Archives: Episodes

John Shegerian: Welcome back to Green is Good, and we’re so honored to have with us today hospitality and restaurateur rock star, Greg Dollarhyde. Greg, welcome to Green is Good.

Greg Dollarhyde: Mike and John, how are you doing?

John: We are great today in Fresno, California, and you’re down in the Manhattan Beach area?

Greg: Yeah, our headquarters are in Manhattan Beach and all our restaurants are located in Los Angeles.

John: Greg, we have you on today because you’re the CEO of Veggie Grill. We’re going to talk a lot about that on today’s show, but we want to talk a little bit about your fascinating journey throughout your career and how you got to where you are today. Your resume, I could spend all 23 minutes, literally, sharing with our great listeners out there your amazing resume, but I want you to share it instead. Your journey includes TGI Friday’s, Pizza Hut, and Baja Fresh before you ever got to become the CEO of Veggie Grill. Share with us a little bit about that journey.

Greg: I started out in southern California, washing dishes and prepping food, like a lot of people in the restaurant business. I know a lot of CEOs of restaurant chains that started out exactly the same way. They just got into the business, liked it, got bitten by the bug. Growing up from there, I ran kitchens and ran restaurants as general manager, and had a chance to go work for a chain called Victoria Station a long time ago. I ran into one of the founders, and he said, “You can come work for us. I think you’ve got to back to school,” because I hadn’t finished college. They talked me into going to Cornell, and I went to the Cornell Hotel School and the Cornell Business School. After that, my horizons really opened up. My eyes really opened up. I grew up pretty much on the beach in Southern California, and going back to Ithaca, New York with my sandals. I learned a lot about what business was about. I was able to take that experience in the restaurant business, as well as the training from Cornell, and landed as the Assistant to the President of TGI Friday’s when it had 19 restaurants. The reason I went there was because it was doing something no one was doing; it was huge volumes, very popular, and the fern bar business was a big hit. It was back in that sort of magical period in the United States, after birth control and before AIDS, so you could imagine TGI Friday’s back in those days was one of the places to be. That’s how it started, then I just stayed in the business the whole time. I was trying to create value and look for opportunities for growth. I really loved the growth business. That’s where you have the most fun and you watch people build their careers and build their fortunes in growth.

John: Greg, how far did you take TGIF? How many locations when you exited TGIF?

Greg: When I left TGI Friday’s, they had 125 locations on its way to being 40 different countries and the like. There have been many successive presidents after that.

John: And, then Pizza Hut. What did you do over at Pizza Hut, and why did that add to the great experience that you have?

Greg: What I learned there was just throughput. I worked in delivery while I was a general manager and vice president of new concept development for Pizza Hut. What that meant was trying to get pizza into different places, like in stadiums and malls and drive-thru units. We were testing a lot of different formats for Pizza Hut, but the most successful format that I was responsible for was the airports. We had just started going to airports, and now it’s hard to go to an airport and not find a Pizza Hut and a personal pan pizza. That program we were rolling out with Marriott, which was host at the time, and also trying to figure out whether you can do little pizzas in a stadium in a sleeve and take it back to your seat and enjoy a pizza. That’s rapid throughput. You’re at halftime. Here you go. You better have the food ready and get it moving. That was a great experience for me. Also, delivery units where you’re dealing with a whole different animal. You get pizzas out in 12 minutes and get them in a car and get them to someone’s house hopefully 30 minutes from the time they call. I learned a lot about systems and throughput. At the time, PepsiCo was a 200,000-employee company, so there was a lot to learn.

John: Wow. And, then you ended up at Baja Fresh.

Greg: Yeah, we bought Baja Fresh with the financial partners on the East Coast. I led the team to buy Baja from Jimmy Magglos when he founded it 10 years before, taking a third trust deed out on his house and a loan from his mom to start the first Baja Fresh. It’s one of those great success stories. I met Jimmy back in 1997. He wanted to get some money off the table, so we bought 80% of the company from him in ’98. We went from 30 restaurants to about 270 in four years, and then we ended up selling it to Wendy’s. When we were getting ready to go public, Wendy’s made an offer we couldn’t refuse, all cash, $285 million. It was time to let them take the reigns.

John: Again, a great brand. My kids love that place, my wife and I love it. You could eat very healthy there. Now, we’re seeing sort of the migration in your journey. Start sharing with our listeners, please, Greg, the Veggie Grill story and how you ended up to be the CEO. Obviously, you really are a hospitality rock star. Talk about meeting the founders and how you saw that this is the future of food.

Greg: I have a million things about Veggie Grill that are fantastic besides the guys who founded it, but basically, in the early nineties, I started seeing that in the restaurant business there was this new way of eating called good food fast. It wasn’t called fast casual back then. What it was, unlike fast food, QSR food with drive-thru and heat-lampy kind of food and the like, it wasn’t really good back in the late eighties and early nineties. Then you had casual theme like Friday’s and Applebee’s and all that. They were sit-down restaurants with hostesses and waiters. This was the way of eating that was coming around where you go to a counter, get much better food than fast food, but not have to deal with servers and bartenders and hostesses and all that in a sit-down restaurant. This fast casual thing really got me interested in the business because it’s smaller footprint, less investment, but you still have great food and a lot of satisfied customers. That’s what Baja Fresh was, fast casual. The company that was running Zoë’s Kitchen is fast casual. Chipotle, one of the most popular restaurant formats today in America, is fast casual. Veggie Grill is the same thing. You have fantastic food, fast casual, but with a really important twist, and that is that the food is incredibly delicious and indulgent, like rich, but it’s 100% plant based, no butter, no eggs, no animal fats, no trans fats, no high-fructose corn syrup, nothing, all really clean food. So, I got introduced to Pillan and Kevin about a year-and-a-half ago. I was out looking at restaurants, especially in fast casual, and some friends of ours introduced us. I went down to their second restaurant they had down in El Segundo, and was blown away by the food. This is amazingly good for the fact that it’s 100% plant-based. When you think of vegetarian, vegan, or plant-based food, you think of bland, mushy bowls of food, a lot of salads and that kind of stuff. But this was burgers, fries, fried chicken sandwich formats, beautiful salads that would be the envy of Cheesecake Factory, and it was all in this 2,500-square-foot restaurant. They were cranking it out of this little tiny kitchen. I was blown away. Of course, my investment and other restaurateur juices got going, and I said, “What are you guys doing with this?” They invited me onto their Board of Advisors last summer, and I made a small investment in the company. They wouldn’t let me make a very big investment because they didn’t need that kind of money. Then this winter, they invited me onto the Board of Directors, and I knew they were talking about taking this thing to the next level, and I said, “What are you guys going to do for a CEO?” They said, “It’s funny, we were going to ask you the same question. What are you doing?” So, conversations kept going, and pretty soon we realized we could strike a deal that everybody would win. I’m really excited about what the future of this brand looks like.

John: I’m really excited for the country, too. For those who just joined us, we are so honored to have Greg Dollarhyde on. He’s the CEO of Veggie Grill. Mike and I have our webs open. If you’ve got your iPad or your laptop in front of you, open up to their great website, veggiegrill.com. I’ve got the menu in front of me. Mike, I don’t know about you, but I’m starving looking at this amazing menu here.

Mike Brady: That’s why I’ve been letting you do all the talking, John. I’ve been trying to not drool too much. Seriously, Greg, I’m looking this over. Number one, I’m looking at the price point. Your price point is right on, partner, with any restaurant. I’m looking at it, and it’s really right there, like any restaurant you go to, but what’s amazing to me, I look at these chicken dishes first, the picture of the chicken salad and all of that, and I’m thinking, “Wait a second, vegetarian chicken,” and I’m looking to see how it’s made, just a brief description, then go onto the menu. Not only Santa Fe Crispy Chicken, but you’ve also got the beef lovers taken care of. If they want to start to migrates towards a vegetarian way of eating, you’ve got carne asada there, the All-American burger, you’ve got veggie cheeseburgers, chipotle barbecue. This looks amazing, and like John, I’m really hungry and I wish we were sitting and doing this radio show inside your restaurant.

John: Exactly.

Greg: Some day, if you guys want to do a live remote, we’ll empty the place and you can fire it up. We’ll make you everything on the menu.

John: We might take you up on that. We’re not that far away from you. Honestly, this looks amazing. Talk about this. Vegan food is becoming the rage. From Bill Clinton to Oprah Winfrey, everyone is talking about vegan food now. I love eating vegan food, but share with our listeners, what’s the biggest myth, Greg? What’s the biggest hurdle that you have to overcome when you talk about plant-based vegan food?

Greg: First off is the guys. Educated women who are worried about how they look and how they feel, they get it right away. They come try it. They’re the early adopters. They’re the first ones. When we open up a restaurant in a new market, they’re the first ones in, and they know exactly what they want. They want an All Hail Kale salad, they want the lighter food, they jump right on it and they tell their friends. When you open up a Veggie Grill for the first time, you see a lot of women from the ages of 25 and 55, usually pretty well educated or very hip. They’re the first ones in. Then what happens is they start realizing that there’s food there for the guys. The guys are typically light on vegetarian food. They don’t want to eat a bunch of brown rice and sautéed vegetables. They want something that will stick to their ribs. This is what really got me most excited about Veggie Grill, besides I like the food, it’s very indulgent and delicious, but what I’m excited about was I was eating in these restaurants, and these restaurants have everybody in them from cops to yogis. I mean, you’ve got these big, burly policemen and they’re having a burger or a chicken sandwich, and they don’t know that it’s 100% plant-based. We don’t bother them with that bit of information. They don’t ask. They just eat the food and come and go. You have the yoga crowd and those people, they’re seeking out this great vegan-based food. The myth, I think, that we’re trying to overcome is that it’s just bland, mushy, sautéed vegetables and salads in bowls. Sometimes the vegetarian restaurants are slow and they’re expensive, so we try to make this fast and affordable. You all should get service in the dining room that you would get in any other fast casual, even a little more. People come by and we fill your tea, they take your plates, but there’s no tipping. You’ve got the combination of delicious food, fair price, great crowd of people, and a menu that really works across the section with people who are vegan and vegetarian over to, like I said, from cops to yogis. They’re in there.

John: We’re looking at this menu here. Chillin’ chicken, veggie steak, too good tempeh. I’m starving here. Is your chicken your biggest seller? What’s the secret to the chicken?

Greg: The biggest seller is the Santa Fe chicken sandwich. That’s the gateway drug, so to speak, to Veggie Grill. You walk in, and it’s funny because we’ll be in active centers, like near a Whole Foods or something like that, and people will stumble in, look at the menu, and you can tell they don’t know if they’re going to stay or not. We try to intercept them. We say, “I know this looks like maybe it’s complicated, but let’s make it easy for you. Just have a Santa Fe crispy chicken sandwich, and have the sweetheart fries, which are made out sweet potato. If you don’t like it, it’s on us.” Everybody takes us up on it. Nobody doesn’t take us up on that offer for a free lunch if they don’t like it. We buy so few free lunches because people taste it. I worked in dining rooms a lot. I love working in the restaurant during busy lunches and talking to the customers, and I’ve had more people than you would believe stop me and go, “I thought you guys were a vegan restaurant. Where did you get this chicken from? Why is this vegan?” It really is made from vegetable proteins in a very special way. It’s marinated with our secret recipe, and then we batter it with a certain kind of batter. We use coconut milk and the like, and it just works. It just tastes good.

Mike: You know what’s amazing? How many times have we heard, “Go ahead. Try it. It tastes like chicken.” In this case, it really does.

Greg: That’s right.

John: Greg, you’re right now in West Hollywood, LA’s Farmer Market, Santa Monica, El Segundo, Rolling Hills, Irvine; you’ve got a couple locations. You’re a guy with a big vision. You’ve done this over. You’re a serial entrepreneur with massive success in your rearview mirror, but with big dreams again. Where can you take this now?

Greg: We’re going to keep building our base in Los Angeles, but clearly, there’s a lot of this kind of eating up and down the West Coast. All the way from Del Mar to Seattle, people are eating more healthfully. I want to make this, and this is going to sound really cocky so I want to be careful, but I think we can be the West Coast phenomenon for this kind of food because, again, it’s very approachable. It’s burgers and fries and sandwiches and salads that you recognize. When you see them and taste them, you’ll love the flavors, but you’ll recognize it. It’s not weird. I think it’s going to catch on pretty well on the West Coast. That’s going to be our focus right now, to stay in this time zone and probably Scottsdale and then that market. Then, I think, the next market really would be the Northeast because there is a lot of demand. We get a lot of requests. When are you going to open it in this city? When are you coming to where you’re coming to? We do get, even though we’re six little restaurants on the West Coast, we do get when are you coming to DC? When are you coming to New York?

John: Boston, New York, I’m sure.

Greg: My two favorite markets on the East Coast are Manhattan and Washington, DC. People are educated, they’re hip, they’re forward thinking, they’re on the move, and that’s our kind of customer.

John: Greg, we have a picture of you here in the studio, and our listeners can see it up on our website, greenisgood.fm. You look like a healthy guy, but we love CEOs that not only talk the great talk, and obviously you’re extraordinarily articulate, but walk a great walk. Talk a little bit about the evolution of your own diet. Are you now a vegan?

