Hi. This is Paul Zellizer, and welcome to the Awarepreneurs podcast. On this show, we dive deep into wisdom from some of the world's leading social entrepreneurs. Our goal is to help increase your positive impact, your profitability, Before we get into today's topic, I have one request. If you could hit subscribe and do a review on your favorite podcast app, it helps more people learn how to have positive impact through a values based business. Thank you so much. Today, I was joking with our guest. I get to interview a lot of my friends here in New Mexico doing awesome, awesome stuff.

And today, it's another New Mexico rock star in the impact space, Dana Koehler. And our title today is the intersection of technology and coworking, a formula for community change. Dana Koehler is the president and CEO of Cactus Brewery, a highly community active brewing company and the executive director of UN seventeen. UN seventeen is on track to be the number one resource within New Mexico to help guide businesses and governments to accomplishing the 17 goals of sustainable development set by the United Nations. With a proven track record of success and quality business management, Dana is turning his attention to encouraging the largest shift in making New Mexico's private sector the leader in the SDGs, the sustainable development goals within The United States. And I wanna just add, when I was starting to ramp up on this podcast, like, two, three years in, and people in New Mexico were hearing about what I was doing, and people they were like, you gotta meet this guy, Dana. And people were saying to Danny, you gotta meet this guy, Paul. And we finally met.

Well, let's just say recently, we had an NM Climate meetup at UN seventeen. We had 38 people there for our third meeting. Dana was so gracious to host us. About 60% of the group had never been there. And people were like, oh my god. This place is totally awesome, and I can see why NM Climate would wanna be meeting at UN seventeen. There's the sustainable development goals on the wall, and it was just awesome. So, anyway Thank you.

Meet my friend, Dana. Dana, thanks for everything you do.

Absolutely. Well, thank you for the, invite, Paul. Appreciate you.

Yeah. So let's a little bit about, like, why this idea of UN seventeen, and I know it ties into some things you've done prior to that. So what would somebody wanna know about your background and how that led to UN seventeen being created right downtown Albuquerque, 30 quarters of a mile from my house. Right?

I appreciate you asking. It it's a big story, but I'll try to keep it fairly simple. I mean, it all derived you know, I've been an entrepreneur. I'm 42 years old now. I've been working for myself since I was very young. I'm an 18 like, around 18 to 20 years old. And as I became more and more successful, you know, I really wanted to start applying my business practices to meet the goals that we're talking about, you know, very similar to what the United Nations has set forth with the 17 goals of sustainable development. And just realizing the challenges that that come with it, right, and and and the lack of support that might be that that's out there or not out there, I should say.

And so so I was really inspired to kinda generate an environment where like minded business people like myself can come together and find the support needed to get to the next level. So we started you know, I started Cactus Brewing Company about thirteen years ago. It started as a dream out of a two car garage in the back of my dad's house and, like, just a few tables, and it was popcorn and beer and kind of grown from that. But during that process, you know, I was always, you know back then, it was, like, thirteen years ago. We were having big discussions about water security in New Mexico and clean water and what does that look like. And do we have enough to grow Albuquerque? Do we have enough to grow Rio Rancho? Those type of things. And so as a brewery, you know, that's an important Turns out water

is helpful to a brewery. Right?

Yeah. Yeah. It does help. Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. So so that that was a big focus of mine, and then that kinda led to, you know, not only recycling and reclaiming water, but rainwater harvesting, which also led to you know, as we went from just beer and popcorn, we started introducing foods, and I'm a big proponent of whole wholesome foods with, you know, no preservatives and healthy organic. And so as we moved into that direction, that was another big, you know, realization of how what what a lack of that we have in in New Mexico just in general, especially for restaurants.