John Shegerian: This episode of the Impact podcast is brought to you by Closed Loop Partners. Closed Loop Partners is a leading circular economy investor in the United States with an extensive network of Fortune 500 corporate investors, family offices, institutional investors, industry experts, and impact partners. Closed Loop’s platform spans the arc of capital from venture capital to private equity, bridging gaps, and fostering synergies to scale the circular economy. To find Closed Loop Partners, please go to www.closedlooppartners.com.

John: Welcome to another edition of the Impact Podcast. I’m so honored to have with us today our first edition ever in 1500 shows from Australia Leif Cocks with us. He’s the founder of the Orangutan Project. Welcome to the Impact Podcast, Leif.

Leif Cocks: Thank you.

John: It’s an honor to have you on, Leif. The work that you’re doing is just so important. But before we get talking about the Orangutan Project itself, tell us a little bit of your background, your biography, where you grew up, and how you got even interested in this wonderful animals.

Leif: I grew up in Hong Kong, one of the largest most dense metropolises that you can imagine. But even then, when I was a very young child, I had a love of animals and wildlife. I started working with 15 orangutans and discovered that not only they’re beautiful animals but they’re also self-aware beings, just like we are. They don’t belong in captivity, no person does. But I also discovered that they are being slaughtered in the most horrific way that we can imagine and driven to extinction. That started my lifelong mission to save orangutans on the vision that one day, all orangutans will live free in the wild in secure habitat in viable populations.

John: So you grew up in Hong Kong, I’ve been there many times now. I grew up in New York City and like in Hong Kong and New York, very similar lots of tall buildings, lots of concrete. I got my love from animals because I grew up with racehorses and I became a professional trainer of horses and things. Where did your love of animals and orangutans come from? As a child, did your mom and dad have a love for animals? Or did they take you to zoos? How did that even start?

Leif: Certainly, love of any subject could be nurtured but I think for me, it was fairly innate although we lived in a flat in this apartment complex, 25-story buildings in a 15-in-a-row concrete. My bedroom was like a little menagerie, budgie guards and tropical fish and aquariums and terrapins.

John: Oh my God.

Leif: So, I created my own little jungle in my own room. So for me, I think it was an innate love of the wild and animals.

John: Was your family originally from Australia before they settled in Hong Kong. So that’s how you ended up back in Australia?

Leif: Yes, exactly. Because my father was a art director for advertising agency so he moved to southeast Asia when I was 18 months old so that’s where I was brought up. But we eventually came back to Australia where I did my university education and started formally studying and researching orangutans and their conservation.

John: So your classic education in terms of your Masters of Science and things of that such were basically in this field. You knew you were going there and you studied this at university before you actually started in 1998 the Orangutan Project?

Leif: It wasn’t kind of often a parallel process of working with the orangutans and I wanted to learn more about them to help them so my postgraduate diploma in Primate Behavior, my Masters of Science studying orangutans. We’re there to help me discover and learn and get information to help orangutans. At the same time, parallel to that again was I started the work in the Orangutan Project to help save them in the wild.

John: For our listeners and viewers, we’ve got Leif Cocks with us. He’s the founder of the Orangutan Project. Please to find Leif and the great work that he’s doing with orangutans and to support this important organization. Please go to www.theorangutanproject.org. I’m on that site right now. I have it up in front of me. It’s a gorgeous site. It’s very informative plus also, there’s ways to get involved and donate and things of that such and learn much more about Leif. Leif, talk a little bit about the problem. Let’s first, before we talk about the solutions that you’re working on, thank God, you’re doing this great work. What’s the problem? Why are we even? In 2021, why are we slaughtering these gorgeous animals? None of this makes sense to me.

Leif: It’s about greed. Greed from a very few people. A few people are destroying the rainforest for the value of the trees and replacing a rainforest with unsustainable formed monoculture, such as palm or pulp paper. What they’re doing is they’re taking away the economic, environmental future from Indonesia. They’d taken away the land and the environmental services from local communities, destroying biodiversity, killing the orangutans, and contributing to climate change in one of the most significant ways. They’re basically destroying the planet as such and passing the true cost onto the powerless orangutans, local community, biodiversity, then future generations. It’s just exploited to more aware that they basically extract wealth at the expense of others.

John: Comparatively speaking, I’m 58 years old, so when you and I were young boys growing up, how big was the orangutan population and how we destroyed it in these last 3 or 4 decades? How much is it? How much are we destroying it? And how desperate is this need for you to have this very important organization?

Leif: Well, the first 20 or 30 years of our life, they’re pretty much OK. There’s vast tracts of wilderness left. In the last 20 years, the big multinationals have come in and destroy 80% of the rainforest, 80% of orangutan home, and the population have plummeted to the point now that they’re all on the verge of all populations tipping over to become unsustainable and collapsing, including the rainforest collapsing. Because you need a certain amount of rainforest to support rainforest. And so, you have these tipping points, we’re at the verge now, in this decade. Whether things that you basically, the orangutan population and rainforest itself would virtually collapsed or we can rebuild now to save the planet and the orangutans.

John: In 1998, you decided to found this world-renowned organization. Now, world-renowned organization, the Orangutan Project. What was your mission when you launch this? I know we’re 23 or 24 years later now, but first, when you launch it, what was your mission and what was your focus then?

Leif: The mission is that one day all orangutan can live in the wild in secure populations in viable habitat. That basically recognizes two things; one is as critically-endangered species, they deserve to survive and their survival is intrinsically linked to our survival because we have to save the planet in order for us species to survive. The second thing is to recognize that these are self-aware persons, the most intelligent being that sheds our planet, we can have a conversation with them and they don’t deserve to be killed and slaughtered as simply as an agricultural pest.

John: Oh, being slaughtered during this process or is it a de facto slaughtering, as you say, in the liquidation and the wholesale destruction of the rainforests, or is it a combination thereof of both?

Leif: The classic scenario is they destroy the rainforest and obviously, then orangutan could either die in the process or starve. Because now, there’s not enough food to support the remaining orangutan because of the destruction of their areas and they basically become agricultural pests and try to eat the young palm oil that’s planted there or they raid local villagers crops. And so basically, they become vulnerable and then end up being slaughtered.

John: It’s also important to note that orangutans should not also be in zoos. We should not be supporting the captivity of these beautiful animals for our own viewing pleasure in in a zoo setting.

Leif: Yes, there’s two aspects to that is although, zoos can do some really wonderful stuff. For example, reintroducing numbats or the California condor. These very targeted programs for small species can actually work out quite well and they can do a great deal of benefit. But what zoos can’t do is save megafauna. They can’t save elephants, tigers, orangutans, gorillas. Their population is unsustainable by their very nature. So zoos can’t save their own collections neither. No conservation value for keeping orangutans in captivity. The second thing is that regardless of the wonderful care that many orangutans have been given by dedicated, loving zookeepers. The analogy I give is that in refugee camps, run by most wonderful people who care for people who want to help them. But we know the long-term internment of people in these camps called a long-term psychological damage because that person’s have to control who and when their contact with, they have anxieties about the future, worried about the path, they need control over their environment. Therefore, as persons, equally orangutans, don’t do well in captivity, they’re mentally damaged by the process. No matter how loving and caring that the keepers are for them. And this is why they can only really successfully live a meaningful life in happiness if they can live that in the own environment, in their own societies.

John: What’s the general age range of an orangutan that lives in its natural habitat in a rain forest setting that’s not been destroyed yet? How long do they typically live?

Leif: That’s a very good question. In the wild, we are not quite sure because [inaudible] 40 or so years. We think they must live at least, since the early 60s, for they’re the slowest reproducing species in the world, the orangutan to survive. Early 60’s, if not a little bit more, would be the classic lifespan for a wild orangutan. Unfortunately, captivity when I did the research on captive survival, even when taking out very high infant mortality, most orangutans would on average die in about 12, 15 years. A few could survive longer but you can see the long term chronic stress of captivity, basically undermines the immune system and makes them vulnerable to diseases and health issues including diabetes. It’s widespread in the captive community. We simply doesn’t exist in the wild population.

John: For our viewers and listeners who just tuned in, we got Leif Cocks. He’s the founder of the Orangutan Project. You could finally support his important organization at www.theorangutanproject.org. What exactly are you doing? And what can we do to help you and also support other great organizations like yours in around the United States and wherever our listeners, we have listeners all around the world, obviously, how can we support you and your efforts and how can we turn the tide on this absolutely tragic information you’re sharing with us today that these animals are endangered and it’s only at our own hands that this happened?

Leif: The first thing is to, I guess, highlight the time span we have to work with. Now, what we’re hearing from COP26 is it look we’ve got 10 years to turn things around. After that, there’s feedback loops which means that the the ecosystem, the planet may be unrecoverable. And so, we’ve got 10 years to turn this around. It’s no surprise we have 10 years to turn this around for the orangutans. The reason is these things are intrinsically linked. Destruction of rainforests causes about 28% of climate change and then the feedback loop where increasing droughts etc., are basically destroying the rainforest. So, rainforest is affected by climate change and so mostly populations are being slowly dwindled and orangutans are basically a lowland species and the palm oil and the pulp paper and the coal mines tend to want the lowlands as well. So, we really only got next 10 years to save viable ecosystems of the right type, shape, and size of rainforest to take the orangutans, elephants, tigers, and indigenous human communities through this crisis. After that, the rainforest will not be sustainable. The population of the orangutans will not be sustainable. Our vision is that one day within the next 10 years, we can secure a ecosystems of the [inaudible] the rainforest to secure these populations and provide the biological basis to start rewilding the planet to make it once again sustainable for human life, as well as all the other biodiversity.

The second part of the question, what we can do about it. Now, we’ve kind of been sold this lie for the last 10 or so years that our individual actions can make a difference. Individual actions have never made a difference. Humans are extremely successful, most successful species on the planet. Not because we’re particularly smart as individual or capable as individual, but because we had a capacity to collectivize. Smart people, collectivize, capital in businesses to make a lot of money. Smart people, collectivize, political interests, and parties to make a significant difference. Individuals can’t. That doesn’t mean as individuals, we don’t have a moral responsibility to live a life without hurting and affecting others and in a negative way. However, if you really want to achieve something, we got to put aside this lie of us saving our planet through our personal choices. We’ve got to collectivize. In this particular situation, one of the cost-effective ways we can mitigate climate change and the most significant thing we can do to the most vulnerable persons on the planet, the orangutans, is to collectivize in organization such as the orangutan project and we work together to achieve the vision. So what can people in America around the world do is there’s two things that people can do is that they can provide funds, we all vicariously by position, in developing nations, standard of living is subsidized from the exploitation of others and other countries. We can give back at least some of that to solve the problem. That’s a basic moral obligation of the privileged position that we’re in. And so, please become a contributor to the Orangutan Project or another organization that can effectively help achieve your vision for better future. The second part is we call all our leaders accountable. One thing I mentioned, we got 10 years to turn this around, but 90% of the human population has no ability to affect meaningful change. They don’t have the money to give. Secondly, they have no political path. They live in totalitarian dictatorships, poor struggling to feed their families. It’s only us in countries such as America, UK, and Australia as examples, that we have wealth, but also we have a possibility of political influence. We can affect our leaders decisions. Therefore, the moral obligation of of us being the most important generation of human history, This is a 10 years that’s going to determine the future of humanity. Those tens of thousand years that occurred before, there’s no more important time than now and we have the small subset of humans that have the capacity to make meaningful change change and change the planet. We have this great obligation and privilege to act and act now decisively through collectivization in to make meaningful change before it’s too late.

John: You’ve been doing this work, this is a lifetime of work, but the Orangutan Project, Leif, has been a child of yours, a baby of yours for almost 24 years now. How has it evolved in terms of your view as the progress you’ve made been and the response you’ve gotten from, as you said, political leaders, and others of influence, been appropriate or helpful so far? Or if you’ve been discouraged and just plowed it on in the wake of lack of action by even intelligent leaders that are out there?

Leif: There is a couple of elements to that. One is actions for governments have been wholly ineffectual. The reason being we’ve lost control of most of our democracies to self-interest of life, business, and multinationals. It’s the same in America. There’s several papers published that America no longer than fix our democracy because the decision of government doesn’t reflect the will of the people. It reflects the rules, their funders. So, there is this kind of inability, I guess, for governments all around the world to actually affect a meaningful change. So it’s been extremely ineffectual. On the other hand is look, I work with so many wonderful Indonesians who have dedicated their lives, put their lives on the line, often have their lives lost to save their future, for the countries, to save the land of indigenous communities, to save the economic future and the biodiversity of Indonesia. And so, what I do believe, is effective in the time frame. Yes, we have to reform our political systems to make them more democratic and more inclusive of benefiting everybody in the community, but in order to meet the time frame, what we’re doing, working with wonderful local organizations and people and indigenous communities and working together to save the ecosystems. The wonderful thing is, if we’re discovering through developing agricultural systems on rainforest canopy, such as trade, coffee, cocoa, honey production is that we can work with a local communities that they can become prosperous and economically-affluent through keeping the rainforest intact and therefore making that culture sustainable. So, a huge win-win solution. I hope to leave this planet, leaves its ecosystems not only environmentally, but economically-sustainable to pass on to future generations. Now, we have to take these communities through this transition because it takes 5 to 7 years to study agricultural systems. You may be surprised that we actually feed school children. We educate them, we provide scholarships, and we support women’s rights and and women work groups as some examples. Because it’s not wildlife versus people or the environment versus kind of these win-win solutions. And we’re taking the indigenous communities through this and developing their success into the future. That’s kind of, I guess, 2 examples of what we’re trying to achieve.

John: Leif, approximately, is it known how many orangutans are left on this planet right now?

Leif: The honest answer is we don’t have it because we don’t have the time, resources. They’re hard to find so that their estimate based on counts is with this huge variability in it. But what we do know is that they’re critically endangered, we hit the highest category of concern before extinction. They’re all on the brink. We really only got the next few years for to turn this around. We also know that because orangutans adapt to the environment through culture predominantly, not natural selection, same as humans. We pass our culture from generation to generation which makes us far more adaptive to ever-changing environment. Orangutans do this by having very long maternal periods. They suckle the infants for 8 years and they stay with the mother after 12 Years, learning the culture, they’re born with brains, we could program by the mothers. This system works really great for adaptation and they reproduce very slowly invest in a very few offspring. But unfortunately, that makes them very vulnerable to extinction when it’s super predator such as humans come along because they can’t bounce back easily. We also started the international elephant and international tiger projects to bring those species under an umbrella of protection but they’re falling out of our protective umbrella that we set up for orangutans in these ecosystems. But let’s say for tigers, what we’ve discovered is if you protect them, they bounce back fairly quickly. They bring relatively quickly. They adapt to the environment for natural search and rise in culture, but orangutans, don’t do that very well. And in fact, if you only kill 1% of the females in a sustainable population a year, the population spirals to extinction.

John: What you just said is fascinating in that you’re saying females might go through their whole life and all you have one offspring.

Leif: Usually, maybe about 3. There’s 3 species of orangutan. We going to careful not to generalize, but let’s take this amount to an Sumatran orangutan. The have the first baby at 15 and then there’s 9 years between individual infants and they’ll keep breathing and obviously until they get very old. They’re very slow levels of reproduction. But on the other hand, they’re the most caring, loving mothers. The infant mortality is very low. In fact, actually, maternal mortality of the female orangutan in the wild is the same as female mortality of humans giving birth in America.

John: Oh my gosh.

Leif: They do look after each other and without an external predator, they do have a very high rate of survival and do quite well.

John: Going back to something you said earlier, the absolute tragic nature of the slaughter of these beautiful animals. They share about 97 or so percent of our DNA, so they’re the closest, these these great great apes are the closest to us out of any of the species that are that are out there?

Leif: They’re not our closest relative. The closest relative actually the chimpanzee which is 99%.

John: Wow.

Leif: But in some ways that actually makes orangutans actually much more cool. Humans and chimpanzees share this trade of aggressiveness and warlike behavior. Chimpanzees and humans would look at another person and want to destroy them. We will destroy others. We would have warfare against other tribes. So that’s a nature of our aggressive ancestors. Orangutans don’t have that. They’re far more noble form of persons. To give an example of this is we killed over million orangutan, slowly slaughtering them to extinction in most horrific ways that we can manage, machete then burning them alive. And although orangutans are 7 times stronger than a human and the males have canines the same size as tigers, not one time in recorded history, not in any zoo or wild or sanctuary, that an orangutan has ever killed a human being. They’re not capable of what I call a kill switch and wanting to totally destroy another being as we do. That’s the added tragedy. They had some more humanity and persons, we share our planet that we should be emulating in so many ways. These are peaceful, loving creatures and we are destroying them as we speak.

John: Intelligence level you said of these beautiful animals is very high in terms of being able to process information and communicate with humans as well.

Leif: Exactly. I said the most intelligent being shares our planet and as persons they have anxieties about the past and your worries about the future, so what a person does is project themselves in the past and the future, not just living in the now. Therefore, their capacity to suffer is much greater than animals that are less intelligent. Humans, we suffer a lot. Most of our suffering is in our minds and it’s about past and future very little of our suffering is actually in the now. Orangutans are the same. I’ve had to care and consult orangutans which been bombed in World War II because when the fireworks, they believe that in bond again, and you have to console and try to rebuild these minds of orangutans which have their mothers slaughtered and eaten front of them, the little minds that are damaged.

John: So they’re capable of having PTSD like humans?

Leif: Exactly. We just discovering how fantastic they are. Researchers, for example, a discovery not only useful in thousands of plants to feed off the youth plants are medicines, topical treatment to treat malaria. And when they go, “Okay, wonder what they’re using, what the different medicines for.” Surprise, surprise. They go to the indigenous communities who are using the same plant for the same issues. So you got these 2 persons trying to frost basically also find the same solutions of medicines and passing those culture down from generation to generation. This is one of the reasons that it’s so important to save these populations. We’re not only saving genetic diversity, beginning framework to survival. We have to save the culture as well, without culture they can’t adapt to the environment. So think past and future generation. One of the interesting things is when we would talk about orangutans being persons. Male orangutans have this big cheek pads and a throat sack. They call out to attract females and keep other males away and like a big megaphone. In the evening when they nest in the trees, they will say, future me. I’m going to go up and move this direction in the morning. So they then point their big cheek pad and basically call into into the direction that they’re going to go the next morning. So they already plan the next day. They’re always thinking ahead into the future. In fact, that have this huge cerebral cortex which is basically this computer simulation. This is why, ley’s say, in zoo situations you probably see chimpanzees trailing area trying to do something. They say escape, rolling, running around. Orangutan would just sit then, just run the program in the head over and over till they get the right solution then just walk out and escape.

John: You save a lot of energy, they refer to their brain to really help them work through things.

Leif: Exactly. It’s a huge survival mechanism because when you’re like body like brain animals like orangutan, you got to conserve energy in the rainforest and so they don’t act, they act once decided and has thought about it for a long time before they make any actual action in itself.

John: So, really some of what you’re sharing today, besides supporting great organizations, like yours, it’s also to support politicians and other leadership that really are truly going to make strides towards turning this environmental crisis that we’re living through around because part and parcel with turning the environmental crisis and the wholesale liquidation of our environment around the world around will be also helping save the orangutans around the world as well.

Leif: Yes, exactly. We got the 2 forces and it actually goes down to brain biology. You have the conservative force and if you have a conservative mindset of brain, new information is it gives you fear. That’s a good reaction because making changes is dangerous. Things that go better but they all seemed to have to be good but the conservative mind look at things like climate change or a better way of doing things and we act with fear and then cognitive dissidence turned away. I think an American term to Liberal mind reacts new information by excitement. Oh, this is interesting. These opportunities climate change. We need to change this and that’s all stuff. And so, you have to kind of forces, with the mind reacting to the new situation with fear and denial, not because they’re unintelligent, that’s just the way their brain is setup or reacting to it. There needs to be some balance because, let’s say, take the Arab Spring. We can make these rapid changes, but then the end up really badly. There was that kind of balance there but my predominant message is we do need predominately politicians with the progressive outlook, because we have to make rapid change. We have to make this daring changes in the next 10 years. So all the conservatives and can actually benefit to it many times in the world. We need very progressive and quickly-moving policies in order to save this planet now, so I would encourage people to go for those visionaries, the visionary politicians who are willing to make the hard decisions and changes and change the [inaudible] because I guess now is not the time for more conservative nature to dictate our outcomes because we will go under.

John: Leif, I want to let you have the last word on any thoughts you want to share with our listeners and our viewers and our readers around the world. This is a very critical mission and project that you’ve created and we’re of course grateful for your time today. But therefore, I want to give you the last word and then I’ll sign off for us together.

Leif: I guess my last message is actually doing good and helping others is the pathway of the joy and happiness. There is no sacrifice in a meaningful, selfless life. If we live that life, we find the happiness within us and express it through intelligent ways in the world. Actually. It’s a win-win situation, all these are win-win situations. So, there is no sacrifice here. Working for our own power, name, fame, reputation, and money, inevitably, you can see yourself lead to misery and unhappiness. But if we work for others, in a sense of community and direction, we become happier and we express our happiness. So there’s no downside of living a meaningful life that helps others because it helps us as individuals too.

John: Leif, you’re living a very meaningful life. We’re so grateful for your time. I know it’s very early in Australia right now and we’re very grateful and thankful for the impact that you’re making at the Orangutan Project. For our listeners and viewers and readers out there that want to support Leif and want to find or connect with Leif in this very important mission at the Orangutan Project, please go to www.theorangutanproject.org, theorangutanproject.org. You can donate money, you could support, you could connect with Leif and his colleagues, and help save these beautiful animals. Leif, thank you for making the world a better place. Thank you for the impact that you’re making. Thank you for being selfless and really, really just doing this really important work. I’m just grateful for you. God bless you continued good health, and I just want you to continue to succeed in this great mission.

Leif: Thank you.

John: This edition of the Impact Podcast is brought to you by the Marketing Masters. 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.

John Shegerian: This edition of the Impact Podcast is brought to you by ERI. ERI has a mission to protect people, the planet, and your privacy. It’s the largest fully integrated IT and electronics asset disposition provider and cybersecurity-focused hardware destruction company in the United States and maybe even the world. For more information on how ERI can help your business properly dispose of outdated electronic hardware devices, please visit ERIdirect.com.

John: Welcome to another edition of the Impact Podcast. My name is John Shegerian, and I’m so honored to have with us today, Ryan Holiday. He is one of the best-selling authors that we have today in the United States. This is his 12th book we’re gonna be talking about today, Courage Is Calling. Ryan, welcome to the Impact Podcast.

Ryan Holiday: Yeah. Thank you for having me.

John: You know, I’m not only a huge fan. I read your daily stoic and you already have at 34 years old, a huge body of work behind you. The obstacles away. Ego is the enemy, daily stoic, stillness is the key. I mean, for million-plus copies New York Times bestseller. Before we get talking about church-going, where did you grow up? How did you even get on this journey of being this prolific writer?

Ryan: I grew up in beautiful Sacramento, California. Not a child of writers or really anyone involved in anything sort of like this. My dad is a police officer. My mom’s a school principal. Sort of ordinary civil servants kind of a family and, I just felt I fell in love with books. I knew I wanted to do something around books. I wasn’t sure if I could be a writer. I just knew that I loved reading and I wanted to do something very different, then how my parents lives were. I didn’t wanna go to an office. I didn’t wanna have a job and, ended up here through a variety of a strange twists and turns but I wrote my first book when I was 24, I think. So, I do have a body of work behind it but I also got started earlier than most. So it’s somewhat unfair advantage.

