John Shegerian: This edition of the Impact Podcast is brought to you by Trajectory Energy Partners. Trajectory Energy Partners brings together landowners, electricity users, and communities to develop solar energy projects with strong local support. For more information on how trajectory is leaving the solar revolution, please visit trajectoryenergy.com

John: Welcome to another edition of the impact podcast. I am so honored to have with us today, Tony Sciarrotta. He is the executive director of the Reverse Logistics Association. Welcome to Impact, Tony.

Tony Sciarrotta: Well, thank you very much, John. It is a thrill to be here.

John: You know before we get talking about your great organization and for our listeners who want to find you or your great colleagues, they could go to www.rla.org and they could go to the ‘about’ section. I am on your website right now. It is a gorgeous website. It is easy to navigate. They could go to the ‘about’ drop down, hit that, and they could find your advisory board, your management team, and they can also, of course, find you there and it is very easy to reach out and connect with the Reverse Logistics Association. Before we get talking about all the great things that your organization does, Tony, talks a little bit about the Tony Sciarrotta journey and where you grew up and how you got to where you are today and how you got to be a leader of this very, very, very important organization in the United States.

Tony: Well, and, the world, John, I am going to try to take credit for being a global association–

John: I love it.

Tony: –that really have my heart from Detroit. I am one of the born and raised in the city of Detroit people that has left the city but still loves it. I went to an amazingly intense Jesuit High School in that City that really prepped me for the world. Did a little bit of college, fell into the electronics industry and my wife jokes about the fact that I really started to be involved in selling and dealing with electronics because I wanted a better stereo system. And she was partly right, and she was partly right.

Tony: I fortunately got involved after a little bit of retail spell with a rep firm and then I cut my teeth with Sony Corporation for five years and they were King Of The Hill in the ’80s, and I was there for it, won a trip to Japan, got to experience the bail side of having a great brand in your pocket. And now that I look back I recognize that a great brand name alone can help reduce returns and give customers a great experience and then I moved into Philips for twenty-five some years. Sales and marketing guy could do it in my sleep and I was part of a Sears team, I want to partners in progress in the ’90s and then late ’90s, Phillips somewhat arbitrarily used a consultant and two or three of the senior vice presidents to go through the organization, pulled my resume and my name out of a hat and said, “Go fix returns. We have a big problem.” This was 1998. We had a huge problem and I came out of sales and marketing which is both a nightmare to be handed that kind of role after sales and marketing and second, an opportunity that I had such a passion for figuring out what the heck is really going on. Why is so much stuff coming back? Why does most of it work? And I got taught by the big boys because I recognize if you are going to fix a problem, go out there and talk to the ones with the biggest numbers and it coincided with the fact that I loved working with people to figure out things, that I love to travel and all of those things came together in this opportunity, and by the way, around the turn of the century, Reverse Logistics did not exist very much, right?

John: Right, right.

Tony: Recycling sort of did. But the idea of returns management and recycling, John, not on a lot of people’s– what we did not even have a returns department at Philips. So, and we were two billion dollar electronics company without a returns control group. So I think that all of my growing up in a tough city and going to some really intense educational institutions, and then cutting my teeth at Sony eventually like I said, sales I could do in my sleep, but this was a challenge and and that is where the journey begins, John. You want me to tell some more of the journey?

John: I do and I want I want you to explain like let us frame up in the beginning because of course when I got in the recycling industry, I never heard of those two words together, Reverse Logistics. I had no idea what it meant. So can you frame up what that even means to you and to your great organization and how that term of art came about and so our listeners can understand and learn what that even means.

Tony: Sure and John it is a great story. In the mid to late ’90s, a gentleman named Dr. Dale Rogers and Dr. Ron Lembke wrote a book called Going Backwards. So here I am around a year ’99, 2000 looking for what to do about returns, you Google back then and up comes this book, Going Backwards, which, so help me God I could download for free off the internet. They did not charge anything for it. And some of the practices, the information in that book are still incredibly relevant today and it happened that as I started to go out and look for answers, I came across a company called Genco, one of the big players around the turn of the century, handling returns for Target and Sears and K-mart and others and I literally met Dr. Dale Rogers in person, listen to him speak, said “I got to get to know that guy.” Turns out Dale was from Michigan and went to Michigan State when I was at Michigan and there is a little bit of rivalry there but we got along nicely and I came at it from a sales and marketing background. Like how do you make your numbers and I came at it from an academic view of who knows what the hell they are doing in this space.

Tony: And you know, everyone was just pushing through returns and pushing and pushing no thought to the environment. No thought to reuse effectively. None of that existed and I am proud to say that I learned from the best and when I was at Philips, the numbers were staggering, the numbers were around eleven to twelve percent return rates, a two billion dollar business in the United States, North America and within three years, I had knocked it down to about six to seven percent. And by the time I was done with Philips, it was down around the three percent range, so I was one of the last people standing, you know, how companies turn of the century were going through cuts after cuts after cuts.

John: Right.

Tony: And for efficiency, of course, and I managed to survive one of the last people standing as it kept merging and cutting because somebody had to deal with the returns. And that was me.

John: what a story. So you are really, you were literally at ground zero

Tony: The dawn.

John: Yes, you were literally ground zero for the advent. The advent of what became and a very important part of the entire ecosystem of Commerce. You were at the advent of the Reverse Logistics industry.

Tony: Not only that, John. Back in those days we were coming out of the end of the century with things like six sigma quality control, TQM, Q1, all these top-notch technical quality programs and I was getting the crap beat out of me by the finance team, the CFO of the organization, the CEO, the VPs of sales and and service, like why are you letting so many things come back when there is nothing wrong with them? You remember that, John?

John: Sure, yes. Of course.

Tony: No fault found. No technical fault found.

John: Right.

Tony: The Holy Grail. Ninety percent of these MP3s coming back are no fault found and we are getting forty percent return rates. Well then, I discovered this amazing organization called the ease of use round table. And those people were rocket scientists as far as I am concerned. They were with HP, Intel, Microsoft, Dell, even Apple participating in these quarterly meetings where you say, “How do we make these products easier to use so we do not get the returns and why are so many returns happening?” Those are the days when buying a computer was a six-hour adventure to hook it up, turn it on, and get it to work. Six hours with the average time.

John: Holy, Toledo.

Tony: Did not even have color-coded connections for printers, or for keyboards, or for the mouse, or any of that. So in the process of three to five years of working with that organization, I brought back the concept of net promoter score to Phillips and Phillips embraced it on a global basis. And now you shift from, is the product great? Well sure the product is great. Ninety-nine percent of them all work right out of the box great, but is the experience great? Net promoter score which is fairly large program these days, right? It is well known and when Philips said that board level, our culture has to change. We have to make products that the customers love. It was a throwback to my years at Sony when you sold Sony stuff. Honestly, it was not the greatest product on the planet, but the experience of buying this product that was easy to use made it returned less. So Philips embraced it, other companies have embraced it, so it is no longer the engineers who are dictating return policies and even product design.

Tony: I met human factor engineers, right? Who were they? Usability Engineers. Who are these people? They were so cool, so smart. I brought it in the Phillips and I would like to say that, I am the superstar genius, but I am not. I got lucky to run into the right people at the right time, as you said, at the dawn of this. When returns were flying out of control because of digitization. And you know, the MP3 story, John, is a unique one [crosstalking] because MP3s around the turn of the century literally, if you bought an MP3 player and you plugged it in and used it with Napster and then try to use it with Windows Media Player, your music would be lost. They would not play nice with each other. They would not connect to each other and then if you try to use iTunes and go back to somebody else, you had that whole AAC format versus MP3 and people said, “What is wrong with this thing? It will not play the music I just downloaded.” So return rates, the industry was dying with MP3 players coming back. I am not kidding. It was in the forty percent range.

John: Wow!

Tony: We knew something had to change and that was about all digital products had to learn to play nice with each other and that took a decade or more and then still an issue. And so that was the whole no-fault found holy grail. When you change your view and your priority to making that customer experience better, you would not only have less products come back, you sell more products and who is the rocket science genius on that one, of course is Amazon, right? They learn to make that customer experience amazing, fast, easy, and returns easier than buying. So it has been a long trail and I am lucky to have been in the right places at the right time. And as you said now we have this organization, which I did join the RLA around 2004-2005 when I was just Phillips and when you write magazine articles about the success of what we did, you gain a certain notoriety and you get invited to speak at things and you get to meet some of the real smart people in the industry. And you get to combine what you hear from different places and I wound up sitting on the advisory board of the RLA along with some other colleagues. But we are going to be honest here and talk about the decline of the RLA.

John: Well before we go into that, I want to know how long did it take for others, they saw the success that you were driving at Phillips, and since you were as you say at the dawn of this, how long did it take other OEMs to get that quote-unquote the memo and put others like you in your type of role, find others within their organizations to be the next Tony Sciarrotta, that can make an impact at their organization, at their OEM as well. Was that a two-year deal? Was that over the last dozen years? I mean, how long did that take?

Tony: It is still going on. Unfortunately.

John: Really? Wow.

Tony: Right and you can tell because if you look for people in positions of power like a vice president of Reverse Logistics, they virtually do not exist in any company. Now, you might find some managers, hopefully you will find some director level but you need somebody of power and influence. And by the way, other companies would put returns responsibility in the hands of different organizations within the company like the service group, or the credit group for authorization of returns, for negotiating return agreements. I mean, there is that whole other world that the more I got into it, the more people realize, “My God, Tony is saving us a ton of money. He negotiated handling fees down from ten percent to four percent for our products and you know, four hundred million dollars worth of sales.” That is a fair amount and a hundred million with the returns. So those are big numbers and unfortunately, most companies still have not learned this.

John: Where does it, before we go into, I want to go back to the journey. But before we do that, where should it be sitting, should it be with the chief supply chain officer and that area? Or where should that be sitting now at an organization that is running at full tilt and doing it the right way.

Tony: So the organizations keep making mistakes thinking when you call it reverse logistics, it must belong in the supply chain group. No, no and no because a reverse logistics, a return, is a reverse sale.

John: Got it.

Tony: That is number one. But PNLs are divided in companies. Right, John?

John: Right.

Tony: The PNL is divided that when you sell a product, you make a certain amount of margin on it and that is what the sales group lives on. And then other organizations that deal with what happens after the sale are all having to reduce their cost of operating and processing and handling customer support. They used to do things like measure the call centers’ average resolution time. Right?

John: Right.

Tony: And if you spent too much time on the phone with a customer, what do they do? They cut them off and they kept charging back companies that were spending too much time on the phone, but that was the secret to a company like Zappos, right? Zappos is proud of their extended call center times. They will talk to people forever and they make people happy. So you have got this entire issue of where does it belong. I was lucky. I came out of sales and marketing. So I knew all those people. They all knew me and they decided that I belonged inside sales, inside a sales ops reporting structure, but I indirectly reported to the service and to the credit VPs. So I was a torn apart child in many ways, but it was right because they actually went as far at Philips as to assign part of their bonuses, their annual bonuses to performance on returns management and reverse logistics. Imagine a company doing that. I do not see him doing it today, but we did it at Phillips. Now this meant, John, I was treated like a king, right? Can you imagine like, “Tony, let us go out to lunch.” “Tony, let us go out to have a drink. We want to talk to you about that bonus program. What do we got to do here again?”

John: Right, right. Got it, got it.

Tony: There is another secret, John, about returns management.

John: Okay.

Tony: We get back garbage for returns.

John: Hmm.

Tony: That is when things went a little crazy when plasma TV started coming back on a pallet with other stuff put on top of them and you talking about a seven, eight, nine, ten thousand dollar panel television, flat panel being used as a palette for other crap on it and that just drew the line and I became the collector. I became the enforcer. I took pictures of everything that came back and if it was broken, if it was chopped up, if remote controls are missing, I literally got on planes flew out and imagine this one, to the buyers at these different major global corporations and I can name a few. Certainly the Walmarts, Targets, Costco’s of the world and I show up with a stack of pictures and say, “We got a problem.” And by the way, we collected money back as a manufacturer.

John: Oh. Interesting, interesting.

Tony: We said, “We do not send it to you this way. You should not send a return back that way.” Now by enforcing that, John, that meant that more products could be refurbished and resold into the secondary market instead of being trashed and it started to make a difference and I knew from my sales background you do not just go into the rooms with the eight hundred pound gorillas and say “You will do it this way.” You learn what it is from their sight. What do they face? Can we make the product information tags better? Can we have pictures at the returns desk so that those stressed out lowest-paid clerks in the world at the returns desk with the line in front of them, they take a moment to make sure the product in the box matches. Things like that. These are all very simple, best practices that made you know, again, I am not a rocket scientist, but to reduce returns from eleven percent to three percent over the course of about nine or ten years, I literally, I made jokes about it, John. I would stand on stage and say, “My job is to work myself out of a job. Reduce returns to a point.”

Tony: And honestly, in 2012 that is what happened. Returns were so low. I had already switched from a returns management role to a director of asset recovery. Selling all the returned goods because Phillips and other companies believe in controlling their destiny and their brand by taking everything back. Some companies do an allowance program, right? In lieu of returns and that is always a challenge and then you, John, and your company are dealing with that stuff sometimes just being thrown out for waste, for some rap, and it is all usually fairly good products. So the world has got a long way to go. This gets into those areas of circular economy and recycling and sustainability, and then we start going back to the mothership and saying “You should design it better, package it better.” So that at the end, we are more earth friendly and reusable, and all of that important good stuff.

