We recently had the chance to connect with Joe Vandenberg and have shared our conversation below.
Joe, it’s always a pleasure to learn from you and your journey. Let’s start with a bit of a warmup: What do you think is misunderstood about your business?
If I am being blunt about it, I believe most of my business is misunderstood. However, that misunderstanding serves as much of the motivation for the work I am doing.
What may be most misunderstood about my work is the scope. People see me as “the tea guy” and often assume I am most concerned with selling some sort of product, yet I spend much of my time studying what we might call “the metacrisis” or “the human pridicament”. It is from this vantage point that I can see the meaning behind my work, and how to apply my skills and specialties in ways that align with that meaning. Tea, for me, is a vessel upon which I can load my deeper philosophical work.
Can you briefly introduce yourself and share what makes you or your brand unique?
My name is Joe Vandenberg. I am a clinical herbalist, master blender, and co-owner of the brand Sage & Cedar Herbal Tea Co. as well as my clinical practice Black Hills Botanicals.
My primary work is as a source for truly high quality medicinal-grade herbs in the great plains region of the U.S. My business operates out of Spearfish, SD, mostly providing loose-leaf tea in retail and wholesale form. I work with dozens of businesses around the area including natural foods stores, coffeeshops, restaurants, and local boutiques, as well as vending directly to the public at all manner of farmer’s markets, craft fairs, art festivals, and other events. We have an herbal clinic and abothecary in Spearfish where we offer 1:1 clincal herbalism consultations and provide a reliable source for our teas, tinctures, and other intentionally sources herbal products. My work is multifaceted, to say the least, and we are regularly involved in various community projects and collaborations in or around the Black Hills area. Our truest aim is to support a deeper connection with our region, including the culture, the land, the people, and the diverse natural medicine, so that our existence may be more intentional and sustainable.
Thanks for sharing that. Would love to go back in time and hear about how your past might have impacted who you are today. What did you believe about yourself as a child that you no longer believe?
When I was young, I was too much for those responsible for me. I say “too much” in the sense that I was too wild, too curious, too rebelious, and searching with all my heart for some true form of wisdom and guidance. Because of this, I spent my whole childhood thinking I was broken. I was always in trouble of some sort, never quite feeling like I was welcome, let alone valued. I see now that I was simply looking for purpose and a mentor. I no longer believe that I am “broken” in that same manner. I have come to recognize all those traits as part of a set of skills which I can dedicate my life to honing and improving.
If you could say one kind thing to your younger self, what would it be?
If I could tell me younger self anything of any flavor, it would always be to care for my body. I have spent many years taking my physical being for granted, and while that has now given me a very hot fire to work with as I develop myself, I definitely could have used a reminder in my teens or 20’s to take self-care more seriously.
Sure, so let’s go deeper into your values and how you think. What’s a belief you used to hold tightly but now think was naive or wrong?
I used to hold most of my beliefs very tightly, and those beliefs were mostly declarations of resistance to the establishment. About a decade ago now the ceiling cracked and the light start pouring in. I do not exactly “hold” beliefs in the way that I used to, but rather, I aim to express my self from a place a faith in the profundity of being. That sounds maybe a bit esoteric, but I cannot articulate it in strictly defined terms for the same reasons that I live by the principle. I spend much more of my time pondering my experience than I do trying to hold some objective truth(s) of the universe, and this has improved the quality of my experience by orders of magnitude. In short, I seek not to move from this belief to that belief, declaring one as a perfectly worded truth. Rather, I open myself to the richness and profoundity of being alive at all and then hopefully articulating that richness to a level which can uniquely deepen (not determine) someone else’s experience of being alive. In the opening words of the Tao Te Ching: The truth that can be told is not the eternal truth.
Thank you so much for all of your openness so far. Maybe we can close with a future oriented question. How do you know when you’re out of your depth?
The key indication, for me, is when I cannot skillfully speak the more technical languange of whatever field, discipline, or challenge that I am facing. In our daily life we get around by the use of only a few thousand words. It is when we step outside of those few thousand that I immediately become more interested in a topic, but also more aware of my own ignorance. This especially applies to the conceptual realm. It is one thing to know the scientific nomenclature of hundreds of chemicals, or species of plants. It is another thing to be able to paraphrase and rearticulate your conceptual frameworks, ad infinitum. I find that I am most out of my depth when I can no longer coherently express a point in a different way than I just did, thus repeating myself but more intensely. This signals that to me that I should move toward speaking less, listening more, and potentially depening my studies in the field at hand.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.sagecedarherbalteas.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/sagecedarsd/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/SageCedarSD