John: Right. What informed you? What made you such a bibliophile growing up and what books informed you to say, this is maybe a path I’m interested and taking?

Ryan: Yeah. I really loved the books and I love reading, but I didn’t really get turned on to the kinds of books that I like now and so much later probably, 18 or 19 years old. I just was a prolific reader of anything. The Hardy Boys Books and then my sister would have Nancy Drew and I’d read that too. I read literally and anything that was between two covers. So I think, I started just loving the printed word. I loved the experience of reading. It wasn’t until a little bit later on that I really got sort of exposed to philosophy and, even this sort of genre of self of. I remember what I graduated from high school. My aunt gave me a copy of man’s search for meaning, which was probably the first book in this kind of genre that, I guess, I’m in now. That sort of exposed me to, that a book could be more than entertainment, that a book could really not just teach you about a specific thing. Like, book about gardening or book about how to use a computer but a book about how to sort of actualize as a human being. That was probably the book that sort of opened my eyes the most or at least at first.

John: When you wrote your first book when you are how old?

Ryan: 24. I wrote an expose of the marketing industry, which I had been in for several years, after college. I started writing on this 24 I think came out right after I turned 25.

John: Got in. So, you have all these books behind you. You’re a New York Times bestselling author. You’re also seen as one of the top philosophers out there right now. I enjoy your daily stoicing. For those who want to find you there, they can go to www.dailystoic.com. Sign up, get his daily, get Ryan’s daily newsletter. It’s so informative and actually really inspirational to get that every day. What prompted you then to now go into this, what is gonna be, I believe, the series that you’re gonna be writing, the four cardinal virtues you started with Courage Is Calling, what then prompted you to take on these four virtues now and start with Courage?

Ryan: So, my first book of philosophy was this book I wrote called The Obstacle Is The Way. Which I didn’t really have much in the way of plans for. I thought, I wanted to talk about this sort of very specific way of thinking about stoic philosophy aimed at a very specific thing, which is sort of the obstacles that life arose in our path. It was my sort of first, I’m may said my breakthrough book. I followed it shortly thereafter with another book, which I had been thinking about before Obstacle came out, but ended up becoming more of a sequel to Obstacle than I had intended. Or at least that I had planned for. So, one book became two books and then the third book in that trilogy which came out in 2019 was called, Stillness Is The Key. So I sort of backed in unintentionally to this three book series. Although none of it was planned as far as what follows each book. So there’s sort of three independent but related books. So as I was thinking about what I wanted to do next, I was thinking about doing a book on Courage. I was interested in the topic. Then, the fact that Courage is the first of the four cardinal virtues really excited me. Not just because that goes to the core of what stoic philosophy is about. But, I like the challenge of having to try to do a series. So, as obviously, philosophically very interested in the sort of the idea of courage and it’s relation to the other virtues. As a writer, I was also excited by the challenge of tackling something as complex as of four book series.

John: So when you were going into this, you took on Courage first because you believe it’s central to the stoic virtues or…?

Ryan: The cardinal virtues are the cardinal virtues of both stoicism and Christianity.

John: Okay.

Ryan: ‘Cause our way back, thousands of years, courage, temperance, justice, wisdom, these are the sort of the– Cardinal comes from the Latin cardo, just means hinge. So these are sort of pivotal virtues. I’ve written about the many times before I just had never written a book about them. So, there, could you do one book on all four virtues like a four-part book on all four virtues? Or would you decide to tackle it as four distinct books? I was excited about doing that. Then, I started with courage, what it tends to be what is listed first? When you list them, we move the order around but typically courage comes first. I think it’s the most essential of all the virtues in that you cannot have temperance, or justice, or wisdom, without courage. You really can’t have any of the virtues without each other, but I think courage is sort of the buy-in on all of the virtues. So, it just felt like the right place to start.

A lot of this stuff is kind of an intuition, right? When someone says, “Oh, why did you decide to write a book about this or what?” You just sort of learn as an artist who trust what is interesting to you? What you’re thinking about? What you cannot think about. That’s really what it is. I mean, honestly, my first book came from the fact that I kept talking about it and I finally thought I’m just gonna write a book about this and then I won’t have to talk about it anymore. Which is never really how it works, but you’re just motivated by this itch that you can’t seem to not scratch.

John: When you decided you’re gonna do this series, before you started writing a word on Courage. Did you already have in your mind which book you thought? You thought hasn’t, you haven’t done while yet. It was gonna be the more difficult challenge, right?

Ryan: Certainly. I mean, I thought courage would probably be the easiest. Courage is right down the middle as far as what it is, how you illustrate it, and why people care about it. There’s no society on Earth, past or present that does not hold up courage as an admirable thing. There’s no society, the ancient culture of X that celebrated it’s cowards. That doesn’t exist. So courage felt the most red meat of all of them. I’m in the middle of the self-discipline book right now or temperance, which is proven to be trickier than I thought. But it also sort of straight down the middle. I think Justice will probably be the hardest book. One because it veers the closest into politics, right? It’s the most clearly based on a sense of right and wrong which obviously, there’s a lot of disagreement about.

So that’s probably the book that I am most intimidated by. Then the one that I have the most reservations about is the Wisdom book. In that writing a book about wisdom, all the books have this, but writing a book about wisdom, it still feels a tad presumptuous to be writing about that topic. So the Wisdom book has it’s perils for different reasons.

John: You know, in your book, and again, for our listeners and viewers out there, Courage Is Calling: Fortune Favors The Brave. Ryan Holiday, his with us today. This is gonna be actually our Thanksgiving edition of the Impact Podcast because I think this is really a real special call to action and Ryan, you really written, as you could tell book that I’ve enjoyed tremendously and gotten a lot out of after my 59 years, a lot that I never even learned or even understood before. You’ve explained it simply and really clearly here with illustrative stories. In the book, you talk about, you mentioned that we price courage maybe the most but this courage is in absolute short supply. What’s your definition of courage? What you want your readers, listeners to come away with from this great book?

Ryan: With the definition that I have in the book, first stipulating that we tend to see there– there being two types of courage. We call moral courage and physical courage. Physical courage, pretty obvious, that’s the courage of a soldier, or a fireman, or something. Moral courage is more of the courage of a whistleblower, or a scientist, or a groundbreaking artist, or some.

John: Right.

Ryan: But I think what both those forms of courage share is willingness to put one’s self on the line for something or someone. So, I think at the core of courage is obviously the idea of risk. If there is no risk, if the outcome is guaranteed, courage is obviously not in play. Risk is, courage is predicated on. There being some form of danger. Reputationally to your actual health, whatever it is. If the company is guaranteed to succeed, it’s not courageous to go started.

John: Right. One of my favorite things that you did in the book is you give all these illustrative examples of courage. You mention, and quoted so many great people. I made a little game of it. I started writing down just like a, my list of.

Ryan: Oh, wow.

John: Of everyone that you gave some great stories and quotes from. One of my favorite stories that I relate to the times that we’re living in right now is you. You brilliantly explain the Kitty Genovese story. Kitty Genovese as you explained it, and the neighbor that came to her rescue, put herself on the line, when no one else was doing anything. Is so relatable to what we just went through in 2020 with George Floyd and just two weeks back on that train in Philadelphia with the woman who was brutally attacked. Unfortunately, as you pointed out, history will repeat itself unless we learn from those mistakes. When you hear about, or read, or watch the news about these, those kind of recent things, you just shake your head and just, you know, when people say, say something, why not say something, do something?

Ryan: Sure.

John: Right?

Ryan: Yeah. I think it in the, as it pertains to that expression, the idea of saying something is doing something right. I think it’s interesting when you look at the Kitty Genovese story, it is this sort of shameful story that we’ve told ourselves about, the indifference of neighbors particularly in the sort of the modern city, which it was in some ways. Then in other ways, she was held by a neighbor as she died. A neighbor, who she knew quite well, who had left her apartment and her small child inside to go answer these screams and finds her dying sort of neighbor there. Then asks for zero credit or recognition for this sort of this experience even as she is implicated for a generation as being part of this horrible tale of indifference to and inhumanity. I don’t know. I don’t know why that happens. I mean, you think abut the girl who won the Pulitzer Prize for taking the video, George Floyd. I mean, it wasn’t just that she took the video. I mean, she stood there filming the police who may, you know, clearly were not wonderful human beings or they wouldn’t have been in the middle of murdering this man. As you said, it’s more than just sort of seeing something but doing something about it, trying to take some active step towards solving a problem. I think what’s interesting about that the George Floyd thing is you have– the woman filming into obviously sees something wrong. But you have the two other officers just standing there, or kneeling there, as their boss does this horrible thing right in front of them.

There’s a line from Marcus Aurelius where he says, you can commit injustice by doing nothing also. It’s, of course, easy to say this isn’t my problem. This isn’t my fight. This is an up to me. I don’t care about this, but you are complicit in the outcome of what happens.

John: What makes it worse to me is in that situation, the recent Philadelphia train attack situation is back in the Kitty Genovese days, Genovese days, people could have said, “Well, I didn’t hear her. I wasn’t at home that night.” This is now a world of we’re all become sort of democratize reporting, and that people have cell phones.

Ryan: Yeah.

John: So the fact, we know people were there and people were watching, they were filming it. So that can even compounds the complicity like you said of an action.

Ryan: Yeah. I think that’s right. Maybe that should remind you that like, hey, people are always watching and that run ought to go through the world acting as if someone is watching. So you mentioned Daily Stoic Email. The email today that we sent out to the list. Obviously, I write them in advance. The point of today’s email was talking about how your children and your grandchildren are gonna ask you about what you did and what the pandemic was like. So, just in the same way that I asked my grandfather about D-Day and I asked my grandmother about the depression. You’re gonna ask them about, they’re gonna ask you about this historical event. What are you gonna be able to say, are you gonna say, “Well, I posted a lot of misinformation on Facebook about it.” Right?

John: Right.

Ryan: Or are you gonna say, “Hey, I volunteered in a vaccine clinic, or we did X, Y, or Z. We kept you guys home. Bob, what are you gonna be able to say?” When your kids ask you and you start to describe your experiences in this time, are you gonna seem like you were part of the problem. Or you gonna seem like you’re part of the solution. Or you’re gonna seem sort of wildly out of touch. There’s a famous exchange with John F. Kennedy, where John F. Kennedy sort of admits that he’d learned about the great depression in Harvard. He was rich and his life was so sheltered that he missed the great depression. He wasn’t 5. He was 15 during the great depression.

So you’re like, oh, wow. Okay. So this person, they were part of the problem, but they were also part of the problem, right? This is exactly the kind of out of touchness that probably cause the great depression to begin with. So, as we kind of think about how history is going to judge us. Like, the larger scale of history but just also your future self. Where you gonna think about yourself in 10 years? Hopefully society will have progressed in 10 years. Hopefully will be kinder, and gentler, and more equitable, all these things. When you look back at where you were, you’re gonna be like, oh. You know what I mean? I didn’t do everything that I could.

John: You talk about in the book, you give some great examples, and of course, you mentioned one of my heroes, Pat Tillman.

Ryan: Mm-hmm.

John: How we’re all gonna be call.

Ryan: Yes.

John: Different times in our lives. But we have to be ready to answer that calling, and the calling could be as you pointed out. You gave so many brilliant examples throughout the book. One of the great examples was the six second example with our brave troops that prevented many people from dying over in the other side of the planet, but with Pat Tillman. He answered his calling and he said, you know when you get called, you can feel it. Can you explain to our listeners and readers, what do you mean by that? How can we get better in tune with ourselves? So when we know we have to make, we have to exhibit courage, we could actually get over our fear and over ourselves?

Ryan: So everyone gets the call, but almost everyone refuses the call. If you’re familiar with the idea of the hero’s journey, which Joseph Campbell puts forth.

John: Yep.

Ryan: One of the steps in the hero’s journey is the refusal of the call. So this is part of it. We have this sense, or we hear this voice, or we see this inspiration that calls us to do something. Almost invariably, we come up with reasons why we can’t do it, or we can’t do it right now. Steven Pressfield call this the resistance.

We don’t say, “I never gonna do it.” We say, “I’ll start tomorrow.” So I think understanding that this sort of tension. If it was obvious, everyone would do it. It’s not obvious. It’s hard, and we wrestle with it. For me when I dropped out of college to become a writer, when I decided to go from writing book, writing marketing books to philosophy books. These were not easy or obvious decisions. I went back and forth about them. I had a lot of doubts about them. But you sort of have to go towards that scarier thing.

The call is there. The call is usually a, we’re coming up on Halloween here, the call is coming from inside the house. But you have to answer, you have to decide to act on it. Because what would a world look like without the Pat Tillman’s, or the Florence Nightingale, or the Winston Churchill, or the Martin Luther King. Martin Luther King is just a ordinary pastor in Birmingham. No, in Montgomery. He doesn’t have to get involved. There were other black preachers and major black churches that didn’t step forward. There were some that just step forward but not as far as king did. To think, I think he’s 25 years old. Like, we often think, you think of Thomas Jefferson and George Washington as old men, but they were in their early 20’s and 30’s when this happened. They weren’t certain about it. It was scary as hell, but they proceeded anyway, they answer the call.

John: They answer the call. You talk in the book about your own fear. As you just pointed out, switching from the marketing guy to a philosopher, dropping out of college, dropped out of law school. It wasn’t an easy decision. Of course, you always, the abyss is always scarier on where you are today. What do you want? So many amazing quotes in this book, and as you can see I’ve marked it up. But anyone who can quote both Martin Luther King and Frank Serpico book is someone that I’m a huge fan of.

I took out so many quotes. I wrote down so many. What would be your favorite two or three quotes in the whole book that you want people to see her in there, to see her in their brain and keep front of their brain every day as they work through their journey?

Ryan: So one of the ones I love it’s often attributed to Andrew Jackson, although he probably didn’t actually say. But, it’s this idea that one person with courage makes a majority. The whole world depends on people who stood alone on a certain issue and brought other people around. Again, to go to Martin Luther King. Martin Luther King was, I think at a 60 or so percent disapproval, disfavorable opinion at the time of his death, not even a majority of African-Americans were a fan of Martin Luther King. But this is what happens when you are ahead of your time. Is that you often upset people or your hard to wrap your head around? So the idea that that it’s gonna require standing alone. It’s not always as high stakes as civil rights. It might just be, hey, this is the direction that I think my industry is going to go in. Everyone on your team might be convinced you are completely wrong. That maybe why you have to break out on your own, or why you have to put in more of your own money on it, or whatever it is. But the point is, being okay standing alone, having the courage to do that, and the perseverance to understand that this is how change happens from person who takes a position and convinces other people to come along with them. One of my favorite ones though and I think we’re in the middle of this right now is, although courage is rare. Even amongst people who think they understand courage. We have trouble understanding what it’s about. So there’s a quote from the poet Lord Byron that I have towards the end of the book. He says, tease the cause makes all that hallows or degrades courage and its fall.

Is it courageous that Kyrie Irving is willing to risk for $400,000 in game to not get vaccinated? Because he’s protesting vaccine mandates or whatever. I mean, it’s certainly risky. I certainly a scary thing to do. You’re betting millions of dollars on a thing you believe. The problem is, when we’re talking about courage as a virtue. It has to be in the pursuit of what the stoic would call the right.

Courageously, protect your right to be a victor of a deadly virus, is not what we’re talking about when we’re talking about courage. Was it courageous for Robert E. Lee to break with the country that he had served honorably for years to side with the State of Virginia? Was he courageous under fire many times? Of course, but we also understand and this is why we’re having this debate now about these statues.

That there’s something empty and a hollow, not hallow. Hollow about discouraged because it was in the pursuit of a monstrous injustice, on monstrously incorrect cause. So when we think about the virtues, we have to understand that they’re related to each other. Not only discourage have to be balanced by justice. It also has to be balanced by wisdom. So if you’ve courageously decided to jump off a cliff, that everyone told you you’re gonna die when you hit the ground. This were wisdom comes in. The wisdom to accept information and integrate it. Is really, really important and so, yes, you can courageously resist vaccines as much as you want. But if you’re the reason you’re doing that is because, you’re also, again, to go to Kyrie Irving, a person who believes the world is flat. You’re an idiot. You’re not great. That’s an important decision.

John: The book came down on the Kyrie Irving story to me is Muhammad Ali. He was a hero because, he have the courage to push back against the war that he didn’t believe in.

Ryan: Sure.

John: It turned out that history was on his side and he lost a lot of his career because of that.

Ryan: Yes. Look, there’s also, even if he was wrong. There were conscientious objectors in the Second World War. I think we go like, look, the cause itself was not bad, but we understand there’s a severe– sorry, a sincere religious conviction behind the resistance. So, even if Vietnam was not a travesty or a tragedy, and Muhammad Ali, there is a sincere religious conviction. That is motivating the decision that he’s making. It’s just important to say that courage is truth-telling. But if you’re just rudely telling truths to hurt people’s feelings, that’s not what we’re talking about.

John: Right. Again, we’ve got Ryan Holiday with us. This is the Thanksgiving special. We all should give thanks for Ryan and his new book, Courage Is Calling: Fortune Favors The Brave. We could all use wisdom on how to be more courageous in our lives. Every one of us. Ryan, one of the things I love about the book is you talk a lot about the stoics. Obviously, which you’re a philosopher. What do you think if the stoics were here today? They came down for just two days here on this planet. So everything that was going on. What would they be intrigued about and be fascinated by? What would they be totally turned off about what’s going on right now?

Ryan: Let’s say you dropped a Marcus Aurelius into 2020.

John: Right.

Ryan: Here you have a guy who was head of state during the beginning of the decline of the Roman Empire. Who’s also the majority of his reign is made up of what we now refer to as the Antonine Plague. So I feel like he’d have looked around and accepting some of the technology been like, this is very familiar to me. He would understand. Actually that’s one of my favorite quotes and meditations. It certainly became more so over time, but he talks about how during a plague. He says, there’s two types of plagues. He says there’s the pestilence that destroys your life and he said there’s another that affects your character. I think we’ve seen this also during the pandemic where people who, whether they got COVID or not, also got some sort of character infection. That made them sort of deeply selfish, or susceptible to conspiracies, or we’re just, when you watch a video of some lady screaming at a supermarket clerk, who asked them to put on a mask. You’re like, you might not have COVID, but I pretty sure you got something worse. You caught something. So, the Marcus was familiar with that 2000 years ago, I find to be really interesting. I said accepting the technology. I do think they would be appalled by our dependency on these devices. That are our inability to focus for 5 minutes on the simplest of tasks.

I think they would struggle to comprehend that. I mean, obviously, human beings have always struggled with attention and focus and whatever. I think they look at at our dependency on these devices and ask why we’re doing this to ourselves.

John: Got it. One of the things I love about your journey and your only 34 which, my two children are above me here in this and this was up on my walls four years before this pandemic ever hit, but it turned out to a nice background for all my Zoom calls.

Ryan: Yeah.

John: My daughter’s 34 and she’s a lawyer and I’m so proud of her. I mean, she’s 35. I think, oh, my gosh. I mean, that’s such a young age, you’ve done so much and now during the pandemic, you are called again. When all of retail shut down or virtually all of retail, you decide to go counter to the absolute trends that are existing in 2020, which was literally a silence that I’ve never seen in my 59 years in the United States and around the world. You opened up a bookstore called “The Painted Porch” in your hometown now, where you live in Bastrop, Texas. Explain, what, where that calling came from? Why you decided that 2023 is the big Debi [?] was the right time to answer the call. How’s it going on since you launched this? I’ve been online. I’ve seen the books for all the photos, and it looks just gorgeous and beautiful and something out of a Norman Rockwell painting. Why?

Ryan: So to be fair. I started before the pandemic. I just decided not to quit during the pandemic. I think, if you had told me, I didn’t decide in March, the opening of books were not be a good idea. But I did stand in the empty bookstore in March and go, “I can’t believe we have to do this now.” It was a long journey. It was an exhausting. It was an expensive and terrifying journey in many ways. But it was a really good experience. So the weird thing, I love books, you can see books behind me. I love physical books most of all, that’s how I read. But now even as an author, something like 60% of my book sales are digital. Either ebooks or audiobooks. Obviously, I’m very grateful for that but something about the physical experience really means something to me and as we were looking for some office space for our company. We sort of came up with this hybrid idea of office space plus, there was a storefront involved. So it worked out at someone accidentally as an opportunity to do both. It’s turned out to be very cool and fun. It was harder and took longer than expected, but it’s been a really cool experience and there’s something about being part of a community, doing something in the real world. I can hear right now like little kids running around.

John: Right.

Ryan: Excited. There’s something I love about that.

John: Hey, listen. I love it. I grew up in New York City and one of my favorite places of peace and enjoyment was Fifth Avenue in 18th Street, the big Barnes & Noble, their flagship store. So opening up a bookstore sounds wonderful. Just during a pandemic, maybe not so much, but how it was call…

Ryan: It was not the best business decision, but it’s been a fun personal experience to say the least.

John: Talking about personal experiences. You’re married with two boys.

Ryan: Yes.

John: I know you take that seriously. I’ve read what you’ve written about fatherhood and being a husband. Yeah. I know you really lean into it. How do you find time? Even how busy you are, how much you loved to read? Also, you’re writing, you’re already writing the second of this four series the book on Temperance. Where do you find time to get into your flow and actually still continue to to be at the peak of your abilities?

Ryan: I mean, it’s kind of an unfair profession. I mean, if I was a professional baseball player, I would be away a lot more. I would be dependent on other. What are the benefits? Part probably why I chose it, but you sort of a lone wolf as a writer as far as doing your actual thing. So you’re able to kind of squeeze it in into different pockets, but I’m a big creature of habit. Part of the reason we did the bookstore, part of the reason we live where we live, was kind of setting up a system to optimize for those things that allow all of them to be possible. If I had a 90 minute commute or something, obviously that would eat up large chunks of the time. So I try to sort of design my life around the things that are important to me, but it also means, saying no to sort of stuff that maybe would ordinarily be perks of the profession to a single, rider my age, or something. I’m not experiencing but that hasn’t been something I’ve particularly missed.

John: Right. One of my favorite quotes in your book is the world is a narrow bridge and the important thing is not to be afraid.

Ryan: Yes.

John: Explain why you put that in the book and what that means to you and why that was so important to put that?

Ryan: Yeah. It’s a little Hebrew prayer. There’s actually a great novel called “The World Is A Narrow Bridge” by a guy named Aaron Thier, which I love as well. But to me what the wisdom of that prayer is it’s like, when you’re walking you’ve ever been on like an narrow rope bridge or something over some canyon. It’s just like, just keep walking, don’t look down, don’t look over the edge. Don’t stop. Don’t look behind you, just get across the bridge. Any of those other things as tempting as they might be, are very dangerous. ‘Cause you slow down, you lose your heart to continue, suddenly get really nervous. You just got to get across.

John: Got it. A lot of your writings that I’ve read before, before even Courage Is Calling. You talk about stoics virtue of controlling their response, how all learn to be better at controlling our response. What do you want people to learn when you write about controlling their response and how the stoics held that in high esteem? How we can all get better at practicing that and actually exhibiting that kind of behavior?

Ryan: I think look at the core of stoicism is the idea that we don’t control what happens, we control how we respond. That’s life. Right?

John: Right.