John: And for our listeners who just joined us, we have got Tony Sciarrota. He is on with us right now. He is the executive director of the Reverse Logistics Association. To find Tony and his colleagues, please go to www.rla.org. Go to the ‘about’ button on the top bar there on the left-hand side. I am on it right now. It is very easy to navigate. You hit ‘about’, you drop down, you find the advisory board and the management team so you can find Tony easily and his colleagues.

John: Tony, you know, talk a little bit about companies. There are a lot of companies out there that are still evolving, that are growing up, and need to understand better. How they need to embrace what your organization teaches and shares the information about reverse logistics. So how does someone go at their company from almost like you said, what you did at Phillips and sales and become the hero of all heroes at their company because they embrace reverse logistics and the value it could drive at a given company.

Tony: Well John, that is a great area to go and I do want to point out that, my wife tells me I am much more handsome than that picture that is on the website. So keep that in mind as you reach out to talk to me, but–

John: That is okay. I do not mind commercial breaks and shameless plugs at all. That is why I am here, you know, we are here to promote great people and great organizations that are making an impact and you definitely have that in spades so any beauty comments you want to make is absolutely fine.

Tony: And John I will also say there is a certain amount of thrill to be in the return space and the returns world. Everything that happens after the sale is how we define reverse logistics, everything. Whether it is the packaging that has to be thrown away, whether it is a– but the thrill of being in reverse logistics world is you have a chance to become a hero. And I cannot tell you, stress enough of what it feels like to be a hero. To stand up on stage, yes sometimes you win awards, but just to be able to stand up on stage and know that you made a difference for your company of millions or tens of millions or even hundreds of millions of dollars by just pursuing this relentlessly and I got to tell you have so much fun along the way because the secret to this is a little bit like the secret of sales.

Tony: You cannot just present the story, the program, the product, the merch program, without getting to know the people you are working with because every company, small example, Target considers their customers, what is the term that they– guests, guests. So you have to recognize that they do not want to mistreat their guests. Costco does not want to mistreat their members. They want to do everything for them. So you have to make it easier for them. But at the end of the day, if you can find ways to make it easier for them, by making product and signage and all of magic things you can do, they love you, because you made it better for them and they recognize that there are those efforts.

Tony: And again, especially about that ease-of-use concept, an example, these docking stations and clock radio dock stations that would have instruction books in twelve languages. Okay, that is not going to work. Another nightmare about those instruction books. Using a lot of words is not going to work, the average reading level in the United States according to Penn State University, that yours truly, according to Penn State has dropped below the sixth-grade level. So nobody thinks about that when they make instruction books in twelve languages and use words. But companies like Phillips got pushed and said, “You know what we need a quick start guide. We need a quick start page. When they open the box, look at some big pictures, steps 1 2 3 and 4 to make this work and do it.” Do not have twelve languages and a lot of verbiage and that does not sound like a reverse logistics function, but it is. It is where you belong because nobody else on the sales and marketing side is doing that enough. So you have to use some influencing skills. But the chance to be a hero, John, is just wonderful and I cannot say how incredible it is because I now have the fortune to lead this global organization and try to share these ideas around the world, knowing you get to be a tree hugger, right? Especially, John, you on your side, you get to be a tree hugger and you can point and say, “We are making a difference.”

John: It is true what you are doing and that is why I wanted you on Impact, Tony, because you yourself and your evangelism and your passion for this and your great organization is making a difference and making an impact and it is so important for people to hear your story and the story of RLA. Go into a little bit, Tony, if you may, what RLA is doing like, okay, we are all living through this horrific tragic period of COVID-19. But talk about during a regular year, post-COVID and beyond, how many conferences do you have a year and what other initiatives, great initiatives, and important initiatives are you focusing on now at RLA.

Tony: So the wonderful part about being in this industry, any important part is we are essential businesses. We are still all working. All of the member companies in RLA are working. Why? Because people are selling stuff and people may be less right now, but people are returning stuff that we do think there is this tsunami down the road of all this stuff that got sold early that will be coming back another as another peak, just like other nightmares. So in a sense, it is still an active year for the reverse industry and maybe somewhat smaller volumes, but it is essential. So I am glad to be in this industry and not in the hotel industry, or the airline industry, some others, and you know, we hope for the best for all of us, for our country, for the world.

Tony: Now, there has been of course some other steps that had to be taken but normally the way the RLA grew up was by having conference events around the world. And I brought those back in 2014 and ’15, the organization under the founder, it started to slip. It had perhaps become too much of a sales organization and not as much a members focused organization. So immediately when I took over completely, I made complete management changes across the board, brought in all new people who I knew from Phillips and other people, companies, and other people that had a passion for this.

Tony: And in 2016 I took over and in 2017, we went back to a conference in Las Vegas. That is our Flagship, North America, normally the largest. We started with about two hundred fifty, three hundred people. We got up to about four hundred, five hundred and then this past year and the year before, we had six hundred and more who have showed up in Las Vegas with an important notice here. I am not a show producer. I am a horrible show producer. I need people to help me figure out what kind of food to order for god sakes. I cannot even think through that stuff. What I do know is content matters. I want people on stage who are going to share the most important information for the people in the audience and give it well said, well done, and well documented. And when it comes to the panels, we try to always have the subject matter experts, our people, who have survived frankly at the retailers and manufacturers in this space and solve some of these problems. And then generally we mix it in with companies like in ERI, John, because you are considered a third party solutions provider or partner.

Tony: So it has to be one side and the other have to balance each other out to get through this and so I am proud of having the highest content possible and I picked each keynote speaker myself personally. I make sure I have heard them before and that they are delivering good information and a good format. And then I made the decision in 2018 to go back to Europe and we have been there in 2018 and 2019. We should have been there this month, but we will do a virtual version in September.

John: God it. And where in Europe is typically that conference?

Tony: So in Europe, we have generally been in Amsterdam. The RLA over its history tended to gravitate towards Las Vegas in North America because of the pull for the whole world and all of the country easily and we do it in early February because right after Super Bowl is quiet time, it is a little bit busy in returns, but it is a good time get out to an event. And then in Europe we were trying to do June. And then last year after June, we went to Asia in September in Singapore. And again, if you look at the board companies like the HPs and Dells and Intels and Ciscos, of the world and even the Amazons and Home Depot and Walmart, they all exist to some degree around the world. So the board represents the strength of the speakers that we can draw. I am saying we draw in, in Singapore, we get Del Asia to come and speak, we get HP Asia to come and speak, and Philips in Asia to come and speak. So we try to be local with the global companies and again content, content, content. We do not have advertising from the stage. I love to have sponsors on stage. I love to have a company like an ERI help to moderate the recycling panel’s best practices, things like that and that is a good combination, but nobody stands up there and talks about their better mousetrap because we need to know about all of them, not just some of them. So that is our focus for our event.

John: What are you most excited about second half of 2020 and we are going into 2021 then so the next eighteen months, what initiatives are you most excited about the next eighteen months?

Tony: I am hoping that Oxford University comes through with this vaccine that they are talking about and delivering a billion doses by December because I think at that point people would be excited about coming back to Las Vegas next February to another event. Initiative wise I take the RLA, it is the serious responsibility and here is what we owe the industry. We owe education, and we do not have a certification program. And I went to a couple of the global powerhouses, our CSCMP and Apex and ASCM. These are the education associations and they have forty-one chapters, forty-one different courses offered in supply chain. And only one course with one chapter talked about reverse logistics. That is a shame. None of the universities with one exception in North America have a reverse logistics degree or Masters. So that is a shame. So I am proud to have Tim Brown from Georgia Tech on the board. We are working towards offering education because the world needs that. There are not enough individuals that think like we do about how to fix these things and make them better. So education is important. I think the industry numbers are important and we do not have a handle on it yet but we at least have a willingness to support putting together– by numbers, I mean, John, for example, would it not be a help to know how many bleders are being sold in North America and how many are being returned. I do not care what brand it is, it can be KitchenAid, it can be Oster. It is not the brand and I do not care who is selling them and I do not need to reveal that it is Walmart or Target or Amazon. We just need to know how many, what is the volume, what is the size of that space because it helps companies like on the third-party side plan for okay, if there are a million blenders sold and we know ten percent are return and come back through the channel there is a hundred thousand. Now of that, fifty percent can be refurbished and resold, we need warehouse space to handle that and then we have another fifty percent, they are going to need to be either scrapped or recycled. I mean that that is valuable information.

John: Very!

Tony: That is a major initiative. We owe that to the industry and we will get there. We will get there.

John: That is wonderful. I love it.

Tony: I have one last initiative dream and this is a matter of needing resources and we are spread a bit thin trying to do everything we are doing but the ultimate resource for all of us in addition to the numbers for the industry will be for the consumers. We have a council of councils working on the concept of like, instead of Carfax, see effects. So if you go looking for a television and you know the serial number, you will know when was it born, where was it born, when was it sold and shipped the first time, where was it refurbished? And now I am buying it from Amazon or someone else online refurbished. There is no refurbished database. The Consumer Technology Association talks about numbers a lot. But no one has gone in that direction. That is my dream. We will get there before I get out of the RLA and turn it over to some other competent people, but that is the third dream on that wish list. The numbers and the CE facts and also seeing all of us go back to work on a near normal or new normal basis because some of what we have learned in these last three months I think will help us going forward. These wonderful communications like podcasts and Zoom meetings and all of that, John. They are really good communication tools and they are teaching us to think more about what we are doing.

John: And although I have given out your information before, I am going to give it out again. To find Tony and his great organization, the RLA, go to www.rla.org. Go to the ‘about’ button, which is on the top bar left-hand side, drop down and you will find the advisory board and the management team. Tony, communication is so important and leveraging communication tools that exist now that did not when you and I were young guys is also important. Talk a little bit about the power of LinkedIn and how you have harnessed it at RLA to get the good word out about your important work.

Tony: Thank you, John. LinkedIn is certainly one of the best business tools out there. For example, John, and I look at building this organization globally in a stronger, stronger, stronger way, and I am always amazed that people still do not know us. Now, reverse logistics, if you look in LinkedIn, there is somewhere north of a hundred and twenty-five individuals around the world that have reverse logistics in their job description or their title. I only have about twenty-five thousand registered in our community and our registration is free to join the community. We do have the memberships for more benefits, but we do have an open registration for more people to join. So LinkedIn is a major tool for us. We have a reverse logistics group, a Reverse Logistics Association group page. We go on there a lot. That is our social media to promote things like today’s webinar and upcoming committee meetings. And so LinkedIn is a tremendous tool. What we have not yet done, and we are going to, is use other aspects of it such as the Navigator, the more premium opportunities to look for things and for people because until we launched our new website last year, late last year and got the kinks worked out by showtime and we just added a few new benefits. I did not want to, I want to give people a better experience than they expect. And that is the secret in life, is under promise and over deliver as best as you can and that means, that does mean under-promise means really being conservative and cautious about what you say you can do to help people and then show them that yes, we can do that but now that you are here, this is what else we are going to do for you and that is my focus.

John: Well for my experience as executive chairman of URI, I have never had the pleasure of being to one of your great events, but my team has they said it is one of the most important events of the year so I can only share with our listeners our own experiences that if you have not been to Tony’s event, one of Tony’s RLA events yet, go to them. Get involved, join the organization. It is very important to what we are doing with regards to OEMs, recycling, and good practices and Tony, I just want to say thank you for coming on today. You have made an important impact on the environment, on the world. You have made the world a better place so as the RLA and for that, I want to say, thank you so much.

Tony: Well, thank you, John. We are going to keep doing it.

John: I cannot wait to have you on again, and I cannot wait to come to your next great event.

Tony: I look forward to it. We hope it is February 9, 10, and 11 right after Super Bowl next year. If there is a Super Bowl, normal, we will be there in Vegas with an important large group of influencers in the industry.

John: And for people to find out more about your great events and about all the initiatives you discuss today, they could then again go to www.rla.org. Tony Sciarrotta, you made an impact on me today. You are making an impact on the United States and around the world. And you are making the world a better place.

Tony: Thank you so much, John.

John Shegerian: This edition of the Impact podcast is brought to you by the Marketing Masters. The Marketing Masters is a boutique marketing agency offering website development and digital marketing services to small and medium businesses across America. For more information on how they can help you grow your business online, please visit themarketingmasters.com.

Welcome to another edition of the Impact podcast. I am John Shegerian I am so honored today to have my business partner Brendan Egan. He is with us today joining the Impact podcast welcome Brendan Egan.

Brendan Egan: John thank you. I am honored, humbled and excited to be on and to be one of your earliest guests and I think we are going to have a lot of fun today. So thanks for having me.

John: We are and just as a little bit of truth in advertising for our listeners out there. Brendan does all the marketing for ERI, a recycling company under his other brand name company simple SEO another great brand company that Brendan is co-founded and is the CEO of and he is my business partner and the CEO of the Marketing Masters. So Brendan, I want you before we get into the Q&A part of this discussion, share a little bit you are very young and massively successful for your youth and you have accomplished so much. Can you share a little bit about your background and your journey from just starting out of school to where you are today and how you got to such a position of success?

