Founder and CEO of Steviva Brands and Icon Foods, Thom King shares when he said he felt like a fraud. He headed companies that promoted healthy foods, yet he was a self-professed sugar addict.  One day in 2016, the pain of it all exceeded the pleasure of maintaining his food addiction and poor health, and he made a change.  Since then, he authored Guy Gone Keto: How to Lose Weight, Feel Great, and Achieve Lifelong Fitness.  Today, Thom’s intention is to make an impact on metabolic disease, or what he calls, “diabesity,” and promote healthy living and to share that knowledge by paying it forward to others.

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Kathy:                   So we’re here with Thom King, founder and CEO of Steviva Brands and Icon Foods, serial entrepreneur and author of Guy Gone Quito. How to Lose Weight, Feel Great and Achieve Lifelong Fitness. First of all, congratulations on the book. I understand it’s your first book, is that right?

Thom:                  It’s my first first book. Like back in maybe like 15 or 20 years ago. I wrote some sort of text manuals, but this was the first actual, real, real book for the public. So yeah. So thank you very much Kathy. I appreciate that.

Kathy:                   Well, first of all, it had a lot of bit of everything in this book. And it starts off actually you’re sharing a lot of vulnerable material.

Thom:                  Some people have called it a confessional.

Kathy:                   Yeah. It sort’ve was. So, first off, what inspired you to write this?

Thom:                  Um, well, what inspired me to write it is, I mean I just started writing it as a process of, of almost like journaling. So I, the book sort of starts the book definitely starts out when I was at a trade show in Las Vegas. And you know, our company, we, uh, we supply sweeteners to sports nutrition companies and companies that support like low carb diets and ketogenic friendly diets, you know, so I was in that industry and I was in Las Vegas at this trade show and went out to dinner with, with some of our suppliers and just really overdid it, you know, like we had steaks and desserts and a bottle of wine and I got back to my hotel and you know, it was, it was Vegas type of hotel and the room smelled like bad liquor and then broken dreams. And it was, you know, it was.

Thom:                  Then when I got up and looked at myself in the mirror and I was like, Whoa, I was carrying 35 pounds of extra weight. My blood pressure was 199 over 99. I was going through a second divorce that was getting super expensive and I just, I looked in the mirror and I didn’t like what I saw. And it, it just, I come from really good stock and I don’t, I just don’t think I was representing them. And that’s when I, the pain of my bad habits exceeded the pleasure that I was deriving from them.

Kathy:                   So you reached a tilting point, I guess.

Thom:                  I guess you could say I bottomed out because it’s like when I, when I looked in the mirror, it just like, you know, it. And My grandfather growing up, my grandfather was like such a role model for me in his integrity was just amazing.

Thom:                  Like I just have never met a man with such fantastic integrity and I couldn’t stand to look at myself at that point. It’s like, what am I doing? Know I’m preaching good health and staying away from sugar, but I’m, I’m doing just the opposite of my life. So I felt like a pretty big fraud. I felt like I wasn’t living up to my integrity and yeah, at that point it’s like this is it. I’ve hit the bottom and now I’m going to start to rebuild. And part of that was just finding those bad habits, you know, like eating sugar and eating carbs and drinking too much wine and pizza, like finding those really bad habits that were leading me down a path of self destruction and just associating so much pain with those habits, you know, and the result of, of indulging those habits that it exceeded the pleasure that I was deriving from it.

Kathy:                   I see. You know, it’s interesting when I was reading this black, it kind of starts off like a screenplay for a movie. Yeah. You described that hotel room and felt like I was there. You mentioned the smell like spilled alcohol, there’s a Jacuzzi in the middle of the room and you’re standing in front of the mirror and you asked yourself, how the hell did I get here? And I think a lot of people can identify with that moment, standing in front of the mirror and looking at yourself, how the hell did I get here? I can’t imagine what it was feeling because you started Steviva Brands, I believe it was 1999. Is that right?

Thom:                  Yup.

Kathy:                   And so at this point when you were at the hotel that was in 2016, is that correct?