Greg: Yeah, I’m a 99.9% vegan. It was funny. It started as a challenge when I started talking to Kevin and T.K. Pillan. They said, “Have you ever tried to eat vegan?” I said, “No, I eat healthfully. I eat a lot of fish. I don’t eat a lot of heavy fat-laden foods, but no, I’m not a vegan. My daughter is a vegan, but I’ve never done it.” They said, “Have you ever thought of just trying it?” I said, “OK.” They threw the gauntlet down, and I thought, OK, fine. I’ll give it six weeks. I ate 100% totally vegan for six weeks. I went down to the South Pacific for a surfing week and came back. I’d lost some weight. I still had my energy. It was funny because I expected to miss the protein; however, as you start doing some more research, you start realizing there’s plenty of protein in plant-based eating. What’s more important is there’s plenty of nutrients. It’s a much more nutrient-rich way of eating. One hundred calories of a kale salad is a lot different than 100 calories of bacon, even though the same is still 100 calories. I started to sort of get into it, then it started becoming a game. How can I eat vegan? Where can I go? I’m in an airport in Atlanta. What am I going to eat that’s vegan? Where am I going to go? How can I figure this out? Besides just having French fries because they’re vegan. It started to become more of a game than more of a way of eating. Our food guy, Ray White, who is really, really a food shaman as far as I’m concerned, he’s been doing this for 16 to 17 years in just plant-based, he said something to me that really caught my attention. “The more you eat this way, the more you want to eat this way. Your body actually starts to crave it.” I’ll be damned if he’s right. It starts to happen that way. I’m not going to say everybody has to. Most people I know want to eat in this kind of healthful way once in a while, but mainly people want to join. Food is one of the last things in life that you can really just sit down and have it your way and eat it and satisfy and enjoy yourself and enjoy it with friends. We don’t prophesize. We don’t say, “Your choices aren’t as good as this choice.” We just say, “This is a choice.” For me, it’s been a choice that, through Veggie Grill, I’ve been exposed to a lot more ways to eat plant based. I’m not missing anything.

John: That’s awesome. One of your taglines here on your website is The Perfect Indulgence. Speaking of indulgence, I have a big sweet tooth, and I see here carrot cake, chocolate pudding, chocolate chip cookies. How good are these desserts, and how do you make them without eggs and butter?

Greg: Yeah, that’s where Ray White comes in, the food magician. By way of a story, I had a birthday party for my girlfriend last summer, and I brought Veggie Grill’s carrot cake in. They can make it either in flat, small pieces that they use on a day-to-day basis, or they can make these great big cakes that you can use for a catered event or something like that. I got a couple of these great big cakes. There were 60 people there, and we started cutting up this cake and handing it around. I didn’t tell anybody it was plant-based, and everybody loved it. This is so good. Where did you get this? I started telling them this is vegan carrot cake. People look at you like, right. No way. The way the company does it is a way of using tofu for the carrot cake, tofu and natural vegetable oils and evaporated cane juice instead of sugar. We use agave syrup instead of honey because honey isn’t vegan. They found ways to blend these ingredients. It is amazing the amount of products that are coming out now that are plant-based that are so close to the real thing, like Tofutti cream cheese and things like that. We’re able to now have those ingredients at our disposal that 10 to 15 years ago weren’t even around. We stay in touch with the manufacturers, and we’re working always with a couple manufacturers to find ways to improve it. That’s how you do it. It’s natural vegetable oils, tofu. What you can do with soybeans now is just, frankly, amazing. All of our soybean products don’t have any GMO and that kind of thing.

John: Greg, we’re down to the last minute-and-a-half or so, and I just want to ask one last question. Talk about how Veggie Grill is good for the planet, besides good for our tummies.

Greg: In a couple ways. One, our business. We use all biodegradable plastic bags and all of our takeout material comes from recycled material and are recyclable. The floors of the restaurants are made out of sustainable bamboo. When we serve our wine, we don’t use bottles; we have these tanks that get refilled so we don’t have to add to the landfill. In a couple of our restaurants, we have people that come by and pick up our rice bran oil that we use for frying the fries and the like, and they use it in their car. We try to do stuff like that. That’s more like a local and store level, but on a bigger level, eating plant-based is much more sustainable than livestock. You know what’s going on in Brazil with the rainforest. They’re clearing the rainforest to raise cattle. There are massive amounts of petrochemicals being used to raise livestock. Methane gas is dramatically higher from livestock. In the long run on this planet, it’s not a sustainable way to live. We’re going to spend way too much economic inputs to make and grow that kind of food versus growing sustainable plant-based food. It’s like 10 times more efficient on the land to grow the same amount of protein for plant-based than livestock. We’re not busting anybody’s choices. I’ll tell you, in the old days, big old steak and a bottle of Cabernet, yum. However, when we disseminate 9 billion people on the planet, we’re going to have to be more creative.

John: Perfect. Greg, we’re going to have you back on because we know that you’re going to grow this amazing brand, Veggie Grill, like you’ve grown all the other brands you’ve touched before. For all our listeners out there, go to Greg’s website, veggiegrill.com. Find out where there’s a location near you, right now in Southern California, but soon in a city coming to you soon when Greg brings them there. Good food fast, veggiegrill.com. Greg Dollarhyde, you’re a hospitality and restaurateur rock star, but now you’re also a visionary eco-preneur and truly living proof that green is good.

Greg: Thanks, guys.

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. This is the first edition in January of 2022 of the Impact and we’ve got two very, very funny and special guests with us today. We’ve got Naomi Bagdonas and Jennifer Aaker with us today. Dr. Jennifer Aaker, welcome to the Impact Podcast.

Jennifer Aaker: We’re so happy to be here.

Naomi Bagdonas: Thanks for having us.

John: Well, I had the benefit of hearing you two women speak at the Goldman Sachs conference recently, you blew myself and my wife away and everyone else in the audience. Totally unexpected but just such an impactful message that you brought. Today, we’re going to be talking about your new book, Humor, Seriously. And you teach a course at Stanford University called Humor, Serious Business. And, before we get doing all of that and talking about that and comedy, and everything else in between, first, tell us a little bit about your backgrounds. Jennifer, give us your little origin story, where were you from, where you went to school and how you even got here.

Jennifer: Yes, absolutely. So, I went to school in Berkeley. Before that Mira Monte, which ironically Naomi did too.

Naomi: Same high school.

Jennifer: Yes, the same. Yes, it’s eerie. And, so, yes, my academic background, not a field, academics is not a field known for its sense of humor, nor was I ever known for my sense of humor. I’ve been rated the least funny person in my family, about five times running, that includes the dog as you know, John. And, so, yes. Basically, about 10 years ago, I started seeing some little stories of different leaders or people that actually achieved really quite remarkable things by using humor. So, I got really interested in this idea that humor is not a thing that can distract from your goals or be inefficient or silly, but, in fact, could enhance your goals. And, that’s what kind of put me on this path to try to understand it. And, that’s when I met Naomi.

John: Where did you two meet?

Jennifer: She gave a guest lecture at my Power of Story class, and it was all on quantitative analysis around how you build teams and how you use actual data to actually inform how teams work well together. But, here’s the thing, “And now, we’re in a half guess lecture.”, people were dying laughing? Like she was like doing this guest lecture almost as a stand-up. And, more importantly, 10 weeks later, not only did they rate her guest lecture extraordinarily high, but they remembered this highly technical information that she communicated. So, it was just this great case of how humor, when embedded in dense information, can actually make it more memorable in the long run.

Naomi: I will say when you’re talking about I get analysis, the bar for humor is very low.

John: So, all right, Naomi, your turn. Where you grow up, you guys went to the same high school obviously…

Naomi: Went to the same high school, Mira Monte High School. John, here’s where you reveal that you also went to Mira Monte High School.

John: No.

Naomi: No? Oh, my gosh.

John: All right. I missed that.

Naomi: Waiting for that one podcaster to be like, “So, did I.”. So, yes, I grew up in the Bay Area. And, I’ve spent my career straddling the worlds of business and impromptu comedy. So, I grew up in corporate strategy at a large consulting firm. But, all the while, I was doing impromptu comedy- nights and weekends. Totally for fun, not trying to ever- I literally would not allow my friends to come to my shows because it was just for fun. I just loved and was so passionate about it. And, a couple of years into my career, I was in my mid-20s, and I came to this realization that I was basically living a double life. Where, at work, I was professional, I was doing really well climbing whatever corporate ladder I was on, but I had no semblance of a personality. I was having no fun, and I basically had no good friends at work. And, that was early in my career. And, so, I sort of started coming to this realization and wondering whether I could merge these two worlds. And, I was really lucky. I was in this incredible group doing creative work within Deloitte. And, the group was so supportive of this. I work with people who brought their full selves to work and sort of model with that look like. And, so, I started merging those two worlds, building really good friendships at work and sort of coming to this realization that actually, there’s incredible power at the intersection of humor and business. So, I went off to business school at Stanford, and that sort of became my mission after business school, after meeting Jennifer and realizing we really had this shared passion around it.

John: When did you both start teaching this wonderful course, Humor, Serious Business?

Naomi: Six years ago. Seven years ago. What is time?

Jennifer: Dates.

Naomi: What is time? Yes. It’s now been running for let’s say six or seven years.

Jennifer: Most likely eight.

Naomi: Two decades. It’s been running at the business school in Stanford.

John: So, it’s 20 years in the making and how popular is the class?

Jennifer: Not at all.

Naomi: Yes. Not at all. It’s just us at the front of the room by ourselves mostly.

Jennifer: No, actually it is. It’s surprising. The first time we taught it, filled up the class the second time. It kind of was oversubscribed, then we built out two sections. Now, we teach it online. It really has blossomed. And, I think part of it is that, right now, especially, the world needs humor. It’s also an incredible tool for leaders to lead in more authentic and effective ways. There’s a large-scale study that recently came out that showed that, since the pandemic, 89% of these respondents said their life was getting worse and 85% said, their mental well-being was on the decline. And, so, it’s in these moments right now where humor is not just nice to have, it’s a mandatory thing and it’s really a secret weapon, especially, for leaders who really want to navigate a very new way of managing teams.

Naomi: Yes. I’ll add to that. In all seriousness, our course at Stanford has become a really important part of the curriculum and part of recognizing what it takes to be this new type of leader. That it used to be that leaders need to be revered and now, more and more, they need to be understood. They need to be seen, we need to have vulnerability from our leaders and even humor. So, by the way, our course gets the same academic credit at Stanford Business School as Financial Accounting which is truly not a joke. So, yes, that’s the journey we’ve been on and where we are now.

John: And because of, the new world that we live in has evolved in person, and people can also log in and watch it online as well.

Jennifer: Well, we do have a TED Talk coming out.

John: Really.

Jennifer: Yes.

John: When?

Jennifer: It’s a surprise.

John: This is a surprise.

Jennifer: It is a surprise. All right, for our guests right now, we told John this, so, it’s not a surprise. But yes, people can get online glimpses into it. The Ted Talk basically condenses a 10-week course into 10 minutes.

John: Wow, how hard was that?

Jennifer: Ridiculously hard. Seriously, we slaved on this for like six months. Is that right, Naomi?

Naomi: Yes. We’ve been slaves for six months.

Jennifer: Yes. And, we had coaches, amazing coaches, that helped us as well. So, we were very spoiled and yet it still took six months.

John: Where did you film it?

Jennifer: Monterey.

John: Monterey.

Naomi: Yes. Ted was back in person this year in Monterey after a couple of years off.

John: Wonderful. Did it turn out the way you wanted it to?

Jennifer: Yes.

John: Obviously preparation is one thing but, then, post is another, are you happy with it?

Jennifer: Well, I broke my leg two weeks before. I broke my femur. And so she brought a sexy cane. I kid you not, it was a cane. So, Naomi had like prop me up but except for that part.

Naomi: Yes, we had backup plans. For if Jennifer started to go down, I would like to nudge over and catch her and we would continue.

John: What were you doing? Unless you have an NFL career that you’re going to now reveal to us, how did you break a femur?

Jennifer: Yes, it was an e-bike that basically… Anyway.

John: Oh, okay.

Jennifer: Yes. It was sad. Although it does bring up this really good point which is, at the end of our class, we do these things with our students. We have them write their signature story. Something that was hard. It was meaningful. It was not necessarily fun. And, then, we have them change their story in one minute and make it a comedy. And, so, we call this a levity reframe. So, you take something bad, and you actually reframe it as a comedy. And, so, that’s what I did when I broke my femur, and it was truly hysterical. Like when you look at life in that way, it’s easy to live on the precipice of a smile which is really what the focus of our book is. I’m not about being funny. It’s just about how do you look at life and live on the precipice of a smile, not an e-bike.

John: Okay. Well, for our listeners of yours, we’re going to talk about a lot of things today, all comedy-related. But one thing we definitely going to do, we’re going to talk about your great book, Humor, Seriously- Why Humor is a Secret Weapon in Business and Life, and how anyone can harness it. Even you, as you can tell, I didn’t love the book, – I really loved the book. And, there is statistical evidence in the book that you laid out in terms of longevity of life and happiness in life with regards to folks. That takes any negative experience they’ve really had, and they re-frame it in a way. That’s sort of funny, in terms of, how they perceive it and how they actually related to others. Is that not true?