Brendan: I appreciate those words on I think there is a lot of people that are far more successful than me, but I have been fortunate enough to find a lot of success as you mentioned at a young age and I think it really comes down to just putting your head down, doing hard work and grinding through and scaling the things that work and cut the things that do not so I was born and raised here in Chicago in the suburbs and was fortunate enough to go to some great schools, meet some great people but when I was 10 years old and all my friends were out playing video games and enjoying themselves my very very first business they started going door to door and my neighborhood and knocking on doors and I started a company that raked leaves and shoveled snow and you know started doing that myself at first and it started to grow beyond what I wanted to do so I had some of my friends working for me. So literally I started very very young in terms of entrepreneurship, I would not call that a true company but it was something that really got me my first flavor of what it is like to have a business, to run a business. Fast forward a few years John and I during the great stock market crash of 2008 I started day trading. I very vividly remember I was sitting in the bedroom of my mom’s house in college and I was watching my tube television of all the different traders that were pull their hair out as the market was crashing and just losing their mind and just the way that my mind thinks I said to myself, ‘hey, I that is something that I have always been interested in I bet I could do it I bet I can make money doing this’ and you know fast forward a year or two and I became pretty successful at that made a decent amount of money for a kid that was in college. In 2008 later in that year, I founded a company that I called learn to trade. It was a company where I wrote an eight hour long video course that taught other people how to trade in the markets how to be day traders and swing traders. I also did consulting with that company. In 2012 I ended up selling that company and the reason that I sold it is kind of interesting. So we actually became incredibly successful, we had first page google rankings for all the major keywords, we had wonderful advertising campaigns running and the reason for that is that I tried to hire probably six or seven different companies to run our marketing and every single one of them were the slimiest biggest rip offs in the world some of them were based in California, there were a few base in Chicago I hired one that was based in Australia and they all did terrible work for me they all got rich off of me and you know charge us thousands and thousands of dollars per month and we saw no ROI so I started doing the marketing for that company in house I built my own in-house team for that and before I knew it I had friends, family and colleagues asking me ‘Hey, can you help me with my marketing, can you help me with my SEO can you’ you know I have had the same experiences that you have had and your company is incredibly successful in those areas. So after I sold the company actually before I sold Learn to Trade, I started simple SEO and then once I sold that company, I really full time started focusing on scaling and growing simple SEO and as you know, John a few years later, I was fortunate enough to meet you and we became partners and launched our own agency the Marketing Masters, which is also been incredibly successful. So that is kind of how I got there and you know really over the last decade my biggest focus has just been running the agencies and scaling them, working with all of our wonderful clients and getting them results and continuing to grow our marketing companies.

John: So I hear the theme then Brendan of just your absolute hyper-focus, hard work and not a lot of shortcuts.

Brendan: I do not think there is many shortcuts in the world. I think that every now and then John we get lucky as you know and we find maybe something that somebody else did not stumble upon or we find something that temporarily gets us a huge advantage but at the end of the day, I think if you are in business for the long run, which all of us should be. I do not think there is a lot of shortcuts, I think it is really a lot of wake up every day with the right attitude, with the right approach, roll up your sleeves and get the work done and whether you are doing the work yourself or if you have a team of five people, five hundred people, five thousand people, it does not matter you need to be a good leader, you just show them that hey you are willing to roll up your sleeves and do the work and you know, John you and I have had many phone calls at midnight and then we have had many phone calls and next morning at 6 a.m. again, you know so you and I both know that there is really no shortcuts and you really just need to put in the time and if you do the right things with the right people and put in the time put in the work, I think you are going to find success in the world of business.

John: I love that. In terms of mission your core mission, what drives you to do what you do every day?

Brendan: I think all of us in the business world in some way are driven obviously by money. If we were not making money, I think it would be much harder for us to do what we do but I also like doing things John as you do I know that make an impact and so what a fitting name for your podcast impact, I love that word impact and I love doing things that make an impact in some way in someone’s life and in the world and so that looks different for different, you know projects different things, you know, John obviously, we are partners and engage which is a wonderful business for booking speakers that we have some young great partners, Daniel Hennas, Jake Olson, Michael Olson, Noah Schwartz, you know for those that do not know Jake story, Jake was on John’s podcast a few episodes ago and I recommend listening to that Jake was the first blind, NCAA football player and so you know when the opportunity for engaged came along, I felt that we could not only make an impact in that industry and grow a successful business but you know, we could also help make an impact in some young lives or some kids that you know, really have good heads on their shoulders that had a great business concept that you know, we are struggling to figure out how to scale it and how to make it work and we are struggling to figure out what they were going to do when they graduate to college. So, you know in that regard that excited me and made an impact there. For other clients, you know, I we have tons of clients as you know, John that are in much more boring industries and so maybe making an impact just means ‘hey, let us find them a ROI, let us find them a marketing strategy that works for them, let us find them something that can impact their business and so you know, one of the fun exciting things that make about being an entrepreneur is that your mission can change but at the end of the day your two core strategies and missions are making money and for me making an impact in businesses and in people’s lives and hopefully in some way impacting the world to make it a better place.

John: I love that and is these not these nothing to be embarrassed about to say that you are in business to make money we live in one of if not the greatest country on the planet in terms of innovation, entrepreneurship and democracy and capitalism. So, there is no shame in saying we want to be successful and make money and make an impact at the same time. Did you feel the same way?

Brendan: You know, I feel sometimes John like the world that we live in today and you know I am pretty young I am in my early 30s. So I have not been around quite as long as you have not seen as many different generations and things but you know, I feel like the world has evolved over the last 10 years to almost make you feel guilty for making money, you know, there is almost this attitude that if you have a successful business and I have seen it I mean I have seen friends, I have seen family, I have seen colleagues that treat you differently because you are successful financially and you know, I have no shame in it because it is not like we sit back and print money, it is not like we do some shady thing that makes money or we found some sort of secret that no one else can have you know, as I talked about earlier we put in the time, we do the hard work, we take the risk and we just as easily could fail at things that we succeed at and so there is tremendous risk in everything that you do in business and so I feel like without that monetary reward at the end of the tunnel for the things that work, you know, it is much more harder to internally be motivated and it is much harder to justify taking risks and doing things that maybe would not work out. So I know my philosophy is similar to yours John is, you know, scale the things that work and cut the things that do not and if you do not have money as a gauge or as a motivator to figure out what works and scale it, you know, you almost lose that balance of being able to do that. So I have no shame in it and you know, it is something that I talk a lot about is, you know, ‘hey if you are in business, there is probably a lot of different reasons beyond money that you are going to be in it and that motivate you but at the end of the day, I think every single one of us is ultimately driven and motivated by financial gains.’

John: Well said, you know Brendan everyone has little idiosyncratic superpowers that they rely on to help them either get through the day or be more successful and get the most out of their day and the most out of their life. What is your one secret super power that you could share with our listeners to make them better every day and what they are trying to accomplish.

Brendan: I think it is one superpower John that I think is a couple different aspects that make it work. The superpower that I think gets me through my day and makes me successful is focus and I think how you get focus is sometimes different for different people but for me personally, there is a few things that I have found really drive my focus it is having a set schedule, you know, making sure every single day you have the same habits, have the same schedule, wake up at the same time, go to bed at the same time you know, I kind of joke with people that I am in my 30s, but I live the life of a sixty-year-old because literally whether it is Friday night, Saturday night, Sunday night or Tuesday night, it does not matter I go to bed usually between 9 and 10 p.m. you know, of course, there is exceptions to that but stay on say on a schedule, have a schedule set for your work day in terms of what you do. Another big part of my focus is exercise and eating well. I think if you are not healthy and if you are not, you know, moving around and getting exercise and fueling your body properly, it is hard to focus and then just to avoid distractions. We live in a world where as you know, John there is a million different things coming your way at once from social media, text messages, phone calls, emails, mail, you know, literally at any point in the day, you can just be bombarded with contacts and information and so find a way to be responsive but also find a way to be able to set that stuff aside and carve out some space for yourself to focus. So my superpower that gets me going is just being able to focus and being able to sit there and put my head down sometimes for you know, one two three hours at a time and just get my tasks done and get myself in that zone where I can really focus and get my work done.

John: So that goes along with also your time and health hack, focus helps you manage your time better and helps you stay healthier and as sharp as you can be is that not true?

Brendan: It is a hundred percent true and you know in terms of time hacks, so two things there is time and health but one of the things that I try to do as a business owner is I try to look at things that take me greater than 20 minutes and figure out how I delegate those. So there is only so many hours in the day. There is only so much that business owners can do you know with the precious time that they have and if you are sitting there spending hours and hours and hours on a task, there is a good chance that you should probably be delegating the task to someone else or having someone else do it. So I try to really focus on things that you know, take less than 20 minutes in my time or that require, you know, my expertise or require a business owner to do. Everything else I tried to have somebody on my team do it and you know, really just delegate that and be strategic in the things that you do but in terms of like health hacks, I do a variety of things I do not have one. There is not a silver bullet just like there is not a silver bullet in starting a business or in marketing, there is not a silver bullet in terms of health and so my philosophy in a lot of this is thanks to you John because you have taught me a great deal of health over the years and have introduced me to some great books and some great people and great resources, but I really have kind of two or three big components to health, one is eat well so eat clean obviously you are going to have exceptions to that but try to always eat clean and eat well. I am a huge fan of green juices as I know you are as well John and I make sure every single day I have at least one or two juices just to get all my nutrients in. The second hack that I mentioned a little bit ago is exercise so I try to do I actually built last year a gym on my home just to try to be more time efficient and so I try to do cardio and weights at least once every single day also a huge fan of using a sauna I think it is great to just kind of heat your body up and sweat everything out and as you know John, we are in the middle of launching a new company together with red lights and so red light therapy I think is a tremendous benefit to entrepreneurs and business owners to just get the most out of your body feel energized feel good. A lot of times we are stuck, you know indoors and we are getting all this junk blue LED light and so red light and infrared light is a fantastic way to kind of reset your body, reset your circadian rhythm and you know, just keep your body the best and freshest that it can be. So those are kind of my biggest time and health hacks.

John: All great things and our listeners would get a lot out of doing any of all those things that you just mentioned because I know they work I do myself and I think you are spot on I think that is great, great advice no matter what age you are. The healthy you are, the better you can be the best that you can be then so I think that is great Brendan. Brendan there is a lot of listeners out there that need some help on their journey. They feel that once they had have had a job or two or gotten a profession or degree in a specific subject that they just stuck and there is a lot of people that are listening to you and want to be the next Brendan Egan and be a serial entrepreneur that makes an impact with a company like the Marketing Masters or engage or trajectory energy or any of the many companies that you are very involved with. Can you give any advice for our listeners who want to change their path or course and figure out something new to do that they are more passionate about. Where they also then get to make an impact on their community or the world at large?

Brendan: I think the only person standing in their way John is their selves and I think that anyone out there can make a change in their life for the positive whether it is a small change whether it is you know, sitting down and talking with their boss and saying that they think they can contribute more at the company or whether it is a big change like you know, leaving your job and starting your own company and becoming an entrepreneur. I think the only person standing in their way and creating fear is them and it is in their own heads. Now I was fortunate to start my business at a really young and so I think that afforded me a lot of luxuries that a lot of people who are older maybe do not have it you know, I was at an age where I had very little fear, I had very little standing in my way of starting a business, you know, the risk of failure was very high but you know, the consequences of failure were very low given that I was a young college kid when I started my first real business. I also kind of in my head, you know said to myself ‘hey if I cannot make my first business or to work that you know going out to college I was going to go out and find a normal 9 to 5 job or whatever it may be so, you know, I had that luxury of doing that because of the age that I started so I certainly understand for our listeners that you know, maybe you have a mortgage to pay for, have a family that they are taken care of. It is much scarier and much more risky. With the internet I think it is amazing how easy it is though to start a business these days. So whether you want to sell a product, sell a service, you know whatever it may be there is a lot of people that I think can still work a 9 to 5 job and can kind of moonlight whatever that other business maybe until they reach a point of profitability and successfulness that they can leave their normal job so you know I think the internet has really brought the ecosystem in the world and to everybody’s living rooms and you know, there is pros and cons to that but one of the biggest pros is that you know, look at all the internet entrepreneurs that we meet John I mean there is you know, there is college kids, there is people in their 70s that have an idea for a product that are starting it online and everyone in between. So I think that you know, if you do a little research if you do some reading and I hate to plug our book, but John and I have a wonderful book on marketing that is a great starting point for somebody that is looking to start a business and market it, you know, if you have a good idea and if you have a good marketing strategy, I think anyone can kind of moonlight, start their own business and then once it reaches a level of success can leave their job and make that their new full-time gig.

John: Hey for 99 cents our book is a in the kindle version is pretty worthwhile.

Brendan: You and I certainly are not eating dinner tonight on our book we really wrote it for people to really have a resource to learn from so, you know, I am glad to see so many people are taking advantage of it and it you know kind of warms my heart to see that we are able to help so many people for such a modest price point.

John: Yes and I just want to share with our listeners what Brendan was just talking about in terms of the internet, I could not agree more and really the net-net of that is and is so well said by you Brendan that the internet truly has the marketized entrepreneurship.

Brendan: It absolutely has.

John: And that is unbelievable opportunity for all of our listeners out there that if they want to make a change, they do not have to give up their nine-to-five job. They could keep one foot in that and keep the income coming in while they start up their vision, their dream, their opportunity and anyone that contacts you or reads the book or both can find that online opportunities are just boundless still and are not going away in the years ahead so I think that is great. Before you know, we have to say goodbye here a couple things Brendan. First how do our listeners connect with you, you are a very personable person, work with people one-on-one and you are also very connected and easy to work with and reach. I want you to give any of the resources how you want our listeners to get in contact you with.

Brendan: I will give a long list, but anyone that wants to contact me is more than welcome to. I am happy to help with anyone’s marketing needs that they may have. Easiest way is to go to the marketingmasters.com and hit the contact button. You could also go to my personal site, which is brendanegan.com. that is where my podcast lives. You can also go on LinkedIn I am very active on LinkedIn and you can also follow me if you would like on

Instagram egan.88 is my Instagram handle.

John: That is perfect and any shameless plugs, this is your time to promote anything and everything you want to promote Brendan.