Thom:                  Yep, that is exactly. That’s exactly correct. And you know, something that’s really ironic is exactly one year later, right after I had started writing the book, I got the same exact room at the same exact hotel and had dinner with the same exact client. So it was like a year later and I’m just like, wow, you know, this is the irony of this. And I actually had a sensible dinner with that client and, and didn’t have any wine and didn’t have any dessert and talked about writing the book based on the last experience that I had with those guys. So it was kind of interesting.

Kathy:                   So that was the beginning of the book. That was your turning point at that hotel and you finish the book by the time you saw them again the next year?

Thom:                  Um, I had the first draft done and it wasn’t. I mean I do a lot of writing because I post, I mean probably two or three blog posts per week. So I mean, I’m used to doing, you know, doing a lot of writing, but this was like, this was pouring out of me, like it, it just, you know, very organically. So I was just basically journaling every day, like about the things that I was doing, the things that I was doing right. And it just became a book and which is pretty, I don’t know it, it’s when I was reading it and the words showed up on the page, I was like, who wrote this?

Kathy:                   That’s impressive. And I also heard you in another interview, describe yourself as a huge sugar addict. Oh, so let me ask you this, is it true that you would get a can of Pepsi and put m and m’s in the can because it wasn’t sweet enough?

Thom:                  Shamefully, Yes. So I had, I, I’m, I’ve had a lot of vices in my life. I mean when I was in college I smoked cigarettes and I got to the point where I was smoking two packs of cigarettes a day, you know, in my early twenties. And Yeah. And I was, I was addicted to sugar and I would open up a can of Pepsi and a bag of regular m and ms and I would just dump them into the, into the Pepsi and probably the first, you know, first half of the can tastes like regular Pepsi and then the second half of the can is like Pepsi flavored chocolate syrup. So I would drink that and yeah, I’m in morning, in the morning instead of of having a proper breakfast. I used to slug down a chocolate milk and twinkies.

Thom:                  I had it. I had it so bad and I never really put the pieces together that flooding my body with all of this, you know, all of the sugar and high glycemic carbohydrates. And fats was actually bringing on like metabolic disease until I started doing the research. And then even even after I knew that that behavior was bad and it was going to lead me down a bad path. I had a very, very hard time breaking that addiction. You know, because I was addicted to food and I was, I was living to eat, I wasn’t eating to live.

Kathy:                   Right. What would you say was the most challenging part of that journey? Was it the physical response, reaction you’re having, or do you think it was something else, emotional attachment to the association of eating?

Thom:                  Oh, I think, I think it was. I think it was both. I think that with, with food and drink, it’s an excuse for people to get together. Like, Hey, let’s go out and have a drink and or you know, let’s get something to eat. So it’s, it’s sort of weaved into the fabric of our social experiences. So it was tough because the lifestyle that I chose is pretty restrictive. So going to, you know, going to a restaurant, you’d have to make certain choices in consuming massive amounts of is part of that either. So you have like a glass of wine, but if you’re going to be out with your friends and plan on having two or three bottles of wine amongst you, that’s not going to really fit into it. So I did have to retool my social experiences and I also had to level up, I guess you’d say my circle of five, so I mean I sort of live by the philosophy that we’re the sum of the five people closest to us. So I had to really retool that and surround myself with people that support the lifestyle change that I was going to make. And that was tough because you, the, you lose that, that social connection and once you feel that sort of emptiness, you’re going to gravitate towards the things that are going to fill you up like food or whatever other vices that you’ve got. So it’s, it’s both a mental and physical thing.

Kathy:                   You talked about that, the challenges of disassociating with the friends that kind of, I don’t know, I guess you were accustomed to eating unhealthily around them and it took about four years for you to do that process. Did any of them continue with you and, and shift more to a healthier lifestyle or did you have to kind of sever those ties all together?

Thom:                  Those ties were severed. So I, it’s, yeah, it’s tough. You know, I mean when you’re leveling up your game and you find that the people you know, that your circle of five write your tribe isn’t in alignment with the goals that you’re trying to achieve. You need to make a hard choice and that choice is between you or them and I, I chose myself. I chose to surround myself with a, with a different group of people. I’ve retained a couple of those friendships, but they, you know, they completely understand that if I go over their house for dinner, I’m not going to be eating the chocolate souffle at the end of the evening and we’re not going to overindulge and alcohol. So you know, it did it. It was that definitely that shift and yeah, out of all my, all my friends and acquaintances I was able to keep, to.

