker on your jumpsuit? Where on your left leg?

Kimberly: 47:27 Oh yeah. What is that? It’s one of

Jon: 47:30 A QAG.

Kimberly: 47:31 It’s a G. It’s from one of our craft kits. Got it. I know. I’m used to having, we

Jon: 47:35 Are covered in stickers stick. We’re stepping on Legos,

Kimberly: 47:37 Food, whatever. It’s all around. But wow, baby, I love you so much and I’m really grateful for our relationship and part of why I love to share with you is I want to share with you guys listening what’s possible, and I would want everyone to have this sort of love and connection and grow within their own relationship or to create this sort of relationship if that’s something that you want. Yeah,

Jon: 48:05 It is really powerful and I am happy to share it. And I don’t think it does, but I do want to reiterate it, that I don’t want our relationship to sound perfect

Kimberly: 48:16 Or perfectly

Jon: 48:17 Idealistic. It’s not perfect. We

Kimberly: 48:19 Work on, we argue and we’ve gone through periods where we’ll kind of need to go in different rooms or you’ll go and lock yourself in the guest house and we need to calm down in that part of seeing ourselves. It’s like, ooh, that’s feelings. But wow, the growth and wow, the love. And I just think that we’ve done other podcasts more specifically around which we’ll link to in the show notes about how we found each other. And I also wrote about this in the last book, you are more than you think you are. There’s sections about you going beyond the surface. And I think that’s a really core part of this. How do you even find the right partner? Because it’s not as easy as saying, oh, we both like to ski, or we both have the same eating habits. It’s a lot more than that.

Jon: 49:14 No, hobbies are often a red herring for me because it’s easy to gravitate. I mean, it’s nice that you guys can do things together, but that’s not why you build a life with someone,

Kimberly: 49:25 And that’s not going to necessarily lead to the soul connection. Yeah, it’s convenient, but you want that heart connection, that really deep

Jon: 49:34 Move. Yeah.

Kimberly: 49:38 I love you so much, baby. Thank you again so much for coming on. And we will link once again on the show notes my sauna.com to other shows that hubby and I have done that. You may be interested in other podcasts, articles, meditations, recipes, and more. And I will be back here Thursday as always for our next q and a show. So till then, take amazing care of yourself, reach out to me on social if you are looking for daily inspiration or support at under

Kimberly Snyder. Otherwise, see you back here soon. Sending you so much love. Namaste.

Jon: 50:17 Bye guys.