Brendan: I would love to just promote once again our book. I think that over the last two years John you and I have put a lot of work and sweat and tears into that book and I think that it is fantastic resource for anyone that needs some marketing help and some marketing tips. It is called a Hundred One Tips from the Marketing Masters and it really focuses on all areas of marketing and especially on digital marketing providing actionable tips and strategies that we use every day at our agency to help our clients grow. So it is a wonderful tool I think for business owners and for people that are maybe looking to start their own business or looking to supercharge and grow their business just to kind of understand some of the different tactics and strategies that we use as an agency and kind of better understand that hey just doing SEO or just doing email marketing does not mean that you are necessarily doing it right or that you are necessarily doing all the little steps that are involved in getting the most ROI in the most success out of your campaign. So that is kind of what we wrote the book for and is John mentioned it is available as an e-book for just 99 Cents. So, there is really no price barriers and there is no reason why somebody would not grab that and even if they just learn one new thing from it, it is well worth it, it is weight and gold.

John: How about this you want to give away five copies to the first five people that contact you and ask you for some for copy of the book The Marketing Masters?

Brendan: I would love to give away 50 copies of the first 50 people that contact me. So anyone that wants to take us up on that feel free to email me [email protected]. Just say that you listen to the Impact podcast and we will get you hooked up with a free copy.

John: Brendan you are not only my great friend and business partner, but you are truly a great example and living proof that everyone who wants to make an impact can and make the world a better place. Thank you again for joining us today at the Impact podcast. It is an honor to have you here.

Brendan: Thanks I appreciate it.

John Shegerian: Welcome to another edition of Impact podcast on John Shegerian. And today, I’m so honored and privileged to have with us Scott Schober. He’s one of the top Cybersecurity experts in the entire world. Welcome to Impact, Scott.

Scott Schober: Hey, thanks for having me on John. This is great. Looking forward to a nice discussion.

John: Oh me, too. And you know, there’s no more timely period than to have this discussion with an expert like you, you know, the statistics that I’ve beengleaning from the FBI and other Federal officials is during this Covid-19 tragedy. Cyber crimes are up four times. But before we get into, you know, why your services and your books and your podcast are so important to all of our listeners out there. I want to share a little bit about I want you to share a little bit about your journey. How did you kid from New Jersey become one of the top cyberexperts in the entire world?

Scott: Yeah, it’s actually kind of an interesting backstory. Our company and I’m the next generation was founded 48 years ago by my father, Gary Schober. So it’s really a true family business in that sense that was founded in Berkeley Heights, New Jersey and hence the name Berkeley for Berkeley Varitronic systems, and we’ve always done kind of niche unique designs for companies. They come to us with a problem and then we would provide a solution. And we really had a kind of a growth spurt at the infancy of the World of Wireless when it kind of kicked off in the mid-80s, 1980s. We were doing a lot of stuff for the TV networks, audience television research, finding out what people are watching on TV with some unique algorithms and we license a lot of the technology to the major networks, but then we were approached by a company down in DC and they asked us to develop some of the very first Wireless test tools to find out where to put the cell towers and to measure how signals propagate all to make cell phones work and that took us in the first generation of traditional cellular mobile phones as we know it when they were giant bricks that we held to communicate and rich businessmen use them to where we are now going from the 4G fourth-generation to 5G fifth generation advanced smart phones that we see around the globe. Everybody’s got a smartphone or two on them. We develop all the test tools that make that technology make phones work. In the process of that we learned a lot of the vulnerabilities and how hackers will exploit a smartphone especially in the past ten years or so because your smartphone is really more powerful than most desktop computers these days. It’s like a supercomputer. So hackers will traditionally use that so they could gain access as a conduitto get into companies so they can find their way onto the network, work laterally, place malware, collect data, steal personal information passwords, whatever the case may be. So that kind of brought us to where we are. And then about five six years ago, I began developing a lot more security related tools. We call wireless threat detection tools mostly to U.S. DOD agencies and fortune 500 companies to keep their boardroom safe, to keep classified information safe from hackers things like that when there’s wireless threats and the more I educated and shared information in from presentations and whitepapers, E papers, whatever the more the hackers start the set their sights on my back and next thing you know is I became personally and my company a victim of repeated hacks and it started out innocent as probably all of us or all your listeners. May be a debitcard my debit card got compromised and my credit card personally. Then the company’s credit card and the company’s debit card they got reissued then it happened again and it happened again and happened again. I said something is wrong in here. Then my twitter account was hacked. Then we received repeated DDOS attacks distributed denial of service attacks with a flood your website with garbage traffic so you can’t do online commerce and now we’re not able to sell our wireless tools online our wireless security tools. So this kept going on things got worse and worse to the point where one morning I came in to work on Monday morning and looked at my computer went online to the bank account and $65,000 was taken out of our account. And that’s when I said guys this is not good. I got a serious problem, called the bank, law enforcement got involved since it exceeded 50,000 dollars in the federal investigation. So as you can imagine letters, phone calls everything under the sun and I finally was able to get all the funds back and cards reissued and so on and so forth, but in the process of being hacked and hacked again, and again, I learned a lot and I always thought as a security company and security minded people here we would never be a victim of that and I learned the hard way. So I learned we had to do some a lot of best practices that you assume you do, you don’t do because you get kind of complacent or a little lazy.

John: Right.

Scott: So then suddenly it’s you know, how do you secure passwords? And how do you secure information? How do you properly shred documents and dispose of things which you guys are certainly experts at computers, printers, fax machines, scanner understanding where the treasures are in your company and valuable information that you properly get rid of that. So nobody can compromise. It goes a long way so I kind of take people through myjourney, and then kind of the emotional side as a business owner and consumer and help them see where I went wrong and what I learned in the process. So hopefully, they don’t go down the same path that I’ve traveled and they could kind of empower themselves to be secure at home, be secure within their own businesses and train and share information and not being an island and keep being a victim of repeated hacks and that’s really the genesis and kind of the backstory of hacked again. And that, it was kind of funny when it first happened. I was very embarrassed. Here we are a security company and we’re- and the story kind of got out there trickled out there and we really kind of kicked it off. I got a call from the Associated Press and they were doing a feature story on it and they said they heard my story and wanted to interview me and I said, “Geez, I don’t know if I feel like going on record that I’m in I’m officially an idiot here and I let everybody down” but I said, you know what,it’s out there and I said if I’ll do it if this will be done in the sense where it will help other people so they don’t make the same mistakes I did. And after that interview, boom the idea for a book started to come together and I started documenting it and and here we are today.

John: You know, and I know your brother is partners with you also in the business. Is your dad still involved with the business?

Scott: Yeah. Yeah. He’s really retired. He’s technically our CTO still so he comes in to make sure we’re not bankrupt ordidn’t destroy the business yet, but he doesn’t he’s not active in the business anymore. He’s really retired with a fishing pole on a lake and just probably laughing at us working our butts off. So it’s good that he deserve that he worked hard he built up a great business and our business is predominantly word-of-mouth. We really don’t advertise which is kind of rare for a 48 year old company to survive the ups and downs and the recent challenges even with this virus, the Covid-19 stuff survive through it and thrive through it. I think it’s kind of a testament to our corporate culture and the legacy of a family business in America today. So it’s kind of a privilege. I always feel just to work here and have a part in it.

John: That is so- I really agree with you on all those points and for our listeners who just joined us we’re so excited to have with us today Scott Schober. He’s one of the top Cybersecurity experts in the entire world. He has a lot to say on these topics, I would listen and also read his books now. We’re going to get to your books in a second but to find Scott go to www.scottschober S-C-H-O-B-E-R.com scottschober.com or his company URL www.bvsystems.com. Scott, talk a little bit about how many years ago you wrote Hacked Again. And how was it received once you got it out there into the marketplace?

Scott: Well, first of all, I have to qualify and say I am not a writer which I find kind of interesting and I’ve spoken a lot of book expose, a lot of colleges, business seminars and people are very curious. How in the world did you become a writer? And you know, was it hard it just study this to college and I can honestly say I’m probably one of the worst writers out there, so I had to learn a lot. I mean everything from A to Z in the process of writing a book and what I quickly learned is there is some structure and things to do it, but there’s enough information outthere in the world that will quickly help you. Anybody can do it. The key to a good book is having a good story and I felt I had a good story and I got a lot of help obviously from my brother Craig. He helped really everything I would write I would hand him and then he would edit the chapter and we would go back and forth and to kind of get it refined and get the kinks out. So I always encourage somebody if you have a story to tell and you have somebody else that you could bounce the ideas off and edit and it would really happen.Fortunately for me growing up with my brother, with three years difference. I’m three years senior to him. He kind of is in my head already since we work together, we grew up together. He knows how I think. I’m more of the kind of the math and science mindset. He’s more of the artsy side with video and that’s a nice combination. You can kind of complement one another. So I always encourage people if you’re writing get somebody that kind of balances you out so that your story will come out and the averagereader will enjoy and read it so that the journey took me about two years to write Hacked Again. Again, that’s really a long time. And I guess it’s because I was learning on the way. I wrote a lot more chapters that didn’t get included because you just end up throwing it out. So all the things that I learned from book number one I said if I ever write book number two, I know what to do and what not to do and it really does help. It’s an amazing journey and process writing because you learn more about yourself than anything else. And I talked to a lot of other writers and I encourage people, too. If you have that story or in the back of your mind, you said like to write a book and I was encouraged to do this pick the genre that you’re writing about my case hacking Cyber security and they told me go to the bookstore and look at the books and buy 20 of them that you really that catch your eye. Maybe it’s the cover. Maybe it’s the title. Maybe it’s the subject and read them cover to cover. And I did that and it was painful but in the process you start to develop what writing style you like, what you enjoy and how you can better tell your story. So I kind of am a self-taught author. I feel from my first book and it’s interesting. Some people said they love the first book more than my second book and some people have said just the opposite and they said well you’ve improved a lot as an author in your second book over your first book. So it’s kind of interesting different takes people get out of it and it’s just an enjoyable journey and encourage people to do it.

John: How many years after you wrote Hacked Again did you write Cybersecurity Is Everybody’s Business which I have on my desk here, which I’ve already halfway through which I just think is so practical in such a great book how many years in between those two books?

Scott: Once, I would say I was probably about I think 2016 Hacked Again came out.

John: Right.

Scott: And it was probably 2017 into 2018. So there’s about a year or so to actually write my second book Cybersecurity Is Everybody’s Business. So there was a little bit of brief time in between there trying to figure out. Hey, is there another book here and what was hesitant for mewas is there another story or is there more to tell and I think it was probably the latter that stood out in my mind. Hey, I’m not done here. I told the story but a lot has happened since I finished Hacked Again and that really was the genesis of Cybersecurity Is Everybody’s Business. So it’s a longer read. It goes into a little bit more detail, but it picks up on a lot of topics some additional breaches. Cryptocurrency really kind of made center stage of the dark web and some of the crimes and things that have happened there certainly got a lot more attention. Skimming technologies that really took off in the past few years. So there’s a lot more I wanted to talk about and share with my audience and that’s exactly what I’ve done.

John: So what goes through a little bit, you know, we’re you know, when you listen to the professionals like the FBI and other Federal officials that prosecute and chase the threat actors in this space they say during Covid-19, Scott, cyber crimes are up at least four times. What key elements, what key themes do you want our listeners to keep in mind that they could take away if they read your book but give them a little bit of a taste of what they’ll start learning about if they pick up your book or download it today at Amazon.com or other great platforms.

Scott: Yeah, I think with all my writing and all my presentations, I always try to share with listeners and readers common themes that security and cyber security in particular is really in your control. Most people they seem to get lazy or complacent that deer in the headlight look because they get overwhelmed. I share this even dealing with my father this weekand he was overwhelmed with trying to create and maintain passwords and a lot of people I talk to they’re frustrated just with cyber security in general the important message. I hope to resonate with those that are listening that if you take a little bit of time and learn there are best practices that you can implement that are really common sense and it’s not necessarily a spend of money. Most people associate Cybersecurity. I got to go spend a lot of money and that’s not necessarilythe answer rather you have to change the way you think, the way you do business and that will translate to a more secure cyber perspective. I analyzed even in my book. In fact, both books I touch on it something as simple as something physical security. We think about a document we take credit cards for example, and we jot down the credit cards we get it over the phone, so it’s secure and not in any digital formor anything else. We jot it down on paper. What happens when we’re done processing that order? We actually have to shred that physical piece of paper that has somebody else’s, our customers personal information on it. Again, that’s simple. What do most people do? They buy a 1995 shredder that does very basic shredding. It really is not very secure. It’s more secure than crumbling it up and putting it in the garbage. But instead if you buy a micro crosscut shredder or you’re using a good company that actually provides shredding services that obliterates that so there’s no way somebody could repeat that together. That’s the proper way to handle security. What’s the difference in cost? Maybe it’s $200 to buy a Brothers micro crosscut shredder that’s closer to the equivalent of what NSA might do to shred a document. Then the $20 shredder that’s almost a giveaway. So sometimes it’s a little bit more money to spend but its more common sense.The way you implement security that’s what’s important and that it’s done throughout your culture in your company. It’s not just the Chief Information Security Officer or the President. I always say it’s from the janitor on up to the CEO. Everybody has to understand there is a culture that needs to be understood and maintained to keep the entire company secure and once you start to learn those best practices, everybody can implement them and again, it doesn’t have to always hit the wall, it’s not a big expense to implement these things most of it is there. Another good example two factor authentication, role used to logging on to a bank or a secure site. Yeah, we check. Is there a lock symbol? Is it HTTPS for secure? Those are the basics important. But if we’re going to check our 401k or a stock portfolio or check our bank account, whatever the case may be. Are we using two-factor authentication? Most of the time it’s there, it’s free, it’s available. But we need to make a balanced decision between security and convenience. Most people will opt for convenience over security every time. We have to think security. We opted for it’s going extra 10 seconds to do this 2 factor authentication, but I’m a hundred times more secure. Boom. That’s the way they go. And that’s what I try to share with people. Empower them to take a little bit extra time and think how this will save them from going down the path that I went with Federal investigations and documentation and phone calls and paperwork. It’s a disruptor from you’re in if you’re a consumer, but it’s even bigger disruptor if you’re trying to run a business and you’re distracted by all the fallout after a breach. It’s a mess.