Kathy:                   I’m glad to hear that. You mentioned about your health at that time and he said that I realized if I kept up this lifestyle would soon be dead of a heart attack, stroke or even cancer. I lost both my parents to cancer. Did a doctor tell you that you need to change or something’s gonna happen to you or is this just something, an epiphany that you had on your own, a wake up call?

Thom:                  No, I had a doctor actually told me that my blood pressure was so high that I should be in the emergency room. So I mean my blood pressure now is like 120 over 80, which is, which is pretty average for, for somebody my age, but I was like I was 199 over 99 and the doctor’s like, you need to go to the pharmacy right now we’re putting you on blood pressure meds. So I was on blood pressure medication and I was also. I had terrible heartburn all the time. Like I would try to sleep at night, couldn’t sleep because of the heartburn. So I was taking provasic. I was taking ambien before I went to bed, you know, because I wasn’t able to sleep and so yeah, I mean I was on those meds and the doctors, like if you don’t get that blood pressure under control, you will have a cardiac event in the, in within the next 10 years.

Thom:                  So it wasn’t like it’s going to happen tomorrow, but he said you’re a ticking time bomb with that blood pressure. So.

Kathy:                   Wow. Yeah. That is a big wake up call when your doctor tells you that that’s, for sure.

Thom:                  It is. And I grew up on a farm in Colorado and my dad was kind of a tough guy so I, I did shrug it off quite a bit. Like now that’s fine. Little bit of high blood pressure doesn’t, doesn’t hurt, hurt anybody, but you know, I started getting super light headed and fainting and heart palpitations and yeah. So I was having some definite health issues that if I didn’t, if I didn’t make a lifestyle change and quickly that I think if I were to kept on that path that I might not be here today.

Kathy:                   You saved yourself.

Thom:                  Yeah, I mean I’d like to think of it that way, but I also looked at like I have sisters that I love to the core of my being and you know, when you think about not maintaining your health and being as healthy as can be, you think that only affects you, but I mean I saw the pain and the suffering that my sisters went through when we lost our parents and our family is small now but tight and, and I started thinking, oh, what’s this gonna do to my sisters if I’m the next one on the list? And really thinking about what I was leaving behind, you know, and how it might impact other people was really more jarring for me than thinking about my own mortality.

Kathy:                   I’m really glad you brought that up because I think that’s so important and when we take care of ourselves, we’re just not taking care of ourselves. We’re also taking care of the people that love us and surround us. So thanks for bringing that up. That’s a really good reminder.

Thom:                  Oh, thanks. I mean, I think about it everyday, like everyday, the everyday that I don’t take care of myself is, you know, another day that I might not get with my family, with my sisters and yeah, so I mean if there’s going to be one message that I’m going to send, it’s. If you’re not going to make a lifestyle change for yourself, definitely do it for those you love.

Kathy:                   Do it for those you love, that’s great. You have a section in your book called leveraging pain and suffering for success. You’ve had this interesting quote you say, to make permanent lifestyle changes, you need persistence, commitment and discipline. Of these three discipline is a overarching need. The only way to achieve that is to leverage your emotional and physical pain. Can you explain what you mean by that? Leveraging your emotional and physical pain and. And can you give an example?

Thom:                  Yeah, I mean I touched on this in the beginning a little bit, but I think that if you find a habit and a habit that you want to break and you want to create the discipline to, to end that habit, Human beings function on two basic principles. That is, seeking pleasure and avoiding pain. If you have a habit that is actually, that’s, that’s bringing joy to you and pleasure, the only way you’re really going to be able to break that habit is through sheer discipline and associating so much pain with that particular bad habit that it exceeds the pleasure that you derive from it. So for instance, this is going to be pretty basic, but for instance, let’s say you’re about to eat a donut, and that donut, is going to give you 30 seconds of extreme pleasure. You’re going to eat it, it’s delicious and everything else, but if you start associating what’s really going on behind that donut, like are you eating that donut because it’s delicious?