Naomi: Yes. Absolutely. Because there’s a wealth of behavioral science showing that humor helps us be more resilient. As you said, there are even linkages to longevity. Part of this is that, when we laugh, we don’t necessarily think of humor as being medicine. And, we’ve all heard the phrase, laughter is the best medicine. Well, as it turns out, medicine is the best medicine, not laughter, but laughter is a close second because it truly changes the chemistry of our brains. So, we release all of these happy hormones that change, not only how we feel about ourselves- more confident, more competent, more powerful, but, also, how other people perceive us. So, we know from the research that leaders with a good sense of humor are seen as 27% more motivating, that their employees report being 15% more engaged, and their teams report being more bonded and creative. And, of course, bonded at work also connects to being happier and feeling healthier at work as well.

John: I’m going to just tell you, I’m 59 years old, and everything that I read in your book, I found to be true. And, of course, I learned a lot also about myself, and also about the power of humor that I never even had heard before. But I wish I was 21 again going through college, and I had a chance to sit in and take your course. Because I could have been a much better leader for the last 35 years, 38 years if I had had a course like this, and I’ll tell you what, it is so powerful. Humor is just, just the best. I really just want to say this going into this before we get talking about, specifically in the book and other things with regards to what you’re doing. And, for our listeners and viewers who just joined us today, we’ve got Jennifer Aaker with us and Naomi Bagdonas. They’re the writers of this book, which by the way, we’re going to have a dozen copies to give out signed by them for those who want to write to us and tell us why they want to get a little humor in their life or in their leadership. And, also that, you could go to humorseriously.com. Buy the book or you could just hire them to help you in your business life in terms of speeches and other things you’re trying to do and another type of services that you might need from both, Jennifer and Naomi. So, I went to the Goldman Sachs conference. You were speakers there. A week away from that conference, I had a very big speech coming up, six hundred plus people. The first big public event in Fresno since covid, and I was very nervous just even thinking about it. And, I didn’t know how I was going to open the event and I love humor. I mean, truth be known, if I wasn’t a business person, I really would have been a stand-up. I wanted to be a stand-up comedian.

I just think funny is just the way to live, and I always try to look for the funny in everything. And, you came on stage, both of you. People that I had never met or seen before. And, you literally captivated the whole audience. You started with the Saturday Live clip, and, then, you went to the George Bush clip. Maybe I have it in reverse. But, anyway, that was the 1-2 beginning of how this whole thing started. You explain the importance of oxytocin and what laughter does for the brain, and you made me feel so much more confident about how to open up the next week, and how to get the audience on my side. And, I’m just going to tell you, you are a blessing for me, and I’m so thankful because that speech went very well, but it’s not because of me. It’s because of both of you and what I learned just in that 45-minute discussion that you put on at the Goldman Sachs conference. So, if that’s not an advertisement for how girlie you both are, nothing is.

Naomi: Wow. Can you share how you opened or is it too specific to the audience?

John: No, it’s not specific to the audience. And in fact, it’s going to be like, you got to be like you talked about terms of radical truth-telling and things of that such. So, Fresno is a very red community, generally speaking. And, I’m a native New Yorker, and I’m very progressive in these photos of me online with Obama and all that other nonsense. That comes along with being progressive in a political advocate and things of that such. So, there was nothing funnier to start the whole show with than- I just used your George Bush clip. And, just tell them, I’m very nervous to be here today and it’s not easy to be the first speaker in Fresno after two years of no public events. And, people didn’t know that they come with non-stop dance and the whole crowd just wanted to be together. And I said, listen, I’m not the only one who sometimes gets nervous before their big public speaking event. And, I just like framed it up and show that they went nuts, had the crowd on my side. And from there, we were off to the race.

Naomi: That’s awesome.

John: So, I plagiarized your great work, but I’m going to tell you, it works. So, you to ask the question. I’m just being really frank with you both.

Naomi: I love that. So, a small tip that we always tell our students is the first 30 seconds of any talk of any meeting is so critical to setting the tone. And, if you can get people to laugh in the first 30 seconds, then it shifts the entire dynamic going forward. People are warmer. And, we know this from research too. That person are warmer, they’re more trusting of each other. There’s more creativity. There’s less stress in the room. And, so, those first 30 seconds are so critical. And, again, if you can get people to laugh, it doesn’t need to be telling a joke. It can be showing a video. It can be just naming something that’s going on in the room.

Jennifer: That’s right. And there’s research to show when you just laugh a little bit, that people self-disclose personal information much more. So, one of the reasons we shared those clips is not just because George Bush was following us. But, also, because when you share information about each other after laughing together, people tend to be more trusting and much more open. And it completely shifts the follow-on conversation and how productive it is.

John: That clip was just, I mean, tremendous, and it got the whole room on the right side of the whole fence, and, from there, it was really easy. And, so, I just want to say thank you both. That really helped me a lot. And, as I said, in reading your book, I learned so much more. And, I’ll tell you what, there’s nobody who’s watching or listening to this podcast today that can’t learn from reading your book and become just a better leader, a better family member, and just a better part of any organization you’re part of. To smile a little bit more laugh a little bit more and make fun of yourself. I mean, there’s no better way to live life, and this book shows you how and shows you how to do it well.

Let’s go into the book. When did you come up with doing this great course? You have a consulting business, and when did you come up like, hey, we’ve got to put this into a book.

Naomi: I could type years. I think, at some point, we both were really excited about the idea of scaling this beyond just what we could do at Stanford.

John: Yes.

Naomi: We absolutely love what we’ve been able to do at Stanford. But we also teach impromptu comedy in the local County jails. We’ve worked with nonprofits and communities outside of Stanford as well. And, there was this idea of, okay, how do we really create a movement here, how do we create a movement towards people living their lives on the precipice of a smile and doing serious things without taking themselves too seriously. And, so, that was this mission, to write this book. And, Jennifer and I, both, we’re a little hesitant to write a book. It seemed pretty intimidating. And, so, Jennifer had written before, so she knew how hard it was. She had just told me stories about how hard it was. And, so, when we started it, we actually started a Google doc, and we tried to put our research into practice. So we said, okay, how are we going to have fun with this even when it’s really hard.

So, we started a Google doc, and we named it “A Really Shitty Proposal”. That was the name of Google Docs. And, every time we open it up, we’re like “Hey, do you want to work on the shitty proposal?” “Yes. Let’s go work on it.” Just as a way to sort of keep ourselves like-hearted about it. And, what happened was, we accidentally submitted it to our agent with the title “A Really Shitty Proposal’. We just forgot to change the document name. And, she liked it so much that she submitted it to publishers with the title “A Really Shitty Proposal”. And, so, throughout our entire book writing process, everything was really shitty- “A really shitty chapter 1″,” A really shitty preface”, “A really shitty opening by former Pixar President Ed Catmull”. Everything until the very last moment.

John: Holy Toledo. And, nothing like setting your expectations low. So, anything they read was going to be really genius after that anyway.

Naomi: There you go. Exactly.

John: And the fact that it was really brilliant, anyway, just created a wonderful paradox of a really shitty proposal to a really great and funny book.

Naomi: But I do want to double click on that a little because this is about creating queues for ourselves in our lives to not take ourselves so seriously. And, so, it’s about what behaviors or what safeguards can we put in place when we start getting too serious. And, Michael Lewis, who wrote the afterword of our book with us, talks about how- when you don’t have enough humor in your life, it sort of feels like walking through a forest and things are a little too quiet. Like there is a lion that is going to come and eat you up. And, so, if you’re walking through your life and you don’t have laughter, you don’t have levity, it’s a really bad sign. That things aren’t going well, that something is out of alignment in your life, and you really need to change it and make some behavior changes to do so. And, that’s what Jennifer did too with the breaking her leg, right? She’s like okay, great. I broke my leg. I’m going to choose right now to send a photo to Naomi of myself on the pavement. And, we’re gonna laugh about this.

John: I was going to ask this later but since you brought up Michael Lewis, and I read the Afterword. I loved it. His story about his daughter and himself going to The Improv and the workshop and him sweating and coming out, like he just left a soul cycle class, and she just coming out bubbly like this is easiest, the breeziest thing she’s ever done, was great. But why Michael Lewis? There is a story behind it, Jennifer. Why did you choose Michael Lewis instead of Jimmy Fallon or some other great comedian that I’m sure you could have gotten.

Jennifer: Part of this, I mean, we were lucky enough to have a bunch of comedians that come into our class like Julia Louis-Dreyfus and Seth Meyers and others. But, what was important for us also is that this is not just about being a comedian. This is about leaders. And, so, there are so many things that are incredible about Michael Lewis, but he is not only a brilliant author, but he spans many, many domains. And, he’s studied leaders and really effective people in an extraordinarily important role. So, his vantage point, his view was actually really interesting for us to have. And, then, we complemented that with Ed Catmull, who was the CEO of Pixar. And, he talks about what’s interesting about humor is that, when you bring humor into an organizational setting, it actually creates meaning for people. It bonds people. It allows meanings and stories to actually unfold in ways that lift others.

John: It’s true. So, I know you’ve heard, I’m sure, over the recent movie that came out called The Ricardo’s.

Jennifer: Yes.

Naomi: Yes.

John: So, Nicole Kidman sat down for an interview with the New York Times. And, in that interview, over the weekend, she said “We’re talking about preparing for the role.” She says, “I’ve got to be funny, and funny is hard.” when she was preparing to play the role of Lucille Ball. Talk about that, is funny as hard a true statement in your mind, or is it just a matter of practice in terms of…? Let’s go into the areas that you’ve talked about in the book, in terms of timing matters, words matter, and context matters.

Naomi: Funny is hard, levity is easy. Levity is a choice. So, we also share in the book this spectrum of levity humor, and comedy. And, oftentimes what can be so intimidating about the idea of humor especially at work, is people think I have to be funny. And, I would absolutely agree with Nicole Kidman, funny is hard. But that’s actually not what we’re going for here. We’re going for a little bit of lightheartedness, a little bit of levity, and, especially, I mean, I joked of that the bar and in I get analysis is very low. But, truly, the bar in business for laughing is so low. Often, all it takes is naming the truth or asking you about what in the world those pictures are in the background of your Zoom background, which we have to go to next. It often just takes a little bit of humanity to get to levity. And, the one tip for getting a little step further to humor is to just notice what’s true? Don’t look for what’s funny in your life. Notice what’s true. And, minding that truth will get you to authentic humor that will connect with other people.

John: Got it. Wow. If that doesn’t say it all.

Naomi: Okay. Now, what’s in the background?

John: That’s my wife of 37 years, who saw you up at Goldman Sachs. And, those are my two children, both much funnier than I am. They’re both lawyers. This was painted in about 14 years ago. This artwork, it’s been in my office just like this and those have been on my wall for 14 or 15 years. But, when this whole Zoom thing started, I just started the zoom thing and it has ironically turned out to be my background and everyone seems to like it. My kids are very supportive. But I told him that I was doing this interview and I’ve had this, first, it was a radio show starting in 2007 which evolves into a podcast because, of course, podcasts then exist in 2007. I told them this interview is coming up and how excited I was because I just love comedy. And they said, “Dad, that’s great.” They said, “How’s your listenership?” I said, “It’s up.” And, so, they called my social guy, who they’re friends with. And they asked him, “What are dad’s numbers?” And he said, “40 percent in 2021. The numbers are up 40%.” So, they wrote me a card for Christmas saying, “Dad, it’s so great. You finally hit 14 listeners, and we wish you well in 2022.” So, that’s where they are. And that’s how they live their life.

Naomi: Okay. So, we have talked about humor styles next, because we got to talk about humor styles in your family.

John: Humor styles in my family is, it’s got to be self-deprecating because my kids jump on me all the time. They’re both so funny. My wife’s not funny at all, but she likes to make jokes. And, then, she goes, “I’m not the funny one anyway. John’s going to do the joke.”

Jennifer: I was giving a little mini-lecture in my daughter’s second-grade class many years ago. And, I ran out of material because second graders consume material much more quickly than MBAs. They’re like yes, we got it, we got it. So, at the end of my lecture, I said, humor, how many of you think you’re funny? Everyone raises their hands, and, then, I asked, tell me who you think is the funniest person you know. Everyone, except for one person, said their dad or their brother. It was horrifying. And, then, I decided to write a book on this with Naomi. But Naomi mentions this idea of humor styles. One of the biggest breakthroughs we had was that people think this is about being funny, and it’s not. It’s about having a humorous style. And there are four, and you can go to humorseriously.com to take the quiz and have data share with what you are. But we have a sense of what you are John, so, we’ll guess at the end of this. But you can guess first. First is the stand-up. They’re bold, they’re brash, they’re unafraid to ruffle a few feathers to get a laugh. There are the sniper- edgy, dry, sarcastic, masters of the unexpected dick. Then, there is the sweetheart, they’re earnest and honest, and they often use humor to uplift others. And, then, there’s a magnet. They’re a little silly, a little like fit, more physical, more charismatic. They’re the people who light up a room when they come to a party. So, what do you think you are primarily?

John: Magnet.

Jennifer: I think so, too. You’re also extroverted, right?