John: You know, Scott the name of the book is great, Cybersecurity Is Everybody’s Business and for our listeners out there for the first, you know, Scott was kind enough to share some of his books with us and for our first six listeners that write to us and tell us why you want to read this book? We’re going to share a copy. It’s autographed as well from Scott to our great listeners. It’s really for all of you. And you could download it as well on your Kindle or your iPad or something as if you’d like to do that and get access to it immediately today when you’re listening to this podcast, but Scott the book is for not only someone at a big corporation. Like you said, it’s everybody’s business, but it’s also for the guy or woman who owns a dry cleaner and also for a mom or dad who’s running a household which has become an ecosystem of itself in terms of money and capital and commerce going through it. It’s for just someone who’s running a household as well. Not just the business. Is that correct?

Scott: Yeah, you’re absolutely right. In fact, it couldn’t be ever more appropriate right now. And we look at a third of America the workforce is working from home with this disaster with Covid-19, so now suddenly they’re trying to juggle things at home, but maybe they’re using their personal laptop or desktop computer, their iPad their smartphone, but they’re still doing business. There are still doing things from their remote office. So even more so do they need to be careful and take their time whether it’s password management, whether it’s two factor authentication, whether it’s caution on social media and watching their digital footprint. All of these things that I talked about are appropriate not just for the office but for somebody at home if they have their home office that they can do these best practices and I go into a lot of things about some of the scams and a lot about credit cards because that’s a huge area where there’s cyber crime taking advantage of us be it online or purchasing even sharing a credit card or over the phone but the common best practices and cautions that we need to employ if we areusing our credit card from home or the office.

John: Fishing and spearfishing, is that still one of the major ways people are falling for these threat actors and cyber criminals?

Scott: Yeah. Absolutely. You make a great point John. I think especially again reverting back to this Covid-19 cyber criminals are great at adapting they change their game often and it’s based upon what’s going to work on their advantage when somebody is fearful, when somebody’s distracted, that’s when they move in and that’s exactly what’s happening. They’re using effective phishing schemes. And in some cases they’re more targeted depending upon what they’re trying to accomplish where they’re selling, you know face mask supposedly, ventilator related things, the miracle medicine, all these different things tied around Covid, which makes people want to react and click because they say wow I need to know where I’m going to get tested locally here to see if I’ve got Coronavirus. Click here to set up an appointment just provide this basic information. Next thing you knew what know what are you doing? You’re divulging personal information, but your mind is focused on what if I have this, what if I pass this on to someone, what if my kids get this, how am I going to go back to work? So you’re distracted over here and that’s a very effective tactics. So immediately I always tell people stop. Don’t be so quick to click on email attachments. You’re better off always double checking it. Make a quick phone call. Grew directly go to the website that claims they’re doing this or that or promising. Enter that URL and so you can actually verify for yourself that it’s truthful. So taking a little bit extra time and steps before you’re too prone to click on things saves a ton and ton of embarrassment or financial ruin or other problems. And there’s a lot of great companies out there that can assist with it. You can do it yourself. If you’re hesitant, you have a company they’re just companies like no before and many others that offer security awareness training and that is important if you get it within the culture as I talked about earlier to make sure everybody understands it and understands the risks and implications if they’re the one that clicks on that specific attachment and of course ransomware. Every the last few years, I’ve been talking about ransomware to my eyes are bleeding. It keeps advancing. It’s more challenging and it’s becoming more lucrative and more targeted toward the medical community hospital so they could shut down any or lockup patients records demanding that ransom in bitcoin, which is certainly anonymous digital currency. So it’s hard to trace down these hackers and catch them. So it’s really important. Be careful what you’re clicking on because really the malware that’s embedded in a lot of these phishing attacks is a different strains of ransomware that keeps evolving and improving so it’s harder and harder to discover and prevent it from happening.

John: You know Scott, we’ve seen in our lifetime the growth and the proliferation of the internet of things. So ten years ago, we didn’t have a nest in our home a ring at our front door and Alexa on our nightstand whatever they’re called the Alexa tools or the Google tools that could just hear voice commanded. Talk a little bit about the inter connectivity of our homesin our businesses now with all these great tools that are designed to make our lives better in some places like ring safer more comfortable. What risks though come along with the internet of things and all these new gadgets that were all enjoying but also could put us at greater peril?

Scott: Yeah, you make a fabulous point and this is one thing that I have talked about extensively and even in my books it’s intertwined in there. IoT, the Internet of things is kind of a phenomena that has come about that we’ve all adopted whether we like it or not. And I too am guilty of this. In fact a couple years ago, I was at I think was the RSA show and somebody presented a point that within a few years you will have 50 IoT devices in your home. Do you realize that? And I kind of laughed, I said that’s ridiculous. And then one day, I sat there in counters I said geesh they were dead on.That’s about what I have in one of my homes. And to your point yet, what is it? It’s exactly that. I mean, I’ve got no wise wireless cameras in the nest, in the ring and this and that you go down the list and you start to realize everything from your TV to whatever is connected into the internet. The problem is when these things were designed a number of years ago and even more recent, cost was the driving factorbecause it’s consumer rich people want it high volume manufacturing. To add security to it add some dollars to the cost and they never want to do that. So instead they said well, well, we’ll figure it out later if it’s a problem and that’s exactly what’s happened. Security wasn’t baked in at the beginning and now we’re starting to pay for it. When you have tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of unsecured insecure cameras out there that are IP based that has a specific address that could be from the other side of the world. A hacker and their easy chair can address that and turn it on without somebody knowing about it. That’s a real problem and when they’re not firmware upgradeable remotely. Guess what the consumer is not going to send it back. It’s installed. They climb the ladder. They mounted it whatever the case may be. They’re going to live with it until they cut the cord and rip it out and put something else in so. The mindset for Internet of Things device is really has to change and focus on encryption, focus on the ability to upgrade the specific devices and also the ability to monitor those things, we’ve developed here at my company Berkeley Varitronic systems tools that actually are used so you can sniff out and hunt down IoT threats that are brought into your environment, in your office, in your home and your business that you don’t even know about. The employee that brings in or the hacker that sneaks in and plugs in rogue access point that you don’t even know about.That connects into your neck computer network, and now they could be siphoning personal information off their compromised IP or anything else. I mean that’s very powerful these days and it’s very real. So it’s important that companies are very cautious but even consumers that they’re not too quick and I always tell people when I’m presenting, do you really need to plug that device in? Stop and think about it first and ask yourself some basic questions. What are you getting out of this device? What are you giving away in the terms of data privacy? That’s important for us to ask those questions.

John: You know, we’re living in this world Scott and for our listeners who just joined us where we got Scotch Schober on with us. He’s one of the top cyber security experts in the world. He has two books out right now Hacked Again,and Cybersecurity Is Everybody’s Business. I would read those books if I were you, whether you’re just a homeowner running your household or business owner running a big corporation or small business in a local community. These books are really great stuff and also to find Scott and maybe even hire him to work with you. You can go to www.scottschober.com or www.bvsystems.com. Scott, we’re living in a world where people are also excited about new transportation opportunities. The growth of the electric car and of course, Tesla and soon-to-be driverless vehicles, is it wrong for me to say that the electric cars basically become a computer on wheels? And if so, what does that mean to our cyber risks as both owners or lessees of these vehicles and also passengers in these vehicles?

Scott: I kind of knew it this way. In fact, there’s a chapter in Cyber Security Is Everybody’s Business. I think I call it Planes, Trains, and Automobiles and I talk just about that. My fear of where we are and where we’re going in the world of transportation and to your point just think about vehicles if anybody walks into a car dealership today and they purchase a vehicle be at a Tesla, Mercedes doesn’t matter what it is.High and low and guess what every single vehicle of the 50-plus manufacturers in the world have embedded 4G LTE cellular modems in there. Whether or not you subscribe to a service there or not there in your vehicle. What does that mean? That means there is wireless connectivity through the basic through all the the cellular networks that are out there around the globe. So what’s tied with that obviously GPS. So technically, can we be tracked? Sure. Can notification be pushed to our car where information pulled out such as innocent things like hey your car is ready for a service or an oil change? Yeah, absolutely. But more nefarious things could be done to buy a hacker and that’s been proven out by many researchers that have shown that hey they can basically affect the ecu’s inside the car electronic control units in pushing nation. That’s scary when it can affect our lives. Were take ransom on a vehicle just like ransomware attacks. That’s the future take over the car. That’s very scary and a real thing that we need to be cautious about.

John: I also read a story and I don’t know where wasn’t recent that was about 18 months ago, where a hacker did the same thing, excuse me, on a commercial plane.

Scott: Yeah, that’s Chris Roberts actually. He was a guest. I interviewed him on my segment what keeps you up at night and what he did there which was kind of interesting. On a flight, he actually tied into the infotainment center plugged in and played some shenanigans I guess you could say and he revved up one engines which caused the plane to tilt and he was greeted when the plane landed by the FAA and banned from flying for a while and I think he lost his job. It was a big mess, but he’s since moved on and I think learned from his debacle let’s say. What was the show us- It shows us how vulnerable-

John: Right.

Scott: When you’re talking about billion dollar companies, Boeing’s and others are developing some pretty advanced avionics and the fact that you could hack in through the infotainment center and it runs parallel to some of the avionics in the security where there were some basic open flaws that have since I believe been corrected throughout the flying community. So people shouldn’t be scared, but they should be concerned. It really researchers open up that conversation. So in my opinion he actually did a good thing. He prevented a real hacker from causing a major take down which is what we really want to do. We want to test things properly and get the vulnerabilities taken out.

John: His shenanigans prevented hopefully a tragedy.

Scott: Exactly. Yeah. Well said.

John: Let’s go back to what you just mentioned though, because you were kind enough to include me on a recent episode of what keeps you up at night, but why did you launch that podcast and how’s it been going? And share with our listeners a couple of the scariest stories you’ve heard since you’ve been hosting that.

Scott: Well, I tell you what, it’s a nice diverse group of business owners. All that how cyber security kind of touches their lives and I think I constantly have fears and I’m dreaming up things. I try to get into the mind of a hacker and I say to myself if I was going to try to do this. Here’s what I would do and to be honest when I was younger, I was addicted to games. My father worked for a number of years at [inaudible] he was the vice president of the research lab, so I grew up in my brother grew up surrounded by games. And at one point we got to the point where we were actually hacking games going on bulletin board systems before the internet as we know it for those old-timers out there and we would get on and we would hack passwords get onto the different levels and we’ll be pirating games and we did this we didn’t have any monetary gain. So I wasn’t I’m trying to justify it wasn’t a thief at that time. However, it was a lot of fun and it was one ofthose ego boosters who could collect more games than anyone else on the world and we did this for years and it was kind of exciting I think. So, I’ve always dreamed up and done things maybe from a hacker side but stayed on this side of the line, which is more of maybe a white hacker than a true black hat and getting in trouble getting caught and stealing things and I think that always kind of in the back of my mind said, you know what I’ve seen a lot of podcasts video audio. I enjoy them. I follow them I saidIf I’m going to do something I want to get into someone else’s mind and get a sense. What is their fear? What really does keep them up at night? So as I started to talk about that with my brother Craig, we said Jesus what if we just call it that and we keep it short and simple and will have a segment that basically has one question and we have no clue what the answer is and we’re going to learn from them and hopefully share with everyone else and that was kind of the genesis of the segment and we’ve done it now for a little more than two years. And had some great guests on there as you meant Chris Roberts. He was a lot of fun. He’s got his purple dyed beard when he came on and his kind of packing den and shared some interesting stories. I had the guy that actually inspired the movie War Games if you remember him.

John: Sure.

Scott: He came on and he actually came on from a secret spot on the other side of the world that’s undisclosed because he’s being hunted down by other people. So we did an episode with him, which was a lot of fun. A lot of people shared similar to your question about IoT. That’s a huge fear by many of my listeners. A lot of researchers have a lot of problems with deep fakes that keeps coming up concern about artificial intelligence. Where were that’s going and how that’s going to come into play in the hackers hand. So very diverse subjects that all crisscrossed the world of Cyber security, but I think it really invokes a lot of fear and that to me is good because it starts the conversation and hopefullysome of our viewers take that and say hey, here’s some stuff that I got a design or develop to counter what these cyber criminals are doing because it’s only going to get worse and I think we’re going to lose if we don’t work together and communicate and share where we are now, but where the future is going to be in the world of Cyber security.

John: Right? I agree, before we go on to what you’re cooking up for the end of the year your next book. Can you talk a little bit about the issue of Cyber Insurance? Where- Is it something that our listeners should buy to protect their businesses to protect themselves, or is it a little bit over hyped? Talk about the realities versus the the promises with Cyber Insurance.