Thom:                  Or are you eating that donut because it’s giving you some sort of an emotional relief or what are the consequences of eating this doughnut? I mean, I’m going to feel like crap in an hour after my blood sugar shoots through the ceiling and then down to the basement. It’s going to bring on metabolic disease. I’m going to get heavier and you look in the mirror and it’s like, do I love what I see? Do I accept what I see? So when you start associating so much pain with the pleasure of eating that donut and you exceed that pleasure zone, that habit’s broken. Okay.

Kathy:                   You also talk about mindfulness practices and their role in making lifestyle changes. What kind of mindful practice can you give an example that we can do?

Thom:                  Um, I would say that one of the practices that has helped me more than anything else is journaling. I mean, I journal every single day and it really helps me get my thoughts down on paper so I can visually see them. But it also allows me that moment of real mindfulness while I’m writing to set the stage of what I want to create and manifest in that day. So I mean, that really helps me get grounded in what I want to accomplish that day. And as well as as declaring my gratitude, if you will, um, because I think that if a person can, can live in a state of gratitude that it’s really hard to be upset or depressed or unhappy because gratitude will wash it all out. So I think that journaling for me is, is hugely, hugely important. And all of my friends, new acquaintances. One of the first thing I do is buy him a journal and try to encourage them to journal well.

Thom:                  But most of them are like, well, where do you start? And it’s like you start with a pen, you start with a pen and you write anything down, you know, and then you went through a series like, what am I grateful for today? What is my purpose? What do I want to create or what do I want to manifest? And one of my favorite things is to write, write an affirmation, you know, and I always write my affirmations from a place of breathing, you know, like I inhale the good, the good habits, the wisdom, clarity. And when I exhale, my focus is lovingly, lovingly releasing like any self limiting beliefs or behaviors or habits or people that are not really helping me get to my higher purpose. So that journaling process is, is invaluable. And that coupled with daily meditation, I think really, really helps a person be sort of more present, grounded and mindful.

Kathy:                   And how much time do you spend journaling?

Thom:                  Well, I have a thing that I call my hour of power. So,

Kathy:                   Tony Robbins, right?

Thom:                  Absolutely. So I’m a big Tony Robbins Fan. Like I’ve, I’ve seen him several times. I mean I, I, he’s super inspirational to me so I use a lot of the tools that he’s given. So yeah, in the morning it’s my hour of power. So the first thing I do is I, you know, I tried to get up by 4:30 and the first thing I do is jump into journaling and followed up with a run and a workout, yoga and then you know, and then meditation and then I’m ready to go to work so that our power is usually an hour and a half hour.

Kathy:                   That’s a great way to start your day.

Thom:                  It’s the only way to start your day.

Kathy:                   And feeding your mind with positivity and gratitude to start your day off. That’s terrific.

Thom:                  Well, thank you.

Kathy:                   Let’s go back to your book a little bit. Okay. I understand you coined a term diabesity. Am I saying it righ?

Thom:                  You are, and that’s a tricky one.

Kathy:                   So for those of us who are not familiar with it, what is it?

Thom:                  So I started using the term probably five or six years ago. Diabesity diabesity is the, is the onset of type two diabetes that is created from being obese. So basically type one diabetes, you’re born with type two diabetes you generally give yourself. And you can give yourself type two diabetes by creating metabolic disease, meaning that you’ve taken in too many, too much sugar and too many carbs and it, it is starting to gather around your midsection as visceral fat. So that is, that’s where I coined the phrase diabesity. It’s basically a combination of type two diabetes and and obesity.

Kathy:                   So were you at risk of getting type two diabetes?

Thom:                  Yeah, my blood sugar was like completely out of control. So I was, you know, what would happen is I would get that mid afternoon crash, which then I would have coffee or energy drinks which would bring me back up, but only to crash again. So what I was doing is putting my myself through this awful metabolic cycle where I would take in sugar, your body can process only so much sugar and then once it’s done processing, processing that sugar deposits is lipids in your blood, which lipids are fat and then that fat just gathers around around your belly. So most of my, most of the fat that I was carrying was right around my midsection. So my blood sugar levels, my fasting blood sugar levels were generally 110 to 120, which is definitely prediabetic. So if I would have kept, I mean, and I was borderline obese, you know, I weighed 238, now I’m under 200. And, and another thing that I really want to stress because I was on a podcast a couple of weeks ago and it was really, really great because the guy that I was talking to said that he used to weigh one 65 and that he had gotten his weight up to.