Ryan: So I think if you think about justice as a resource allocation issue. Are you gonna spend time on the things you don’t control, or you’re gonna put all of that energy towards the parts of it that you do control. So I think stoic just tries to say, what part of this is up to me? What can I do? Where can I move the ball forward? I’m not saying, I’m perfect at it. On the contrary, I just know. Sometimes you get all worked up in something and you’re like, what am I really saying here? What you’re really saying is, I wish that it hadn’t happened to this way. But it did. So are you gonna spend time litigating that? Or you gonna focus on what comes after?

John: Yeah. You made a point in the book where you said, or in your book or somewhere else when I read one of your passages. You said, “Really, do you ever feel excited, or do you look back favorably on a time where you got mad or got it exploded at somebody or something?

Ryan: Sure.

John: You never, it’s not fun to look back at those moments.

Ryan: Yeah. I mean, I don’t think I’ve ever lost my temper and then been proud of myself after. Are there certain moments where I’m glad I stood up for myself? Yeah, but even in those moments, I say, I wish I’d done that without saying X, Y, or Z. Right?

John: Right. You get to meet a lot of people like you said because of your, over four million copies you’ve sold Ryan. You’re a New York Times bestseller, many times over. Athletes, entertainers, and so many leaders, military leaders around the world read your books. So you have great access to so many people, but I’d love to know is if tonight and tomorrow night, you had two chances at dinner. One tonight with someone who is still living, not a family member.

Ryan: Sure.

John: Go to dinner with somebody and tomorrow night with someone who’s passed. Anyone who’s passed. Who will be there your two favorite people to have dinner with, past and still alive?

Ryan: Yeah. I mean, I’d love to meet General Mattis. I’m a big fan of and I know a little bit, but we’ve never met in person. So if I had to pick a living, maybe I’d go there. I mean, I feel like I would lose my stoic credentials if I didn’t choose Marcus Aurelius. But if I had to pick, let’s say you’re limiting it to an American, I think Lincoln probably.

John: It could be anyone. No. [inaudible].

Ryan: No, I’m just saying. If I can choose two, I’d say Marcus Aurelius number one.

John: You’ve got a bonus one [inaudible].

Ryan: Exactly.

John: Yourself limited it. I got it. Again, Courage Is Calling, you can buy this book not only at the Painted Porch but at Barnes & Noble Amazon and every other place you can buy great books. This is just really one of the favorite books that I’ve read in 10 years. You can see how much I’ve marked it up. You talked about David Brooks in the book. You talked about The Second Mountain. Can you share a little bit about what you mean about the Brooks? What Brooks meant by The Second Mountain?

Ryan: Yeah. The Second Mountain is, he said sort of once you climbed the top of the first mountain, that’s your career success. What is the second mountain for you? What do you sort of giving back? What is the other thing that you’re doing? It’s a great book. The title and anything, it gets up there. Anyways, I’m gonna talk about that more probably in the Justice book but, to me the second mountain, the bookstore was part of the second mountain. Was like, hey, I’ve had this success. This is the thing I’m good at. What is a cool thing I could do in a place that I live? What’s another project to tackle that might not be as financially lucrative, but might be richer in meaning or purpose? It’s certainly been that. So I think the second mountain is sort of what is it that you are doing, after you have achieved the thing that you wanted most in the world.

John: Got it. I love that you’ve talked about and, well, first of all, you talk, you share some stories that I’ve never heard. I mean, I love the story that you shared. If you wanna just hit the high notes on it. I think it would be fun for our listeners and viewers on the relationship between Martin Luther King and Richard Nixon, which I had never read that or heard that anywhere, and relationship between JFK and Martin Luther King and how to phone calls could have probably turned that whole election.

Ryan: Yeah. So Nixon and King were actually friends because Nixon was in charge of Eisenhower’s civil rights platform. So they met each other many, many times. Then, Kennedy did not really know King until the 1960 election and King is arrested in Georgia, on these sort of trumped-up charges. There’s real concern that he’s either gonna do a long prison sentence or he’s gonna mysteriously disappear while in police custody. It’s gonna be murder or lynched.

John: Right.

Ryan: So Coretta Scott King, who’s pregnant I think with their third child at the time, calls both campaigns and says, “You guys got to do something. You can’t let my husband die.” Both parties had some civil rights planks in their campaign. Nixon decides not to get involved. She doesn’t want to be seen as grandstanding. He wants to wait until after the election. He also doesn’t wanna lose some of the southern vote. It’s a razor-thin there anyway, doesn’t wanna lose the southern vote. So he doesn’t get involved. Kennedy on the other hand decides mostly at the prompting of his brother-in-law, Sargent Shriver, to place a phone call. One to Coretta Scott King and then his brother both called the judge in Georgia and they ultimately sort of apply enough pressure that King is released.

Martin Luther King, when he gets out of jail, he’s like stun. He would have sworn that it would have been Nixon who would have helped him, not Kennedy, who’s a democrat, who is more dependent on southern democratic support. He’s just puts out there. What happened? He’d been planning to vote for Nixon, and he changes his mind. I think Kennedy goes on to win the presidential election by like 30,000 votes across three states. Almost entirely people think due to the swing in the black vote, due to this two phone calls that he makes. So, I think it’s an important example of how a single but 30 second bursts of courage can change one’s life. Conversely that a momentary lapse of courage. A moment of cowardice can change your life for the negative as well.

Nixon doesn’t get involved ‘cause he doesn’t wanna hurt his re-election prospects and ends up costing himself the election. When we have these moments, when our conscience is telling us what to do, we feel that pit in her stomach, you just gotta do it.

John: You gotta answer the call.

Ryan: Yes.

John: You’re very self-reflective, Ryan. I really enjoyed the after forward. I have to tell you, the afterward was really interesting to me. I never heard that story, never read all that. I had just seen the business side of that story. Never understood the underpinnings. It’s the American peril, your involvement with American peril, and as you said, you’ve already pointed out during this interview and other places. Complicity is just as bad as [inaudible].

Ryan: Sure.

John: But I love when you write about yourself. Like 34 mistakes on the way to 34 years old. It’s that do you enjoy the process of being so self reflective and on varnish? Is it a cathartic experience for you? Or do you find it informative to the platform that you’ve created? Or is it a duality of both?

Ryan: I think it’s both. I mean, I do think as far as counter-programming goes. Most people celebrate their successes and talk only to a very selected picture of sort of who they are and how things are going.

John: Yeah.

Ryan: I certainly understand is for branding purposes, but it’s also kind of boring. Because everything’s positive, everything’s going well. Nothing feels particularly real. So I do try to sort of consciously make an effort to sort of show how things actually are, and I think people appreciate that. But I also feel like, it’s just really easy to buy into your own crop. I try to sort of consciously, like look at things, like I did in this story. I could have told some sort of narrative that presented myself as a particularly courageous person, or I could have shown all the things all, but I don’t know. It just didn’t feel right. I talked earlier about intuition. There’s just a part of me that said, the best way to wrap up this book would be with a story of cowardice, or as a failure of courage as opposed to somehow trying to coast ride on the coattails of these people whose stories you’ve just told. So it just felt right. I certainly benefited from the experience of reflecting on it as well, but part of it also, it just felt like the honest thing to do.

John: Before we let you go today Ryan, I wanna talk about two fascinating shows that really hit a big during this pandemic. One was the last dance with Michael Jordan. The ten parts, right. I believe it was episode 8. The last part of it, the last 45 minutes was the only time he got emotional during the whole interview. He had a quote. This is when he literally started breaking. We have to see him break. He said at the end of episode 8, “Leadership has a price and winning has a price.”

Ryan: Yeah.

John: If we replace the words leadership and winning with the words courage, do you find that that analogy is absolute spot-on?

Ryan: Yeah. I mean, when you look at whistleblowers. I had, what’s his name? Who’s the whistleblower? Oh, Lieutenant Colonel Vindman on my podcast. The white house whistleblower. You look at what that decision cost that got. It cost him, not only him, his military career, but it cost his brother, his career as well. So these things don’t come for free. They come at a cost. I think that’s right. But that’s what makes it so impressive. Again, if it was free. It was easy. Everyone would do it and there’d be a lot more Michael Jordan’s and as there’d be no Michael Jordan’s.

John: You know, we all grew up, especially during this pandemic. Moderna became one of the great brands now that we all know about because they have breakthrough technology with Pfizer, to come up with this, the great vaccination. But we all look back then to Jonas Salk, and you mentioned Jonas Salk in the book. I always knew him for, of course, creating the polio vaccine. I never knew until I read your book that he didn’t patent it and he didn’t, again, personally take advantage of that great breakthrough.

Ryan: But there’s another woman, her name is Dr. Katalin Kariko. She had been working on MRNA vax research for 30 years. She came to America as an immigrant from Hungary with $900 in her pocket. She never made more than $60,000 a year. She constantly had to fight for funding. She was constantly having to fight for her job. Everyone thought this was this sort of scientific dead end and then lo and behold 2020 comes around and suddenly it’s the ticket and it’s the invention of a lifetime or the breakthrough of a lifetime. It wasn’t easy for her. I’m sure it took a lot out of her, and I’m sure it took a lot out of her family, but we need people like that. Where would we be without people like that, right?

It’s almost unfathomable.

John: My last question for today, and then I’m gonna leave you, of course, ‘cause you’ve been so generous is about our new hero of the world, Ted Lasso.

Ryan: Yes.

John: So Jason Sudeikis, he was being interviewed the other day and he said, “Listen. How did you come up with such an amazing an idea or to execute into the series when your life was sort of falling apart? You and your wife had split. You were separated from your children and stuff.” He talked about. He said, “Listen, you have a choice.” You talk about this choice in the book. He said, “You have a choice.” You can either become when the world crushes you, and it’s going to crush you. All of us are gonna somewhere somehow getting knocked down, or beat up, or crushed. He goes, “You can become a pile of 206 bones.” Broken bones, which means he goes it’s, “All your bones are broken. If we all have 206 bones, he goes that means you’re a pile of 400-plus bones, or you can put yourself back together, get up, and move forward every day. If you do it right, the bones have come together and healed even stronger then when you started.” You talked about the Japanese are called kintsugi I think. It’s K-I-N-T-S-U-G-I. Can you talk a little bit about how all of us in some way, shape, or form were broken? How we can either decide that death is the option or where we’re gonna come back stronger and smarter?

Ryan: So what I love about Ted Lasso is the show and I sort of talked about this a little bit in the book is I love just earnestness. It’s like a positive show. He actually sincerely tries to be a decent human being instead of this sort of action hero, or anti-hero, or whatever you want. I love that. I think hope is probably the most courageous thing that there is, or just earnestly trying. ‘Cause you know one of the most courageous things you can do in this life. So I love that. The art form you’re talking about it’s a Japanese form of art, where let’s say a piece of pottery breaks. Instead of gluing it back together, they attach it either via gold or silver. So the thin becomes, not just more valuable as a result, but it becomes more beautiful as a result. It’s a fascinating form of art. I think it’s a good metaphor for the human experience, right?

You can break and become stronger as you heal in the broken places, or you can become weaker and more vulnerable in those places, but that’s your choice. I think, look, the last year is has been really hard. Last year and a half has been really hard. Some of us are gonna emerge from this better, and some of us are gonna emerge from this broken shells of human being. Again, you look at some of the ways that people being [?] now. The things they say, you understand where it comes from, it’s been a rough year and a half. But, the choices are we gonna be made better, more kind, more loving, more connected, more appreciative, more generous, as a result of what’s happening and we’re gonna become bitter, and angry, and aggressive, and anti-social, as a result of what’s happened. That’s ultimately to go back to the question about, what do you control? That choice is on you.

You didn’t choose what happened the last year and a half. No one would have chosen it. If they did, but it did happen. So, what are you gonna emerge looking like. That’s the question.

John: Got it. That’s why you’re here with us today on this Thanksgiving special. We want people to emerge better with more courage. Ryan, my lifelong friends since I’m 5 years old. So that’s 54, 55 years now. Greg Saffer, first told me about you and he’s still, of course, my good friend. He told me about your coins and this coin…

Ryan: Oh, lovely.

John: This coin sits underneath my speaker here. So when I do all these interviews and at my business desk, I’m always able to remember but, can you just share with our listeners why Memento mori, and you could live life right now means so much is something that we all should keep in mind as we move through this journey?

Ryan: Well, I think the point about the pandemic stands. Is it, it sort of, it put and stoic relief, how fragile life is. How you really can’t take anything for granted? How things can change in an instant? The stoic wanted us never to lose sight of that. To remember that we’re mortal, to remember that we’re not in control, to remember that life has a definite end. Every single person who’s born will die. When that is? Is an open question, but it could be five minutes from now, it could be 50 years from now. But how are you gonna spend that time? Who were you gonna be? What decisions are you gonna make while you’re still in control? Again, those are the important questions.

John: For our listeners and viewers who wanna buy these coins, you can go to the dailystoic.com. Sign up for Ryan’s newsletter. You can buy this book. You can buy it, of course, at the Painted Porch, or you can buy it on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and all great rip bookstores, both physical bookstores and online in the United States and around the world. Courage Is Calling: Fortune Favors The Brave. Ryan was kind enough to sign a bunch of copies for us. We’re gonna be giving them out during our Thanksgiving special. Thank you, Ryan Holiday. You are making a huge impact on this planet. You also made a huge impact on me and my family. Thank you for this time. We’re really grateful for all that you’re doing.

Ryan: John, thank you so much.

John: Thanks, Ryan. This edition of the Impact Podcast is brought to you by Engage. Engage is a digital booking platform, revolutionizing the talent booking industry. With thousands of athletes, celebrities, entrepreneurs, and business leaders, Engage is the go-to spot for booking talent, for speeches, custom experiences, livestreams, and much more. For more information on Engage or to book talent today, visit letsengage.com.

John Shegerian: Welcome to another edition of Green Is Good, and we are so honored to have with us today Phil Lisotta. He is the Senior Director of Architecture of Qualcomm. Welcome to Green Is Good, Phil.

Phil Lisotta: Thank you very much. Nice to be here, John.

John: Great to have you today, and you represent one of the great brands in the entire planet – Qualcomm – but before we get talking about all the great work you’re doing at Qualcomm, I want you to share with our listeners first, Phil, your journey, your story leading up to joining Qualcomm and then how has it been since you’ve been there.

Phil: I think it – my journey if you will – started back when I was in college at Carnegie-Mellon University in Pittsburgh. Everything starting there is focused on the environment and sustainability, building correctly. After college, having worked at multiple different architecture firms, I ended up here in San Diego and worked for an architecture firm that had Qualcomm as a client and I designed one of their first LEED Gold buildings. Then I came on board and started working here about – what was it – eight years ago now.

John: Eight years ago. Before that was green architecture something – when you were in college was green architecture already being discussed and that was something on your mind, or has that been a recent phenomenon evolution in the last 10, 15 years?

Phil: No. I think – it might not have been called “green architecture” at the time, right?

John: Right.

Phil: I mean, that was back in the 1990s.

John: Right.

Phil: But it was always a focus, right? I mean energy, sustainability, building your building in a way that is responsive to the Earth – I think – has always been a tenant of Carnegie-Mellon’s design program. Then, it has just been continuing throughout my career. I think it’s finally getting to the point where pretty much every single architect in the world is paying attention to this now.

John: So you joined Qualcomm about eight years ago. You are the Senior Director or Architecture for Qualcomm. What does that mean? What does “Senior Director of Architecture for Qualcomm” mean? And share a day in the life and a year in the life of what you’re doing right now.

Phil: You know, I ask myself often, what does that mean because my role is really very wide here at Qualcomm. In-house, we have a significant team that supports our design process. It starts with space planning, strategic planning, looking at what we call the “butts in seats.” How do we organize those people? Then it leads to the design side of things of how do we design the space? How do we pick the seats that those butts go into? Then looking at the mechanical systems, electrical systems, working with the facility’s maintenance team to make sure that we’re picking the right equipment. Then it goes into the construction management aspect as well. I have a fairly robust team that really focused on are we building this the way we really want to build it? So it’s a very wide organization, and most companies really don’t have that type of breadth, and I’m grateful to have a team that has that technology.

John: How big is a team like yours?

Phil: Over 30 people. Closer to 40.

John: Wow.

Phil: Yeah, it’s actually, really, a small multi-discipline architecture firm.

John: Right.

Phil: And it’s global too. We’re focusing on projects all around the world. It’s not just here in San Diego, where our headquarters is, but all of our locations around the world.

John: Right. And sustainability. We’re so appreciative you’ve come on the show today. As you evolved as an architect, when did all the facets that you’re talking about whether it’s the chairs that people are sitting in or the water that they’re drinking, the quality of the air that they’re breathing in the buildings that you build – when did the whole 360 start filling in for you? Was it during your time in college, or was it some sort of epiphany, or people you met along the way that further sparked your interest in this, Phil?

Phil: Well, I think one of the jobs that I had after college – I worked for an architecture firm and then I left that firm and I went to look for a landscape architecture firm. I worked there for about three years, and they really wanted me for my project management aspect, but I remember going in there the first day going, “What am I doing? I know nothing about shrubs and trees?” and I was a little concerned. But having worked there I really realized that the environment is connected to the buildings that we design and that outside-inside sort of dichotomy is super important. I think that’s really where it started for me. But once the USGBC really started pushing the LEED program – I think – is when I realized that it was a much more multifaceted design solution. I had the great opportunity to do Qualcomm’s first LEED Gold building here when I was working for an architecture firm here in San Diego and that’s – I think – sort of where Qualcomm – it started before I got here that they were focused on this as an important part of the facility’s business.

John: Talk a little bit about the Pacific Center. I know I’m interrupting you.

Phil: Don’t worry.

John: The Pacific Center. Was that the first building you worked on or when?

Phil: No.

John: When was the Pacific – OK.

Phil: No, actually, the Pacific Center is our latest building that we’ve done. We have multiple LEED facilities and we have a lot of other facilities that we just didn’t do the LEED certification on, but we feel that they meet or exceed most of the LEED certifications. But the latest project at the Pacific Center – we call it “Pacific Center” because it is actually on Pacific Center Boulevard here in San Diego – that project is over 380,000 square feet of our newest location, which we really started about three years ago. We started it with our employees, saying, “What do you want in your new building?” We sent out a survey and connection to nature, natural ventilation and light were the three biggest things that our employees really wanted.

John: So you really started it from the ground up. You were listening to your constituents – so to speak – which are your coworkers and employees, and wanting to know what they wanted for their workspace. But workspace is really a misnomer nowadays because it’s really a living space. They’re living there so much of their lives you wanted to hear from them how to create the best environment for them to be working, living during the day.

Phil: Absolutely.

John: That’s so cool.

Phil: And we realized being here in San Diego that being in a building is also being outside of the building. We have such wonderful weather that capturing that was a big tenet of one of the things that we were trying to do.

John: That is so interesting. For our listeners who just joined us, we’re so excited and honored to have Phil Lisotta. He is the Senior Director of Architecture of Qualcomm. To learn more about Qualcomm and all the great things they’re doing in sustainability, go to www.Qualcomm.com. Phil, talk a little bit about you got the feedback from your colleagues of what they wanted. Talk a little bit about, then, the process of planning and then building this – this is a Gold or is this a Platinum LEED certified building?

Phil: It’s Gold, actually. It’s Gold.

John: Got it. So talk a little bit about building then, planning and building this building.

Phil: Sure. So we worked with multiple design team members, right.

John: Sure.

Phil: Where we hired architects and engineers. We have a lot of that staff on in-house as well so we really worked together to guide us to a solution that we feel really excels. The natural light and additionally water use, especially here in California. 

John: Yeah.

Phil: Was extremely important to us. So we had a bunch of bullet points on the wall, and we kept going back to that during the design process to make sure that we were meeting or exceeding those goals, and we were very successful in doing that. I think this was really the first project that we took a holistic approach and really looked at how that connection to nature and the sustainability was going to hold out. It was really important for us. I think if we hadn’t gone back and forth during the design process to make sure we were meeting that I think we would have missed some things. But we were able to do it, we were able to do it on budget and on schedule, and the employees that have moved in there this past January are pleased as punch so.

John: Phil, what does the process take? For a layman like me. You did the survey. Now you have the facts and the figures. You have the big data in front of you, and now you’re sitting with your fellow architects and it’s time to plan and build. From the time you got that data to this January, when your colleagues were moving in, how long was that whole cycle?

Phil: It was about three years in the making and it really started with multiple master plans. We tried lots of different options like “what is the best way to use this site?” The existing site had three buildings on it to begin with and a parking garage and lots of parking lots and we said, “We really want to change this to a more pedestrian space.” So that sort of pre-prototyping – if you will –

John: Yeah.

Phil: Of different master plans took us quite a few months just to do that. That was even before we actually designed a building. It was like “how does the site really react to that?”

John: Wow.

Phil: Then it gets developed further and further and further, and you would keep narrowing down our solutions to where we feel that we came up with a great architectural design of the buildings as well.

John: And for our listeners out there to learn more about what Qualcomm does in sustainability it’s – when you’re on your website, which I am right now – sustainability is part of your culture and DNA. It’s very obvious at Qualcomm. Can you share with our listeners what does that translate to in terms of the practices that are implemented across the offices that you build for them?

Phil: Well, I mean, I think we look at the environment – at least on the facilities side – is it super multifaceted? There are ways to look at what kind of retrofits and improvements that we can do to minimize our energy usage, our water usage, what kinds of designs can we do in our data centers to reduce that energy use, and it goes all the way to providing electric vehicle charging stations for our employees. We’ve actually won – for almost 10 years in a row – awards from the City of San Diego and the county for recycling programs that we’ve provided here at the company. So it’s really from everywhere. We look at it on all ends to the point where we got rid of water bottles in our refrigerators and we provided everybody a reusable water bottle. So every little bit helps and I think utilizing all of our employees’ ideas and ways to save and ways to minimize our impact is huge. And I think our design lately has been looking at more natural daylight for everyone, better ergonomics at their work station, better ways to minimize their energy usage in the labs where a lot of our work is being developed and providing options for people in different ways that they work. I mean, the whole millennial discussion – we could spend an hour on that alone, right?

John: Exactly. When you said they’re “pleased as punch,” that really struck me, and I’m sure our listeners, because you really listened to them so they should be – in theory – pleased as punch if you built what they were asking for and it all turned out to be that integrative. Their comments and their wishes turned out to be a building that really exemplified what they were looking for and that is fascinating to me. That’s fascinating.

Phil: It’s interesting, though. Even though I say “pleased as punch,” you can’t please all of the people all of the time, right? So- John: Of course. Phil: And there are always views about the guys that do have a little bit of a problem with the design. They’re the loudest, right?

John: They’re the loudest.

Phil: Yeah. But I think, honestly, way more than 80 percent of the people have – based on occupancy surveys that we’ve done – have said that they really prefer their new workspace over their old workspaces, and I really think that natural light and natural ventilation are the two biggest impacts to that survey. John: The silent majority is pleased as punch, and that is good enough for all of us. I love it.

Phil: Yeah.

John: So let’s talk about three things. Air quality. So you say there is indoor-out – explain the ventilation thing, and how do you get the best air quality, which everyone is thinking about nowadays? How do you get to ensure the best air quality for your colleagues inside the office space?

Phil: Sure. So, like I mentioned, San Diego is a wonderful place to be. Our weather is just perfect. And, even more strangely, this building’s location makes it even more ideal. So it is just far enough away from the coast to not be too moist, but it’s inland just enough to get some warmer air.

John: Right.

Phil: So we have a weather station on the building – actually, we have multiple – and it’s constantly looking at the current conditions both air quality, if there are particulates in the air, humidity, temperature, wind and direction. And if those sensors all align and the weather conditions are good, the air conditioning will enable the employee to go over and push a button which opens up the windows, turns off the air conditioning, turns onto strictly evacuation mode and allows that to bring that fresh air into the building.