Scott: Yeah. It’s a top very topical I think and it’s a question. I think almost daily. I talk about Cyber insurance whereas it used to be something I would talk about every few months. So I think it’s on a lot of people’s minds especially small business owners because larger companies they have cyber security insurance and they usually can afford it because it’s really about weighing the risks and offsetting those a bit smaller businesses is a little bit more challenging because they’re run mean and lean often. They’re not so quick to spend a buck and they’re a little more hesitant for most business owners that I talk to. I know I was that way myself go back post more than five years ago. We did not have cyber security insurance. After being hacked and hacked again, we do have cyber security insurance and I’ll tell you why because it’s now become in a sense like my second book. It’s become everybody’s business it now affects everyone and hence. It allows you to look at whatever information you have. What’s your secret sauce? What personal information do you have inside of your business that you need to protect? It could be employee records Social Security numbers, credit card information, passwords, whatever it is. Intellectual property know how software doesn’t matter. That’s all very valuable. So having some Cyber security Insurance protects you but it does not actually in a backwards way. I don’t focus as much as hey out if I am compromised or say if and when I’m compromised more importantly it gives you a discipline set of rules and regulations that you need to implement within a company and within a culture. So you think about cyber security and most good cyber security policies comes with some level of education. Just like if you’re familiar anybody that’s listening, PCI compliance. It’s I kind of call it a checklist that you got to go down. If you’re going to process credit cards to make sure you know, do you do this? Do you shred documents? Most people say yes, yes,yes, yes. If they’re in a meeting or over the phone. Why? Because they look like an idiot if they’re not properly complying to this but it’s a bit self-disciplined. You don’t want to lie, but you don’t want to you know confuse people and say that we’re really not secure. I think with Cyber security Insurance you need to take it to the next level and actually implement the policies and procedures for handling personal information and a good cyber insurance company and an agent is going to come in and make sure that you’re actually doing it and educate the staff to make sure that they’re properly doing it and I think that kind of goes hand in hand. Don’t look at it as if I buy this policy for a million dollars of coverage. That’s it. I’m done. I don’t have to worry about passwords. I don’t have to worry about factor authentication. And no that’s not the case. In fact, you need to do even more once you sign on the dotted line and you pay a premium. Why? Because if and when you are compromised in breach you’re going to want to pick up the phone 24/7 and have a person at the other end and say hey John Smith, I think I’m a victim of ransomware. What do I do? They’re demanding $50,000 in the equivalent of Bitcoin. They’re going to tell you right there stop and they’re going to move in and see if they have the decryption keys. So they can unlock that and put you back in business. They could tell you hey, remember that back up I told you have to do every week? Let’s revert you to that. They’re going to have some procedural steps. They’re going to step inand say hey Scott, guess what? We’re going to go in and we’re going to negotiate this you’re going to have to pay the ransom the policy will cover but instead of paying fifty thousand we’re going to negotiate it down to the equivalent Bitcoins for $15,000 and settle it. Get that decryption get you back in business. So a lot of it is reducing the risk getting an expert that’s going to hand hold you through the process so you’re not bumbling and we’ve got example after example of people that probably did it wrong and I talked about that the target breach and the Sony breach and Home Depot, Anthem, you know breach after breach things that will done.

John: Marriott.

Scott: Yahoo. Yahoo! Yahoo! Happened three times, right?

John: Right. Unbelievable.

Scott: Billions of people were affected. So do we learn things post breach from these large companies that we can now implement in our small businesses even Fortune 500 companies can look at those examples to say hey, we got to do some things here to improve our cyber security posture. And yes, part of that is having good coverage cyber security coverage understanding what it does cover and what it doesn’t cover. That’s very important.

John: Now, you know, obviously because you’re not doing enough hosting what keeps you up at night, having written Hacked Again, having written the Cybersecurity Is Everybody’s Business, and running BV systems.com with is PV systems with your brother and your father. You’re now writing and about to come out with a third book, which we’re going to have you back on the show and to when that book comes out to talk about it, but give our listeners a preview on the next book coming in. Why you wrote this one?

Scott: Yeah, absolutely. My continual frustration in the world of cyber security is analyzing who is targeted and why and one standout that I keep hearing again and again and again, and I lived through it the personal experience of my grandfather and he had several attacks. And when I say cyber attacks the more of what I call a scam through the phone that he was targeted and then also credit card fraud and acouple other things that he dealt with and tried to assist them through that. It pains me deeply to see how cyber criminals really just don’t care about their victim. They really don’t care. They just want one thing they want the money. So it’s kind of a crime that they never see the person and I always related to somebody that robs a bank. The old days they take a gun. They got to get away car. They put a mask on. They go into a bank. They hold up a gun and say give me all your money. They see the victim. That’s not the case in the world of cyber security. Somebody’s at some remote disconnected keyboard and they never see the pain exactly that their victim gets inflicted with and what’s happened is they’ve targeted the elderly they literally and I share the story in my third book and then the book is titled Senior Cyber and I actually dedicate it to my grandfather. He is- he was 99 years old just shy about a month of his hundredth birthday when he passedaway recently and it’s an interesting I try to take people through and give them some empowerment if they are elderly so they’re not feeling like they’re hopeless and they can’t get on the computer and they can’t use a smartphone and they can’t use the internet because of fear or fear of scams. So hopefully it’s educating the senior. So they’re comfortable enough to survive in this economy that were in in this life where you’re forced to use technology. So a lot of it- It’s a combination of building them up. I hope empowering them giving them education but more on a simple path without a deep tech dive and as I come across the term and Senior cyber, that’s unfamiliar. I literally will define it and then I will try to relate it to something that perhaps 50 years ago or decades back that they could relate to. So that way it’s draws a corollary every time they say Iremember when I got my first phone in the house or my first TV on the block that was new hot technology. Just like now I go on the internet and it’s something so different. So you didn’t have to be scared back then. You got used to it. Just like now you can get used to it, but you still need to take some basic precautions. So I try to balance that throughout so it’s a much light to read. It’s also a much larger font because as I get older. I’m now 50/50 in my eyesight starting to go so I made the font a little bit bigger. Trying to think about the senior to make it easier for them to relate to it. Read it. Enjoy it and more importantly share the information and the tips throughout the book so they could help others that are maybe thinking about getting a computer or going on the Internet or getting a smartphone and not being so afraid.

John: I love it. And when does that book come out?

Scott: It’s going to be later this year. So hopefully fourth quarter this year. It’s actually it’s been written. I finished writing it and it’s again co-authored by my brother because that worked so successfully in the second book. So now we’re going through the process of getting it published and we are self-published. So it’ll be available hopefully very soon on Amazon and all the popular book stores and online as well.

John: That’s awesome. And that’s going to give us a great excuse to have you back.

Scott: Yeah. I look forward to it.

John: Yeah, and before we sign off for today any final thoughts you want to share with our listeners?

Scott: I think I just want to again and I mentioned it before but really emphasize to people when you hear cyber security, don’t turn that switch in your mind and say oh that’s techie or that’s this or that, it truly is now everybody’s business and it is something that we have to embrace, learn about and make it part of our daily lives, even though we don’t like it we might liken it, too.Unfortunately, I hate to bring up this analogy with this virus we’re learning how to survive wearing a mask. We’re learning about social distancing. We’re learning about different type of hygiene with hand sanitizer and think that may be the new norm going forward and we will survive through it if we make adjustments just like cyber security. Once we learn about it, we will learn how to make adjustments so we can stay safe so we can still use our computers, our smart phones, the internet, wireless devices, IoT, I love technology. I embrace it. I encourage people to do it, but with caution don’t be afraid of it. But use caution to make sure that you’re doing it as secure as you can and into implementing best practices. So you’re not the next victim that gets hacked.

John: I love it, Scott and I can’t wait to have you back on. There’s so many questions I didn’t get to today that I want to ask you about GDPR and the new privacy laws and states and of course, we’ll have you back to then talk about your new book Senior Cyber. For our listeners out there that want to reach Scott or read what he’s doing or see what he’s up to. Please go watch his podcast what keeps you up at night. Also you could go to www.scottschober.com or www.bvsystems.com. If cyber security is on your mind and you’re worried about your security or your privacy or all your as it’s known in the industry your crown jewelsand your money, you should read Cybersecurity Is Everybody’s Business. It’s everybody’s booked for sure. I’ve read half of it already and I’ve learned more in that half of book than I learned in reading 10 other books on the subject. Scott, you’re making a great impact. You’re making the world a better and safer place. Thank you for joining us today on the Impact podcast.

Scott: Thank you, John and to all those listeners stay safe.

John Shegerian: Welcome to another edition of the Impact podcast. I am John Shegerian and it is an honor and privilege to have my great friend with us today, Dr. Armen Orujyan. Welcome to Impact, Armen.

Dr. Armen Orujyan: Thank you John. Thanks for having me on your show. This is a great privilege to be having this conversation with you through eleven time zones away. It’s coming evening time for me, morning time for you. Thanks for having me again, and I am hopeful that we can keep this entertaining for your audience.

John: Yes, I am sure we’ll be because you are just a fascinating human being and for my audience members out there, Armen is not only a long time friend that I have worked with for many, many, many years. But this is our first show that we are doing from California and Armenia. Armen happens to be in Yerevan Armenia. And we’re so excited to have him coming to us from Armenia and making time on during one of his evenings over there. Armen, before we get talking about the current state of affairs in Armenia and what it is going on and how you created the Fast Foundation. I want to go back. You and I met years ago, when you were the founder and chairman of the Ethical Corporation. Talk a little bit about your entire journey, where you grew up, how you came to do so much good, do so much make so much impact in all the communities you served in your lifetime. And I have known you a long time and then we will get to the, of course the Fast Foundation. Share your journey a little bit, please.

Armen: John. I am just really, really truly so humbled by your presentation of what I have done and what we are doing now. I was born in Armenia and I spent first fifteen years of my life here in Armenia until my parents decided to migrate to the United States in late 1989. So it’s some over thirty years ago. Back then Armenia was still part of the Soviet Republics. And I came to the United States, having brought up in a very different type of regime under going to communist party school. So everything about education, about discipline and then coming to United States, going to Los Angeles, going to Hollywood High School, which was very, very different type of an experience to say the least. But look what the opportunities that were presented in the United States where far from having here. And Soviet Armenia at that time, it was you were on a conveyor belt if they decided you’re going to be X, you were going to be that individual no matter what you decide for yourself. But then coming to United States and having all these opportunities, I had to work for a living because we didn’t have money when we landed in the United States. Three hundred and sixty dollars for four people. So that wasn’t a lot of money. We started working. My first job was at Sears. Garnish, watering plants. Still love plants and will speak about this at some later point. Yes, so I was watering plants that was incredible. And then my first entrepreneurial engagement was at the age of seventeen. But just to fast forward, High school then College didn’t work out the first time around. I was making money so I thought it’s like “Who needs school?”, but then went back the age of twenty three because there was some kind of an emptiness in you. You feel at some point that it is missing. So once you went back to college and went all the way to get my PhD. So I started that but you mentioned that. But I started at 1999 I was still in college then. It was an interesting journey with Afco. We started as almost a platform for young people for them that have had challenges, the same challenges that I had when I landed in United States. For us to help them to overcome those whether its financial, whether its network, whether its intellectual Capital, so we had training courses on how to become an entrepreneur. But also major innovation forums where you attended one at the UN headquarters and back in mid-2000 on environment, I recall that was a phenomenal event and it was great knowing you, getting to know you then, but you saw firsthand what we were doing with the young people. Hundreds of them every Innovation Forum at the UN headquarters was four hundred plus people from over a hundred countries.

John: Right.

Armen: And we did that very quickly, getting to that space. Within twenty four months or so we went from a local engagement here in LA to a global entrepreneurial platform. But one thing led to another. We had many different types of programs in Europe, in Africa throughout the United States, but then in some three years ago or four years ago I had one of our fellow Armenians, very prominent and phenomenal, Ruben Vardanyan who launched Aurora Humanitarian Initiative to celebrate incredible people around the world that sacrifice their likes, their everything that they have for things they stand for and they give them a million point one. I think they give them about one hundred thousand dollars in cash plus million dollars to give to other organizations that they find worthy in any scenario. So Ruben reached out to me in 2016, wanted to meet up and talk about some of the things that they are thinking to do in Armenia, including science and technology. So that was interesting. We met up in late 2016. And he invited me over to come to Armenia and I came back here in 2017. It was my first time in a decade. I have not been in the country for a long time and the rest is history. Now, I am here for the past nearly three years.

John: Before we get talking and for our listeners who just tuned in. We have got my good friend on with us today Armen Orujyan–Dr. Armen Orujyan. He is the founding CEO of the Fast Foundation, which is doing just incredible work in Armenia and around the world. And to find him there, you could go to www.fast.foundation, www.fast.foundation. Before we get talking about what your initiatives are at fast and who else is behind it? Can you go back to the issue of entrepreneurship? Because you are such a proponent and you have made such a huge impact on so many young people’s lives. If I am not mistaken, your network that you created with a Afco, basically touched at least six hundred universities through eighty countries. And over ten thousand young people got incubated and impacted through Afco Corporation. What do you see going on right now, since you are literally one of the leading people when with regards to entrepreneurial innovation and incubation. What’s going on right now in the world with entrepreneurship? Is it on the rise? Is it on the fall? Where do you see it right now?