Thom:                  He was now a 309 pounds. And so he, he sort of stressed the fact that while will you lost 35 pounds, what about those people that need to lose a hundred or 200 or 300 pounds? You know? And also, I mean I really want to stress the fact that adopting a ketogenic lifestyle, that choice is up to you. It might not be your thing, like keto might not be your thing, but something else is. And you should find that out. And then also I really wanted to stress the fact about body shaming. So because I looked in the mirror and didn’t like what I saw, I don’t advocate body shaming like I don’t advocate people constantly destroying their, their self esteem by, by just throwing hate on, on what they’re seeing in the mirror. I, I really focused on falling in love with myself, you know, and accepting myself.

Thom:                  I just wanted to be the best self that I possibly could. So I think if there’s people out there that are carrying extra weight, if you feel good about yourself and you accept yourself and you like what you see in the mirror, then good for you, then that’s where you should be. But if you think that you could do better, you know, I encourage you to make a lifestyle change. But I don’t at all advocate any type of body shaming whether other people are shaming you or well, whether it’s self inflicted shame, I think that that does nothing but set you back.

Kathy:                   Yes, I agree. And while we’re talking about the subject of type two or or prediabetic some years back, I’m a pretty healthy person and I feel comfortable in my weight and I don’t know why, but I was getting more and more tired all the time regardless how many hours of sleep I would get. Always. I’m not a drinker, I’m not a heavy eater. And so I couldn’t figure out. Then pretty soon it was getting worse and worse where I actually was head nodding at at work. I’m like, I couldn’t even stay awake. So finally went to the doctor. They checked my blood and she said, your glucose levels are high, you’re prediabetic. And it just shows to prove that anybody in any type of body can become prediabetic.

Thom:                  Oh yeah, definitely. I mean, and people, people that are thin, you know, like friends of mine that are in the work, in the fitness industry, call it skinny fat or gelatin skeleton where people are actually thin, but they’re still super unhealthy. So I mean, I, I’ve seen that quite a bit where people were, they don’t look like they’re carrying a lot of weight, but their body is still suffering from metabolic disease and if you’re that person and your blood sugar levels keep rising and your, you know, and you fall into the category of, of being prediabetic than most definitely you should consider a lifestyle change. And I mean, and I found for me that keto really helped because your brain is actually functioning on fat rather than, than glucose. And what happens is you get a lot of really constant energy.. And you really don’t need energy drinks for caffeine and you function on a much sort of higher cognitive level.

Kathy:                   Let’s talk about some other statistics that you, you brought up there, kind of shocking actually and startling in your book. You mentioned that according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 38 percent of all Americans are obese and that more than 84 million Americans have prediabetes, but they just aren’t aware of it.

Thom:                  Yeah, that’s very true. And they won’t really do anything about it until it becomes symptomatic. Like lightheadedness or not being able to work or not being able to focus, it seems until people really filled physical, physical strain of it that they won’t really make any efforts to change the course of their, of their life. So I, I recommend that people go see their doctor and have some blood drawn and see what their blood sugar levels look like and see what their weight looks like. So once you’ve got that information, my making a lifestyle change is all about data collection. So if you can collect that data, you’re going to be able to come up with a plan on how to strategically reverse that.

Kathy:                   You talk about that, how you want to stand for something and a philosophy about helping or giving back. You aren’t doing well unless you’re also doing some good Is that also why you wrote

Thom:                  the book? Yeah, I mean it really is. I mean I live by paying it forward and I mean I know if my employees, part of my agreement, you know, my mentoring agreement is that you have to pay it forward because I don’t believe that there’s anything free in life. And I also believe that if you’re given something, like if you’re given knowledge or if you’re giving, given some sort of enthusiasm that you are required, I mean that is your debt for being in this world that you’re required to contribute and pay that forward. So as I was going through my journaling process and while I was going through my process of changing my lifestyle, absolutely. My whole thought on that was I want everybody to see this because I want them to be able to see that this is really who I am. I’m not this perfect symbol of, of health and that, that I could, I can do better and this is how I did it. And if you want to do it, let me share this information with you and if it helps you. Terrific.