John: Whoa.

Phil: If the climate conditions change, the windows will automatically close and go back to the air conditioning mode.

John: Wow. I love it. That is really cool. Another important topic that of course we are the nation that the world is talking about now but you’re living in a hotbed of it down in – we’re all living in a hotbed in California but even on a micro discussion you’re getting a lot of publicity in San Diego with the big desalinization plant that is going in. Water. How do you ensure water conservation in the buildings, in the structures that you manage and also build and retrofit?

Phil: Sure. And in all of our newer buildings we’re definitely using better than the standard low-flow fixtures.

John: Right.

Phil: I mean, a no-brainer. But a lot of the stuff that we’ve done on the Pacific Center site is looking at water in a different way. The City of San Diego really requires us to minimize our water being put down in the drain – if you will.

John: Right.

Phil: So we have a lot of bio swells, a lot of biophilia stuff going on on the site to minimize our water being treated or needing to be treated. Capturing a lot of the water on the site – if you will – to feed the plantings and by specifying the correct plants in the first place so that you don’t have to overwater. But even in all of our other buildings we’re making retrofits to all of our toilets and our sinks and showers and that’s a significant impact. But even more so utilizing the city’s reclaimed water system has been a huge benefit to us. So instead of using potable water in our air conditioning systems and our chiller plants, we’re utilizing the reclaimed water that the city provides and minimizing that potable water use in those areas.

John: So you’re speaking of like the recycled grey water and things of that such?

Phil: Yes. Exactly.

John: Got it.

Phil: I think that’s the majority of our water usage in our buildings is through our air conditioning and our chiller, and by minimizing that – the potable use – to instead use the reclaimed, it’s a big savings.

John: You know, Phil, you mentioned a very hot topic a couple minutes ago, and you said we could spend an hour on it and I’m sure we could. We’re down to the last two minutes. Talk a little bit – though, in a truncated fashion – of the millennial opportunity. With you building these beautiful buildings and listening both to the natural environment in San Diego but then to the constituents and colleagues that you have at Qualcomm, does that make recruiting better and easier for your HR department of the millennial generation because you’re building such great and wonderful and sustainable properties? And does that also then further drive home – in a physical sense for a technology company – that you’re so progressive and forward-thinking in terms of sustainability and is a place that those Millennials should be working at?

Phil: I don’t have any hard data on that, but I can tell you the year before – well, actually, the year that we started designing the building-

John: Yeah.

Phil: Some of the vice presidents of the organization that was going to go in to the new building said, “We lost interns that left a few weeks early because they really didn’t feel connected to their co-workers.”

John: Yeah.

Phil: And I took that hard and I said, “We need to change the way we’re designing our space so that they can remain engaged with their co-workers and their bosses and their employees,” right?

John: Right.

Phil: And since then, the design – I think – has evolved and we’ve paid attention to how the millennial generation works differently than all the other generations. I think that we’re doing a better job of it but honestly I don’t really have any data specifically saying that “hey we’ve recruited the best guy because he said he saw the building.”

John: Right.

Phil: But I think it’s very positive, and I’d go out to the buildings a lot and I talk to employees and I try to understand what is working and what is not working for them and I see the younger they are – I hate to do this because it says that I’m old but – the younger they are the more likely they are working in weird places. I mean, they work anywhere, right? They’re connected through their wireless device, which, thankfully, Qualcomm helps enable. But I would never think to go work on the couch that’s a lounge chair that’s off on a balcony, right? But they have no concerns taking their laptop and going there and working there for the day.

John: Well, Phil, thank you so much for spending time with us today. Phil Lisotta, the Senior Director of Architecture from Qualcomm. To learn more about what Qualcomm is doing in sustainability go to www.Qualcomm.com. Phil, I wish I could work out of one of the buildings you designed and built. And thank you for being living proof that Green Is Good.

John Shegerian: This edition of the Impact Podcast is brought to you by ERI. ERI has a mission to protect people, the planet and your privacy, and is the largest fully integrated IT and electronics asset disposition provider and cybersecurity-focused hardware destruction company in the United States, and maybe even the world. For more information on how ERI can help your business properly dispose of outdated electronic hardware devices, please visit eridirect.com.

John: Welcome to another edition of the Impact Podcast. I’m so honored. This is our first show ever that we’ve done an interview, in about fourteen years of doing this show, from Israel. So, welcome to the show. Oshik Efrati, he’s the co-founder and CEO of HomeBiogas. It’s an honor to have you today.

Oshik Efrati: It’s an honor to me, too. Thank you, John. Pleasure to be here.

John: As you just said off the air when we were chatting, just for truth in advertising, we’re connected because we have the same big brother. Ron Gonen is our big brother, with Closed Loop Partners. It’s an honor to be connected with such a great company on the other side of the world.

Oshik: You’re right. It’s a great honor to be part of the Closed Loop mission.

John: That’s right. Oshik, we want to talk about all the great work you’re doing at HomeBiogas, but before we get there, can you share a little bit about yourself? Because there’s so many entrepreneurs that watch this show and listen to this podcast. They say, “I want to be the next one. I want to be Oshik one day. I want to solve a big problem on this planet.” How did you get started? Where were you born and where were you educated?

Oshik: All right. First of all, I’m a father of two. I have two little kids. One is a five and one is seven years old. We live in Israel. I was born in Israel. My education, I studied Marine Biology. During my studies, I already started to invent products. At the beginning, it was tanks for filters or water purification filters for outdoor use. I discovered that I am good at it. I like it. I like to develop things. I love to solve problems.

John: When you were growing up, was Mom and Dad, were they inventors? Were they business people? What did they do for a living? What informed you and your childhood?

Oshik: Actually, my parents are immigrants from [inaudible]. My father was a gardener and my grandfather was a farmer. Actually, we’re not highly educated. They were simple people, hardworking. As a kid and a teenager, I was working with my father a lot. My father gave me a lot of responsibility. When I was a teenager, he already gave me a responsibility to run projects, sometimes complicated projects. He also gave me space to do mistakes. I think I learned a lot from it. After I finish high school, I went to the military like all young Israelis. I had the privilege to serve in an elite unit. That was actually a special unit and I was in this special unit for five years. After two and a half years, I became an officer. I was a commander of a team and then the commander of a platoon. I learned a lot during this time on leadership and actually managing complex situation, go through challenges, leading people to–

John: Excuse my ignorance. As an American, I’ve learned that the elite units are often in Israel. The Mossad, was that part of the group you were part of or some other elite unit there? Help me out.

Oshik: The Mossad does not belong to the military. In the military, there are mandatory three years. Everybody needs to serve for three years. Women actually are serving too for two years.

John: Wow.

Oshik: Yes, and because I was in a special unit and I was an officer, I stayed for another two years so in total, five years.

John: That’s what informed your leadership style and you learned a lot about leadership when you were going through that experience.

Oshik: Yes. Sure. It shaped my perspective on how to lead people and how to make them follow you. It’s all about self example, courage and values.

John: That’s really true — the courage and values. Now, you had great experience, you had great values growing up with family that tended to the earth, farmers and people that worked on the earth. Some of my in-laws are farmers. They come from a farming background. There’s great appreciation from your family with regards to the planet. Now, you learned leadership skills in the military. What was your aha moment that said, “Okay. I want to take my background and my skills that I’ve learned and want to be an entrepreneur.” When was that moment in your life?

Oshik: Yes. This has happened even before the military. I think it’s something that was first, when I was sixteen, I was already entrepreneur. I run small business of cleaning cars, and then taking care of people’s gardens. But I think that in the military, the patriotism to protect the country was very strong. When I finish the military reserve, this patriotism of taking care of only my country become bigger. It’s become bigger and wider to taking care of earth. I was traveling, actually, for two years around the world after I finished my military. I was in Africa and in the South America, Central America, Europe, U.S., Canada, and see different cultures. I saw beautiful places. After this trip, my perspective, I think I was not only Israeli or Jewish anymore. I was more open ,more universal.

John: You know what I call that? It’s so fascinating you said that because it’s so interesting. When you meet people that never travel out of their own city or country where they grew up, they have a limited view. But because you traveled, you went from like you said, just being an Israeli citizen and now, you became a global citizen.

Oshik: Exactly. For example, when I was in Africa, I’ve seen every day… I’ve been one year in Africa. Every day, I’ve seen the line of women that are going back from the forest with woods on the head and little children on the back. Actually, at the beginning, I thought that it was really romantic. Beautiful thing. They live on a natural way. But then, you start to understand that, actually, they are coming home and when you visit them in there small homes, you see them cook. Actually, you cannot stay for more than one minute. Amazing women because the smoke that the fire is making is actually killing. One hour of cooking is like smoking four hundred cigarettes.

John: Really? Oh my gosh.

Oshik: Then you discover that it’s actually causing the death of four million women and children every year, only from cooking. I discovered that it’s a massive cause of deforestation. Forest is the life of the world. Let me understand that it’s not romantic at all. It’s a community problem and someone needs to do something about it.

John: When did you have the aha moment with your partners? How many partners do you have, Oshik? How many partners do you have?

Oshik: Gladly, we have local partners today. At the beginning when we started the trip, we are three founders. It is in the air. We are good friends. This is very, very unique. We are partners, not only the business but we are also very, very good friends. We share the same values and we share the same vision.

John: Now, how big is this problem? You decided to tackle the food waste industry, the food with the composting issue of recycling food waste. How big is this problem, Oshik, of food waste in Israel and around the world?

Oshik: The food waste, first of all now we are in the time… We are living in a very… This year is a very special year. Actually, 2021 is a turning point on the way we are understanding. The world is understanding the climate change. It’s a turning point. It’s the year where governments, organization, and people understand that the climate change is something real. We need to change our behavior to tackle it. From that perspective, which is the most important one for me, food waste is… Greenhouse gases, the most little greenhouse gas is methane. It’s the strongest, one of the strongest greenhouse gases. Now, seventy percent of the methane is produced from food waste. Seventy percent of the methane is produced from food waste. If you can treat it in a way that will eliminate the methane that comes out of it, the benefit for the planet is huge. Now, another perspective, food waste is just growing year by year. We throw a lot of waste. We throw billions, more than one billion tons of waste a year. The collection of waste…

Now, we are actually… Most of the world is working on the linear economy. You buy the waste from… You buy the food from the supermarket. You eat some of it and then you have food leftover. You have food waste. You throw it to the trash can. Then a truck is coming and pick it up and take it far away. Sometimes, it can drive for four hours to a faraway length field. Actually, most of the waste is going to landfills and it go to the ground. And then the gas, the methane gas is going out to the atmosphere. Now, the solution that HomeBiogas is bringing is transforming from linear economy to circular economy. The food we bought from the supermarket or we even grow ourselves, we eat some of it with. The food leftover, we will put it in the HomeBiogas system? The HomeBiogas system will break down the organic methane and will produce a biogas. The biogas is composed from methane. The biogas we will use for cooking or for heating water so–

John: Let me understand this. You not only remove the methane, which is the harmful part of the food waste, but you’re then creating energy out of it. You’re returning something for beneficial reuse in this planet so we don’t have to further destroy our planet with more non-sustainable energy sources.

Oshik: Exactly. We are tanking the problem and turns it into a solution.

John: I love it. For our listeners in our and in our viewers who just joined us, we’ve got Oshik Efrati with us. He’s the CEO and co-founder of HomeBiogas. You can find home biogas at www.homebiogas.com. Oshik, what year did you found this company? You and your partners, what year did you come up with this idea?

Oshik: We founded the HomeBiogas at 2012.

John: That’s important because you just made a great point that 2021, and I fully agree with you, is our turning point where the world is finally waking up that the science is real. Climate change is real, and we’ve got to do something now before we let this beautiful planet burn down. How were the first nine years? Was it very difficult getting people to listen to you and understand what you’re trying to do, how big the problem was and how good your solution was?

Oshik: That’s a great question. Actually, at the beginning, when I was telling people about what we are going to do, they didn’t really understand. “What? You’re going to produce gas? To do trash cans? What are you going to do?” When you were explaining to them, they will look at you as three-headed or something like that. They don’t really understand. When I’m telling them… I was telling them it’s a new technology that we are developing, it’s a startup. It’s was something strange. We felt and we are still feeling that we are a pioneering that this as huge mission, a huge mission much more bigger than us to do here. It’s a mission-driven company. At the first year, yes, it was hard and the we needed partners. We needed investors. Only people like Ron Gonen and the Closed Loop were tensed enough and open enough with the same mission and the same values. By the way, it’s beautiful to see along this journey how the Closed Loop become big and the impact they are doing. Yes, so I think along with these nine years, almost ten years, we became from pioneer that is pushing our solution. Now, people are looking at us as heroes. It’s very nice because suddenly you get invited to podcast with John and you get invited to meet the Prime Minister.

John: I heard. Congratulations! In the last couple of weeks, you’ve met the Prime Minister. How is that? How did that work? How did that feel?

Oshik: It felt good. It felt really good. Mostly because, for me, the understanding that the leadership of Israel and the leadership of the world, the leadership of the U.S. President Biden now took the in climate change at the top priorities. It’s so important and it’s not only important for us, it’s important for our kids. It’s a very, very good year for this subject.

John: Now, your technology, I assume, is proprietary. It’s something you and your partners invented that doesn’t exist anywhere else right now.

Oshik: Yes, like every technology, of course, there are competitors. Of course, there are alternatives. We bring something very unique and we still invest a lot in innovation. I think it’s in our blood to innovate and improve ourselves.

John: Right. Your great invention, your great company now turns the methane of food waste into an energy source. Have you developed this for a home use, Oshik, or is this for commercial or is this both?

Oshik: We started with the homes. The first mission was to bring solutions to developing countries, in the places where I told you before. Africa, East Asia, those places that they don’t have energy for cooking so they use firewood. The first product that we developed was a HomeBiogas system for families. It’s still very successful. We got customers to use this, the families in more than one hundred countries around the world, probably in Africa and East Asia, in India, Nepal, Mexico, Brazil, the U.S., Australia–

John: Is that the map behind you? Changing people’s lives all over the globe, is that where all your systems are?

Oshik: Yes.

John: Already? All over the place. Wow!

Oshik: Yes, so we started with families and then the next stage was to tackle the problem of industrial kitchen works. Industrial kitchens are responsible for huge amount of food waste. They also need to pay for the collection. The cost of treating the waste is going up year by year and the regulation against taking the organic waste into landfill is become strict. Those industrial kitchens are looking for solutions. Industrial kitchen including the hotels, restaurants, universities, hospitals, they pay a lot for collecting the waste. They also pay a lot for energy. We bring them now a new product. Actually, it’s a new product that we worked on for the last three to four years and just started the implementation of it. It’s a very innovative product, beautiful. We put it near a restaurant or near the industrial kitchen of a hotel, the food will taste is going directly to the biogas system. The biogas system treats it, convert into biogas that goes back to the kitchen as energy, normally, for either heating water or electricity. It’s also producing liquid fertilizer for using it for local use.

John: Are you selling this all around the world now or only in Israel? Is this for sale? If I’m watching you right now from Paris and I have a hotel or restaurant, can I buy your system right now for my restaurant or hotel in Paris?

Oshik: For now, we only launched it in Israel. Next is we’re going to bring it to the U.S. This is the next market. We are going to do it together with the Closed Loop. We already have a very, very interesting projects that we are processing them. A very, very interesting projects. Even project that we haven’t thought that we will do like multi-family houses.

John: If I want to put your system in my house in California just for the home use, when will it be available to homeowners in the United States and other parts of the world to buy for our home use?

Oshik: Now, we have three channels of sales. One is online. You can buy it online. You can all wait and we ship it to you. Secondly, we have distributors that are representing us. Now, we have distributors in twenty countries around the world. Third, we are doing projects with international organizations. It can be like the UN or WWF, but for California for now, you can buy it online.

John: That’s exciting. Take your entrepreneur hat off and put your salesman hat on. Now, when I was going to buy solar for my house, I want to buy it to save the world and plan it, but I also liked that I’m going to save money because now, I’m going to have solar on my house. Is there a similar sales approach to HomeBiogas? Not only am I doing something good for the planet, but will it save my family money or is it cost-neutral? How does that work for a family or a hotel that wants to buy this and thinking about the return on investment for the environment, but for also the organization that buys it?

Oshik: Yes, so the good thing is that it’s not only helping the environment, but it’s also saving costs. The return of investment is normally less than two years.

John: Wow. It’s like solar. You’re really following the same solar model.

Oshik: Yes, we’re working on a Model. That is a win-win for everyone.

John: I love it. I just love it. Wit a second now. You’ve developed this great thing. You’re sitting in Israel. You’ve got all sorts of distribution and sales opportunities. When you and your partner sit in a room together and you dream about how big the problem is and what your solution is, how is this going to work? The problem sounds huge. I mean the problem of food waste sounds massive actually, and it doesn’t get a lot of TV or media attention unfortunately. It’s not very sexy. Talk about your solution and the opportunity to solve this problem over the next ten years.

Oshik: Yes, our mission is to bring a revolution to the existing way of treating waste. Organic waste is only forty or fifty percent of the waste. Once you take care of the organics, the other can be recycled. Actually, it’s part of a bigger revolution of recycling all the waste we are producing. At the beginning, we developed system for developing countries. Now, we took it to institutions. The next stage, we’ll bring it to multi-family houses and to advance houses. Eventually, we want to bring solutions to people to recycle their waste to save money on energy, save money on waste collections, and to make it affordable and available.

John: That’s beautiful. You’re going to democratized the solution. Your system will democratize the food waste problem. It will be the food waste problem solution that you eventually democratize around the world.

Oshik: Once you understand that the food waste has value, you cannot throw it away. It’s like money. It’s only paper. Now, I have here a paper. You don’t throw ten dollars to the garbage like how we throw waste. Why? Because it has value. Once you have the same… Just to understand, one kilogram of waste, which is something like what you have left over from cooking lunch for your family, you can create one hour of cooking gas. From this waste, you can put it in the biogas system. It will produce gas that will enable you to cook one hour. It’s a lot.

John: How about the big waste companies like Waste Management Republic Services? Are they great opportunities for you, too, to work with them so they can recycle food waste on their [inaudible] and other places so they don’t have to throw this into their landfills and take up space in their landfills anymore?

Oshik: Yes. Sure. Sure. All sources of food waste can be treated. Almost all sources of food waste can be treated on site. Eventually, that’s the future. This is where the world will go. There would be no reason to collect it and take it to a landfill.

John: This is going to help shift us, as you said, generationally, from a linear economy, which you and I grew up in, to a circular economy that our children and grandchildren will live in.

Oshik: Yes, exactly. The linear economy has started not long ago and it’s destroyed our planet. We’ll go back to the circular economy with solutions, technological solutions that actually will improve our life, will make it cleaner, and will also reduce cost, that will be more economical.

John: For our listeners and viewers out there, we’re so honored to have with us from Israel today Oshik Efrati, CEO and co-founder of HomeBiogas. You can find HomeBiogas and buy their great products at www.homebiogas.com. Oshik, tell me the truth here. When you and your partners are sitting together over dinner or lunch and you dream about this amazing solution you’ve created, are you going to become the Tesla of food waste recycling?

Oshik: First of all, we have bigger dreams and I believe that we came here to fulfill them. About this, it’s interesting because now, actually, these days, there is the biggest experiment of living on Mars. They took a biogas system to this experiment. You can see astronaut are using HomeBiogas.

John: Come on. Is it SpaceX or which company is using it to go to Mars with? Is there a certain company or a bunch of different–?

Oshik: Actually, it’s a huge project that they chose it, from all over the world, there are participant astronaut that come and they do it in desert in Israel. They use HomeBiogas–

John: That’s exciting. Congratulations! I love it.

Oshik: [inaudible]. Maybe one day we will bring HomeBiogas to Mars.

John: I love it. What’s the next step? What do you want our listeners and viewers to think about? Do you want them to go on your site and buy a system for their house now or do you want if they work in a restaurant or a large facility, a stadium or some other place that creates a lot of waste to contact you? What’s the takeaway for our listeners? If you love to give them points of action, some calls to action to help become part of the solution and to help support your great opportunity and venture.

Oshik: First of all, everything stopped with awareness. Be aware that after we throw the waste and the food waste to the trash can, try to understand where it goes next. Understand the problems it creates if it goes with the truck to a landfill. The next stage is try to find solution to reduce the waste. The next stage, find solutions to recycle it or, even better, upcycle it to use the waste as a source for something new, so the energy or power source as a new raw material. If you need help to recycle your food waste, we are here. We love to help you. It doesn’t matter if you’re a family, a business, a restaurant, a hotel or businessmen that want to create something new with us. We are here to help you.

John: Oshik, what I find with great people like you, great leaders like you, is you’ve mastered a form of courage. Like you said, you learned in the military about courage. Obviously, you’re applying it as an entrepreneur. It takes it takes a lot of courage to do what you’re doing, to not go work for somebody, to actually go try to solve a big problem. Talk a little bit about the courage that you learned about and are exhibiting it in your company. What can our next generation learn from you about when you’re called, when the call comes, because we’re all going to get called in one way, shape or form, how to make sure you’re ready to answer the call? Whether it was when you’re in the military or when you had this epiphany to start home biogas, how do you know how to answer the call? How do you have courage to answer the call?

Oshik: Okay. I think that we came here to this planet to do something meaningful with the years that we got live here. Do something, meaningful, some fun. Sometimes, it will be challenging. Most of the time, it will be challenging. The courage can come only in places where you have fear. Fear is part of the process and the courage is only to help you to go forward, not to stop and go backwards. Now, I think that our generation and even more the young audience that is looking at us, people that finished universities now that are looking for their next career, I think this generation will not go only for a career that will bring or looking for money or I don’t know. I think this generation has now a mission to fix what the old generation has done wrong.

This podcast is about the impact. If you look twenty or thirty years ago, businesses only care about doing money. I think at the beginning of 2000, it was starting to speak about “Do no harm.” Then it became “Do money and do good,” which is now the impact. You can do money and do good. But if it’s not doing good, if it’s not… The impact now in this generation, if it’s not doing good, so you don’t want any part of it. You will not buy those products. You will not support it. This is the future. I think, if I speak, if we have young entrepreneur, so people that are looking for the next career, I think this generation has a mission now to bring solutions to make the world a better place on climate change, on actually a lot of subjects that you can do good. The good news is that there are many opportunities to do good and do money.

John: Oshik, I feel like we really do have a same older brother like in Ron, but I feel so close to you in terms of your mission. You’re so right. The next generation is learning from people like you that it’s more than just a paycheck or profit. It’s about purpose. It’s about purpose and you’re a great example. I can’t wait myself to have a HomeBiogas system at my home and and tell my children about what you’re doing so we get it in their home. I want to thank you for being on today’s show. I love the statement above your head there. Changing people’s lives all over the globe. HomeBiogas’ Oshik Efrati. You can find HomeBiogas and buy his great products or contact him about what you need and what help you need wherever you are on the world at www.homebiogas.com. Oshik, you’re always welcome back on Impact to continue to share your journey. I really wish you all God blessings and I want you to continue your great mission of making a huge impact and making the world a better place. Thank you for joining us today. It’s my total honor.

Oshik: Thank you, John. It was a pleasure for me. Take care. Hope to meet you in person soon. All the best.