Armen: Well, you know given all the current affairs, right? The realities such, the United States, we have over twenty five million people that lost their jobs the last six weeks and it’s incredible since the recession in 2008. In that decade from 2010 to 2020, we had gained approximately sixteen million jobs. In a decade, we had gotten sixteen million jobs and in four weeks, we lost twenty one million jobs. I mean imagine that, right? I mean it is a shock to the system. And it is not only in the United States. I view what’s happening in the United States and in Europe in the western world as a massive earthquake and then but earthquake not inland earthquake in the middle of an ocean or so. And every earthquake then if it happens in the ocean, it leads to a major tsunami. And I think that’s what’s going to happen. I think there is going to be major tsunami that we do not feel just yet, right? Because losing twenty five million people who do not work, that means they are not going to consume the same ways. So they are going to have to change their habits. And in the second quarter I think the numbers of major companies will demonstrate the contraction that happens in the economy, which means it is going to lead to Tsunami. And I think the first hit is that it’s going to be probably a place like China. And the reason why because China makes all the products or consumption–makes the consumption possible through its workforce. So if it’s the first tsunami is going to come from Europe and United States to a place like China and then I’m curious how far or how deep it is going to travel and how the rest of the world is going to be impacted. And the reason I came to this when you asked me about entrepreneurship, there is two types, there is a lot but there is two major types. There is one opportunity and then necessity entrepreneurship. Those opportunities generally more successful and necessity something that you’ll have to do because you have no other ways or no other means and there is going to be a lot of people that are going to either find opportunities, new opportunities in this new world. Or they are going to have no other choice but to turn to entrepreneurship because there are no jobs. So it gives a lot of very interesting new opportunities to people not only in the United States, but in around the world. And the difference between I want to say now in to 2020 versus 2008, the types of tools that are available, types of information that is available, are far more sophisticated and far more conducive to producing entrepreneurs and better entrepreneurs than it would have been possible in 2008. The online platforms–I mean look what happened right, John? And I think you probably felt it yourself. My entire team not only mine naturally, I mean places like Google’s, Facebook’s and Twitter’s, but also my team, we send them home. We say, “Go home and work from home.” And then you quickly learn these people are far more productive when they are working from home than they were in the office space. But not up until that moment we would value that. We would say, it is like “What is?” If you go home, you are not going to work. It is not going to be the same” but we have been massively wrong.

I think the whole world was which means many of these people can find new opportunities and they don’t have to be in specific places. They could be just sitting at home. This is the garage that Google was created. This is the room that Facebook was created. It’s in every person’s bedroom now. And there is so much information on how to become an entrepreneur. So I want to say it is a long-winded answer to your question. I think entrepreneurship is going to be at a rise.

John: That’s correct.

Armen: There is going to be so much more opportunities. And I think there is going to be a lot more funding, that always going to be directed towards entrepreneurs. Instead of saving big corporations and you see it now. I think the mistakes people made or the government’s made in 2008. Some of them are being repeated naturally. It’s normal but there are also many different ways. You see how they are saving small businesses by giving this no interest loans and then if you save your employees, then you don’t have to repay those loans. That was not available in 2008 or the fact that they are giving families, up to one thousand dollars. That was not available in 2008. It was all about saving banks and this and that. But now they are saving small businesses and they are saving people. Right now, you can take that one thousand dollars and do something with it. Start a new company or so.

John: That is so interesting and you are right. I really believe you are so right. Working from home is going to be a trend that is here to stay. And as you said in the last twelve years technology has really democratized the opportunity to become part of the technological revolution. I think you are so spot-on. Let us talk a little bit about the important work. For our listeners out there I was so honored to go to you on last fall in October and see Armand’s great work up front with the Fast Foundation. Go to numerous events, meet so many of his supporters and board members and other great people that he has surrounded himself with. Armenia, it’s just who is who. And it was literally, I am still enjoying the halo effect of being with you and seeing the world that you work in over there. For our listeners out there, please share little bit about now. Ruben got behind, you who else got behind you to create this amazing organization. And what are your current goals for Fast?

Armen: Yes, I want to say, well first I got behind Ruben. Ruben had the idea of doing something of this nature in Armenia and then he is the one who came to LA talk to me and then I said this is a great, great, great thing to do in Armenia and I’ll come and join you. I will structure this for the team that we put together. It is Ruben, we have Arturo and a few other people, but another very interesting person that I would want to mention is the other co-founder is Noubar Afeyan from Boston and many people either know him or known one of his companies that is founded Moderna Therapeutics. Moderna is a phenomenal entity to forefront of what’s happening with Coronavirus and Covid-19 working on creation of a vaccine. Moderna got a unique technology. It is one of the leading biotech companies that is working on experimental vaccine against the virus. And its technologies is pretty phenomenal. It synthesizes something called messenger RNA or MRNA to essentially prompt human body to make its own medicine. I mentioned this when I was having a discussion with the president of Armenia few weeks ago on one of our webinars that if we were to talk about anything of that nature three months ago, point about creating or having to deal with messenger RNA prompting a human body to make its own medicine. That would have been considered as a fantasy, a discussion only people in white robes and sealed lab should be speaking about. But now everyone, you and I, everyone in the world, we are eagerly waiting to hear more news about solutions of this nature. And we are fortunate to have one of our own on the front lines of scientific discovery and this eagerness of governments to work with the private sectors in United States has displayed by investing about half billion dollars into Moderna at least in near terms also shows appreciation for what entities like Moderna but also what entities like Fast focusing on Science and Technology are doing. And I think that one particular change is very important because if you look at how the world functions, right? So we invest two percent or three percent or not invest but spent on defense and military in every country. In the United States that is nearly eight hundred billion dollars annually. But when it comes to putting money in scientific discovery or in true wellness of people, very, very little money being spent, up to this moment, even when we talk about healthcare be it in United States or anywhere. It is very reactive, right? You spend money on treating illnesses. You are not spending money on wellness of people. To do things proactively for you not to get a person to condition when you need to worry about health care. Even if you look at everything that is happening, with coronavirus, we are speaking about everything reactive. This is happened, now, we need to come and fix it.

John: Right.

Armen: If we were to spend the right amount of money, they are putting in the right places and had preventive mechanisms in place. We would have a very different type of a conversation. We would have said, “Look this where going to happen and we stopped it.” But we are far from having a conversation of that nature. And I am very fortunate that here in Armenia were working this foundation. When the foundation was founded to drive scientific discovery and technological innovations in Armenia and beyond. And we have several teams here that does work on Bio-Technology Solutions on artificial intelligence machine learning on Robotics and Advanced Materials. These are technologies that are going to lead humanity forward. And we are very excited to be at the forefront of it ourselves.

John: Two things that strikes me, Armen. First of all, it has been said over and over again that a person is really a sum of the five or six people they surround themselves with. They take on their qualities. They absorb their information and it is really who you surround yourself with. And when I was in Armenia and you literally gave me a front-row seat to listen to Ruben talk, to Dr. Afeyan talk, I was blown away and they were dozens of others that I met with you, and that you have surrounded yourself with. These are not just some of the most interesting scientists and entrepreneurs just in Armenia. These are some of the most important business people in the world. These people have succeeded around the world. They just happen to be Armenian or have Armenian interest and are now giving back through your great organization in Armenia. It is arguable that Dr. Afeyan could be the next Jonas Salk of the world. With one of the greatest tragic pandemics that have ever happened in modern times with a breakthrough drug. And Ruben could be doing fifty other things than what he is doing right now. But you have surrounded yourself with some of the most interesting and fascinating and accomplished human beings I have ever seen as an organization. Tell me a little bit of two things. What is it like working with these folks every day for you? Because great people with huge accomplishments are always challenging those around them. And then what was their why? Why did they choose to do this at this point in their lives? When they could be off on their yachts in the Mediterranean and never do any of this kind of very important and critical work.

Armen: It’s fulfillment of different nature. Right? Look. I am very fortunate to have these people in my life. It’s really a different type of an experience being surrounded with people with so much experience as you said, leading or being in the in the middle of affairs that impact every human being on the planet. We did not even speak about Lord Ara Darzi, was also part of our world from the United Kingdom who is also on the forefront of what’s taking place in the space of bio medicine.

John: I was mesmerized when he was speaking. I have to tell you, Armen. Not many people mesmerize me. I was mesmerized. I left him off the list in your so right to include him. He is truly–not only a brilliant man, but he speaks so clearly, speaks so clearly.

Armen: Yes, I mean he is the type of a surgeon he is and where he is specializing in minimally invasive robot-assisted surgery. He has pioneered so many new technologies. He is just a phenomenal human being. So being around these people, be it Lord Darzi, Noubar Afeyan, Ruben Vardanyan, few others, and [inaudible], other co-founders Arturo [inaudible] and [inaudible]. On our board, we have the president of the country or [inaudible] who happens to be a physicist himself. You know that also, so phenomenal. And learning from these people and getting their Vibes. And as you said, watching them not spending–not blowing their money on buying yachts, but continuously doing philanthropic engagements for betterment of societies.

Someone like Ruben Vardanyan has spent as almost his entire fortune and he has committed his entire fortune on doing philanthropic work. And him and his team has spent nearly close to a billion dollars in Armenia doing phenomenal work here. It’s really educational. I mean talking to them and what inspires them, right? [crosstalk] What inspires…

John: And you have done this over and over. I’ve seen this with you, Armen. This is a common theme in your life. There is never a time that I have been with you that you haven’t you surrounded yourself with some of the best and the brightest. Before the Fast Foundation back at Afco and everything you have done. So this is a theme. So obviously, they are attracted to you and you are attracted to them, which is just beyond phenomenal because I see that you are all a fascinating group of servant leaders. You are all doing so much impactful work. So when you are with them, for our audience, what’s their “Why?”. Do they have a similar or they’re similar themes as to their “Why” or is it very personal for them because they’re Armenian or just a philanthropic DNA that runs through their veins or a little bit of both?

Armen: All right. I think it is the depth of the individual, right? I mean these people are extremely deep. Some of it is personal, right? All of us and I think you too John, we all have that weak spot for Armenia because we are all grandchildren of genocide survivors. And there is a reason why you were born in the United States. Noubar Afeyan was born in Lebanon and my father was born in Lebanon. And Ruben’s family was not originally from Armenia only because we were dispersed all around the world. We survived. Our ancestors helped us come to this world and to some degree we are indebted to them but also to the world. I mean there are a lot of societies, a lot of communities that help Armenians back during the genocide. I mean so you had a group of perpetrators, you had Ottoman Turks that were committing the genocide. But then you had groups, you had United States, you had Germans, you have French, you had English. Communities that also saved Armenian lives, helped Armenian lives. Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, these are communities that embraced Armenians, allowed Armenians to prosper. And now, many of us are giving back. Giving back to our ancestors for the jobs that they have done. We give back in Armenia, but we give back to the world, John. You have been incredible philanthropist yourself for Armenian matters, but also beyond, how much time you would spend on doing philanthropic work and the same thing with our partners. What Ruben and Noubar are doing, what Ara Darzi is doing, it kind of becomes part of your DNA . I mean what I have been doing for twenty years of my life being in Armenian and before that, I was doing a lot of work in Africa, it has nothing to do with Armenians. But we are kind of indebted to people that gave us opportunities, gave us who we have become, helped us become, who shaped us to become…

John: Well, I am going to tell you this, coming to Armenia and being with you changed my life. And my children were so excited about me being there with you. They had just come back and they are going to be going back and they want actually as I’ve shared with you, they want us to set up a Shegerian residence there and be coming back a numerous times and spending part of our adult lives there and especially for them and in the future. Armen for our listeners out there, we’ve got my good friend with us today. Dr. Armen Orujyan. He’s called in live from Armenia. He is my first and one of my most important friends that I’ve ever had in my life and made a huge impact on me and the greater community. And he is now the founding CEO of the Fast Foundation. To find Armen and all of his partners and his great work and their great work over there and around the world. You could go to www.fast.foundation, www.fast.foundation. They are also on Facebook and very, very active on Facebook. So you could find the Fast Foundation on Facebook as well. You know Armen, you are doing so much there. Share with our listeners, really what are your top three or five initiatives at Fast right now and let’s talk about coming out of this pandemic and where the rest of the year is going to go in Armenia with Fast and beyond this year. So share a little bit about current initiatives, post-pandemic and then where we are going from there.

Armen: We focus on science. So let me just explain what that means for us.

John: Yes.

Armen: Science, it is the body of knowledge, right? It’s year 2020 not year one, so Science exists. It is not that science needs to be, you can always expand it, but first you need to understand it. And to understand Science to make use of it, you need to have education. Without education, doesn’t matter whether the science exists or doesn’t exist, you have zero appreciation for it. So education is a key element for us. And then so suppose you understood Science because you are educated, you are well educated, you understand it, you can preserve it. But then extending scientific discovery, expanding Science, you need to do research. So that is the second kind of a pillar for us that we pay a lot of attention to and then the third, great to know Science, great to extend science, but then you gotta utilize it for something that benefits humanity.

So we look at commercialization of Science. What is it that you can do to help commercialize Science? And so we, our all work is around those areas in education research and commercialization of Science. And if you put science in the center of it, so we have some [inaudible] phenomenal initiatives to do in all these three areas of its peek. Maybe I’ll give you an example of one or two for each, one probably for each to make sense of things.

John: That would be great.

Armen: Yes, for instance for commercialization of science. We have this initiative, we call it Advanced Solution Center ASCENT. We actually structured this with Noubar Afeyan. Believe it or not, his group in Boston flagship pioneering that was also the entity that founded Moderna, right? Moderna came out with flagship pioneering that is an incredible Venture Builder that has venturing to incubation and venture funding all in one. So we worked with nobody on this team to create that very model here in Armenia.

We were all skeptical to see whether something of that nature could work in Armenia because you need the echo system especially in Boston. You have MITs, MIT labs. You have a lot of physical infrastructure and then human capital for you to be able to do biotechnology and similar types of discoveries there. But we were pleasantly surprised. We established it here and within very short period of time we send some of our people to be trained in Boston. And some of it trained here, their team came in from Boston to train some of the guys. And now, we’ve already generated a startup that has an incredible potential, it could possibly become a unicorn. It was all made in Armenia. We really, really, I myself was big time skeptic whether it would be possible to think of platform technologies out of Armenia that is not looking at Armenia as a point of solution, but just point of creation and the solution is a global solution. So it’s a platform technology that could impact all sorts of verticals or sectors regardless where you’re doing it physically. So that’s really phenomenal. We have a group of young men and women working at space. Right now, and we already have a startup that has gotten external funding. And we have several other companies or possible startups of that nature in the pipeline that could go for major funding in the next a month or two also.