Kathy:                   I also understand that Guy Gone Keto has a giving back project. Is that true or community project?

Thom:                  I. So yes, it’s true.

Kathy:                   I don’t know what it is.

Thom:                  So we ended up moving our facility. We were in like in, in pretty close to downtown Portland and we ended up moving our facility to, to this town outside of Portland called Gresham, and one thing that, one thing that I noticed in having conversations with my employees and other colleagues is that our educational system is broken. Schools don’t have enough money for supplies and the first areas that they cut our, our P.E. and music. So there’s no musical instruments, there’s no gym equipment and to me, like when I, you know, what I ran into that, I was like, what kind of craziness this is, why wouldn’t we invest in children? Why wouldn’t we invest in schools? This doesn’t make any sense. So we’re pretty heavily involved in supporting education in this particular area and I’d like to spread it out, but you know, we’re, we’re moving towards that, but it does take a lot of manpower to do that type of stuff because you don’t want to just write a check. You want to make sure that you’re really empowering these particular schools. So that’s what our giving back program is all about.

Kathy:                   Oh, that’s terrific. Yes. I can imagine school without music or P.E.

Thom:                  There’s nothing right about it and you know, and it’s like when teachers are spending money out of their pocket to buy school supplies, that just boggles my mind. I mean, I don’t understand why cuts were made, but you know, if there’s anything that I can do personally or any of my organizations that, that can do something to help that cause we’re, we’re going to be all over it. Right. I mean, and we do things to do other things like sort of environmental, like we, our facilities with located adjacent to a wetland and there’s lots of amphibian population on this wetland and we really didn’t want them to spray it, you know, for mosquitoes. So we installed bat houses around our property to encourage bats to come in. Yeah. We have a garden that we, we share the vegetables from and in the newest thing that I’m going to be installing our beehives.

Kathy:                   Cool. We do need more bees for sure.

Thom:                  Yes we do. If I can keep the yellow jackets out of there, that will. I’ll consider that one a win.

Kathy:                   Let’s talk about one of your latest projects. You created The Guy Gone Keto Condiments. Yeah. Tell us what they are, how they’re different or unique?

Thom:                  Well, I, there are different and unique because they, they won’t affect blood sugar levels. And um, what’s interesting is like when I wrote the book, I was coming up with a lot of recipes for workarounds, you know, like having a hamburger. I would always like to have a lot of catch up on it, but a lot of people don’t realize that ketchup actually has more sugar in it than ice cream. So it’s like, why are you going to have a hamburger? I’ll have my hamburger with a scoop of ice cream on it. Back in the day, what I was eating a bag of m and m’s in, in Pepsi. That would have made sense, but it doesn’t really make sense for me now. So what I was finding is that as I, as I ran into these particular condiments, like teriyaki sauce and barbecue and ketchup and really the, one of the biggest nemesis is, was this Thai sweet chili sauce, which I just couldn’t seem to get enough of it and that actually has more sugar in it than the ketchup, so it’s crazy, a crazy amount of sugars.

Thom:                  So those were the things that I kinda missed because like, well I’d like to catch up on this hamburger or you know, what I’d love to have some barbecued ribs. So I actually developed those recipes myself because I miss those, those condiments. And I then thought, you know, I should probably pay these forward, I should probably create a line and you know, and see people are interested in it. So we did small, small batches, small little pilot runs and everybody, you had them just really thought they were fantastic. And they’re super clean. Very basic ingredients. Yeah. And they’re completely diabetic safe, keto safe in won’t, won’t affect blood sugar levels. So that sort of organically gave birth to the line of condiments. And so we released those a couple months ago and almost immediately sold out and so had to order new packaging and yeah, it’s been going really well for us now.

Kathy:                   Are we going to see those on the store shelves soon or are there already there?