John: No.

Jennifer: You seem extroverted. And, so, yes, I bet it, you would have also made me a secondary dimension of stand up. Naomi, what do you think?

Naomi: Exactly the same. I think that you’re a magnet but that New Yorker energy really pulls you towards stand up and sniper every so often.

John: Here’s my wife’s version of humor, and she tries her best. So, it’s 1986 we’re at New York Airport. No one’s in the terminal, and we’re waiting for my daughter to arrive. She’s eight or nine months old, with my brother who’s bringing her back from California. And, who strolls into the terminals the middle of July and it’s a hot summer night in New Jersey but Bill Murray. And, he’s licking an ice cream cone. And now, Bill Murray was at the height of Bill Murry-ness. And he’s still, of course, who he is. And she goes, “I’m going to go ask him for his autograph.” And, I’m like, “Oh boy, how can this go wrong?” “I can’t really go wrong asking Bill Murray for his autograph.”

So, my wife walks up to him. And she says, “Come with me, come with me. I want to ask.” And, so, I sort of sheepishly go alongside, and finally, she goes up to him. She goes, “Mr. Murray, can I just have your autograph?” She goes, “And by the way, I loved you in the movie Fletch.” That’s how that goes. And Bill Murray didn’t even know because, of course, he’s archrival at that time. Coming out of Caddyshack was probably much more made about it than it really should. It was his competition and sort of adversity at that moment with Chevy Chase. So, he sort of laughed it off. So, he says, “Give me something to sign and I’ll sign it.” So, the only thing she had was a check. So, he turns the check over and he writes, Merry Christmas, drive safely home. And, that was Bill Murray. And that’s how he did middle of July “Merry Christmas.”

Naomi: Oh, my gosh.

John: She tries.

Naomi: I thought that you are going to say he signed Chevy Chase.

John: Oh, no. He should have, but it’s great. Listen, what other takeaways do you want? Obviously, the bar is low in business. I do agree with you. Levity brings us together. Talk about what you do for folks like me that have to go do speaking engagements and want to open and be funny but be contextual and timely at the same same time but get everybody on their side. How do you coach them? How’s that part of your practice? And even your book, how can you make us better in terms of opening, so, we get the crowd on our side?

Naomi: Yes, so, if someone comes to us and says, hey, I’ve got this talk to give please help me be funny, write jokes. We turn right back to them and say, great but the takeaway, tell me what’s true for you. So, it’s literally just helping them mind their life for what’s true. So, I would ask you things like all right, John, tell me about your last five dances. Tell me about the holidays. Tell me about what your dynamic with your kids is like. Tell me a little bit about your wife. What’s going on at work? What do you most energize by? What do you most drain by? And it’s in minding those truths from our life that we find material that’s going to land on the moment. So, one example is, a CEO that we work with came to us the other day and said this, and so we said, great, tell us some things about your life. And, also, what strategic message do you need to get across right now? What tone do you need to say? Right. So, his tone was, he feels there is an incredible distance between him and his team and if he walks in the room people feel nervous. He wants them to see him as more of a human, right? So, how do I be a little self-deprecating and have them feel safer on me?

So, he gave us some information about his life like the fact that his kids never listen to him. And, this is like a real problem in his life. So, he came in and he opened it, he’s all hands. And he named off the fact that he wants people to feel comfortable around him. Like, come talk to me. And, just so, you know, it may seem like I’m the CEO in this room. When I walk into this room, I’m CEO, but when I walked out that door, I’m the executive assistant to two teenage girls. And, then, he went through all of his responsibilities as an executive assistant. I cut the crust off all of the sandwiches. I’m a professional Uber driver, all these things. And, even though, again, this isn’t haha, funny, perfect comedy, it’s humanity. And it’s a little window into his life that got everyone in the room laughing and also feeling a bit more comfortable with him. So, the biggest. the takeaway for people who have an event coming up, they want to be more human, is first thinking about what’s true for you. And, also, what’s going to be true for others in the room.

John: Love it. I love it. Jennifer, do I have this, right? Do you watch every Saturday Night Live episode?

Jennifer: Oh, yes, absolutely. I’m part of this too, just not being a student like a student at this domain. But, part of this is very personal to me as well. My mom has worked in hospice for as long as I can remember, 40 plus years. And, I remember talking to her as a young girl, who are the people that have regrets in their last days of life? Because it was her job to see if she could help them, right? Because that’s what you do as a hospice volunteer. So, I remember her sharing the types of people that had so much joy and no regrets versus those who had regrets. And, the regrets really kind of more bucketed into a few areas. One is bold people often mentioned they wish they had been bolder and traveled more, changed more, took more risks. And, then, another was authenticity people wish that they had been just more authentic in life and listen less to what others had said, and more to what they felt to be true. They wish they savor these small little moments. They wish they laugh more than take themselves so seriously. It is one of the most serious moments of life and they mentioned that. And love, they wish they had the chance to say I love you one more time.

And, what’s really powerful is that all of this work of the neurosciences, social sciences, all of these things that Naomi and I have delved into over the last decade, it’s revealed that not only is having a sense of humor and not taking yourself too seriously. would allow you to mitigate that one regret. It really allows you to mitigate the others. Because when you have this like sense of humor and mindset of levity, you’re able to take bolder risks. You are by definition, as you already mentioned, you feel more authentic. You can read the room better as well. You by definition have to be present because you’re looking for these small truths that actually can make you smile each day. And as you noted, Michael Lewis ended our book. And he said when humor exists love is not far behind, and we find that to be extraordinarily true. This is why it’s very important to watch SNL as often as you can.

John: Favorite skit. Go. What was your favorite skit ever?

Jennifer: Oh my gosh, Cowbell. Yes, I’m just going to stick with that.

John: And, Naomi, favorite skit?

Naomi: Oh, I don’t think I can name a favorite set of all time. But recent favorites are Iceberg. So, Bowen Yang is the Titanic iceberg. I will always love Totino’s commercial, High School play, where Will Ferrell is the teacher and he’s casting it. Too many dimensions but those are some recent favorites.

John: Listen. I know we’re up against the time limit here. For our listeners and viewers who want to learn more and or potentially hire you to help them get better at this in business and in life, they can go to www.humorseriously.com or they can buy your book, read it as I did. You can also write to me and potentially win a free copy signed by both Jennifer Naomi. But this book is great. You can buy it on amazon.com, on their website, Barnes and Noble, and other great bookstores close to you.

Naomi and Jennifer, both of you are amazing. I could spend three hours just chatting with both of you. You are doing amazing and important work. I’m just grateful for your time. I’m grateful that you came to Goldman Sachs and spoke. And I can’t wait to see you again in person and listen to what you’re up to. Because, I think, you both are just doing such important, impactful work that’s so underrated in society and in business that I think there’s a big future ahead. And, I hope you come back one day on the Impact Podcast.

Jennifer: Thank you, John.

Naomi: Love to. And yes, thank you so much for having us. And, you can tell Courtney and Tyler that two more regular listeners, they might have noticed, have been added in the last couple of months. So, I think we’re up at least 20%.

John: Thank you both for everything. And, seriously, I really want you to come back. Also, on January 13, your Ted Talk comes out. Listen to their Ted talk. If you can’t make it to their Stanford class, which most of us won’t be able to unless we’re students at Stanford. Listen to their Ted Talk that comes out that Jennifer did while she had a broken femur.

Jennifer: All right, thanks so much.

Naomi: Thank you, John.

John: Thank you both for everything. Be well. Have a great 2022 and way beyond.

Naomi: Thank you. You too.

John: 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, speeches, custom experiences, live streams, and much more. For more information on Engage or to book talent today, visit letsengage.com

John Shegerian: Welcome back to Green is Good, and this is a real exciting segment for me personally. We’ve got my great friend, Brian Scudamore, on. He’s the founder of 1-800-GOT-JUNK and he’s a superstar entrepreneur who’s even doing many other ventures besides that. Welcome back to Green is Good, Brian Scudamore.

Brian Scudamore: Awesome, John. Thanks for having me back on the show. Always a good time.

John: Hey, Brian, for our listeners out there that haven’t heard you personally tell your story, before we get into any of the questions and the fun about your great brand, 1-800-GOT-JUNK, and the other brands you’ve launched recently, can you share a little bit about your journey leading up to it and how you even founded the great brand, 1-800-GOT-JUNK?

Brian: Of course, so it all started one day in a McDonald’s drive-thru in 1989. It was a tight job market for students. I had planned on going to university or college here in Vancouver, and couldn’t fund my own way without getting a great job so I was looking around, thinking of job ideas, and finally I thought you know what, it’s a tough market. My applications weren’t getting looked at, so I was at the McDonald’s drive-thru and there was this beat-up truck in front of me in the lineup and it said “Mark’s Hauling” on the side and the guy’s truck was filled with junk and I thought you know what, maybe I’ll go buy a truck and start hauling junk and create my own job rather than depend on finding one and I got out there, started with one truck, and ironically, funded my way through my entire university education and it inspired me to drop out. I thought here I am three years into a four-year degree. I’m learning more about business actually running a business rather than studying it in school and I thought I’m gonna drop out and pursue this great business full time and 1-800-GOT-JUNK started adding trucks, three trucks that year, four, five, we’re at about a thousand trucks now, Canada, the United States, and Australia, and we’re at record revenues, which is a fantastic place to be right now so a little bit about the journey and every day is a new part of the journey and that’s what makes being an entrepreneur so exciting.

John: And, the recession that came up in 2008, 2009, your brand totally made it through that and no potholes or no scars and it’s flying now?

Brian: I would say we made it through. I would say there’s plenty of scars and wounds and potholes. It was an interesting time. I think it really helped me understand what being an entrepreneur is all about, that you’ve gotta take the good times and the bad times and roll with them both and we dropped from 119 million in revenue down to 85 million during that economic downturn. It was a big downturn for us. However, we survived. We made it through. We learned a lot about leadership and weathered the storm and the exciting part is post recession, we’re actually back to now pre recession levels and beyond. We’ll do 126 million this year, perhaps even more, so that’s an improvement over our record year and every month this year has actually turned out to be a record month in revenue and it feels good to be back on top and winning again.

John: That’s so great, and you know, that’s what makes great entrepreneurs like you, Brian, the fact that you just keep getting back up off the canvas when things get you down again and I know you personally and I just love that about you and love that about your brand, but talk about that. You had record revenues because you have customers coming back and back and back again. Here in New York City where we tape the show and where I live now, your trucks are all over the city. Can you talk a little bit about the customer stickiness to your brand?

Brian: Sure, and maybe I’ll even comment for a second. You had mentioned knowing me personally and the never give up. It’s funny that we’re talking right now but in front of me here is a helmet that you gave me from Rudy Ruettiger that’s signed and it’s a big old shiny helmet that’s signed that actually says, “Don’t give up.” We can’t ever give up and I think that one of the things that makes the experience great for our customers is we never give up on them. If we had ever got an experience that goes awry, if something happens and one of our guys makes a mistake, we will do whatever it takes to fix that experience and learn from it and I’ve learned that if you actually upset a customer and do something wrong, if you handle it properly and handle it with an exceptional sort of attitude and experience, you can have that customer be so wowed with you, more so than they were before even having a bad experience so customer loyalty is something important to us and we work really hard. We ask every single customer. At the end of the job, we will call or email them, depending on how they booked their job, and we will ask, ‘On a scale of one to 10, how likely are you to refer us to friends or colleagues?’ and our scores are off the charts because of how careful our care and attention is to the customer experience to make it better and better every step of the way.

John: You know, Brian, you started this journey in approximately 1989, so you’ve seen times have changed so much. What has changed in the junk removal industry since ’89?

Brian: I don’t know if much has changed other than I think what we’ve started to do was professionalize an industry; clean, shiny trucks, professional drivers, on-time service, pricing, and I think the only things that’s changed is people have followed our leadership, which is flattering and there’s lots of competitors out there that certainly try and keep us on our toes but nobody’s really grown to the size we’re at. We’ve got about 1,000 trucks. Our next biggest competitor might have 100, and so we feel that as long as we continue to focus on customer service, we continue to wow every single person we can, which you have to do in these days of social media — bad news spreads real quick — we think we’ll always be on top and that’s an exciting position to be in, but it’s never one we take for granted.

John: Yeah, you know, for our listeners who just tuned in, we’ve got Brian Scudamore on with us. He’s the founder of 1-800-GOT-JUNK and yes, it’s www.1-800-GOT-JUNK.com. To learn more about 1-800-GOT-JUNK, to book one of their great trucks, to understand what they do and their service, that’s the way to go. Either call them or you could do it online and Brian, the show is called Green is Good. We’ve had you on before. You have a tremendous legacy and great environmental footprint because that’s actually the DNA of your company. Can you explain to our listeners why using 1-800-GOT-JUNK is the environmentally friendly thing to do?