John: This episode of the Impact Podcast is brought to you by Closed Loop Partners. Closed Loop Partners is a leading circular economy investor in the United States with an extensive network of Fortune 500 corporate investors, family offices, institutional investors, industry experts and Impact partners. Closed Loop’s platform spans the arc of capital, from venture capital to private equity, bridging gaps and fostering synergies to scale the circular economy. To find Closed Loop Partners, please go to www.closedlooppartners.com.

John Shegerian: Welcome back to Green is Good, and we are so honored to have Mitch Jackson on with us right now. He’s the Vice President of Environmental Affairs and Sustainability at FedEx. Welcome to Green is Good, Mitch Jackson.

Mitch: John, Mike, it’s great to be here. Thanks for having me

John: You know, Mitch, you are amazing. I could take the whole 23-minute segment here and talk all about the awards you’ve won over the years and your journey. What I like to typically do with our great esteemed guests when we start is ask you to share your journey. You’ve been at FedEx 20 years now, and now you’ve ended up in a really great spot. You’re doing amazing things in that spot as the Vice President of Environmental Affairs and Sustainability. Can you share please your journey, 20 years at FedEx, and how you came to this position?

Mitch Jackson: Sure, John. I’d be glad to. I think one of the things that’s helped me is I’ve done a number of different things with FedEx. I’ve been out in the operation and seen how the movement of our customers’ goods occurs. I’ve been in our properties department and helped in the design of the facilities and the like, and then I’ve been doing environmental management issues for quite a few years now, sometimes more years than I’d care to imagine, but I think that broad base has given me a good understanding of what the company does and how to try to integrate sustainability into that core structure.

John: You know, this summer, you released the FedEx global citizenship report. Can you share with our listeners a little bit what that means and why you’ve released that, and what you want our listeners and the people who read that great report to take away from it?

Mitch: Well, I think transparency is a big part of what companies need to do with respect to sustainability. I mean, they need to be providing information to their stakeholders about how they’re performing. I think in this particular case, what the report does for us is it gives us the ability to share how we’re progressing on environmental sustainability with our external stakeholders, and also to show that the input and the value that it brings from our team members, our internal stakeholders. I think that that is probably a very big piece of this, which is to show this is what we’re doing, this is why we’re doing it, and this is how we’re performing in undertaking those initiatives that we have underway.

John: For our listeners out there, Mitch and his colleagues have created an amazing website. If you’ve got your laptop or iPad close by, Mike and I are on it right now. It’s www.environment.fedex.com. You talk about transparency. This sets the mark. This sets the bar in terms of your videos, in terms of your articles, in terms of how it’s organized. It’s truly so well done, Mitch. Mike and I have been on it the last couple days prior to the show, getting ready for the show, and we just wanted to tell you our hats are off to you. This website is just one of the best we’ve ever seen.

Mitch: Thank you for that. It’s a balance. You’re always trying to present information that is needed by stakeholders, but you don’t want to overwhelm them with information to where the narrative is lost by just simply reams of information. The way you convey it, I think, is as important as what you’re actually conveying.

John: Right. It’s so well put. One thing we’ve learned while prepping for this segment with you is that FedEx serves over 220 countries and territories around the world, and when you start adding up the planes and the trucks that support those facilities, talk a little bit about sustainability and just your fleet of planes and trucks, and how they interrelate, and you can make such a huge impact.

Mitch: Yes. Think about it for a second. We move the goods for our customers, but in essence what we’re doing is we’re helping to connect a world. So, when you’re serving 220 countries and territories, ultimately, that’s what you’re doing each and every day. And, so we realize that what that does is not only does that have an environmental impact that we have to address, but it also has a social good that it provides, and that’s providing access to the developing world to be able to reach markets so that they can improve their standards of living and improve their GDPs as well. But with respect to that environmental impact, when you’re operating and moving over 8 million packages a day, you’re going to be operating a number of global sources. In our case, it’s primarily aircraft vehicles. So, what we’ve looked to do is we’ve looked to focus initially, and what we did back in 2008 when we set our goals, is we set goals to reduce emissions in both of those and to improve the vehicle fuel efficiency of our vehicle fleet as well because we had to do that in order to be responsible. If you think about it, our role is to connect the world in responsible and resourceful ways, so we had to approach it from that angle to begin with.

John: You are sitting at such a fascinating position, given the times we’re in, and as the sustainability revolution is just picking up velocity. Now you have the huge opportunity working with FedEx, in terms of environmental affairs and sustainability. How do you not let it overwhelm you, Mitch? How do you pick the right investment priorities with regards to environment and sustainability?

Mitch: Well, I think two words come to mind right off the bat, and that’s materiality matters. If you’re focusing on the issues that you use each and every day in your operations, that’s a great place to start. For us, again, we started with aircraft and we moved to vehicles, and now we’re focusing on issues around renewable energy in our facilities. We’re focused on the sourcing of the paper that we have, and then even how we build our facilities. So, we’re building in our FedEx Express operations, we’re building to LEED, leadership, environment, energy and design. Those things, if you focus on what your impacts are and where you can have the major influence, which is what we do, then you can start to really get at the issue. I talk about something called practical environmentalism, and I define that as strategic and transformational environmental stewardship that adds value to the organization. It’s comprised of four different building blocks. It starts with performance. You have to be performing. It’s the foundation. Transparency, to be reporting and explaining what you’re doing and why you’re doing it and how you’re doing. Third is leadership. Figure out how to lead in the areas that you are having influence in, and take action in that respect. And then innovation. You have to be able to innovate and find new ways of doing things. I wrote a piece recently, and I said sustainability is not answering the question, “What have you done for me today?” It’s “What have you done for me for tomorrow?” And, so that innovation is a key part of that.

John: That is just great. One of the great things in your report and also the culture at FedEx is the people who work there, the FedEx team members, and their relationship to the environment and your sustainability and social programs. I read somewhere a great quote by you, where you said, “Sustainability is really a team sport.” Can you elaborate on that, with regards to your team member engagement and citizenship, and the evolution that you’ve fostered at FedEx?

Mitch: If you think about FedEx, we’re a service-oriented organization, so our team members are central and core to what we do each and every day. The couriers out interfacing with our customers, the pilots and the drivers who move the goods, as well as all of the support staff behind the scenes, make it an integrated approach that helps move those more than 8 million packages a day. Sustainability is no different, and if you’re actually trying to integrate sustainability into the organization, it has to be a team sport. What we tried to do with this report is we tried to show how the different work groups out there are actually helping us achieve our goals. We used case studies to show that, to be able to highlight the efforts that they were performing on. The key issue is we want team members engaging in discretionary effort that helps make the company better, better in our service that we provide our customers, better in the returns that we give to our share owners, and also the environmental benefit and environmental performance that we can give back to the communities that we operate in. Without that teamwork, without team members being a part of that, then you really don’t have an integrated program, and it’s not going to reach the full potential that it would have if you had done so. So, for us, what we’re trying to show in this report and also trying to illustrate to the team members is you’re critical to success of sustainability at FedEx. Keep doing what you’re doing.

John: That’s just great. A lot of big companies like yours have taken the 2020 approach, where they’ve created big goals for their company and have empowered their employees and team members to work towards those goals. Can you share a little bit about what are your goals for 2020 at FedEx, and where are you going to be focusing the next two or three years to help you get to those goals?

Mitch: I’d be glad to. It’s a good question because there’s a lot about goals as you set out in business and in the space. Back in 2008, we were the first to set goals in U.S. transportation logistics around reducing global aviation emissions and improving vehicle fuel efficiency. By the way, that actually followed our push in 2007, where we testified to the U.S. Congress, calling for fuel economy or fuel efficiency and greenhouse gas standards for commercial vehicles because they didn’t exist at the time. What we did is we set these 20 by ’20 goals, and the reason we did it is because we had to give a goal or a direction that we needed the operations groups to head, to meet. For us on both of those goals, for aircraft and for vehicles, it requires two different things. It requires asset replacement, so replacement of existing vehicles and existing aircraft, and it also requires changes in our operations, how we actually operate and perform each and every day. I think what I’ve been very pleased at is we set these goals in 2020 because they did involve asset replacement, but because of the early and rapid improvement in our operations, we are well on our way to achieving those goals and to achieving them early. John: That is just great. Mike here with me is more of the aviation expert, but I read some of the facts and figures in your report with regards to the replacement of 727s with 757s and also your new use of the 777s and the fuel consumption reduction that this has brought. Can you just share with our listeners some of these wow numbers, what you’re really accomplishing? I’ll tell you what. I almost fell off my chair when I was reading it. I want you to share because I’m sure your version will even be more full of great statistics than what I was reading. I’ll tell you what. Just from this, it’s just so tremendous how much FedEx is moving the needle with regards to the environment and sustainability revolution.

Mitch: I’m glad to, but Mike, John just said you were the aviation guy. He did pretty well talking about the different models of aircraft.

MIKE BRADY: Yeah, he sure did. It’s like, come on, John. Who’s zooming who here?

Mitch: So, I’ll use both of those examples. I’ll start with the 757s replacing the 727s, which are part of our domestic narrow body fleet. The replacement of that 727 with a 757 results in a 47% reduction in fuel consumption per ton carried because what we’re doing is we’re actually operating more efficiently with that 757 aircraft, and we can carry more freight as well. So, we actually get a big bump in fuel economy, but we actually have more payload capacity as well. What that really means is not only do we have a 47% reduction in fuel consumption, we have a 47% reduction in emission as well per ton carried. On the 777 freighter, the beautiful part of that aircraft is that it’s used mainly in our international operations. Because of the increase in payload and range, it results in an approximately 18% improvement in fuel economy, so therefore reduction in emissions as well. The beautiful part of that aircraft is that because of that extended range, it allows us to have a two hour later window or drop-off time in Asia in order to meet the same delivery commitments back home, so customers in Asia have now two more hours in order to drop off packages out of cities served by the 777 in order to get it back to the States or Europe or the like. I’ve talked about that being like the Holy Grail of sustainability because you’re improving your business capabilities, improving the choices for the customer, and reducing your emissions and being a better steward for the environment all at the same time.

MIKE BRADY: Mitch, that’s just amazing because any time that anybody can give anyone else two hours extra in a day, that is the Holy Grail. That’s amazing.

Mitch: Right. That comes into that issue I was talking about with respect to innovation. It does get at leadership too because we were fortunate to be the first to be able to use that 777 freighter, but without that innovation by the manufacturer, you wouldn’t have that ability. So, innovation is often a critical component of a good sustainability program.

John: The aviation examples were just tremendous, and thank you for sharing those, Mitch. Can you share a couple other business benefits that FedEx has experienced with regards to the deeper integration of your CSR program into the company?

Mitch: Sure. I’ll use the vehicles. We talked about the vehicles just a couple minutes ago. On the vehicles, we really kind of follow what we call a reduce, replace, and revolutionize strategy. What that really comes down to simplistically is that through routing efficiencies, making more stops per mile to deliver packages, we’re able to use less vehicles for the volume that we have, so we reduce the number of vehicles that we have to use. The second piece is to replace, and that is actually to use the right vehicle for the right application or route. So, dense urban delivery areas would have larger vehicles with more cargo capacity, but therefore would have lower fuel economy, but they’re not really driving that many miles. Rural routes, which have more miles driven and less packages delivered, use the most fuel efficient vehicles that we can put into operation to meet the needs there. The revolutionize piece is to find new technologies that can bridge the gap between both of those urban and rural routes. For instance, we started working in 2000 with Environmental Defense Fund to bring hybrid electric vehicles to the marketplace because they didn’t exist in the commercial vehicle sector. That’s been a work in progress. We’ve now been working with respect to bringing full electrics into the delivery fleet. Hybrid electrics can work in some of that medium-range distance area. The electric vehicles tend to work very well in the urban environments, and so those efforts have been part of our leadership and innovation aspects of what we do. Our Chairman and founder, Fred Smith, has co-chaired an organization called the Energy Security Leadership Council, that has pushed for electrification of transportation. He’s also a member of a sister organization called the Electrification Coalition. As I’ve said earlier, we were also the first company to actually call for commercial vehicle standards around fuel economy and greenhouse gases because we realized that that approach would help drive the technical innovation and integration of these new technologies in the vehicle fleets.

John: Wow. Your Chairman and CEO’s great work outside of the company has even come back and benefitted the company with regards to energy policy.

Mitch: Absolutely. Not only benefitted the company, but is helping to benefit the country.

John: That is great. That is just amazing. Mitch, there are so many things to talk about. For our listeners who just joined us, we’re so honored today to have Mitch Jackson on, the Vice President of Environmental Affairs and Sustainability at the great company FedEx. If you have your laptop or your iPad open right now, go to their website, www.environment.fedex.com. Mike and I are on the website right now. It’s beautiful. I see here the EarthSmart program. Talk a little bit about EarthSmart. I know you launched it a couple years ago. What does that really mean, and where do you want to go with that?

Mitch: I’d be glad to. EarthSmart was our program that was intended to engage our team members in innovating and creating new services or products for the marketplace with sustainability in mind, to engage our team members to operate more responsibly in the workplace itself, and then it was also to be part of our volunteerism and philanthropic efforts around environmental sustainability. So, it’s really comprised of three programs, our EarthSmart Solutions program, which is about looking for new ways to do things. Our electric vehicles, our hybrid electric vehicles, fit into that category. The EarthSmart At Work was about operating more efficiently, recycling, focusing on energy reductions, etc. in the workplace. And then EarthSmart Outreach was that volunteerism and philanthropic area. In that, we’ve been working in several different areas. Probably one of the biggest examples of how that work has come to fruition is we’ve been working with the World Resources Institute’s Embark program. That’s their Center for Sustainable Transport. They and FedEx have been working in Mexico to try to provide some learning around how we move packages to some of the municipal bus systems in the large megacities in Mexico because the idea is if we can provide any learning or education for how we’re moving packages, maybe it will benefit them in moving people, where you’ve got millions and millions of people in the city each and every day. We feel that that actually benefits in several areas, including safety, congestion, environmental issues, and also in competitiveness for those cities to be able to compete in the global marketplace.

John: Got it. Mitch, we’re down to the last two or three minutes, and I want you to talk a little bit about the CSR reporting. You have a couple years behind you in this, but you have a huge future in front of you. What does the evolution look like the last three years, and where are you going with this in the years ahead?

Mitch: I think when you first start your reporting, you’re actually just trying to capture data. You’re really looking to put the systems in place to capture data, and that will continue as you add more metrics to the mix. But I think what we’re trying to do now is we’re trying to use that data for these metrics that matter and are material to the company, and we’re trying to use it in a feedback loop, if you will, to basically help us do better in managing those initiatives that we have underway, to do it in an even better manner. So we’re doing well, but there’s always room for improvement, and I think that that’s where we’ll continue to focus. What can we learn from how we’re doing so that we can do it better as we go forward?

John: A couple last parting thoughts. You’ve done so much so far. When we talk to great leaders like you who are at the apex of huge organizations, we always come away with a message that it’s a process. It’s never over, and it’s an ongoing process. What today are you most proud of at FedEx, of accomplishments you and your team have done already?

Mitch: I think that I’m most proud of the fact that we’ve been able to engage our team members, to have them understand the value that this brings to the company and to our customers and our share owners, and that they’re actually the ones that are out helping to bring this to fruition, to do this. We’re helping, but they’re the ones that are actually accomplishing this. I think the second thing I could say is we’re not following what I refer to as pinball leadership. What that is is we’re trying not to simply react to what others say is important. We’re actually trying to work on what we know to be important in the company, and to focus on those issues, so that we’re actually making a difference and actually helping to change what’s possible for all of our stakeholders.

John: That is so well-put. Mitch, I just want to say again Mike and I are so thankful for your time today. We know how busy you are. You are always a welcome guest to come back on the show and talk about the tremendous sustainability evolution at FedEx that you guys are doing, and how you’re moving the needle in such a big way, in such an important way. For our listeners out there again, to see what Mitch and his colleagues are doing at FedEx, please go to www.environment.fedex.com. Mitch Jackson, you are an inspirational sustainability leader and truly living proof that green is good.

John Shegerian: This edition of the Impact podcast is brought to you by ERI. ERI has a mission to protect people, the planet, and your privacy. It is the largest fully integrated IT and electronics asset disposition provider and cybersecurity-focused hardware destruction company in the United States, and maybe even the world. For more information on how ERI can help your business properly dispose of outdated electronic hardware devices, please visit ERIdirect.com

John: Welcome to another edition of the Impact podcast. This is a very exciting edition of Impact. We’ve got Max Elder with us. He’s the co-founder and CEO of Nowadays. Welcome to the Impact podcast, Max.

Max Elder: Thank you John. I’m so excited to be here.

John: Hey, listen. Before we get talking about Nowadays, you’ve got a great product, which I’m a fan of and I’ve eaten your great product. Talk a little bit about yesterday. I want you to talk about where you grew up, how you even got here, talk about your journey leading up to founding this great new plant-based company.

Max: Okay, we’ll go back.

John: Okay.

Max: So, I grew up in Massachusetts, a coastal town in Massachusetts. My first job was working on- I was a lobsterman. Unfortunately, brutal brutal work. If you’ve ever worked on a boat.

John: I heard it’s brutal.

Max: It’s horrible. I regret it, but it was a good, good work for a young 15-16 year-olds. So, I grew up on the coast. I grew up with environmentalist parents actually. My father is a big environmentalist. We were one of the first families to buy Prius when they were available.

John: Really?

Max: And there was a strong ethos of social justice. My mother was a judge and my father, of course, was focused on sustainability at every turn. So, that led me to try to figure out how to have a positive impact in the world.

I went to college, I studied Philosophy, actually. I have a bachelor’s degree in Ethics.

John: Wow!

Max: And, spent a year studying at Oxford, trying to figure out how to live a good life, how to be a good person. And when I was there, I got wrapped up with some animal ethicists. And actually, when I left Oxford was invited to become a fellow at a think tank called the Oxford Centre for Animal Ethics. And for the past, I guess, at this point 9 or 10 years, I’ve done academic work on sustainability, animal welfare, and food systems. And, that was how I started to think critically about our relationship with to non-human animals. Fast forward a few years and I decided that I wanted to have impact. And when you look at the landscape of our relationship to animals, the way that we farm them is by far, the biggest challenge in the world. So, thought I would try to dedicate my life towards alternative proteins, and actually trying to create a future world alternative proteins are no longer considered alternatives.

So, I spent 5 years in New York City doing research and strategy in grant money. And a philanthropy foundation, moved out to San Francisco and spent 4 years doing strategy and innovation consulting across the global food value chain at a sort of hybrid think tank slash creative consultancy called The Institute for the Future. And then, last year, jumped ship and met my co-founder Dominic Grabinski and decided to start Nowadays. So, in many ways, I feel like Nowadays has been just 10 years in the making of my professional career.

I actually started in 2015 trying to build a cultured meat company back when there were only, I guess 2 culture meat companies incorporate in the world. I was really interested in seafood and aquaculture, very concerned about it. And decided I didn’t have enough experience to start a company back then; wanted to get more experience across the global food value chain. So, instead of starting that company, moved up to the Bay Area and started consulting for food companies. And that’s how I realized that none of these companies know what they’re doing that. That it’s not about knowing the answers to any of these questions, it’s about knowing what kinds of questions to ask in the first place. And, that’s, you know, if we want to have impact at scale and want to solve some of these problems across, labor, environment, health, that we need radical innovation. And the startup ecosystem is just perfect for that.

John: You know, first of all, it’s so interesting, what you’re saying. I think it’s important for all parents to hear what you just said about your parents, those seeds of greatness and of creating change-makers, like you, really are set from a very young age. They must be extraordinarily proud of what you’re doing right now.

Max: I hope so. Yeah, they definitely, I caused them some trouble when I was younger, for sure. So, hopefully…

John: What kids don’t do? Don’t be so hard on yourself.

Max: But yes, they instilled everything in me. And for better or for worse. When I look at the food system and a lot of the problems around health and access are not due to anyone’s merit. Your health outcomes and the social determinants of your health, in the United States, are totally dependent on the ZIP code that you’re born into. So it’s also good motivation for me and for Nowadays to focus on how we scale healthy, humane, and sustainable foods to communities who really need it. And, it’s really informed how we think about brand-building.

John: It’s interesting.

Max: Honestly, not just my parents, but also our ZIP codes. Because it’s interesting, there’s a lot of shame and blame in the modern food system and there’s a lot of shame and blame involved in health and eating junk food. And, we think that it takes herculean efforts in the United States to eat well and that instead of shaming and blaming people for their dietary patterns, we need to create healthy options with good value propositions that do jobs that need to be done for people and give people a better choice.

John: Well, if that’s so well said, and I think you’re so right. And I think democratizing healthy options is really where it’s at right now because we are at an inflection point. I believe that healthy options like you’ve created with Nowadays are more imperative than ever before because we’ve created such an environmental burden, in terms of what’s coming at us environmentally speaking. Look at the air problems we’re having in California. Just with all the fires and stuff. These are unprecedented times for a living and I know that’s a little bit of a cliche, but I promise you at 58, I can tell you it’s really not. We are at an inflection point right now.

Max: Yes, and it’s one that I think a lot of people are feeling acutely. And you know, this inflection point, I live in San Francisco. And last year, before I started Nowadays, I was sitting at home. My phone vibrates for a warning that there was a curfew at nights, because we weren’t allowed to go outside. And, you know, the state was on fire. There was a helicopter flying over my apartment because of riots for racial justice down the street. And, there’s a pandemic and I sat down for dinner and I just couldn’t help but think the food that’s on our plates is so deeply interwoven with all of the problems around me right now that I need to do something. And I don’t need to do something in a year; I don’t need to do something in 5 years. I need to do something yesterday. So, I spend every waking moment trying to solve these problems because we don’t have much time left, I think to wait.

John: Max, I so agree with you. So you meet your partner and how did you come up with what you were going to tackle, these delicious chicken nuggets at Nowadays and for our listeners and our viewers and our readers, please go to eatnowadays.com. I’m on the website. It’s really one of the nicest websites I’ve ever seen, eatnowadays.com. I’ve tried your product. You were kind enough, your people at your company, your colleagues were kind enough to send me these products. I want to eat 3 pieces, I ended up eating six because I loved it so much. And so, why did you choose to tackle chicken first? And how did you come up with the name and the whole concept?

Max: Yes. Okay. Well, the first day, John is, you can have 6, you can have 12, you can have 24. The beauty of Nowadays is that we make very clean, very simple plant-based meats. A few simple familiar ingredients and an unparalleled nutritional profile. And that’s really the ethos, that guides everything we do at the company. So, Nowadays was started originally because we realized that when we look across the landscape of alternative proteins. In the US, they account for less than 2% of the overall meat market. And to me, that’s a rounding error. That’s nothing. I mean, despite one of the biggest IPOs in the past, like, you know, decade. Despite some of these companies already saying, one and a half billion dollars of private equity. And despite a lot of media coverage, and a lot of conversation, and just like the Poltergeist, we are a rounding error compared to the meat industry. We can’t afford to continue to be less than 2% for much longer.

John: Right.