John: That is awesome.

Armen: So that’s one, and we are very, very, very excited about this. We recently launched a comprehensive granting scheme which funds and connects distinguished international researchers for local postdocs and accomplished researches here locally and bind them in a two-year program that will produce publishable and patentable work. This cohort currently is on bio medicine, AI, and advanced materials. And this is a large grant, maybe between fifty to seventy five thousand dollars a year for a group to work. So this is nothing of that nature exists here and I don’t think anywhere in the world of shape up this way that would lead all the way from finding a team or founding a team to publication and patenting, everything is funded. So we launched this and we’re right now in selection process. So that’s on the research side. It would be for fundamental scientific discoveries rather than applied scientific discoveries as it would be with ASCENT on the commercial side.

John: Got it.

Armen: And then on the educational side, we have this, we have number of progress with this one that is fascinating. And I think you and I, we spoke a little bit about this in Armenia that we are training young men and now also women for the unit 1991 and a military. So in Armenia, conscription is mandatory and we are, right now, training seventeen, eighteen year old young men who will end up in army for them to join this unit 1991 that will focus on artificial intelligence and machine learning for them to compose intellectual side of military. Not only serving in the army to protect the borders, but also think of, for them to become highly educated while they are serving in the military. So when they finish their service after two years they come back far more knowledgeable and far more educated than otherwise, they would have been even if they’d stayed behind and gone to universities. So we’re changing the narrative, where defense was or military was all about going to serve for defensive purposes. Now, military is also about education and making better citizens. So these young people don’t lose two years of their life just learning how to protect the country but also the country is giving them opportunities for them to be highly educated young men. And then we’ve also created an opportunity for young women who can actually volunteer in some cases also get contracted by the military for them to work on some of these solutions that will be focused on AI and ML, machine learning and whatnot. So it’s major educational component for the military, but I speak of it only because it’s kind of a creative way of bringing education to families, not only through professional educational or academic structure, but also in a creative way, going into other aspects of human life and giving them education there as well.

John: That’s awesome. So it all really–Science is the base of everything and then from there you build everything off of that.

Armen: Yes, yes. We look at science as–I mean it is. John today when we talk about what’s happening in our reality. I mean really, imagine if we were all properly trained. This science–regardless what type of we’re speaking about, was properly funded as well. It would be a different… Absolutely, I’m hoping there will be a shift in thinking for the government and that’s what we’re doing in Armenia and we are very fortunate. As you said to be working with so many phenomenal people, the President of the country, we have the Minister of Education and Science on our board as well. And also, the Prime Minister’s Office, the Prime Minister himself, very interested engaged. You met him briefly at our forum when you were in Armenia.

John: Yes.

Armen: They are also very thoughtful, very mindful of necessity and importance of Science and scientific discovery.

John: Armen, I also know you are so multi-dimensional. It goes way beyond science with you. You are also a true environmentalist for all the right reasons. Share a little bit about when I was in Armenia, one of your ideas that you created with then the minister of the environment, common friend of ours Eric, and the Prime Minister was around the environment that you are going to be doing this fall. Share a little bit about how you did that. How you announced it and what is happening with that initiative right now? Because I think that is so important to it, to show how–you are not only impacting Armenia and the rest of the world by showing great leadership there with your incubation of Science and entrepreneurs but you are also nurturing and reinventing the environment of Armenia, which is going to help lead that whole region to a greener future.

Armen: I appreciate you bringing this up John, because you are one of the leaders in the space around the world when it comes to looking at environment climate change and making something of value out of it. I have been always impressed by the work that you have done. It is really phenomenal what you have done on many fronts but in your spent on electronic recyclers, it is so important and in how we take all this poison into landfills and you potentially not allowing this to end up poisoning our environment. For that I thank you…

John: Thank you.

Armen: As a citizen of the globe because it’s such an important work that you are doing. In Armenia, look, I think somewhere after the Soviet collapse, we have lost our focus as people, as nation, I think Armenians and also between 1992-1994, the war with over Nagorno-Karabakh with Azerbaijan didn’t help because there were major energy crisis in Armenian and they’re cold winters in Armenian people needed to get warm. So there was a lot of logging, a lot of trees disappeared from all parts of the country because people needed to survive. When people need to survive a lot of bad things could happen. So we did not really–and since then it has been over twenty five years. We have not really done the right things when it comes to the environment. We do not have as many trees, we are good because we have got a nuclear power plant here. So we get a bulk of our energy from that source. But we haven’t really meaningfully invested in clean technologies and alternative renewables and we haven’t planted trees, at least, we haven’t planted in enough trees and that’s something that needs to change. And that’s what we are looking forward here to do. We made an announcement during our forum that we will plant ten million trees on October 10th of 2020.

John: Ten million trees. That is amazing.

Armen: Ten million trees, ten million trees. It’s significant for a number of reasons. There is about ten million source to say, there are about ten million Armenians around the world. So we wanted to signify that, ten million trees Armenians, ten million trees for every Armenian. But also, Armenia wants to plant about a billion trees as part of their trillion tree campaign around the world and we need to start somewhere. So we wanted to start in one day, in single day, October 10. So it is 10/10/2020 to plant ten million trees.

John: Wow.

Armen: But now, we still plan to do this. But Covid-19 derails some of our plans as well. We needed to do a lot of planning, planting. This is important, the trees, you just can’t find them, right? You have to grow these things. You have to bring them from other places. If you do not have them enough here, so what we are planning to do and that was something that Minister had a conversation with the Prime Minister here too. For us to at least do a million trees this year, sometime in October and then push this for next year till next fall for us to come back to that ten million. The reason behind this because we want, besides planting trees. We want people like you. We are not here to be here for us to have this major collective event where we as people come together and we take care of our country. We take care of our nation, but now it is dangerous. We do not want to do that in October. We do not know where we are going to be when it comes to this virus, bringing all these people to Armenia and not having all the protective elements in place. We can’t risk it.

John: That makes sense. But it is an initiative that once things come back to some new normal and there is a vaccine out and the world becomes a safer place. It is an initiative that will be picked up on and continue to move forward with, in the months and years ahead. I take it.

Armen: Absolutely. Absolutely. We absolutely come back to this. This is important. It’s necessary and on Monday, I planted five trees myself with the help of friends naturally. And then on Tuesday, I wasn’t there but they planted another five trees in my house. So I’ve planted ten trees this week only. So we are going to do everything possible individually as a group for us to bring more plants to Armenia but do the right thing. Without them, we have no chance of survival. We got to learn how to live better with them. We got to live. We got to make sure that we understand them better and we take care of them the same ways they have been taking care of us.

John: I love it. And for our listeners out there if you have just joined we have got Dr. Armen Orujyan. My great friend on from Armenia from Yerevan. He’s the founding CEO of the Fast Foundation. To find out what him and his colleagues are doing, their great work at the Fast Foundation, you could go to www.fast.foundation or Facebook where Fast Foundation has a very lively area on Facebook as well. Armen, we were talking before we started taping the show. You travel a lot. You are very busy, you have meetings around the world. You are also on the board at Rice University’s Baker Institute for Public Policy. So I know you go to Houston a lot and you are also on LA to visit your family. How has it been during this pandemic and when do you think you are going to be traveling next again? And how do you see the rest of the year in Armenia? How is Armenia coming out of this pandemic? And what does the rest of the year look like Armen Orujyan but for Yerevan in Armenia.

Armen: I think that’s the million-dollar question. I came back from my last travel. I was in Jakarta, Surabaya, actually, but through Jakarta, I went to Surabaya. I was in Indonesia for about a week. Elijah’s here, March 14, and then Indonesia closed down on March 15 and Armenia had a special emergency laws in place from March 16. So I just made it like here, right? And then I have been here since. I had a flight to LA on March 23rd, which got derailed. So I’ve been in Armenia the longest now, to over two months continuously. And I haven’t been in LA since January, so I haven’t been in LA with the family for a long time. The first flight that was announced out of Armenia, commercial flight is scheduled for July 3rd, and I am already on that flight.

John: Wow.

Armen: So that will be nearly six months not being home. I’ll travel home on July 3rd, and I will be in LA on July 3rd. Hopefully, I will be able to stay there for a while but there’s a lot here. Now, in terms of how Armenia is taking care of it, Armenia, look we’re kind of insulated, right? So we have only four neighbors. Two of them, two borders are closed. We’re kind of used to not having a lot of activity here in Armenia. We’re nicely situated or prepared to take care of ourselves in situations of this nature.

So the country is doing relatively well. People are learning how to live with a virus. People are learning how to have this physical distance, some people do it well than others and some entities are doing better than others, it’s normal. But there are also conspiracies all around. Actually that’s normal when you do not know what’s happening, when you do not know all the information, conspiracy, theories, they just rise, they just ripe. It’s normal, it happens in every society. Let me do it, look what’s happening in the United States. So that is also rampant here.

The case has increased whereas, about three weeks ago, you would say about forty cases a day. Now, you are close to four hundred cases a day. So that’s a big jump only because on May 3rd, the government announced that they are going to be opening the society for March 4th. And then when you look at numbers you would see from about March 14 or so, the numbers started increasing and then after that almost like exponentially because times ten is exponential to me.

Everyone is learning, including the government is learning how to deal with the situation. You do not know how much of it, how much does the economy can keep shots. This is dangerous, it’s a give and take. Not here, meaning it’s a give and take with this current situation for anyone on the planet. I mean relatively well, you want to be here than in New York City for instance.

John: Right. Right.

Armen: And you want to be here rather than in Italy or in Spain or definitely you do not want to be in Brazil, right? The government is handling as best as it could, given all the information that we do not have and all the resources that we do not have in trying to address this issue and handled it. I think we should be in better shape and in few months, we will learn better of how to work, how to coexist, how to live with this and hopefully we will reach a point where there’s enough herding unity that will be able to ride the wave or our Noubar Afeyan and Moderna come up with a vaccine and enough people will be vaccinated. So the numbers will decrease and eventually be meaningless. I do not think it’s going to completely disappear. I do not see this virus as one of those that you would just kill off, at least not quickly, not for the next few years. It will probably be with us at least for a few years. If not longer. So we will just have to learn how to live with this.

John: Armen, Before we say goodbye for today and let you have your evening back in Yerevan. You have any final thoughts for our listeners, we have a lot of young listeners around the world that want to become part of the new economy, part of the new normal, part of an entrepreneur and they want to make an impact. They want to make the world a better place like you have done over and over again. Any final thoughts for our listeners before we sign off for today.

Armen: John, I would say one of the key things moving forward, many jobs are going to disappear and many of the jobs that we lose today, they may never come back. One thing is very important. Anything that has to do with creative thinking, anything that has to do with creative analytics is going to be with us at least for the next decade too.

For young people, I think learning mathematics, learning hard sciences it’s so important. It is more important today than any other time in the history. With that type of a power kit or toolkit, they have chance, they have opportunities for them to reinvent themselves for them to do any types of, to participate in any type of economic activities and they would be able to weather any type of a storm.

Learn physics, learn chemistry, learn biology, learn mathematics. Absolutely, Data Sciences, anything in data analytics, AI, ML, all of those things are so important. Doctors may be replaced, lawyers may be replaced, absolutely. There is no way to argue that there cannot be a smart machine that will have access to so much information and so quickly than any other attorney that could be in the courtroom. There is no way to compete with that type of a powered–with that type of access to information but being on the forefront of scientific discovery, knowing hard Sciences are critical for young people.

I would absolutely encourage our young listeners for them to spend some time, six months, take six months a year, two years out of their lives right now and get a toolkit of that nature. For them to really be able to have the power, the strength, the right set of skills for them to compete better, for them to be able to be competitive and also contribute. Contribute to betterment of society for them to be able to be those types of phenomenal inventors, innovators and entrepreneurs we’re going to make a difference in not only in their lives, but your life, my life and every and the society’s life.

I mean what if one of them is the genius that is going to find solutions where no virus can ever impact the human being. No cancer can impact the human being. No person will be killed through an accident because a human is driving the car. In all of these things to be eliminated and the young folks that are listening to us. They could be the engineers of that. They could be the minds that are actually doing things of that nature for us.

John: Armen. Thank you so much. Those are wise words from a great man. You’ve made a tremendous impact on my life. You have made a wonderful impact on Armenia and every community you’ve touched and you’ve made the world a better place. Thank you again, for joining us today on Impact. This is your first time on, it’s not going to be your last. And it is really an honor and privilege to have you as a friend.

Armen: And John, I really want to thank you. You said we’ve known each other for many years. I met you some thirteen years ago. I have seen you pursuing your dream, building a tremendous business empire contributing heavily to the global sustainability through as I mentioned electronics recycling but also traveling the globe and always put a smile on your face, which is contagious. As those of us who are fortunate to be in your company always smile because of you and I am really, really grateful for the planet to have a son like you. I really wish I can do my little part and that you and I can come together and do something massive both for Armenia and the planet. It would be my privilege and thanks for really being a part of the show.

John: Thank you so much. And you are going to be back and join us and talk about all the great updates that are happening at Fast and then also in your life. And I look forward to seeing you in July in Los Angeles and being able to, not be distanced from you, to be with you in person. It is always an honor and wonderful to just be in your orbit. So thank you again Armen. And for all of our listeners in Yeravan, we’re so grateful to have such a wonderful community and for Armen to be there among you all leading the way it was just one of the most exciting experiences of my life.

Armen: Thank you, John and thanks everyone for listening. This really has been a phenomenal experience. Until next time John.