Brian: Yeah, well, it’s interesting and you and I have had this conversation several times offline is that we were recycling before people were even talking about recycling. Everything we haul away, which is literally billions of pounds of junk, rubbish, trash, whatever you want to call it, when we’re taking these things off to transfer stations, we’ve always chosen transfer stations who are more environmentally friendly than say their competitors. What they do is they sort through the refrigerators, the TVs, the old furniture, whatever they can do, and 61.3%, that’s our currently nationally audited by an independent third-party number, 61.3% of what we haul away gets recycled, reused, donated and so recycling is something that we really practice and we don’t do it just because we’re trying to greenwash and sound like we’re doing all the right things form an environmentally green perspective. We don’t really talk about it all that much. Why we do it is because it’s the right thing to do and if we can keep as much of the waste out of the waste stream and have things get reused, recycled, donated, that’s where the future’s at. There’s just too much stuff getting produced and thrown away. Look at any one of us. We’re very consumer driven. I’m talking on my iPhone right now. How many iPhones have I had? It’s kind of sad that we consume so we’ve gotta figure out as human beings how to continue to have things reused and recycled and I think our business does that at the core and we did it, again, before people were even talking about recycling so it is really the core of our business.

John: You’ve been doing this and you do it so well and you’re constantly pushing your organization, both the entrepreneurs who become franchisees but then also the core people back at headquarters, you’re constantly working with them to create a better experience and a better brand. Where do you want to take it the next five years?

Brian: So, what we’re doing over the next five years that is really helping us be a better business and be better leaders is we’re also developing other concepts that can help people in their home, so 1-800-GOT-JUNK, which started 24 years ago and my first baby of sorts inspired me to start another business called Wow 1 Day Painting. I know you had the founder of the concept, Jim Biden, on the show, which is great. We go in and we paint homes in a day without any compromise in quality. We have a third concept called You Move Me and You Move Me is a locally run moving company so we don’t do long distance moves. We only specialize in local moves and the five-year vision, the 10-year vision is how can we come in and be the home service professional that you trust for as many different things in your home as possible? We’re known for customer experience and caring about the customer and doing everything it takes to wow so how can we do it with our three brands and beyond?

John: That is so interesting. So, it’s a one-stop shop for the people with their home services?

Brian: Yeah. They’re all different businesses with different challenges and problems. Let’s face it. Painting, moving, they’re not simple businesses, but we’re constantly trying to raise the bar and improve the experience in that industry. If I look at what binds all our companies together, is making the ordinary business of X exceptional so making the ordinary business of junk removal exceptional, painting exception, and moving exceptional. If we can’t take an industry and make it exceptional, we won’t touch it. We’ll leave it to someone else to either try and figure out or mess it up but that’s really what ties everything together.

John: With You Move Me, was that an entrepreneur that came to you or was that something you incubated in house?

Brian: That was something we incubated in house. It came to me in a couple of different ways. Number one is as a consumer, I had moved and my experience was so horrible that I said somebody’s gotta do something about this. Somebody’s gotta change this scary, broken industry and when I say broken, much of our stuff was literally broken, so it was a terrible experience.

John: I’m laughing because I’ve been through that myself, so you thought of that yourself then?

Brian: Thought of it myself and then found out that there was someone in our business in Kansas who was running a moving company, so his name is Tyler and he runs a 1-800-GOT-JUNK franchise and a Wow 1 Day franchise. He had gotten into the moving business on his own and I said, listen, would you like to be our first test franchise partner and join this bigger brand and in return we’ll give you a franchise but you help us build up some of the system and share the learning? And it’s been fantastic. John: No kidding, and Jim came to you. Jim and you met and you had sort of an epiphany together on scaling Wow 1 Day. Is that correct?

Brian: Yeah, so I got my home team because I had three different people quote me on painting my house and they told me seven to 10 days, this is what it’ll cost. Jim came in and said same price, same quality, I’ve done this for 22 years, I hire great people but particularly what got me excited is he said listen, I’ll do it in a day and my immediate reaction was is that even possible? And, I think everybody questions that when they look at our business. However, it’s pretty easy to see that one room can be painted by two people in a day. Why can’t you just take the rooms, multiply by one or two people? I had 16 people in my house and they banged off my job in a day without rushing, without any compromise in quality, and it was fantastic, so when I had my house painted by Jim’s crew, I said, okay, have you looked at franchising this? And, he said I actually tried and failed and I said, okay, well maybe I can help you and we got together for a beer and the rest is history.

John: Taking 24 years of amazing business experience that you had at 1-800-GOT-JUNK and then using that as a platform for Wow 1 Day Painting and You Move Me, how is that going to enable you to scale those brands much faster? Obviously, you had to scale 1-800-GOT-JUNK. You were on a territory and putting footsteps where no one’s ever been before. Now how are you going to use all your great experience as an entrepreneur and a massively successful one at that to help scale these much faster and get these to a critical mass and to the places you want them to go in a truncated way?

Brian: Yeah, two key points on that. Number one is I have to and people in our company have got to make sure that I keep and we keep our egos in check, not to think that just because we built one business successfully or two or three that we can continue to do it. Each business has different set of problems and different set of challenges and we’ve got to still bootstrap these businesses like we did with 1-800-GOT-JUNK . We’ve still got to hire great people. We’ve still gotta focus on the consumer so it’s keeping our ego in check and saying hey, we haven’t quite figure everything out. There’s so much learning each and every day. The second key point is we really have to take our systems and processes that we have in place and leverage those; our call center, how we get PR, how we market online, all the things that we do a good, solid job at, leveraging that and I think proof that we’re leveraging it is if you look at You Move Me, we launched 26 markets almost overnight and we did a million dollars in revenue, actual million dollars in moves in our last two months. We’ll do a million dollars in our third month. It’s growing quickly and it’s only because we’ve had infrastructure in place to really lever things up.

John: That’s great. Let’s go back to 1-800-GOT-JUNK. 1-800-GOT-JUNK landed on a television show. Can you talk about the power of TV and interrelate that to what you’ve done with social media? Because you’re just a master at messaging and branding and can you share with our listeners out there? Because we have so many listeners out there of the generation behind us that are looking to start something new and the aspects that it takes to start something new now aren’t as daunting as they used to be because of the democratization of the Internet and the processes that it allows us. Can you take what you’ve done on TV and interrelate it with online also and talk about how you keep your brands in front of the public at large that way?

Brian: Sure, so we landed one of the biggest media hits I think someone can land, which was The Oprah Winfrey Show years ago, 2003, and that was just unbelievable but we had already had some great big wins, Wall Street Journal, Fortune magazine, all sorts of great press that we aggressively went after and said listen, we have a great story to tell. We’d love to be able to have you hear our story and I would often call up producers and I still do this today. I met with someone at The Wall Street Journal recently, which turned into me doing a webcast later on today with The Wall Street Journal and press is just the perfect way to get the message out. We mentioned social media. That’s one that I don’t know if we’ve really figured out but I’d say no, we haven’t and I think I’m starting to learn that social media really is just the medium. It’s still about the message. Nobody can just put their business on Facebook or LinkedIn and expect that everything goes hog-wild. What makes a business go hog wild and spread virally is having a great story and so what stories can we mine from our business, from our people? It’s the stories that get spread and 1-800-GOT-JUNK, the coolest find I think we ever found was $400,000 in cash under someone’s hardwood floors. There was a little tiny board sticking up and there was a bill and one of our guys pointed it out to the homeowner and he said let’s rip this board up and sure enough, at the end of the day, when this person ripped up their floorboards, there was $400,000 in bills that had been buried apparently in the 1930s so it’s those stories, the cool the things that happen, that really get spread. It’s not the actual medium and I think in today’s storytelling era, we’ve got two many people that are trying to just show up and throw up. This is who I am. This is my business. This is why I’m so great. Now think of how you can tell a story that can help someone. That’s the key is we’re in the storytelling era and I think that that’s the future.

John: For our young listeners out there that want to grow up and become the next Brian Scudamore, my son being one that you inspired when he was only a mere 11 years old and he’s now 20, what advice or resources do you want to share with them? We’ve got a couple minutes left here. Looking backwards, how do you inspire our next generation to be like you? Look at you with three amazing businesses up and running and more to come. You’ve got so much more in front of you, Brian. What can you share backwards for the young listeners who are struggling to find what’s their place on this planet in terms of business and opportunities?

Brian: It’s a great question and I think that the most important thing someone can do is just really tap into their soul and try and figure out what is the reason I am here? What is it that I was intended to do? So, in my situation, my life, is to see possibilities, to imagine big things and I believe when you imagine big things, you never know. They just might happen. I had envisioned — and we put it up on our big can you imagine wall in our office years ago — imagine being on The Oprah Winfrey Show. Imagine being a brand that’s a billion dollars in revenue. What could we imagine starting to ask the questions and having that really spread? So I think future entrepreneurs or future adults, people that are growing up that want to do something great for the world, which hey, that’s why we’re all here, I think it’s checking in with yourself and saying what can I imagine for myself? What can I imagine for the world? I know that your son, Tyler, what I did to inspire him I have no idea. He’s an inspiring kid who’s doing inspiring things and I remember the day he picked me up at the airport in Fresno, California, 11 years old. He’s got a sign out and he’s wearing a 1-800-GOT-JUNK uniform and he holds out the sign, ‘Brian Scudamore.’ I felt like a rock star and it’s pretty special experience so I think inspiring people do inspiring things and it’s just tapping into what’s important in this world and how one individual can make this place better.

John: Well, you’ve inspired me and our listeners again, Brian, and you are an inspiring entrepreneur and sustainability superstar 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 and is the largest fully integrated IT in electronics asset disposition provider and cyber security 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 ERI direct.com.

John: Welcome to another edition of the Impact podcast. I’m so honored today because we have a home town hero with us, a real home town hero. She’s Lynea Lattanzio. She’s the founder and executive director of the Cathouse on the Kings. Welcome to the Impact podcast, Lynea.

Lynea Lattanzio: Thank you for having me.

John: Lynea, you are a local Legend and international Superstar, and I never even had the wonderful chance of meeting you until just today. I just heard about you recently and you are literally an International treasure and a local hero. So, I’m so glad I was able to get you today and to do this interview. Can you share a little bit of your journey. How you even got here before we get talking about the Cathouse on the Kings. How did you even get to this position? I know it started somewhere back in 1981. Can you talk a little bit about what happened?

Lynea: 1981, my divorce was final and it was a terrible marriage. After that, I didn’t want to date. I didn’t want to have any relationships with men after that. It was that bad and then I wanted to live on the river. So, without looking at the piece of property itself up close it was a pouring down rain and we turn the corner on the street, and I just saw this big beautiful river and I said I’ll take it. And I had not been in the house. So, here it is. It’s six acres. It’s a 4200 square foot five, bedroom home and I’m single with no kids. What was I thinking?

John: Wow! And what is your profession? Will you want to stay home wife went before this or did you already have a profession?

Lynea: I had several. My husband and I built apartment units. We were Developers. Most of the apartments over 1000 units ones by Fresno State, most of those by Fresno State.

John: Got it. Understood.

Lynea: And then I owned a karate school for a while and I did stuff.

John: Right. You were busy. So, now you have this house, beautiful home on 6 acres, five bedrooms. No children. No husband. What was the going through your head? What was the tipping point that made you get into this amazing and important line of work?

Lynea: Well, I realized that I don’t know why I bought it. There was just no rhyme or reason to owning all of this property in this big house. And then in 1992, my dad asked me to find him to maines[?] kittens and it was March. And I thought kittens. They’re everywhere all the time. No, biggie. So I went looking around and there were no kittens and I thought, well, that’s odd. They must all be getting homes, how bizarre. And then I went to a local singer[?] which is right just North of us to their kill[?] shelter and they were starting to get in these little tiny three week old that needed bottle feeding. And they says this is all we have right now. Can you take these home and bottle feed him. So I took home, I think five and then they called me a couple days later. I ended up with 15 and they got sick and then I take this pitiful box of sick kittens from vet to vet to vet going to get a help. And after by the end of the year, I had done 96 cats and kittens. So I thought this is easy. I can do this. Next year I had 35 left over and that was the end of my life.

John: Wow! So wait a second. So now you started this and when did you decide that this was going to become much bigger than you ever could have imagined?

Lynea: I never thought that, I never ever thought that, I’ve been doing this 30 years and have rescued 40,000 cats.

John: Oh my gosh! Off the air you were sharing with me some fascinating stats, you’re a very humble person. I know you’re sort of a very private person. You don’t look for the spotlight, but the spotlights found you, because your work is tremendously important and impactful Lynea to talk a little bit about what you told me off the air, who’s done television stations from around the world shares some of the International stories that have been done on you in recent times.

Lynea: Well, we’ve been on Australian TV three times, in fact, Dr. Chris came to the Cathouse and filmed once and he’s a Bondi[?] vets, that’s their show. And then we were on Korean TV twice. We were on Japanese TV three times. We’ve been on Great Britain TV, French TV. We just did a Yugoslavian[?] Country. I don’t remember the name of it. I didn’t [inaudible] and then we’ve been on Canadians and then we’ve been on Natgeo[?] Wild. We’ve been on Animal Planet. We’ve been on a lot of other programs.

Interviewer: National Geographic. I saw you on. They did a big story on you.

Lynea: We also got about 20 videos on YouTube of all the different people that have come out and done stories on us.

John: Unbelievable and for our listeners and viewers to find Lynea’s amazing place. It’s wwwcathouseonthekings.com Cathouse. No fancy spelling, cathouseonthekings.com. Lynea, I got your website up here in front of me. And as you said since the time you started this amazing shelter, you’ve saved over 40,000 cats. Over 40,000?