Max: So we looked at that problem and my co-founder, Dominic, and I tried to figure out, what is the barrier to really reaching mass adoption adoption for alternative proteins. Why can’t plant-based meats be 10% of the market or follow the alternative dairy market, which is now upwards of 15% of the overall dairy market, why aren’t plant-based meats there yet? And we came up with 2 reason: one, is that plant-based meat companies today don’t have a value proposition that speaks to a growing flexitarian audience. What I mean by that is when you actually look at the number of vegans and vegetarians in the United States, that number has stayed steady forever. It is not significantly increasing. What is increasing is the growing number of flexitarians across the country who are occasionally swapping out meat product with an alternative. Those people, when you ask them, what motivates them their primary motivator is health. We are in a public health crisis. We are in a global pandemic. And Americans are trying to eat a little bit better occasionally. But when you look at the landscape of these products, they are certainly more sustainable. They are certainly more humane. In terms of health, it’s kind of a wash, they’re better marginally, but it’s hard to communicate. And when you see these big brands saying things like, we have 40% less saturated fat, you know, I’m not convinced that that’s enough. So we realized we need to make plant-based meat products that are as good for you as they are for the planet. The second barrier, we’re convinced is price. And we’re convinced that there’s too much complexity in novel forms of protein production and in complex manufacturing. And so, we started out with the very innovative approach to product development and manufacturing, to be able to really compete with chicken, which is the most consumed protein in the world, the most consumed protein in the United States. And, by the way, the cheapest.

John: Wow.

Max: So albeit, artificially cheap, the industry’s been amazing at externalizing costs. But nevertheless, we need to compete in this commodity market. So, we’ve figured out a way to make plant-based meat cheap and make plant-based meat healthy. And if you can make it cheap and healthy and delicious, then we think you can reach mass market adoption very quickly.

John: Got it. And then how did you come up with the great name Nowadays, lovely name?

Max: A lot of late-night whiteboarding, to be honest.

John: Why?

Max: We looked at Wilton a bunch of the brand names used across the space and I love them all. They’re very masculine. They’re very product-focused. There’s a lot of, you know, we’re doing the impossible, we’re going beyond where, you know, starting a rebellion with rebellious foods. Those are all wonderful. But we wanted to create a brand that was much more accessible and approachable and non-judgmental. Nowadays has a sort of evergreen presentism to it. In 10 years, Nowadays will be about the present and the here and now. But it also acknowledges and have, in a non-judgmental and somewhat folksy way like that there’s something different about today. Nowadays, we don’t eat as many animals as we used to. Nowadays, we think about the connection between our plates and the planet, you know. So it’s a very, it’s an acknowledgement of something new and different. It’s kind of folksy and very accessible and it’s inclusive. We are trying to make a brand that people can really identify with. So Nowadays came up as a way that we were thinking about taking a sort of modern twist on classic favorites, that Gainey’s breaded fried chicken products, like nuggets and tenders and patties and making them healthy, humane, and sustainable. And doing so, in a way that people feel good about. And I think I think we’ve landed on something that works.

John: That’s s so wonderful. So you just so you whiteboard the name. You have this wonderful product, you and your partner have created. Where are you now? What did you have to do- all ventures take capital.

Max: I have capital. Yeah.

John: All dreams need the fuel to really help the fire keep burning and grow. How did that work for you? Where did you decide to raise capital from? And how is that part of your journey been?

Max: Yeah. Well, all ventures need capital. They also need an immense amount of luck. And we have benefited greatly from it. And very, very in a very talented team. So we have been very lucky in our ability to raise capital from wonderful folks, primarily funds from around the world who are focused on alternative proteins or health and wellness better-for-you brands. And the real answer is that, we found a few funds early on who knew us, as individuals. And who saw an early idea of vision, a prototype. And were willing to place a bet on our ability to execute. And that took a long time. So actually the first investor who wrote a check into Nowadays is VegInvest Trust. It’s run, the managing director is a woman, Amy Trakinski. And I’ve known Amy probably for the past, gosh,8 or 9 years. And Amy and I met many, many moons ago at a conference actually, in San Francisco. We’re both were living in New York, but we met at a cultured meat conference in San Francisco. And we hit it off. We started talking. And we kept in touch. And that was when I was working at a philanthropy foundation in New York City. It was early, early, before Nowadays was even a hope, a dream, anything at all. And we kept in touch over the years. And eventually, I called Amy and said, I’m going to start a plant-based meat company and I need your support and I know that you know me and I know you’ve watched me over the past, you know, 6 or 7 years do all these interesting stuff across the food system. And I know that you know that I can make this something that’s very successful with impact. And she said, yes, I know and I’m ready to write the first check. And once you get that first check in, it’s a whole different ball game.

John: Yeah, and you know, you bring up two great points. First of all, the power of relationships and building trust and nurturing those relationships over years. That’s such a powerful statement. And it’s so true. And so many people forget that very critical element to becoming a successful entrepreneur.

Max: It’s everything. It’s everything. I don’t know how Nowadays would have been able to do anything that we’ve done over the past year, year and a half if not for all of our relationships that we fostered for much longer than the company’s existence. And to be honest, John, we’ve made a lot of mistakes. Some big, big, bad mistakes, including mistakes with people like Amy. And it takes the long-term trust and relationships to make sure that those mistakes don’t cause you a lot of trouble. So, when you have that trust and when people know you personally, it’s a different kind of conversation; people are much more forgiving. And you need that when you’re trying to build because the one thing that I know is that, I don’t know what we’re doing. And I know we are going to make mistakes over and over and over again. The good news is we learn from them every time. The bad news is they’re, mistakes, nevertheless. So you need people to appreciate and respect you and know that you’ll learn from them and you won’t make them again and know that your vision and your heart are both in the right place.

John: And I agree with you and mistakes are just lessons in the journey. Just long as they’re not fatal mistakes.

Max: That’s right.

John: If you avoid fatal mistakes as an entrepreneur, they’re just good lessons and you just keep rolling. And if you’re transparent about it, you’re also very transparent about the importance of luck. And there’s no venture that I’ve been involved with that has been successful, that hasn’t leaned on luck. And a lot of entrepreneurs don’t admit that though. And that’s really not a good way to be because luck has so much to do with a lot of good things that happen. It’s good to say that upfront.

Max: Absolutely. Luck and privilege, John, I mean, we’re very privileged to have the relationships that we have. I know, we’ve worked hard for them. But when you look at the landscape of venture capital, and when you look at who’s getting investments, it’s very inequitable. So, we know that, we see it. And, and it’s for every Nowadays, there are plenty of great ideas for every one of me. They’re amazing entrepreneurs who don’t have the same opportunities. So if anything it makes us feel like we have more of a responsibility to do an amazing job and to take the luck and privilege that we have and turn it into something impactful.

John: So, if you’ve just joined us, we got Max Elders with us today. Max is the CEO and co-founder of Nowadays. You can find Max and his partner and his colleagues and their great products at eatnowadays.com. Max, where are you in the journey now? I know, I was lucky enough because your colleagues were kind enough to send me this wonderful package that arrived at my house about a week ago. Where can our listeners and viewers and readers find your products and where do you expect to go in the months ahead here?

Max: So everyone can buy our products direct-to-consumer. So you can go to eatnowadays.com and buy our nuggets. If you’re a first-time buyer, we have a 25% discount, which is very large. And we ship 2 days direct to your door.

John: Wow!

Max: So, online, we are in restaurants across the country and are scaling that. We are very excited about our restaurant partnerships. And we are in conversations with some large quick service restaurants, to some fast food chains. We love food service because of the size of the market. We’re really focused on having impact at scale and that requires us to find channels with massive volume. So we’re very excited and hopeful that we’ll be included on some very big menus in the near term. And then ultimately we’ll be omni-channel. We need to be omni-channel. So we are submitting for category reviews for retailers right now. So, soon will be everywhere. Right now, we love being online.

John: It’s great.

Max: To me, the most amazing thing, John, about shipping direct to consumer is for an emerging brand, we get to build relationships directly with our customers. So I know who buys our product. I can email them. Once we end this conversation, I can go online and I can call someone who bought Nowadays nuggets this morning and learn about them. Learn about why they bought maybe for a second time or a third time or a fourth time. Ask them how their kids like the product and that kind of feedback is just so critical for an emerging brand. So we love it. But we also love our restaurant partners and we were very excited for retail. So everywhere.

John: Max, yeah. And because chicken is the number one protein on the planet, I assume that once you democratize your Nowadays’ nuggets throughout North America, the international opportunities are all there for the taking for you.

Max: Absolutely. And you know, John, we’re not just a nugget company. We launched with nuggets because nuggets are a really fun category.

John: Right, they are.

Max: Americans love nuggets. Kids love nuggets. And we’re really focused on, we want to break into the mainstream family meal rotation. But we’re really a plant-based meat company and we’re focused primarily on chicken first. So we’ve got 3 other chicken skus in the pipeline, that we’re going to release very shortly. One before the end of the year, the second in Q1 of 2022, and the third probably also in Q1 of 2022. So there’s some other fun chicken products. But one of the things that’s quite important about Nowadays is that we’re focused on this segment of the meat market, where we think we can have impact, which is the, for lack of a better word, the junk food category. So, in many ways, these breaded and fried frozen meat products, nuggets, tenders, patties, popcorn chicken.

John: Right.

Max: They have pretty poor chicken, actually in the products. It’s very low-quality meat. The nutritional profiles are horrendous. The ingredient lists are terrible. And what we’re doing is targeting those categories and we’re reformulating those products with just a few simple ingredients and an unparalleled nutritional profile so that we can lead with the value proposition. That these do not only taste good, but they make you feel good. And that you can be proud to put them on your table for dinner or to feed them to your kids. And I think, you know, when we talk to a lot of people who eat animal-based nuggets, everyone knows that they’re not good for you. No one is proud to feed their kids nuggets at dinner. It’s a convenience food.

John: Right.

Max: It’s a cheap way. And so, if we can help people, we can enable and power and embolden people to feel better about what they’re putting in their bodies but still have the delight of an indulgent category like nuggets. Then we think we can win.

John: I so agree with you and I want to go into that. Well, I gotta tell you, I felt I feel like a kid again when I eat nuggets. I mean really. And it’s fun because it’s finger food. I could dip it in what I want and it’s easy to prepare and quick to prepare because we’re all short on time now. But I loved on your package and I know this was just sent to me as a special thing. But on the side of it, was your ingredients. So while I was eating the nuggets, I was focused on the ingredients and I was blown away that you only have seven ingredients and you’re gluten-free, soy-free, GMO-free. Talk about why only 7 ingredients, and why that’s better for us, not only from an environmental perspective, but just better from us as humans and consumption perspective as well?

Max: Now, we love our ingredients stack. It’s actually one of the things we’re most proud of. The taste is number one. We’re very, very proud of how the product taste. But it’s more impressive after you taste the product, to look and say, well, what is this made of? This tastes too good to be true, it’s seven ingredients. One of which is water, by the way, which is the number one ingredient in most alternative meats. It’s the number one ingredient in most meats.

John: Right.

Max: But after that, we use things like our protein comes from really from organic yellow pea protein. It’s a particular peas farm in the midwest. We’re really focused on making an ingredient list that people can read and pronounce and think that these are familiar ingredients. So nothing foreign and wild, nothing crazy. No binder stabilizers. No fillers. No preservatives. None of that junk. And it’s primarily because when you look across the landscape of the category, these products have 30, 40 ingredients. There’s added sugars. I mean, there’s sodium bombs. And you’re talking 500, 600 milligrams of sodium per serving. I’m having a heart attack when I read that. And so clean and simple ingredient list translates to a really unparalleled nutritional profile for us. And that, for us at Nowadays, we believe that that really unlocks an ability to speak to a really broad segment of consumers and of flexitarians. So, we’re hyper-focus on the ingredient list.

The other kind of elegant solution that a short, but ingredient lists and enables for us, is simplicity of manufacturing. And one of the things that I love is simplicity. It turns out that simplicity is very complex. And, especially when we think about the future of food and the future even of the alternative protein world. Things are getting really complex and I spend my life in this space. I study this stuff and there are new branded proteins that are coming online from companies. There are new novel forms of bio-fermentation that are creating new kinds of products coming online. People are doing wild genetic engineering of different plants to express animal-based proteins, like casein, to create dairy products. There’s just a massive, massive amount of innovation that translates to a lot of complexity. There are blended products on the market today, that are partially plant proteins and partially animal proteins. There’s just like there’s a lot. And I think, increasingly that’s going to be hard for consumers to navigate. And we’re trying to make eating well simple and that’s very hard to do. So a simplicity of the ingredient list, I think translates to a simplicity of understanding for consumers about what’s in this product.

The thing that I’m most concerned about is some of these alternative protein products, which I love, and I consume very much feel like fake food to me. They’re cookie cutter shapes. And, and when I talk to consumers, they always say, “Oh, that’s the fake meat right. That’s the fake X.”

John: Right.

Max: And I don’t want anyone to think that these products are fake and they’re not. They’re very real. They’re in fact, if people really understood how some of these meat products are made, we’d know how artificial they are.

John: Right.

Max: But nevertheless, I think like, the overall ethos for us is simplicity and a really easy understanding when you pick up a box in a moment when you need to make a decision, “Is this something I want to try?” We want the answer to be, yes. And we want to lower all the barriers to getting to, “Yes.” And plant-based meats need to lower the barriers for people to try.

John: You’re talking about manufacturing, that’s fascinating, Max. As the pull for your product increases, and as you democratize your great product, Nowadays, and for our listeners and viewers out there that want to find Max’s product, it’s eatnowadays.com. You could order it directly. It comes to you in 2 days. And soon to be found in more restaurants, and eventually retail around North America. But when you one day are going to be selling in Shanghai, in Singapore, and Paris, is contract manufacturing the kind of simplistic and delicious foods that you’re creating, plant-based foods, is that a complicated process to contract manufacturer them as you spread around the United States and around the world? Or is it actually easier than the industrial food state that we live in right now?

Max: That’s a really, really good question. So we are building Nowadays with a strategy to scale very quickly and very cheaply. And the way to do that is to leverage existing manufacturing lines. We, especially for the meat industry, these lines are cheap and ubiquitous, they’re everywhere. And we need to plug into them. So, the really radical innovation that Nowadays, is our approach to manufacturing. We are a meat manufacturer, first, and foremost, ramped up in a CPG brand. So, we have a patent that protects our technology, which is our ability to create whole cuts of plant-based chicken using pea protein. So, we take peas, we figure out a way to make whole cuts of meat. And those pieces of meat function, taste; they are meat. They are just made from plants.

John: Right.

Max: We can then ship those pieces of meat around the world, to all kinds of contract manufacturers.

John: Perfect.

Max: And the finishing line is battering, breading, frying, freezing. The finishing line, John, exists in your office today, I mean, it’s everywhere.

John: Right.

Max: And so, our vision is, in order to scale manufacturing very cheaply and in order to become a global brand very quickly, we need to be able to develop a product that plugs into those lines. Plugs into them very easily. Most alternative meat companies make the finished product, all in one process. They don’t make the meat first and then finish it into a value-added product like a nugget or a tender. We make the meat, and so that enables this really interesting business model of using contract manufacturers and not just specialized contract manufacturers, of course. Most food companies, when they scale unless they’re totally vertically integrated. Do you really want to scale big? You need to leverage contract manufacturers. The problem is that can get very complicated, it can get very expensive, and some of your technology, and your intellectual property can be wrapped up in that manufacturing process. So, we split the production process into our IP is in the manufacturing, and then finishing, those pieces of meats, anyone can do. You can do it in your kitchen.

John: Right. That’s so fancy. So you’re protecting the IP along the way, and also simplifying the process.

Max: Yep, bingo. Simplicity is everything. And simplicity, by the way, John, it saves a lot of money.

John: It saves a lot of money. Is part of your vision and dream, Max, after you’ve conquered the chicken category, will you be producing with your proprietary technology other meats, as well?

Max: Yes. Yes.

John: Good.

Max: We’re very excited about other meats. Chicken, of course, we love because we think that there’s been plenty of innovation done on beef right now.

John: Right.

Max: We think that there still is a lot of work that needs to be done on chicken. And quite frankly, I think that the environmental conversations around broiler chickens are nascent and people are overlooking the environmental impacts. And I think that they’re horrible. And so we’re really focused on overcoming some of those.

But we’re very excited about other animals and other animal-based products because our vision is that, we make food that nourishes, both people in the planet without harming animals, and there’s massive amounts of innovation that needs to be done across the board for that vision to be realized.

John: Max before I let you go today, you have any final thoughts for our young entrepreneurs out there that want to be the next Max Elder, that want to follow in your footsteps and make the world a better place and also make it a more tasty place, as well?

Max: Well, I’d say don’t be the next Max out of there because Max out there made a lot of mistakes and fumbles. I’m sure you’ll be better than the next Max. Maybe the only piece of advice that I have is that, you need to be radically obsessed with a problem that you’re trying to solve. Because I don’t know about you John, but entrepreneurialism is not necessarily my forte. This job is hard. It’s really, really brutal and involves a lot of mistakes, a lot of failure. You’re always doing too much and you’re never doing enough. And so, the type of grit that you need to wake up every day and stay up late every night is unparalleled. And so, you need to find something that you can’t live without, that you feel like, “Gosh, if I can do one thing in life, this is what I need to do.” And not what I want to do, what I need to do. Because it’s incredibly, incredibly challenging.

The other side of that coin though is, it’s the most rewarding thing in the world to wake up every day, and realize that everything that you’re doing, every waking moment, is for a mission that you deeply believe in. It’s not about the money. You’ll probably never make any money. It’s not about the- it’s only about the vision and the mission. And if you are unwavering in your conviction, then you’ll be really successful.

John: I love it. And that’s why you’re great, Max, because you’re relentless, and the relentless will prevail. They will. For our listeners and viewers out there again, I’ve eaten this product. I say it’s great. I promise you, you’re going to enjoy it. It’s Nowadays. You could go to www.eatnowadays.com and order it for yourself directly. Max offered a 25% off first time purchase. And I promise you, you’ll enjoy it.

Max Elder, you’re always welcome back on the Impact podcast to share your journey. We want to have you back on and we’re just so grateful. I wish you continued success, continued good health, and thank you for making an impact and making the world a better place.

Max: Thanks, John. I really appreciate it.

John: 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 Shegerian: This edition of the impact podcast is brought to you by Engage. Engage as a digital booking platform, revolutionizing the talent booking industry. With thousands of athletes, celebrities, entrepreneurs, and business leaders, Engage is the go-to spot for booking talent, speeches, custom experiences, livestreams, and much more. For more information on Engage or to book talent today, visit letsengage.com.

John: Hi, this is John Shegerian. I never could have imagined when we started the Green Is Good radio show back in 2006 that it would grow into a big podcast called the Green Is Good Podcast. And now, we’ve evolved that podcast into the Impact Podcast, which is more inclusive and more diverse than ever before. But we did look back recently at some of our timeless Green Is Good interviews and decided to share some of them with you now. So, enjoy one of our great Green Is Good episodes from our archives. And next week, I’ll be back with a fresh and new episode of the Impact podcast. Thanks again for listening. I’m grateful to all of you. This is John Shegerian.

Narrator: Welcome to Green Is Good. Raising awareness of each individual’s impact on the environment and helping to create a more beautiful and sustainable world. Now, here’s John Shegerian, Chairman and CEO of Electronic Recyclers International, and Mike Brady.

John: Welcome to Green Is Good, Mike. It’s great to be in the studio with you.

Mike Brady: Always, John. I look forward to this every week. And this truly is the high point of my week. A chance for us to entertain, inform and empower our audience, and how we can all come together and make the world a better place in which to live and raise our kids and grandkids.

John: Well, [laughs] today is just another great guest and another great show, but I just want to remind our listeners that you and I tape our show here in Fresno, California, in the Central Valley of California.

Mike: Right.

John: And we have a little bit of local recognition. We have a local superstar among us who ties into today’s show.

Mike: Oh, yeah?

John: We have Tim McDonald, the ex-NFL player who is an amazing player of the San Francisco 49ers.

Mike: Right.

John: He is a local and owns a restaurant, is the coach of the Edison football team, very well known, and very well adored here in this town, and respected. And he used to be represented by our guest today.

Mike: No, Leigh Steinberg?

John: Leigh Steinberg.

Mike: Wait a second.

John: And it was his story, and he was with Leigh, Jerry Maguire was based on Leigh Steinberg’s experiences as a sports agent, and Tim was one of the key role models for the movie and actually also starred in the movie, made a cameo appearance in Jerry Maguire.

Mike: Show me the money.

John: Show me the money. And we have Leigh Steinberg, legendary sports agent Leigh Steinberg with us today Mike, on the line. Why don’t we get him now?

Mike: Let’s do it.

John: We are so honored today to have both my friend and legendary sports agent, Leigh Steinberg, on the phone. Leigh, thank you for coming on Green Is Good. You are the legendary sports agent, the man behind Jerry Maguire and Arliss, and so many other great movies and agents and Troy Aikman, Steve Bartkowski. Leigh, thank you, and welcome to Green Is Good.

Leigh Steinberg: Well, it’s my pleasure. I’m excited to do it.

John: Well, Leigh, you know, there’s a famous line in Jerry Maguire, “Okay, just jump right into my nightmare, the water is warm.” Was that a little of you foreshadowing of the Green Revolution? What was coming? What got you into this?

Leigh: You know, a real feeling that our species is in denial, and we’re just not seeing what’s around us that we don’t want to be the first generation to hand a degraded quality of life down to our children. And that, we are sitting around. The dinosaurs, of course, we’re on the planet all those years, and they have these wonderful prodigious bodies but limited intellect and couldn’t adapt to the comet, storms, and other changes environmentally that doomed them. Well, we’ve got these wonderful brains, but we seem to be limited in our ability to adapt because of nation-states, and greed, and multinationals, and a whole lot of reasons for climate change. And it just strikes me that the oceans are rising, the South Pole is breaking up, we’ve got hurricanes and all sorts of environmental changes that are occurring with the temperature rising very quickly. And we need to be, technologically, the generation that jumps on this, and if I can use sports and attitude change to do a clarion call here so that we turn this around rapidly. I was raised by a father who said two things; one, to treasure relationships. And the second was to try to make a meaningful difference in the world. And that’s what we’re trying to do.

John: And Leigh, you had an amazing career and I’ve been so lucky enough to share time with you and know how truly brilliant you are on so many subjects. What was your tipping point as you’ve represented all these legends and sports? What made you jump into and start becoming a thought leader and a doer in the Green Revolution? What was that tipping point moment?

Leigh: I think when I first saw Al Gore’s film and realized how rapidly this whole change was occurring and realized that air pollution, water, the degradation of the rainforest, that it was all going to imperil the next generation. And that it was occurring so rapidly that if we didn’t start to use our best brains and try to retrofit the energy systems that we use to try and do dramatic things.

And when I saw Walmart change the light bulbs in their stores, it was no longer the purview of just tree-huggers. That there was a basic understanding that unless we changed the way that we live, and it doesn’t have to be so dramatic but, unless we put this as a top priority then, we’re going to go beyond the tipping point. And we’ll live in a very different way which we won’t like very much. And we need to lift the veil of denial and start to act very decisively to try and change this.

John: Leigh, you founded the Sporting Green Alliance. What is that? And what are you doing with sports franchises and universities across America to get them to become part of the solution? The Green Revolution solution.

Leigh: Well, basically John, we’ve aggregated a set of sustainable technologies and go on to certain franchises and talk to them about integrating those technologies into their stadia and arenas for two purposes; one, to trap carbon emissions and the energy load. And second of all, to transform them into an educational platform so that the millions of fans, and literally hundreds and hundreds of millions of fans that go to sporting events, all across the country at the high school, collegiate, and professional level can see a waterless urinal, can see a solar panel, can see recycling, and these advanced energy systems and think about how they integrate those concepts into their own homes and businesses so that sports can lead the way.