Thom:                  You know what, that’s a really good question. So because we have [inaudible] Aviva brands, we’ve got a, you know, we have a retail product and it was really hard for us to work with stores, you know, because you have to get your product on store shelves and lot of times there’s like a slotting fees and by the time you go through brokers and distributors, it didn’t really make sense for us because our margins aren’t very high because of the ingredient costs on the, on the condiments. We really broke it down and did a pretty in depth analysis and it really made sense for us to do direct to consumer and skip the stores and skip the, the middlemen and skip the distributors. So they’re on Amazon and they’re available directly, directly off of our website.

Thom:                  If stores come to us and ask for it, we’ll certainly sell it to them, but we’re not really focused on getting it into store shelves. We’d rather have it sort of grow organically through our direct consumer and it also gives us an opportunity to really touch that consumer and you know, and ask them like, Hey, what did you think of the Ketchup? Do you think it needs to be thicker? Did you notice any off notes? So it really gives us the opportunity to, to engage the consumer in a way that we can start just making little tweaks to the, to the finished product that everybody that everybody finds completely delicious.

Kathy:                   Terrific.

Thom:                  Thanks.

Kathy:                   So what’s next for you? What other plans do you have going? Well, I plan on expanding the Guy Gone Keto product offering. So as I find foods that I’m craving, I’m actually just creating them.

Thom:                  So we’ve got like, we’ve got 3000 square foot lab space here. It’s literally my playground. So I’m working on cereal, like a Ketogenic, low carb, low sugar cereal. Um, I’ve got keito pops that are very similar to otter pop except they won’t affect blood sugar levels, so I’m constantly working in that playground on developing new products and I really love to get consumer interaction with it, you know, where I can send out samples to people so they can tell me what I’m doing wrong. That in a, I’ve got my second book about halfway done. And so that will be, that will be coming out hopefully second quarter of 2019.

Kathy:                   Terrific. What’s that one about this one?

Thom:                  Well, it’s actually sort of a daily meditation book, but it leverages a bunch of different quotes. Um, some of them are from Yoda, some of them are from rock and roll songs, but it just leverages these little pieces of, of, of wisdom. And then I offer sort of a meditation and a reflection and an affirmation on what that particular quote means to me. And then there’s a section where you can actually write with that quote means to you.

Kathy:                   I was going to ask you that. Can you write in the book because it seems like you’re giving away all these blank journals. You might as well give out your own book.

Thom:                  It. It does. It does have a component that encourages you to journal, so if I can’t get you to journal by just buying you a journal, I’ll buy you one that’s already like halfway filled out and you can just jot down a few thoughts there.

Kathy:                   Well, I look forward to seeing it when it comes out.

Thom:                  I will get you a copy.

Kathy:                   Tom, for listeners out there, maybe they perhaps can relate to your story of you standing in front of the mirror and asking, asking yourself, how the heck did I get here? Are there any words of encouragement that you would like to share?

Thom:                  Set your intention, so set your intention and make your plan. People, people don’t realize what their potential is or what they’re capable of, but human beings are capable of such amazing feats and if you set your intention and you create your plan to stick with it and never give up and you’ll find success one way or another.

Kathy:                   Set your intention and never give up. Good words. Thank you, Thom. If listeners out there want to learn more about your products or connect with you, where can they find you?

Thom:                  You can go to GuyGoneKeto.com and there you can see the condiments. You can see some of my posts that I write. You can contact me through the contact page there if you want to see what kind of mad science I’m up to, you can go to iconfoods.com. I C o n foods plural dot com. Or you can find me on any of the socials under GuyGoneKeto or just Thom King.

New Speaker:     Well, Thom, thank you so much for joining me and sharing your story, talking about your book and your words of encouragement. I appreciate all that you’re doing in the community, so thank you so much

Thom:                  Kathy. I so much appreciate you having me on your podcast. I mean, I was listening to other episodes and I can’t imagine that I’m that exciting because the other people you were interviewing were absolutely amazing and I encourage you, if you just checked in on this podcast, I encourage you to listen to to all of them because they’re. You’re really quite excellent at what you do and I’m, I’m, I’m honored and humbled that you have me on your podcast.

Kathy:                   Thank you, Thom. Thank you.

 

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