Lynea: Yes. And over 3000 dogs.

John: And over 3000 dogs. So we don’t want to leave the dogs out either.

Lynea: Probably a couple 100 peacocks and assorted rodents and skunks and raccoons too.

John: Peacocks?

Lynea: We have hundreds of peacocks.

John: Really? Are they indigenous to this area. I didn’t know anything.

Lynea: They were from upriver and when the people move, you don’t take your peacocks with you. You just leave them and then when they would lay their eggs on our property and then the eggs would hatch and the babies were cat toys. So we would grab all the babies and lock them up till they were bigger than a cat. So I think that’s why we have so many. We were a little overly conscientious about saving up.

John: So, in the 1990’s, you became a veterinary technician along the way during this journey?

Lynea: I had to learn what I was doing and so I went to work and I was a surgical tech and janitorial work, you clean the cages and stuff but I assisted in surgery and every paycheck I owed him money. So, he loved it, it was a win win because I would do all my spays and neuters and all my medical and all my medications. I’d have to buy it through him and so it he loved it. Free labor.

John: Oh my gosh. And so, if I was to ask you just straight away. Obviously, we know the great work you’re doing, you’re saving these beautiful animals, both cats dogs peacocks. And like you said, raccoons skunks and some other assorted animals, but in terms of [inaudible] Mission, explain to our audience, why you’re such a unique shelter and what your true mission is at the Cathouse on the Kings.

Lynea: What makes us unique in the world is that we are a 12 acre no cage. No kill sanctuary.

John: Wow!

Lynea: We take in the unadoptable animals. We take in the ones with behavioral problems. We take in the seniors. We take in three legged blind. Those are the ones that we take and then we trade with other no kills that we approve and for everyone unadoptable cat they bring us. They have to take five of our adults or 25 of our kittens. So that’s how we get ours out, Fresno’s the highest kill rate in the United States.

John: Really?

Lynea: Yeah we have to get them out in order to save them or we have to get them out.

John: So wait a second. Just so I understand, you’re no kill shelter and no cages. So when cats come in and you nurture them and you work with them. So you have a constant adoption process going on. How do people find you and how if our listeners or viewers want to adopt from you. Some of your beautiful animals. How do they go about doing that?

Lynea: Do you hear that at the door? That’s a rottweiler and a pug that went out. Can you hold for a second?

John: Of course.

Lynea: They knocked.

John: They’re polite at least.

Lynea: Yes. Okay. Come back.

John: [laughing].

Lynea: Yeah, we are on Petfinder and we have all of our adoptable is listed on the website, but the kittens are all quarantine. There’s two buildings with kittens.

John: Oh my god!

Lynea: We have to ICU’s. We have a senior facility. That’s just beautiful. It’s got five buildings in it and the buildings have couches and lounge chairs and they have an individual heaters. So we tried to make it like a home because they’re senior cats and they came from a home, the owner died or went to a rest home and they couldn’t stay. And so we tried to make it the best we could for them but it has grass and trees and everything that they need and people there to hold them hug them and love them.

John: So on a weekly basis or a monthly basis Lynea, how many animals are adopted from your wonderful facility on a monthly basis, approximately?

Lynea: Well, we are Petco partner and there are very many of those, [inaudible] people that they give us a building inside their Petco. It’s a 1500 square foot adoption center. We have the key, we lock it. We take care of it inside Petco, and we do about at least 60 a month adoptions there and probably 30 a month adoptions here. And then, from this time of year until May will send out 300 or 400 animals to other rescues.

John: Wow! So about 100 a month are being adopted between your own facility and the Petco facilities.

Lynea: Correct.

John: You’re a non profit. Is that correct?

Lynea: Yes.

John: So talk a little bit about people like you that do such great work. Of course, it just doesn’t happen by accident, a you put a lot of thought and energy and hard work with your volunteers into what you do in your mission, but money had to help fund it. How did you fund all this work since the 1980s and get to the place that you’ve gotten with such massive success, and saving so many wonderful animals?

Lynea: Started it out spending my retirement, about $300,000 of my own money. I had a 450 SL I sold to build some kennels, my diamond ring I sold to build fencing. I thought I don’t need this anymore, minivan here I come. So basically I supported myself until we started getting a little bit of notoriety and then the County of Fresno tried to shut me down and I got my first publicity. They said I could have pigs or goats or chickens or ducks. But I could not have cats. And there was an uproar such an uproar that finally, at the end of the meeting they said, how many cats do you want? And I said, 500.

John: Oh my God!

Lynea: [coughing] I think I’d never have 500 and now I have 1000.

John: Wow! And so go back to something you said earlier Lynea, that’s so fast and never heard that statistic before. Why is Fresno have the highest kill rate in the country?

Lynea: It’s the way that they run the City shelter. Now, the County shelter, when they took over, they have turned the County shelter from an 86 percent kill to an 86 percent or 90 percent no kill. That’s the County. The problem is the County doesn’t take cats. The City of Fresno kills almost every cat that comes in and dog and they are statistically, I think it was at a best friend’s they had a convention and it said the kill rates in order and Fresno was the highest number one on that list of killed groups in the United States.

John: Oh my gosh!

Lynea: So it’s nothing to be proud of.

John: No!

Lynea: But it’s the way that they run it and they choose to kill them as opposed to like we do, we send them to Canada for God’s sake. Wisconsin doesn’t have cats there get too cold for cats to breed around, like they do here. They could send them someplace, but they choose to immediately euthanize[?] on the way in the door they just kill them.

John: Oh my gosh, they don’t have a chance once the City [inaudible] on them.

Lynea: If they’re under two pounds they are killed immediately. Give it an owner surrender. Let’s say you couldn’t keep your cat. You were moving or whatever. You took your cat. They’re thinking it’s going to find a home. If it’s an owner surrender they can kill it immediately. And the only ones I have to keep for 72 hours are lost or found animals when they found and strays.

John: That’s tragic.

Lynea: [inaudible] we used to take 1300 a year out of there and then they wouldn’t let us take any. That’s how bad they are.

John: Why?

Lynea: Hello what’s wrong with them?

John: Right. That makes no sense. When you’re someone as wonderful as you. Have you served as a role model when people watch your story in Korea or Australia, and National Geographic, and all around the world. And like you said, there’s at least 20 videos of you up on YouTube. So anyone can watch it. It’s democratized information on what you’re doing. Have people come to you from all different parts of the world and said they want to model themselves after you. And what you’ve built with Cathouse on the Kings?

Lynea: All the time. Even Korea one of their film crews. When they come, they brought an entourage. Like four cars and 40 people. It was ridiculous. He wanted to open his own sanctuary in Japan. And they taped it in Japanese and did it in Japanese. And then they had a translator that would ask me a question and it was the babbling[?] the this and all of that, it was kind of cute.

John: [laughing].

Lynea: Yeah, he was asking questions about how to do it and I get those questions from all over. I just got a call from Puerto Rico today. We’ve taken them from Puerto Rico before we got them from China, Venezuela all over the Middle East, every country in the Middle East and a few other odd places around the world plus all over the United States they bring them to us.

John: Wow!

Lynea: I’m famous, but locally they don’t know who I am.

John: Right. That’s some crazy! Lynea, how many volunteers do you have working for you by the way?

Lynea: We have 45 paid.

John: Paid.

Lynea: Paid. You cannot have 700 cats and 300 kittens, 12 acres and rely on volunteers that doesn’t happened.

John: So you have a full staff underneath you.

Lynea: It’s hard enough getting paid employees to come to work these days.

John: Right.

Lynea: So yeah, we’ve got everybody’s paid. The volunteers come out and do open house or foster. We are always in need of people to foster little tiny kittens.

John: So Lynea if people want to donate to your great organization, Cathouse on the Kings. How does that work? How do you work with philanthropist and other people who love your mission and love what you’re doing? And how can they contribute if they feel motivated?

Lynea: Well, you can go to our website and there’s everything that you need there. Also. We have an Amazon wish list. And whenever you order anything on that, we get a cut a percentage so that adds up, and when we put in out of urgent need for say kitten food because when you have 300 kittens at all times between June and Christmas, you run through a lot of kitten food. And we just say we’re out of kitten food and then the trucks start coming in bringing as kitten food and look at like one Amazon thing had 23 boxes for us. So it’s very helpful when we don’t have to go out and start buying kitten food.

John: So, which days of the week or the public allowed to come in and adopt cats from your facilities, it’s open every day or just certain days?

Lynea: Well, we’re open at Petco and out here every day. But to adopt you have to fill out an application online. And it takes a couple days for an approval. And then they will tell you where that particular kitten or cat is because they’re either out here. They’re in foster care or they’re at pet coat. So you you can’t just come out here and expect to see the cat you saw online because might not be here. However, we’re open seven days a week for visitors and we have visitors from all over the world.

John: Wow! So Lynea, this sounds like an immersive mission that you’ve been on since the 1980s. Have you left it all? Do you ever leave and take a breather and go somewhere else in the United States around the world, or you just hyper focus on this amazing platform and amazing shelter that you built. And this is where you stay and you don’t move that far from it. What is your personal life like besides your professional life?

Lynea: There is no such thing as a personal life, but I do run away every once in a while. I took my Rottweiler and we drove all the way to Wyoming. I thought it was going to be nice weather, shorts and t-shirts. No, it’s no. Okay, my dog hated me for a week after that. She would not go near my van. She says, I am never going that van with you again.

John: She was done with your head fake. You had faked her thoughts we were going on a vacation.

Lynea: We’re going to have fun. We’re going to go see some moose.

John: Right.

Lynea: We saw one moose the whole thing.

John: Oh my gosh. That is too funny. You’ve done so much, 40,000 animals, you’ve saved over the years. When you go to bed at night and you don’t seem like the type of person Lynea that rests on her [inaudible] or her past accomplishments. What’s your goals for the future in the years to come?

Lynea: Well, we just bought some acreage on the corner. And what I want to build there is a spay neuter clinic because the only way that we’re going to stop the overpopulation is to have free and mandatory spays and neuters. Some of the vets in Fresno will charge up to $300 for a spay, but people can’t afford that. And the people that get the free animals, when they get pregnant, they just throw them out and go get another free animal. So we’re never going to stop it until we make it the law that says you must fix your animal and make it free. So that the you don’t have an excuse.

John: Right, you mentioned that you have two ICU units on your facility, do veterinarians donate their time to come over and work at the ICU units, or do you have paid vets on on staff? How does that work?

Lynea: We have one that comes out and we pay her. We had one that volunteered but he moved to [inaudible] and we have seven vet techs or vet assistants and techs. So, they take care of the health of the animals, and then we work with the one vet [inaudible] does our spays and neuters and amputations, and then we work with San Joaquin vet in Fresno and they do any of our more involved surgeries and things like that. So, we have two vets that we work with all the time.

John: That’s wonderful. Lynea this is all about you and this is your show. We’re going into the Holidays, any words of advice for parents that are badgered by their children to get animals to get pets? Is it just smarter to come to a facility like yours or Petco and adopt rather than go to a breeder and buy new cats or dogs is that more intelligent for parents?

Lynea: What I’m finding out from a lot of my friends that do buy pedigrees is that they end up with health issues, heart problems kidney problems, all kinds of things and they don’t live their normal life span. They had by nine and they should live to be 16. And she’s had three, and she keeps going to the same breeder. And so they’re all going to die at nine. That’s it. But the fact is, when you get him from a rescue that saves them, saves their lives you’re helping out because it gives them room to take in more. And they’re already spayed and neutered. So you really getting a good deal and when you get a free to good home, they’re not free if you take care of them. So you really want to help the people. There’s several no kill adoption centers in Fresno. So you want to help them get their cats adopted so they can save more.

John: When another wonderful human beings reach out to you from around the world and say to you Lynea what’s the secret to your success? How did you do this? I’m trying to grow my my no kill facility, my shelter my sanctuary, I’m hitting a wall or I’m hitting roadblocks, when they come to you for your pearls of wisdom and you’re success model. What are some of the words of advice you share with others that want to mimic and copy this great kind of work you’re doing?

Lynea: One thing since the beginning was, I have positive imaging. I had a little bit of money and I envisioned it place at the river. So I built an enclosure down there with a building and then next one. Well, this is where I made my mistake with that. Next one was bigger, then it was bigger. And so, I do positive imaging and my saying is, don’t ever tell me what I can or cannot do. That was something that since I was married. Don’t tell me, I can’t do that. So I’m good. I just find a way and I do it.

John: And you did it and you’ve done it. What an amazing life over 40,000 animals. Lynea I got to tell you this, like I said, you’re a home town hero here in Fresno. You’re an International star. You’ve been all over the world in terms of the other videos on you and I’m sure there’s going to be even be a lot more coverage on you in the years to come. I’m going to come over and meet you one day in the near future. I’ll call in advance, of course, I only live 20 minutes away from you.

Lynea: I know, I’ll give you a private tour. We also have some hybrids, they’re savannas and one of them is 3/4 serval, you know the serval is that’s an African wildcat.

John: Yeah.