And if you think about the number of fans that go to games, the amount of real estate that those venues cover, it’s really extraordinary. In addition, we can get franchises and we’ve talked to some of them about being producers of content. So if you could have green superheroes fighting for the environment, green cartoon heroes, educate a new generation of kids to have green forest and use the same power of role modeling that we’ve used in other parts of our practice so that the fact that athletes can trigger attitudinal change, they can be role models to trigger imitative behavior. And so, when we’ve had a Warren Moon, be part of the million people Environmental March on Washington, which is virtual, not actual. [crosstalk]

John: Right.

Leigh: And sit there on that website, or cut PSAs or be part of the environmental media push. If we can have athletes start to trigger attitudinal change and get people to see how they can make a basic change in their lives, then it can make a real difference. It’s the same principle that we’ve used, John, in having a Lennox Lewis say, “Real men don’t hit women.” Or having Steve Young say, “If you really believe in America, prejudice is foul play.”

It can trigger basic change. So that’s what we’re trying to do. Give people a chance to use sports as the venue where they can see these changes.

John: Got it. I mean, that is amazing. So now, what athletes of yours and you find all, the stable of athletes that you’ve represented over the years is just quite quite, frankly, a Hall of Fame of names from Aikman on down and big Ben who’s in Pittsburgh? What are you doing now? What are your athletes? Give us an example of one of your messengers and what the message they’re giving now. If in 1993, just like the name of our show, Leigh, is Green Is Good. Because that’s a play on 1987 Gordon Gekko’s, “Greed is good.”

What if show me the money was the call of the times back in ’93, which was so brilliant, and what you did with Jerry Maguire. What is the call of the times and what is the message that you’re giving your athletes to go and promote. And what is the ripple effect that you are seeing?

Leigh: Well, it’s every part of really how people live. We do a Super Bowl party, as you know. [laughs] Because electronic recyclers was a [crosstalk]

John: We were a partner of yours and we were honored and it was just amazing. You throw a party for 2500 of your closest friends.

Leigh: And they’re 2500 opinion leaders. So, you have a number of the athletes there. Here would be an example. You have all these opinion leaders and so they walk up to the front door of the party and they’re encouraged to recycle their old cellphone or their old computer, through electronic recycling. They walk into a party, and there’s a green carpet. It’s all using solar panels. It’s all biodegradable. All the products are either recycled or made from recycled materials. The waste products, every part of it is a green model so that people can actually see how you could take a home or a business and rewire an energy system, use renewable energy in the same way.

And then, we have athletes who were there who were encouraging all of these tips. So they’re biodegradable materials used everywhere, solar panels used everywhere powering the grid. And so, it becomes a model for how you can rewire a whole system and then we’ll do a silent auction there which or a live auction which aided the environmental fund for Arizona. In one case or the other case, the Tampa Lowry Park Zoo, which focused on conservation. And so, you are using the power of these athletes to impact and affect opinion leaders in the same way. When you have stadia, that does what the Washington Nationals did, which is to have a leech rating from the US Green Building Council or an in-house recycling center and wastewater system designed to filter out, hot dog bits or peanut shells or low flow plumbing. Or the Dallas Stadium with a reflective roof and they use bright star. Or the new Jets-Giants stadium, which is lead compliant.

In each of these cases, the Novacare Complex for the Eagles uses corn plastic dishes and utensils. These are all just examples where you’ve got different methods that people will start to see. The New Minnesota Twins franchise has low volatile organic compounds. Or you’ve got a system called AtmosAir, which is now in the Kansas City and Dallas facilities, which uses this ionization process to take all the bad molds out of the air and, therefore, uses less energy. So these are just a variety of different systems that get people’s imaginations going. And then they can see how they can use them in their own businesses and their own lives.

John: Perfect. Leigh, we’re going to take a quick break to commercial and we’re going to come back. Our listeners got to come back and listen to legendary sports agent, Leigh Steinberg, because he’s here today on Green Is Good.

Voice-over: If a little green is good, more is even better. Now, back to Green Is Good with John Shegerian and Mike Brady.

John: Welcome back to Green Is Good. Mike and I, are so humbled today to have legendary sports agent Leigh Steinberg on the phone. Leigh, thank you for being with us today. And talking a bit about the statistics are just amazing. As you mentioned before the commercial break, the real estate that sports occupy across America and the world, and the difference it can make in the greening of the world.

For instance, say 6480 regular season Major League Baseball games. And as you were saying before the break, imagine if you can help these owners make some minor changes and adjustments in their stadia. In terms of greening their stadia, the impact that would have on all the people who attend those games. Speak a little bit more about that and what else you’re trying to do with all that’s going on.

Leigh: Well, if you really think about it and you look at the amount of attendance there is. Literally, it’s hundreds and hundreds of millions of people go to games at the high school, collegiate, and professional levels. And the amount of real estate, you’d be aware of it if you ever look down as you’re flying, you know, across the city or an area. And you realize just how many practice fields, stadia, high school, indoor arenas that play basketball, hockey, soccer, indoor or outdoor. I mean, the amount of real estate is extraordinary.

It becomes a major issue both in terms of water use. We found, for example, a technology that puts electricity into the water and that enables it to defeat soil compaction, which is what stops agricultural growth. When they do this in a series of golf courses, which is a whole different issue, it saves about 70% of the water. So we’re looking at issues of water, public transportation. The type of products that go into building these stadia. For example, Citi Field with the Mets was built from 95% recycled steel. And how we get people to the games, again, the public transportation. It’s really a whole set of interrelated issues.

If you would think of the fact that you’ve got a major massive amount of real estate and land that’s being impacted for professional sports. And then you’ve got the opportunity to have in essence, discovery centers, where you’ve got young kids growing up learning these practices and their parents thinking about how to integrate them and spread the more energy-efficient practices.

So, we stopped having to be dependent on foreign oil and stopped having to worry about waking up every day, reading the paper about what happens in the Middle East. It offers a tremendous amount of creativity and we’re seeing the best and brightest in American industry. And if I can be so bold, I think that this might end up being the way we save our economy. Because when we get the best and brightest in American industry, such as John’s done with electronic recycling. When you get the brightest minds in this country, all trying to work on solutions, we’re going to start making products that the world wants to buy. And when we’re making products the world wants to buy, it’s going to force China to compete to try to solve things environmentally. And all of a sudden, we re-energize our economy. We put people into green cars. We put people into electronic cars. We’ve retrofit our systems and sports can be a stimulant to lead the way in all of this.

John: Okay. So Leigh, now these are amazing initiatives. Many of them, if not most of them, are paradigm-shifting from what we’re all used to. You’ve worked with these billionaire owners who have been titans in business. Prior to them ever even getting involved with sports. What is it like working with them? And the proposition for them, these sound amazing. But is there also a money saving element to this? Is the proposition that you bring to them, not only do they help change the world and leave a great legacy of helping to save the environment, but can you also save them money in the process?

Leigh: I’ll take the Washington National Stadium, for example, if low-flow plumbing reduces water consumption by 37%, it saves 3.6 million gallons a year. If you use that lighting system, you save 21% in terms of power.

John: Right.

Leigh: If you cut, you can go energy system by energy system. And you will find that Fenway Park in the Red Sox, they put 28 solar panels and it offsets 37% of the natural gas which was used to heat the stadium’s water supply. In Safeco Field, they saved half-million dollars by cutting natural gas and electricity usage by 36% and 18% over two years. They recycle 342 tons of plastic. And you can go on and on. Citizens Park for the Phillies purchased about 250,000 renewable energy credits to offset utility power use for all of 2008 and 2009.

So yes, these savings are really huge. Philips Arena which is going to be used for the Hawks and the Thrasher is LEED-certified. They’re going to save hundreds of millions of dollars in energy costs. Also, in the NBA, you’ve got the Phoenix Suns Arena which added 1100 solar panels, which gives them enough energy to power the equivalent of 26 home games a year. So, you have huge energy savings which are coming back to teams, that are going ahead and being creative.

We met with the Minnesota Timberwolves. They’ve got the first green roof on any arena in the country, which is going to capture a million gallons of stormwater runoff, and it’s going to help in terms of how that water gets diverted away from the Mississippi River. [sigh] And so there are all sorts of ancillary benefits.

John: Sure.

Leigh: This ends up saving money. As I said, you’re going to have energy providers. So, [crosstalk]

John: So, it’s really is a misconception, Leigh, that all of our listeners should hear loud and clear from you that it’s more expensive to go green. It’s really not.

Leigh: No. There are times where, like anything, there’s an initial costs [crosstalk] to put the system in.

John: Sure.

Leigh: But then, it ends up generating massive savings over time. And so, we’ve been able to sort of show the way. And in many of these situations, it’s the wind, it’s Sun, its reflect, it’s the right surfacing, all of this is made available by the genius of American technology. It’s putting our brains back to work, with respect to moving out of a period where energy was just cheap and available to a time of more scarcity.

John: Leigh, before I even became a friend of yours and got to see you upfront and personal, in action. You were known, you made your mark, by insisting that every contract that you negotiated for your players included a clause where they gave back. And I know to date, the number is over a hundred million dollars that your athletes have donated. I mean, it’s a huge number and I want you to share that number with our audience. But is now being green another part of your mandatory clauses that you insist, that your athletes are part of this Green Revolution?

Leigh: Yes. I mean, I talked with every young athlete, about the need to be environmentally aware and to be part of this movement. Because this is the number one issue to me. If we don’t move rapidly to save our species. Remember, the planet will do just fine. The planet survived Ice Ages. The Earth is not imperiled. It’s our species and our quality of life as human beings that’s imperil. The Earth can survive anything. The dung beetle will be here, right? [laughs]

If you go back, 200 million years, the cockroach was here. But that doesn’t help you and my children very much. You know, we’ve established hundreds of high school scholarship funds, hundreds of collegiate scholarship funds. The amount of money that the athletes have raised is in the hundreds and hundreds of millions. I’ve challenged each of them to find something in their own life they’d like to leave a legacy for. Whether it’s moving single mothers into the first homes. At the [inaudible] and outfitting their homes. Or raising money for the fund for endangered species at the San Diego Zoo. Programs that address children’s literacy in Kansas City, that help with at-risk children in Seattle, that send kids to college on scholarships, each athlete finds a way to make a fundamental difference in the world and to retrace their roots.

John: Leigh, I know, our listeners are just so excited to hear you today. And I want them to also know that you do Twitter. That you live in a modern world and you’re @SteinbergSports on Twitter. And also, leighsteinberg.com if they want to learn more about you.

But I remember having dinner with you one night. And you were telling me so many amazing stories. But one of the funny stories I remember is about our children and your son and yourself watching a Cowboy football game. And I know how close you are with the Cowboy organization and with Mr. Jerry Jones and all that. And I think your son turns to you, halfway through the game and said, “Dad, how come you didn’t represent Tony Romo?” And I know you’ve had, I think what, eight number one picks?

Leigh: Well, I’ve had the very first pick in the first round of the NFL draft.

John: Eight times?

Leigh: Eight times.

John:There you go. And I know you turned to him, I know the punchline and you turn to him and you said, “Son if it was that easy, everyone would do it.”

Leigh: Well, [laughs] no. It was just invariably my children would pick as their favorite players. It didn’t matter. I could have 90 of the Pro Bowl players and if I was representing Steve Young, my son’s favorite was Joe Montana.

John: But I bring that up, not to make- I just, because my kids make make fun of me all the time, in so many ways. And not even make fun, they always are challenging us and [crosstalk]

Leigh: Oh, it didn’t matter. I mean, I could have the top 10 rated players. But why didn’t I have Randy Moss? Or I didn’t have Michael Irvin.

John: That’s right. But I brought that up for a different reason. And I brought that up because I know you also told me the story about being young and asking your pops, what he had done in the second world war to help fight the battle against global tyranny.

Leigh: Right.

John: And so, I want to know more as we end this show and leave our listeners something to think about. Why do you do what you do? We have about a minute left and I want to talk about the legacy of Leigh Steinberg.

Leigh: Well, I think I said to you, John, I was raised by a father who said, there’s no they in the world. When you look for someone to solve basic problems, the they is you, and the day is me. And I’m on this one issue.

Traumatized by the fact that our children are going to come to us and ask, didn’t we know that fossil fuel was going away? Didn’t we know that our water and our air were imperiled and water wars were coming? Did we not know that the quality of life, for the very first time in the history of this country, was about to go down and we could do something to change it? And what didn’t we know and why didn’t we do it? And I want to have an answer to that question. And I think, that at least for myself, and I don’t want to judge other people. I want to be part of that solution. Not part of the problem.

John: Leigh, we’re going to ask you to come back next year and talk about all the things that have happened over the next course here because you are one of the great leaders in the sports world. And I just want to tell you, to Mike and I and our listeners out there, inspiration is an understatement for what you do and what you’ve done in your story career. Leigh Steinberg, we are humbled and honored to have you today on our show. And I just want to tell you once again, that you are living proof that green is good.

Leigh: Thank you so much.

John: 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.

John Shegerian: This edition of the Impact podcast is brought to you by ERI. ERI has a mission to protect people, the planet, and your privacy. And it’s the largest fully integrated IT and electronics asset disposition provider, and cybersecurity-focused hardware destruction company in the United States, and maybe even the world. For more information on how ERI can help your business properly dispose of outdated electronic hardware devices, please visit eridirect.com.

John: Welcome to another edition of the impact podcast. This is a really special edition because we’ve got with us, John Holden, who’s the executive producer, and the host of Earth with John Holden. Welcome to our show today, John.

John Holden: Hello, John. It’s great to be here with you.

John: You know, John, you have such a story career. You’re a 6-time Emmy Award winner, and just one of the most esteemed journalists on this whole great planet, which is sitting behind you, which I love. I love the background behind you. And before I get to asking some important questions of what’s going on, and what your career has been about, I’d love you to share with our listeners and our viewers, the John Holden story. Where did the journey begin and how did you even get here?

John H: I’m not sure how I got here with this planet behind me. But, you can find all kinds of great backgrounds these days. But, yeah, I was born in South Dakota. And as far as environmental, that might have been the first key to an interest in the environment because I grew up in a farm. And, we had a lot of acres of the farm, the beef cattle, the milk cattle. And so, you’re really in touch with the environment there. And, the thing about farming is, everything is dependent upon the weather, and how good you are at what you do with the land. So, that taught me to care for the land and taught me that you can get wiped out. Kind of like, people are doing right now, being wiped up because of climate change, and what’s happening. But there, it’s always been risky as a farmer, you know, growing up.

And then, broadcasting neighbor was Tom Brokaw from Bristol, South Dakota. He was born and went to the University of South Dakota. I’ve met him several times. I mean, a really nice guy, salt of the earth, and really was a solid guy. And I met him at several launches of the Space Shuttle over the years. And then, as far as getting into television, I went to the University of Nebraska. I loved it there. Big red football and-

John: Cornhuskers!

John H: Yeah, Cornhuskers. And I really wanted to see the game. So, I kind of went and applied to work with the University of Nebraska media department. And they said, “Oh, we need a film processor.” So, I did film processing and went to all the games free. I met all the players, met Bob Devaney before coach Tom Osborne and interviewed them. But I actually was close to always brushing shoulders of them because I’d have to pick up the film, run back during halftime of the Big Red Game, and split the defense and the offense, so that they can right away, even at halftime, go in and see, “What did you do wrong?” That’s how fast things were happening.

Then, that was getting me kind of into media. I’m not into sports other than that. I love watching football, so. And then, I was in journalism. I graduated with a journalism degree from the University of Nebraska. And, I think, what really made me think that I could make it in that is, we had great guys and women in the journalism department. Fantastic. A lot more from Omaha, Lincoln, the big cities, and Nebraska. And they were from the TV stations there. They were from the radio stations, from the son of the or owner of the many of the stations. And, we had a contest where we would all write scripts for a documentary. I’m talking about the mid-70s right now. We did a contest, and I wrote a script, and I did a script on whenever I travel across Nebraska, I’d see the remains of a town sitting there, and every time it passes, it is turning more into the Earth. It’s crumbling away and it probably been a successful town in the turn of the century, but obviously, it had died years ago.

So, I did a story. I looked up information, and I decided to do story on what makes a town live, what makes a town die. I found 2 towns next to each other. One town was nearly dying, population is all moving way, very few people left. The other town was just doing really well and flourishing. So, I did an hour documentary on, “A Tale of 2 Towns.” And I wrote, and interviewed. I mean, the reason one was successful, it was the people who was the pride, and it was the religion. They were a Mennonite type. There was a cross between Amish and Mennonite in there, but they were really strong churches, and the people and anything happened, they needed something constructed, the whole town would help them construct the barn, or whatever, something burned, they’d all get together. The other town didn’t have that. So, I did that, and that script got chosen as the best script. And, the winner got to have it produced. So, I became the producer of a documentary and it aired on PBS or Nebraska public television. And so, back when I was just a teenager, or just about turning twenty, I had my first documentary produced with all the class. I was with the Nebraska, and then, we shot the interviews and kind of do the same thing I’m doing right now. This would have been the year 1976, probably, and it aired on public television there.

John: You were off to the races as it grows.

John H: Yeah. So, from there it was on to Green Bay, Wisconsin, or stations in Nebraska. Green Bay Wisconsin with the Green Bay Packers and doing stuff with them. And then, finally went down to Miami to a show called PM Magazine, which is a nightly- yeah, and, that really got me into world stories because they needed an adventure page producer. At PM Magazine, they told me, “We don’t care what you do. We like your scripts.” At this time, I didn’t do anything on air. I’m writing and producing, wearing all those [inaudible], and shooting, editing, shooting, producing, writing. Everything but on camera. But, I find the people to put on camera and stuff. So, they said, “there’s only one thing we ask of you as you find stories around the globe, it could be anywhere, is that we can’t spend one penny. You do not have a budget, not one penny. Other than maybe a hundred bucks per diem or whatever.”

John: Wow.

John H: So, I said, “Wow, how do you do that?” So, I started looking around, and I’d look up stuff on the internet, and I’d find companies that would do exotic travel. And, I’d called them, say, “I’m with so-called PM Magazine, nightly entertainment shows.” Entertainment Tonight was its main competitor and we are beating them at the time. And I said, “I’d like to go to this-” over the Galapagos Islands is one. “I’d like to go to the Galapagos Islands and do the theory of evolution, Charles Darwin Theory.” And they said, “Oh, we’d love to have you, and we’ll take care of everything. We’ll take care of your flights. We’ll take care of your food.” And then, it became, I find places all over the world. Free food, free everything, other than the crew coming with me. We had a blast doing that.

Even went to New Guinea to discover if there’s still cannibalism, and went down this epic river in the New Guinea in search of cannibalism and found seven hundred tribes each speaking a different language. And, is there cannibalism? Yeah, they have little wars and maybe somebody will get killed and I had died from-

John: Oh my gosh.

John H: Yeah. Every village you come to, which is about every half-mile, totally different language spoken, except they would have missionary shirts on that would say Coca-Cola or something that they don’t know what it said. But, it was something from a new land or America. And, they would all speak pidgin English, they did understand that. Cannibalism simply as what my guide from Australia said, is that “Somebody gets killed, okay? And, to celebrate their heritage and their history, they all sit down and we’ll, scrape, scrape, scrape and nibble. Do a little nibble.” All gather around and nibble a little bit to celebrate their cannibalistic ancestry.

John: Wow. So when did you come up with, take all of your experiences, your education, and then, also you’re in the field, real-life experiences, and producing, and editing, and writing, and come up with this wonderful show that you have called “Earth with John Holden”?

John H: I mean, it started as a segment called “The Green Room” which was obviously about green, and then it kind of developed into Earth, because the Green Room just didn’t tell the whole story. It’s named Earth, easy. I guess really first stories for that were probably done in 2014, maybe, I mean, 2009 is when I started doing segments as environmental and I love environmental stories. I’d worked for NBC for a while and it had been a feature order and I love doing stories on people and some environmental stories and stuff. So, when I left, I became freelance way back in the 90s.

And then, in the 2000s, I started doing stuff for everybody, not just NBCn but ABC, and Fox, a lot of Fox stuff. And then, just doing stories out there. They’re always one and a half minutes to 2 minutes long and it will be people-type stories, or just crazy-type people and interesting things, but always telling a story and having a personality. And then, I just kind of- I have an interest, like I said from the beginning, in just the environment, coming from a farm. So, those were really, I think Obama would have been the president. And there was obviously interest then in saving our planet and Al Gore with what he did. So, I started [inaudible] on the time. That’s when I started doing stories, and they really took off.

John: So, for our listeners and viewers, we’ve got John Holden with us. He’s executive producer, the journalist, and the host of “Earth with John Holden”. You could find him at earthwithjohnholden.com. You can find them also on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Vimeo, and YouTube. You know, John, you’ve done so many stories over the years in your, no pun intended, in your story career. Who’s an individual who has significantly impacted sustainability, the circular economy revolution, and the future of the environment that stands out? I know it’s hard to choose among all your children, and I’m not trying to make you make Sophie’s choice or anything, but who’s some standouts that are inspiring to you, that you really love to cover, and that you’d love to share with our listeners and our viewers?

John H: Well, you know what? There’s a great staff at the Star Media producers and researchers. So, they’re always looking up things. Because, man, there’s so many things going on right now, and they’re such a key. Every company right now has a sustainability manager involved in marketing and stuff. So, involved in-

John: But that’s that relatively a new phenomenon.

John H: That’s new, yeah.

John: That’s relatively new.

John H: And that’s what’s happening. Now, I’m always incorporating them. But, going back to over the years of doing this, really since 2009, 2010. Star Media, to give you a little bit of a background, the company is Star Media, that I work with bunch of people, about a dozen people are the researchers, producers, and editor, and they’re coming up with ideas. When I’d found the company, you know, they look at companies who know what’s the green angle to what they really want to spend their money on because everybody wants to be thought well off.

John: Of course.

John H: I think every company I’ve ever met has an interest in the environment. And you know, you used to be, just maybe make money while now it’s make money but also do a good thing too.

John: Right.

John H: They found a person named Fisk Johnson. SC Johnson is the name of the company he owns. He’s the kind of guy born of the golden spoon, born into it from his family, with right away you’re born, all of a sudden, “Okay, you have a hundred companies under you, everything from Windex to Glade.” It’s a family product company of all the products you find in your home, okay.

John: Iconic brands that we all grew up with, iconic brands that we all grew up with.

John H: Yeah. I mean, the most common brands out there and I’ll bet you look in your house, you got thirty, forty, fifty items in your bathroom and your kitchen that were all-

John: Right.

John H: SC Johnson. They’re all separate companies and stuff and they’re all under Fisk and Fisk himself, he’s about my age, real nice guy. I thought, when I talked to him, I felt like I was talking to my brother or something. He’s not anybody you think has a lot of money. You’ll think he was just the most down to earth person you’ve ever met, and he’s a scuba diver, and forty-five years, he’s been scuba diving. And he’s noticed really how bad the oceans have gotten from plastic pollution. And he showed me just the video of what he found in like places off of Panama and Haiti and where you know the reef are wrapped in plastic and fish life are, even no matter how deep you go, even the smallest organism has remnants of plastic, they’re eating plastic. So it’s like, of course, that’s affecting us, you know. The marine life affects us too, even if they’re under the sea.

John: Sure.

John H: He’s virtually seeing and he says, there’s over 8 million tons of plastic pouring in every year and the ocean and you see just hordes of it in islands in Indonesia, China, just it is really bad. And so, what he did, he came up with an idea of how do you at least do a part in saving our oceans from plastic by partnering with a company in Bali. And so, I flew to Bali which was wonderful long flight, but nice, I saw a lot of movies all way there. And, you know, you always think of Bali is just these beautiful beaches. But when you go to Bali, yeah, you see beautiful beaches but it’s the hotel, these 4, 5-star hotels that have crews go out every day and scrape the plastic off. And yeah, then you take the picture by every wave coming in, there’s more plastic coming in. By the end of the day, there’s waste all over the beach again, when the waves come in and leave plastic and they got to clean it again. So, you go to some of the public beaches there and they’re bad. It’s just, I mean, walking on plastic and every kind of trash you can imagine. So, he thought that was a good way to start what he started for a program in partnering with a company that would that called itself a plastic bank. And plastic banks are actually just like banks we think of, only the deal and the currency of plastic, they take plastic in, and they pay the people that bring it in, in crypto or digital tokens by the pounds or by the ton of plastic. And so, you have all these people in Bali are, a lot of poor people, a lot of people that have absolutely no comprehension of how much they’re polluting our oceans, and they’re just throwing plastic, whatever. But now, “Whoa, plastic is worth something.” Now, they’re all out cleaning up, picking up plastic, going on the waters, and every day they’re cleaning the beaches, putting it in bags, and they go into town, the villages there, to a plastic bag with big bags. They weigh them and then they say, “Okay. You got a hundred pounds of plastic here. And you can have either cash or we’ll give you a digital token,” which you can use it in, even the grocery stores and stuff there in Bali, take digital tokens.

John: Wow.

John H: Yeah, so the people had learned how to save. It’s the first time they’ve ever saved and get this, if they’d gotten digital tokens are cryptocurrency, can you imagine-? I did the story a couple of years ago. Do you imagine what the price of crypto going up would some of these people might have had if they didn’t spend their tokens?

John: Right, right, right, right.

John H: Yeah. So yeah, I mean, it’s like they’re suddenly realizing, “Oh, I could make some money.” And so, it’s helping clean the waters, it’s helping clean the beaches, it’s helping clean the rivers going in, it’s helping the people with the economy and what does a bank do with the plastic? They sell back to like, Fisk Johnson who’s partnering with all of this. And he’s using all the plastic to be recycled to make his products now, like Windex, which the new Windex bottle is 100% recycled ocean plastic, 100%.

John: I didn’t realize that.

John H: Yes.

John: That’s great.

John H: And so, anyone can do that with all these products. So, he got this guy, he could do anything, just keep raking in money. But he’s just like trying to find this circular economy of saving the oceans of plastic, clean it up, turn it in for crypto, recycle, and we can use the plastic over again.

John: What a great [inaudible].

John H: Yeah. So, I hit that [inaudible] out of my mind to somebody who’s found a way that could catch on and get into more and more countries.

John: You know, John, you do all these very positive stories. You yourself were a very positive human being and you exude great energy that is uplifting but I can’t help to ask you about what we’re living through right now. Yesterday, I know you we, off the air, talked, shared a little bit about you just coming back from Europe. Yesterday in Italy, it rained thirty-four inches in twenty-four hours, which is more than the rainfall in an entire year in Seattle. It’s never happened before in all the history of that part of the world. And, you know, I live in California, literally the air quality control index in today, the air quality index in Fresno is in the 170s because of all the smoke coming down on us from the fires in Northern California. You know, where are we right now in our journey? You know, sometimes I feel like you’re in my generation which we’re both the same collective generation, inherited a diamond, but we’re turning over sort of a pile of tin to the Greta Thunberg’s or to our children and our grandchildren. How can we reverse that when all these big signals are happening in and around us? What are your thoughts?

John H: Well, any at least with these companies, like, with Earth, the secret is we’re looking at what companies are doing and every company seems to have different programs. It’s like what you just mentioned, sustainability managers. Every company’s got a sustainability manager and the departments are growing and they’re doing things like, “Okay, we’re doing this kind of a program in cleaning up our beach or our parks,” or whatever, or the recycling programs, and all. But every company is doing something and that’s growing because these people are becoming major players in companies now. And probably the first person I check with and check with a company to say, “Hey, there’s an issue facing our planet.” Maybe it’s, you know, the combustion engines or renewable energy or health care solutions or autonomous vehicles. I mean, just whatever your some issue, “Okay. What are we doing about it?”

Well, now here’s a company that’s doing something about it. So, I mean, I’m taking a company perspective and it might be a lot of companies doing that. But some companies, you know, really going over overboard and with ideas that are catching on and other companies can grab to because of all these environmental solutions, people aren’t saying, “Here’s my solutions. I don’t want anybody else to know about it. I’m putting a copyright on it.” It’s like, “Hey, this is for our planet and we want everybody to-”

John: Every company’s happy when you show up at their door like just-

John H: Oh, yeah. I’m not 60 Minutes, you know, I could begin to-

John: No. You’re [inaudible], you’re the opposite. You’re focusing on positivity. So, you’re saying you focus on the positivity of all these great iconic brands that are truly working to push back against all the damage we’ve done. And that’s how you stay positive and keep marching forward every day. By producing Earth with John Holden and focusing on positivity.

John H: Yeah. And it’s really fun. I mean, the ideas are just ranged from well, like, let me tell you one story I just did last month was the food problem, you know, food scarcity. We’re going to have 10 billion people, supposedly by the year 2050, how do you feed that many people? Is there enough land to grow that much food? So I found a guy with a company called IWI, I-W-I. He’s from Spain, but he’s starting up this all over the world. He’s got a way to make desert land farmable. Well, how do you do that? So, he goes to the desert- we shot the story in New Mexico and I’d flew in El Paso and drove a long distance until we got into the desert, right next to the border wall of Mexico. And here in the middle of the desert of New Mexico is a something out of the moonscape of canals that have been dug with water. That’s the aquifer underneath the desert sand, that saltwater. Well, what do you raise in saltwater? Oh, well, what comes from saltwater CLG. What is CLG good for? Filled with protein and it’s the omega-3. That’s CLG is the source of Omega-3 and people buy, you know, like fish pills and all that thinking, “Okay, that’s how I’m going to get my omega-3.”

Well, no, the only reason fish have omega-3 is because they eat CLG. So this guy thought, “Well, if I take CLG, the seeds and just seed the water of the deserts and you can dig down and it’s unlimited saltwater. So, he has literally fields of CLG growing in the middle of the desert that’s harvested every day. I mean, you think of one corn crop or something, you know, or I mean, soy beans or something once a year or once a season, this is every day, tons of CLG being produced and then they dry it. It’s being used for protein, for foods, for nutrients. And he calls it the super vegetable of the future and he thinks that every desert in the world can become an arable land of CLG that is going to be our food. And you can make CLD, might not taste really good, but you can make it taste good. I mean, you’d be amazed what-

John: You liked it. Like just say this, you enjoyed the taste.

John H: I didn’t like taking the CLG and just eating it raw.

John: No, no.

John H: I would have, “Hey, can I have a little pepper on it?”

John: No, no, no. But you enjoyed the product that he shares with you?

John H: Yeah.

John: Yeah, okay.

John H: The products, and I mean, what’s going to be coming down the pike are, I’m sure going to be energy bars, and whatnot, CLG [inaudible].

John: Right, right.

John H: Right now, it’s mostly the nutrients and the things for, you know, mind and your body and taking capsules, you know, just health foods that are being made from it and so they probably have about fifteen, twenty different kinds of health food, or-

John: That’s wonderful. That’s wonderful.

John H: Yeah, and he’s doing that in the deserts of Texas, the deserts of New Mexico. He’s from Spain. He’s getting people, you know, into his company that are partnering with them saying, “Let’s do the deserts of the world,” you know.

John: You know, John, when I was doing my prep work on you, which was just a joy because all you’ve done is really spread so much positivity over the length of your career. Well, like I shared with you, off the air, we need fifty more of you, really, because the rest of the news, the mainstream news, has become so negative in terms of what they’re putting out there nowadays. It’s such a darn shame, but one of the great stories I read about you goes back to your home, State of South Dakota, where you did a human interest story in the late 70s, on a gentleman, who was carving an entire mountain. Can you share a little bit about that story and what that meant to you?

John H: That’s kind of still a favorite just because it’s my first story and it was because I was getting into news at that time. I was a news reporter, although later on became just producer and stuff. And then, with MBC down the road, I got back on the air again.

John: Right.

John H: As a feature reporter. But that time, I was just getting into wanting to do people stories and this little town in Nebraska called Kearney, Nebraska and it’ll station called MTV and they said, “Hey, I like your stuff. Why don’t you just go out and find stories?” And I said, “Well, how far can I go for my story?” And they said, “Go as far as you want.” It wasn’t quite like PM magazine where they said, “as long as it doesn’t cost anything.” They gave me some money to go travel and I’d always, as a kid growing up, I’d always wanted to do a meet the guy that was carving a giant mountain in South Dakota called Crazy Horse Monument. If people have been there, it’s a monument mountain. It’s been carved down to Chief Crazy Horse, it’s the world’s largest mountain carving. It’s also known as the 8th Wonder of the world, but it’s been under carving for years. And it’s in the Black Hills of South Dakota where Mount Rushmore is the 4 faces. So I thought well, and if they’re letting me go, I just took off started driving and I thought, “I’m going to go back to South Dakota, which is the Black Hills and near the Nebraska border. So, I’m not too far out of the range, but it’s a human interest story anybody’s going to want.” So, I drove to this place where the guy was carving the mountain.

It’s a big tourist attraction, Korczak Ziolkowski, the bearded giant carving it, and he’s no longer alive. But at that time, he was at it dynamiting away. And as I drove up to the mountain, I could see blasts going off in the mountains and you can see the hand of Crazy Horse coming out in the horse’s head and the mountain itself, I think, I’m trying to remember, Korczak had worked on the Mount Rushmore in carving the 4 faces with Gutzon Borglum, who is behind the Mount Rushmore. So that’s how he knew how to carve mountains because he worked under the best. But this is Crazy Horse was forty times bigger. I mean, again, the biggest mountain carving in the world.

John: How long did it take, John? How long did it take?

John H: This can take lifetimes, the carve.

John: So, it’s still a work in progress.

John H: Still work in progress.

John: Wow.

John H: He worked on it for, I think, thirty-six years before he died on it. This would have been the year right after I got out of college. In fact, after I did that story on the Table of Two Towns, it was the year 1978, I guess ’79, and I drove up to that mountain, saw the blast going off and I was shooting my own stuff then. I was the old one-man-band. You put a camera, [inaudible[ on your shoulder, hold the mic out, you walk up and talk to people. Unfortunately, that’s the way some camera people are again back to doing that to save money, but I went into the center there at Mount Rushmore, at Crazy Horse. And there was a woman in there, and I said, “I’m from a TV station in Nebraska. I want to go interview that guy up there on the mountain that’s carving.” And she says, “Nobody goes up to bother Korczak Ziolkowski. Nobody.” She says, “You interview me.” I said, “And who are you?” She says, “I’m Ruth. I’m in charge of the lobby here or the, you know, the souvenirs shop and everything. So I’ll let you get in free. You don’t have to pay. And you can interview me and I’ll show you the little monument that he’s carving here, a little small part of it and tell you about what he’s doing up there and then through the window, maybe you can see the mountain.”

So I said, “Well, I really wanted to do more than that. I want to meet the guy.” She said, “No, no. Everybody wants to interview Korczak. We don’t let anybody interview Korczak. He’s got a mountain to carve.” Okay, so I walk outside, go to my car, get my camera out and a jeep drives up, the kids in there saying, “Hey, who are you?” And I said, “I’m from a station in Nebraska.” “What are you doing here?” I said, “I want to interview the guy that’s on the mountain. But the lady inside said I can’t go up there,” and he says, “Wait a minute, mom won’t let you go up and interview dad? Bullshit.” Excuse me, so he said, “Jump in with me.” So, I jump into them. He takes me, you know, all over to the top of the mountain. And on the top of his head, that’s being carved, and I can see explosions going off, and here’s this bearded guy with a big cowboy hat on, and we get out of the jeep, and he just turns around sees me, and he comes at me in a rage, “Who the hell are you? How the hell did you get up here?”

And I said, “Well, your son took me up here.” He says, “Well, now that you’re up here, I’m not going to take you back. Get in.” And then, I jumped in his truck and he said, “What do you know about dynamiting?” I said, “I don’t know anything about dynamite.” He said, “I’ll teach you.” And so, they said, “Here we got to get this. Set the dynamite here.” You know, we’re trying to do so. He wanted me to set things and, I mean, I didn’t like the stuff.

John: Right, right, right.

John H: And he was pointing this. He got to get this done today. I got to do that. He said, “I got 10 kids,” and all the kids are, you know, they’re all just interested in, mostly, sons, they’re all just interested in girls, “I’ve got a mountain to carve.” He started telling me a story and so I have my camera. I’m pointing it at him and every time he says, “Put that damn camera down.” He says, “That’s all you people are interested in interviews.” I said, “I got work to do.” He says, “The last person that came here to try to interview me, I told him where to go. His name was Morley Schafer from 60 Minutes,” I said, “That’s a big show. He says, “Yeah, but I said I didn’t want that guy up here.” He says, “How do I know what he’s going to ask me and I don’t have time. So I had my wife deal with him. And so, but I wouldn’t let him up here.” That’s why he said, “I’m surprised you got up here.”

So, anyway, I did finally get an interview with him and we hit it off, and pretty soon he’s telling me all his stories of everything from getting a call from, once from a drunken party in which George McGovern called, says, “Hey, Korczak, I have a friend here wants to talk to you. Can you talk to him?”, “Yeah. Who is it?” And he gets on the phone and the guy says, “Korczak, I understand you worked on the 4 faces. Is there room for another face?” And then, Korczak said to him, “Ted Kennedy,” he says, “I can tell you’re drunk and no, there’s not room for- I can’t believe you’re asking. You think this is just a big joke?” He says, “No, there’s no room for another face. And nobody’s going to carve a monument to your brother, John Kennedy.” Then, he hung up on him. I mean, that’s just one of the stories I remember him-

John: Wow.

John H: So, he’s taking me, and then, we’re doing more stories about, you know, what made him want to do this. He says there’s an Indian in this mountain and Chief Sitting Bull had come to him and said “You, White man, have your heroes while we have our heroes in the Indian lore too. We want you to uncover one and he’s in that mountain.” So, he’s started uncovering this giant mountain. And anyway, so I spent a day with him on the mountain, I know which sound like anybody, and in fact his own family now, Korczak is dead, Ruth is dead, his wife, but all sons are still working. I’d love to get together with his sons and tell them some of the stories I heard because I don’t think he would even told them the stories. But one thing he did was, he said, “I got to take you down and show you something.”

So, he took me to all the bottom of the mountain and it drove all the way down his jeep. And then, we come to the bottom of the mountain. And here’s this big door that says, “Korczak, Storyteller” in stone. And I said, “What’s that?” He says, “That’s where I’m going to live the rest of my life after I’m dead.” And then, so he said, “Here, open the door.” And I tried pulling open the door of this big giant mountain door, and I couldn’t get over it. So, he literally just shoved me aside, took it. And he’s a mountain of a man, pulls this thing open. And here’s his big chamber in the mountain underneath with a solitary coffin, or I mean, you know, tomb.

John: Like a crypt. Like he was like at a crypt.

John H: A giant crypt, yeah. So, he walks in, the sun was just a setting sun. The sun is just perfect. He walks in. He sits down on his tomb, his crypt, and he’s just sitting there stroking his big beard, and totally oblivious to me. And he says, “I’m going to like it here.” He says, “Ruth won’t come in here. She refuses to set foot, but it’s seventy-two degrees in here year-round. This is going to be a nice place to be.” And then-

John: He figured it all out.

John H: That was the last shot.

John: He figured it all out.

John H: Yeah, sitting in his tomb, underneath his mountain, and it was pretty-

John: He knew who he was. But he also knew where he was going to go. And he was good with it.

John H: Here’s the funny thing. I probably shouldn’t even tell this because I don’t know how many people visit Crazy Horse, but he said, “Hey, I want you to eat dinner with me and the family.” I said, “I don’t think your wife’s going to want me.” And he said, “No.” So, he took me, and says, “We’re going to eat.” So, he goes into this little, just modest little place home right next to where the souvenirs are and it’s a little checkerboard table, you know, with a cloth and plastic, everything just looks like, you know, very, very modest and they got some chicken and stuff laid out. And Ruth, his wife, is there, making the dinner and she looks and just glares at me. And then, Korczak says to her, “Ruth, I got a guest. He’s eating with us tonight.” She just looks at him, looks at me, and it turns back to cooking again. And then, so I ate with them. She never said a word to me. She was mad. But the family is around there. They are all eating and then, in the middle of the food that we’re reaching over, knocking it over every once in a while to get the butter, pass the pepper, pass the salt, reaching over, grabbing it.

And I say, “You know, this thing here in the middle of the table, as a sculpture, it looks a lot like your most famous sculpture up above in the souvenir shop that has Mona Lisa [inaudible] wraps around it. Nobody’s allowed to get near.” He says, “Well, yeah, this is my deal and band, or a deal and horse carving. It’s worth I don’t know how many million,” and I said, “Well, why is it sitting here in the middle of the table?” He says, “You think I’d put a multi-million dollar carving of mine, my most famous carving up where people can touch it?” He said, “No, that’s a fake.” He said, I’d have it here at the dinner so we can, you know, do whatever we want. I mean, it was, literally, fall over. They lift it up again.

John: Oh my God.

John H: That’s where his most famous carving is.

John: On the dinner table?

John H: On the dinner table, yeah, where everybody eating around it. So, if the Joukowsky family watches, “Hey, now, we know.”

John: Now, we know. Hey, for our listeners and viewers who just joined us, we’re so excited and honored to have with us today, the hosts of Earth with John Holden, John Holden himself. You can find them in earthwithjohnholden.com, on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Vimeo, and YouTube. John, your show truly is a bastion of possibilities and positivity. What do you think your effect has been on investors and other people who watch it to get inspired and then, they go on to either create companies that are making a difference in ESG circular economy or ESG, or they invest in companies that are doing like-minded things, to fight climate change, and create a better world for all of us?

John H: Well, you know, I mean, that’s kind of like all the stories and again, the company, Star Media, that I work with has the staff of researchers. So, they’re looking for companies that are green, that are concerned with ESG, you know, the environment, society, and governance and, you know, it always used to be that if you’re investing in things you’d best either number one to make money or maybe invest to do good, you know.

John: Right.

John H: But not one or the other because if you invest to do good, then you’re probably not making money. it’s probably costing too much. Well, now kind of like tables have turned and a lot of things now investors are looking at companies that are green that before they’ll even invest in, and that that they want to know what their environmental plans are, what they’re doing for the environment. They want to know what they’re doing for their communities and society, and they want to know that they’re going to be meeting the governance. I mean, you know, by the year 2050, we’re going to be Net Zero, is the big thing, you know. It’s all about, well, if it’s making cars, what about electric cars? You know, what’s your end, or from oil, or what about going to natural gas, you know, and in oil exploration. So, I’ve done 2 stories on a couple of companies.

One was called MFS Investment, Boston. What was the need about that is there, that was back in 1924, they started the first mutual fund. So, they invented the mutual fund that got people to the average joe to be able to invest, you know, before then, it was, you know, who knew about investing. Well, 1924, the first investment fund, they still own it. When I went to the story there. I think they’re in the Prudential Building there in downtown Boston, really neat company, their CEO is Carol Geremia. And she really was passionate about the, you know, what direction she takes investing, and they don’t even think of investing unless the company has, you know, in their portfolios, that they’re doing this green, or their doing that green and that. So, that when you invest, okay, then you’re guaranteed that whoever is your investing in is going to have a green, you know, say, or I mean, outlook, so that’s all they do. Now, from the first mutual fund now to today, they’re still doing the same, you know, responsible environmental thought. But now, it’s all about that, it’s got to be this ESG-minded in order to or else they’re not going to invest in you, you know, it’s all about that.

John: John, give us a little teaser on some shows that we’ll be looking for in 2022 that you’re either taped already or you’re planning on taping and covering. Give us a little teaser before we say goodbye for today.

John H: Okay. Well, I just got back from one trip. That was Germany, Spain. And now, the cotton fields of Tech tour, Louisiana, and in Germany, it was a company called Mubaya and what they do, you’re not going to really understand or see that name anywhere, because they do the parts that are in a lot of cars, almost all cars that make them lightweight. So, their whole thing is making cars lightweight so that they get better gas mileage. And the whole thing now is they don’t even talk about combustion engines anymore cause everybody there in Germany is going electric. And what was really interested in their showroom is that they have a 2014 Volkswagen on display called The Leader, I think it’s called the XL1. This is back in the year 2014-2015, it got one hundred kilometers per 1 liter of fuel. Okay, so put in 1 liter of fuel, you can go a hundred and that’s like going to, you know, one gallon a hundred miles, you know, and that was back in 2014. They only made 3 of them and they stopped because now it’s all about electric and it’s all about making it lightweight. So, the future cars out, it’s just going to be lightweight electric vehicles. And I mean, whether it’s Volkswagen, whether it’s, you know, the other German manufacturers of cars, it’s all going to be lightweight.

And then, in Spain, kind of interesting, it’s just got interesting too. Also, in Germany, there’s a lot of fishnets. You talk about plastic polluting our oceans. Fishnets are polluting our oceans. And so, I did a company that partnered with Aquafil in Italy and they’re taking fishnets, taken out of the ocean to make fiber and then they’re creating carpet, you know, high and carpet out of fishnet from the ocean that’s all recyclable. So, they’re also completing the circle of taking things from the ocean and using it again, making high in fiber, and then that company is called Object Carpet and you can get really great carpet, you know, that used to be fishnet from the ocean.

And then in Spain, there was a grape-growing and how sustainable grape-growing is done today and the technology to make grape growing sustainable. And one thing that hasn’t changed in centuries of grape growing is that still sustainable is they still use falcons. They have a bunch of falcons in cages that are released to go after birds that eat the grapes because they don’t want to spray the grapes, you know, that contaminates, so how do you get rid of- Right before harvest, you got this beautiful harvest ready to happen, but it’s destroyed by starlings birds. So, how do you get rid of these birds without spraying the crop? You unleash your pet falcons and eagles, they’re called Harris Eagles. And they have pet names, and they put a little hood on them, and they line them up and then they release the hoods, release them from their arms. I got to hold one too. It’s pretty neat. And then, that flies off and they scare the heck. The [inaudible] out of the birds that are out there and the rest of the stories, I’m doing this, I’m kind of like, “Well, where do I go next?”

John: Oh, right there. We’re going to have you back on to continue your great journeys and I just want to say thank you for joining us today on the Impact podcast. I wish you continued good health and success and we want you to be doing this show for the next twenty years. And guess what? I take back my words from earlier today. I don’t wish it was twenty of you. I wish we need a hundred of you telling and sharing these great stories. To our listeners and viewers out there. to find John, you could go to earthwithjohnholden.com, or find him on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Vimeo, or YouTube. John, thank you for being who you are and thanking you for making the earth and the world a better place. I so appreciate it. And so does everyone else that’s going to watch and listen to this show.

John H: Thank you, John, for having me on. I appreciate it.

John Shegerian: This episode of the impact podcast is brought to you by Closed Loop Partners. Closed Loop Partners is a leading circular economy investor in the United States with an extensive network of Fortune 500 corporate investors, family offices, institutional investors, industry experts, and Impact Partners. Closed Loop’s platform spans the arc of capital from venture capital to private equity, bridging gaps, and fostering synergies to scale the circular economy. To find Closed Loop Partners, please go to www.closedlooppartners.com.