Lynea: Almost like a cheetah and we have four of those right now and the one that’s 3/4 serval is going to be going back to his owner in the next month, I think. So, if you want to see him, you got to come now and he is unbelievable. He’s a biggie to he’s about 30kg.

John: Whoa! What’s going to happened to the other three? What’s the plans for the other three?

Lynea: Well, one of them was in a cage 14 years breeding. We’re not going to adopt her out. She’s done time. They have a beautiful enclosure. It’s got a big waterfall. It’s got its own house it’s patios grass and trees and everything in it just to make it perfect. And then it’s where my swimming pool used to be, when I bought the house and had a dance floor. It had a wet bar and had a swimming pool. All that’s gone. I’m going to turn the swimming pool into a recirculating Koi pond.

John: Wow!

Lynea: That’s more entertainment for.

John: Oh my gosh. I can’t wait to come out and meet you in person. I can’t wait to come see this wonderful Sanctuary you built. For our friends and our listeners, and our viewers all around the world, please to learn more about Lynea, her important work to donate or to adopt, or to just get involved and contribute to her great mission, please go to www.cathouseonthekings.com. Lynea, God bless you and thank you for all the impactful work you’ve made over the last 30 plus years, you’re doing great stuff. It’s just wonderful to have you as part of the Fresno community and as a home town hero, and we just wish you continued success and blessings in the months and years ahead.

Lynea: Thank you, and I’m looking forward to meeting you in person, too.

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 loops platform spans the arc of capital from venture capital to private equity, bridging gaps and fostering synergies to scale the circular economy, to find close loops partners, please. Go to www.closelooppartners.com.

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 Loops 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: 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. Now, we’ve evolved that podcast to the Impact Podcast, which is more inclusive and more diverse than ever before. 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. 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.

Voiceover: 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 so great to be in the studio with you again today.

Mike Brady: Hey! Buddy, right back at you. We just look forward to every week getting together and entertaining, informing, and empowering our audience. You know, one of the things I love about working with you, John, is when we talk about things environmental and Lord knows, we face a few challenges on good old spaceship earth here, but you are such a solution-based guy. That’s just in your DNA. I know that’s how you live your life but you bring that to the table every week.

So rather than gloom and doom and people going, “Oh my gosh, what are we going to do?” Well, will show you a couple of things. I mean, we’re always constantly discovering new things that we can do, each of us as individuals just doing small things. Do that globally and you’ve got a changed world right at your fingertips.

John: Right at our fingertips, and today is a special edition of Green Is Good. We’re going to call it the WW edition of Green Is Good because in the first half we have Woolf Farms on. And Woolf Farms is just another great example here in the Central Valley, of a local entrepreneurial venture that has changed the world just by the solutions that they’ve implemented on their farms. And on the second half of the show, the other W is Walmart and a grand legacy, amazing powerhouse brand, international brand and they’re going to come on and discuss what they do to help the sustainability movement and how they push the Green Revolution forward.

So again, this is the essence of ‘Why’. Mike, you and I do the show. We love having local brands, we love having small growing brands from across the world, actually, but we also like to show the grand international brands and what they’re doing. So today is a perfect merry and the fact is even Woolf Farms works with Walmart. And so we’re going to even show the interrelation of how small brands work with international brands which lead to massive changes around the world.

Mike: And, you know, one of the things too, I think part of the takeaway, if you are an entrepreneur or somebody that isn’t quite yet, got it into action, on an idea that’s been noodling around in your head for a while. You just might find the inspiration here to think, “Okay, so you’ve got a local company [crosstalk] that is now dealing with a worldwide giant”. The biggest retailer on the planet, the biggest employer in the United States, which is Walmart. Now, if they can do it. Is the possibility exists that you might too? That you might find your idea when given wings, will find the proper distribution platform. That’s a real possibility.

John: Local company.

John: Oh! It very much is. And it doesn’t matter, big or small, you can. As Mike always says, “Make small changes which will lead to big solutions”. So we want everybody to tune in today because the WW, Woolf Farms and Walmart edition of Green Is Good is going to be extra special. So come on back to here, Stuart Woolf, at Green Is Good.

Voiceover: 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, and we’re so honored to have our local ecopreneur rock star, Stuart Woolf, who is the president and CEO of Woolf Farming and Processing and also the managing partners of Harris Woolf California Almonds and Los Gatos Tomato Products. Stuart Woolf, welcome to Green is good.

Stuart Woolf: Well, it’s a pleasure to be here. I don’t think I’ve ever been called a rock star, but I guess that’s a good thing.

John: Hey, listen, this is, it’s something to tell the kids at least, right?

Stuart: Yeah, that’s right. Thank you.

John: But you know, your company is again one of the great local brands here in the Central Valley of California. You’re doing great things, you’ve been named agribusiness of the year and have a whole list of awards. It would take me the whole show to go through them. But why you’re here Stuart, is to talk about all the great things you’re doing to lead the Green Revolution. And, you know, I just love your mission statement here, ‘The simple notion of feeding more people with fewer resources is how you build your family business.’ That is an amazing mission statement.

Stuart: Well, thank you. It’s something. We’re very, very proud of it. You know, my family started this business in ’74 and we go back and look at those early budgets. What’s really amazing to me is that we’ve more than doubled, most of the yields that we were budgeting in 1974. Today, on the same footprint and ground, using fewer resources, fewer labor hours, less water, and we’ve kind of doubled all of our production. So it’s not unique just to our farm operation. A lot of the farmers throughout California have been able to do this and it’s really remarkable.

John: Well, we’ve read some great articles on you and your family, Farming and Processing Company. And one of the great relationships you have is with Walmart and how you’re using solar and other renewable practices to help meet Walmart’s goals of less packaging. And of also using vendors that are totally green in their DNA, and then with regards to sustainable practices. Why don’t you tell us about some of the most recent projects that you’ve been involved with? With regards to you’re farming business and also Walmart.

Stuart: Well with Walmart, let me first tell you that we grow… For example, let’s talk about processing tomatoes. We grow processing tomatoes in Fresno County.

John: Okay.

Stuart: And we send them to our processing plant, Los Gatos Tomato Products. And so, we sell bulk tomato paste to a whole host of customers that then, in turn, sell those retail products, the likes of a Heinz, to Walmart. And through the years we’ve read a little bit about some of these larger companies that are interested in making their supply chain a bit more green, or taking carbon out of it, and what have you.

And being out here in the west side and a farming area that is short of water. We had plenty of lands, we had plenty of sunshine and you think about it. We’ll use sunshine to produce tomatoes, onion, garlic, all these crops. We figured, “Well if we can’t farm all the land. Why don’t we use some of that property to capture that sunlight to grow electricity or produce electricity?”

And that kind of fits in also with some of these larger green trends, if you will, throughout the food business. And we just assume this would better position us, it would give us a better profile for those companies, like Walmart, that certainly are looking to take carbon out of their food chains.

John: So explain, like your new, your one of your more recent projects, the solar tracking system that you did with it, tell us a little bit about that.

Stuart: Yeah. So about a year ago, at Los Gatos, we built a single megawatt, tracking solar system that sits on about six and a half acres. We spent about $6.5 million on it. But the project, actually we work with a company called SPG Solar, that helped us line up the financing and what have you. So it wasn’t a huge out-of-pocket expense for us and it’s able to generate about 25% of our requirements at our tomato processing plant. [crosstalk]

Stuart: I’m sorry, please.

John: No. I want to go over that a little bit. First of all, SPG Solar, Tom Rooney, a great, great company, has been on our show before, he’s doing great things. So, explain this, so we all understand this simply sort. You didn’t have to come out of pocket, SPG Solar found you the financing for this and now you have a huge energy saving. Is this how it works?

Stuart: Well, the way it basically works is you have a system that is in place that’s going to generate a megawatt of energy every year. In between, various tax incentives, rebates from PG&E. You get renewable energy credits that one day, you could mark it under the governor’s AB 32 legislation, and all this. You layer all this stuff together and we went to a bank that basically finances this thing, over a 10-year period, we’re on an annual basis. We’re paying for that project and there’s a slight saving for us.

Now, if the cost of energy goes up, which I believe it likely will, then that savings grow over time. And so, essentially, the project is paying for itself [crosstalk]. And we enjoy the benefits of having this greener profile.

John: So it’s also… so it’s a hedge against future potential, rising energy costs, and it creates a great green profile and the continued green profile for Woolf Farming and Processing.

Stuart: Yeah, you know, one of the things, you just nailed it. One of the things that really persuade us was as we look at energy costs in California and the growth of the state, and all of these factors. We believe the cost of energy can only go up. So this is a hedge. We’ve looked into what it will cost us to generate energy out of this solar project and the project was financed over a 10-year, but its useful life, they estimate to be over 25. So we’ll enjoy these benefits for a long time to come.

John: And when you speak of the benefits, can you share some of the round numbers? And with regards to the environmental benefits just from your system itself and from you taking this action on what you’ve created for the communities and the area around you?

Stuart: Sure, you know, actually these projects, when you take them on, and the EPA actually has a schedule of what the benefits are from an environmental standpoint and our project. The EPA suggests that effectively running the solar project would offset about 37,000 tons of pollutants over a 25-year period, That’s the equivalent of just less than, about, burning 4 million gallons of gasoline. It’s the equivalent of over 7,700 acres of pine trees. And when you lay it out over a 25-year period, I mean they’re pretty impressive offsets.

John: So it’s a significant environmental benefit and environmental benefit for all of us to understand when you make this kind of investment?

Stuart: Yes, absolutely. And lastly, I want to throw in there again, by virtue of putting this project in place. We develop these energy credits that ultimately they talked about the possibility of having an open exchange and market for energy credits. We think these will grow in value over time and maybe marketable.

John: So Los Gatos Tomatoes Products is in a penny service area. What was the tipping point for your board, for you, personally, for your family, to go ahead and jump in with this kind of project? These aren’t small dollars we’re talking about for any company, big or small. Where did you guys… How did this all shake out in the board room or family dinners?

Stuart: Well, I can tell you, we had a lot of discussion around our boardroom. And ultimately, one of the driving factors for us, when you lay out all the economics and everything, the project does have a positive payback. We could easily have spent money on a new tomato harvester or some other thing with a quicker payback, but the other way we looked at this, we own a lot of farmland out in Western Fresno County and we couldn’t farm it all. I mean, because of water restrictions, and so a solar project requires no water. And so, we were thinking, “Well, here we already have the asset of the land. What could we do on that land that wouldn’t require water that could generate a return for us?” This was another layer in our decision-making.

Again, I mentioned the governor has his AB 32 legislation, is looking at reducing the amount of carbon coming out of industries, and what have you throughout California. We think this better positioned us in the long term if that legislation does come forward and have an impact. Again, it required very little out-of-pocket capital for us. It was a kind of a self-funding project. And again, the basic investment fits with our mission of producing more food with fewer inputs and resources. So when we laid all the staff out, together with giving us that green profile, it was pretty compelling.

John: Well, Stuart, you mentioned earlier too, I’d like to revisit if you will, for just a second, the energy credits, which you said, I believe if I remember correctly, “Will become even more valuable in the future”. So that’s like an investment, like a savings bond, sort of thing, or putting some money in a CD, if you will, to just break it down. The credits become even more valuable as energy in the future becomes even more expensive, correct?

Stuart: No, that’s correct. And ultimately, as I understand the legislation, is that if you hope to expand, or your current operations, and you need to increase your carbon profile, or what have you, you may have to go buy credits to offset your usage, to offset whatever carbon you’re producing. So I believe the State of California is going to continue to grow and I believe we’re going to continue to have economic activity and growth here. And so, these credits over the course of time, if we’re putting, kind of, a cap on how much carbon industry can emit, and they’ve got to buy these credits as offsets. They’ve got to grow in value, I would think.

John: All right. Will this become a tradable commodity to another business down the road, possibly?

Stuart: Yes, that’s what they’re talking about. But we have other processing facilities. We’re in the frozen vegetable business, we’re in the almond processing business. And so, these credits, we may use them internally in other parts of our operation, or we may very well be investing in more solar installations in other parts of our operation. But this was our first step in it and I can tell you, working with the folks at SPG, these guys built a project, it came in under budget. They built it faster than they had promised and it’s generating more power than what it was rated to do. I mean, we’ve been very, very pleased.

John: And we’re big fans of Tom Rooney. So, this is so great to hear the living proof of what really, how this really works in the fields, in the real world. So, we’re so glad you shared with us the SPG Solar connection. Also, now, let’s toggle and pivot over to the Walmart connection. Your name in different articles has been mentioned with Mike Duke, and Mike is doing great things at Walmart. Explain how this decision of yours, and the greening, and the further greening of both Woolf Farms and Los Gatos Tomato Products has helped you build a closer relationship with Walmart and their goals.

Stuart: Well, I have to tell you. I, again, don’t have a direct relationship with Walmart. I sell to people that remanufacture and virtually, as you well know, all of these guys. See, Walmart is an opportunity.

John: Right.

Stuart: And our basic belief is if we have a greener profile than other suppliers. It puts us in a better position as we move forward, and hope to build our own markets and customer base. And I can tell you, I was just recently, I was in Oak Brook, Oak Brook, Illinois at McDonald’s headquarters, and I was struck that we were talking to those folks about the tomato crop in California and the unique nature of our vertically integrated farming company. And those folks ask me more questions about the solar project than our history of farming, or food process, and what have you.

John: Isn’t that interesting? [crosstalk]

Stuart: They just zeroed in on that thing. And again, I think they’re interested in aligning themselves with people that are, quite frankly, making these kinds of decisions and investments.

John: And what we’ve learned along the way, what Mike and I have learned when we’ve talked to people who have created the next greatest widget, or a sustainable organic product is that, when Walmart, or as you point out, a McDonald’s makes a decision to support people like you that are making green and more sustainable products and decisions, it really moves the needle. It pushes the Green Revolution forward much faster.

Stuart: Well, I would hope so. We believe if companies like McDonald’s or Walmart really take a hard look at, say Los Gatos, and as a part of their supply chain. We think the solar project may be a hook. If we get them here to actually come to the ranch and see the operations. They’ll find out, we have one of the shortest halls in the industry, we actually truck our…

Because our plants are in the middle of our fields of tomatoes, we have a smaller carbon footprint there. We’re making fewer passes in the fields with our tractors, the way we’ve laid out our fields, and the buried rep. We’ve taken a number of steps, quite frankly, pursuing yield and reducing costs that ultimately all fall in line with the basic, their basic goal, of taking carbon out of their supply chain.

John: Gotcha. Gotcha. You know, Stuart, I know the solar project is one great step in the right direction, but I know, as you’ve pointed out, your family’s mission statement and your business mission statement have really been intact for a while. So what other green things? I know you have many other green initiatives. Share with our listeners and the fellow farmers out there, and other active people, and also retailers, and people that will be looking to buy your products. What other things are you doing to make your company more sustainable in its practices?

Stuart: Well, we’ve done a lot of things, but some are just the basic things we’ve done. You know, Fresno County by itself, is the largest tomato-producing region in the world and we stack a tomato plant in the middle of the tomato fields. So we’re not trucking tomatoes all over the state, what have you?

John: So lower carbon footprint just from that.

Stuart: Oh! It’s huge, the amount of miles that we use. We used to truck tomatoes from our farm, about 177 to 100 miles up towards, you know, heading north to the canneries in Sacramento and Tracy, and what have you. We no longer do that. Our average haul here on the ranch is about 5 miles. And so, we really have taken a lot of truck miles off the roads. Out in the fields and here, we’ve done things like, use GPS and standardized our bed configurations. All that means is, every year we can grow a crop on the same bed, using the same drip systems, without having to run tractors to disk everything up, and lay the new furrows out and everything. We’re just simply making fewer passes all over this ranch.

My father, years ago, started investing in all kinds of distribution systems on the ranch, so we could move water all over this property. So we could properly rotate the crops and maintain the health of the soils. This is how we’re able to get… We keep pushing the envelope on yield with fewer inputs. It’s fantastic.

John: How does it work in the agro? Because you’re really the, no pun intended, the top of the food chain, in terms of your massive success, Stuart. And your family’s business has really grown tremendously over the years. Do you share best practices with other leaders in the ag industry, both here in the Central Valley and other parts of the United States, and other parts of the world? Is that how this works?

Stuart: Yeah, you know it’s funny when you’re a farmer, it’s common practice to share best practices if you will. And these best practices that we have, we’ve adopted from a lot of our neighbors and vice versa. And so we do all get better together, but you know, just one thing about California, it’s something that we just take for granted here, how diverse and how productive this region is. But the rest of the world, they typically come to California to find out, how to do it better and more intensively, more efficiently, and what have you, We’re not racing over to Europe, or Africa, or South America to figure out how to do it better. They’re coming here.

That’s the product of having the UC system here and its land grant mission of helping agriculture in their research and development of better farming techniques. We’ve enjoyed the benefit of all of that here. I think we’ve done a good job, but I think all of my neighbors and friends in the Valley are doing just as good a job. We’re not that unique.

John: Hey, you know, we’re down to the last 2 minutes. Do you have…? You know, we have a lot of entrepreneurs, or budding entrepreneurs, or entrepreneurs-in-waiting, or people who want to reinvent themselves. Can you share some pearls of wisdom of your experience of being a CEO and now a green entrepreneur? A lot of people want to be the next Stuart Woolf. Do you have some pearls you want to share with our listeners out there as we wrap up the show?

Stuart: No, I would just tell them to sort out and think about what the possible opportunities are going forward. And for us, we look at, like 50 years, and realize we’ve got more than double the food production throughout the world to feed the world. And we think California’s well-positioned, and so we think there are great opportunities here. If you can hunker down, get more efficient, people are always going to eat and there’s going to be more of them. So I’m very optimistic. I think agriculture is a great place for a young person to come and stake a claim. Unlimited demand going forward.

John: And with regards to agriculture and where it intersects, also, with the Green Revolution. Do you feel very hopeful that they’ll be more entrepreneurs like you that get involved with solar and other great kinds of technology and make their companies greener and better?

Stuart: Absolutely. It’s happening now. And I think there are plenty of opportunities there. I’m very excited about the future.

John: Well, you know, Stuart, we are so thankful for your time and honored that you came on today, Green Is Good. For our listeners out there that want to learn more about what Stuart’s doing and his great family business is doing. You could go to www.woolffarming.com. Stuart, Stuart Woolf, you are really a visionary, ecopreneur, and truly living proof that green is good.

Stuart: Thank you for the kind words.

---

Voiceover: 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. Now, wasn’t that a great first half of the show, Mike?

Mike: Well, once again, I’m totally inspired, John. Just totally inspired.

John: You know, we brought Fresno to all our listeners. It shows how local the solutions can be in the Green Revolution and we’re going to go from Fresno-based, Western Fresno-based, good companies. Now, we’re going to go to Bentonville, Arkansas to bring on one of the greatest global, international brands in the world, Walmart.

Mike: Well, you know, I think I came across his statistic and you are much better with numbers, and facts, and figures than I, John. But am I correct in what I thought I heard, that Walmart is the single largest employer in the United States?

John: You know what? We have to ask Kory Lundberg, our guest from Walmart. But I think you’re right, but I don’t want to say specifically. But I think I’ve heard that also.

Mike: They are big.

John: Oh! And when they make a decision, it truly moves society. And that’s the great thing because, with that kind of platform, they really do have a huge role in moving the needle in the Green Revolution.

Mike: Yeah. There’s a talk about a bully pulpit like President Theodore Roosevelt used to call it. And he was one of the first true conservationists. But TR would be very proud basically of the leadership role that the folks at Walmart do take when it comes to environmental responsibility.

John: They were one of the folks that have gotten ahead of this and they’re still a huge leader in this, and I think it’s going to be truly a fascinating conversation today because they touch so many facets. It’s just not also their own internal processes and procedures, but they demanded of the vendors that sell to them, and that then creates a massive ripple effect across so many platforms.

Mike: Well, as we spoke earlier when I worked for one of their major vendors, a major record company. Walmart was very exacting about the packaging that we would distribute our videos, our games, our DVDs, even our gaming platforms if you will. The hardware that went with it as well, as the chips and the salsa, the software. Really, they were very exacting about using minimal packaging and one of the legs of the environmental sustainability movement is Reduce, Reuse, and Recycle. Well, they were all about reducing the unnecessary packaging and they had their own recycling going on.

John: And they continue to use their platform for the greater good. I think our listeners are going to be fascinated. We’re going to take Green Is Good now, over to Arkansas. So come on back to the other side, to hear Walmart at Green Is Good.

Voiceover: 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. And we’re so honored to have our special guest, Kory Lundberg, who’s the Senior Manager and Head of Sustainability Communications at Walmart. Welcome Kory to Green Is Good.

Kory: Thanks, John. It’s great to be here. I appreciate the opportunity.

John: Well, you know, this is truly a momentous day for Mike and I. And I’m going to just share with our listeners one more time, because of Walmart and all the great things you do, and the invitation that Jenni Dinger extended to me in 2007, to come down to Bentonville and be part of a think tank where we got to speak to an audience of your vendors, on how to green, or how to better green the United States and the world.

I thought up green is good as part of my remarks that day down in 2007 then trademarked it while I was going to the airport in Bentonville. And literally, it’s because of your great company Kory, that we’re here today and we’re able to use Green Is Good as a platform to help share with the people across the United States and even the world who listened to it on iTunes, how to really be part of the solution. So, thank you.

Kory: Oh, you bet it. And that’s a really neat story. And, boy, how little did we know back in 2007, just how right you were about green being good. And the thing that’s so interesting is, that’s kind of a great example of kind of how we’ve gotten to where we are, is bringing in people, experts, like yourself to come in and talk to us. You know, we’ve been retailers, we’ve been retailers since 1962 when we started, and so the whole sustainability area. We had some ideas but we didn’t have all the ideas. And so it was bringing in new ideas in the experts like yourselves to give us guidance and give us help, is really how we’ve been able to be so successful at this.

John: Well, Kory, I just want to start at the basics. I know you have three main sustainability goals, even though there are so many things we could talk about, and we’re going to get to a lot of them today. Why don’t you share with our listeners, the three main sustainability goals at Walmart?

Kory: You bet. When our sustainability program was outlined in 2005 by our then CEO, Lee Scott. It really came down to three goals. It was number one, to be supplied with 100% renewable energy. Number two, to create zero waste, and three, was to sell products and sustain people and resources. I mean, it really comes down to… that’s where our footprint is and that’s where we’re able to make a big difference.

John: When I’ve heard Lee’s remarks back then, and I want to hear how you evolved that from ’05 to 2010 and what Lee Scott said, “Those goals of sustainability.” I remember his remarks. They’re not even low-hanging fruit though. That’s fruit on the floor. He’s the first person I ever heard say, “Food on the floor.” And I’ve probably used it a million times since then, but to me, that really stuck with me. Tell us how you evolve that vision from 2005 to today, and what you’re doing today Kory.

Kory: And I’ll tell you, John, there’s still a lot of low-hanging fruit out there, as new technologies emerge and develop, it creates low-hanging fruit all the time. But, really, when we started the goal and the focus was, let’s make sure that we have our operations, let’s make sure we have our own house in order. The focus when you talk about Walmart is our buildings and our fleet. We outlined some goals to make our buildings more energy-efficient and produce fewer greenhouse gases, which was kind of a stretch goal because our buildings in the US were already very efficient because as you know, Walmart is about lowering costs and operating more efficiently. So we’ve always looked for ways to lower our energy.

But what we did discover, as we went through this process, we were able to increase the efficiency of our buildings, not just here in the US, but we met this goal in all of our global markets. You imagine when you have 8,400 locations across 15 countries, the size and scale are really able to make an impact. Now, you can share those learnings, what we have in the US, we can share those with our team in China, or our team down in Costa Rica. That’s one of the big things that we realized early on, is that Walmart’s scale and our size is something that really provides a benefit in trying to move the needle in the area of sustainability.

John: That’s such a great point, Mike, and I have been so lucky to have guests that have created revolutionary or even evolve just legacy products that are now greener or more organic. And one of their comments to us, the common thread that they say, is that besides being on Oprah Winfrey Show, which of course moves the needle, when Walmart decides to make a purchase, and they get to stock your shelves, and you decide to carry them. That pushes the Green Revolution faster, further than anyone, other movements. We know that your size and scale are amazing and our listeners should really understand that that you get to be a leader on so many levels, Kory.

Kory: Well, and I think probably our best example of that is with concentrated liquid laundry detergent. We announced in 2007, that’s all we were going to sell in our stores is concentrated form, and by mid-2008, we had reached that goal. But what we have found is, manufacturers aren’t going to make the 33-ounce bottle and the 100-ounce bottle, they’re all going to go to the concentrated 33-ounce bottle. Now, you’ll see that on all of Walmart shelves, but anywhere you go to buy liquid laundry detergent, it’s going to be the concentrated, the concentrated version. So that’s really had a ripple effect across the entire retail industry and that’s something we’re really proud of.

You talked about, obviously, the savings and water, and plastic in terms of the packaging and cardboard. But think about the savings you get from a smaller packaging on your transportation. So now you’re able to put the same number of bottles of laundry detergent in fewer trucks. You’re able to get more of that laundry detergent on your shelves. So now when the customers come in, they’re going to be in stock and get what they’re looking for. And then, it’s more convenient for them to take home the 33-ounce bottle, and at the end of the day, when they’re done with that, they’re creating less waste in their home as well.

So it’s really looking at products, not just in terms of packaging or resources, but really over the entire life cycle of where can you make improvements or where can you make benefits, that are going to be good for our customers, our communities, and, of course, in our company.

John: Kory, you could not have put that any more succinctly. That was like, that was the entire process. And if you want to know about efficiency and the ripple effect thereof, you’ve just heard it from Kory Lundberg. I mean, the domino effect is just amazing and that’s what we’re so excited to talk with you about, talk about that some. Because I remember when I was sitting in your amazing auditorium down there and they were many other suppliers there, and I was listening to the goals that you were outlaying for the suppliers. How do you engage with your suppliers, to then keep continuing and pushing the green movement forward, more and more? Explain that process.

Kory: Sure. It really comes down to explaining to them what we’ve learned as we’ve gone through this process. And when you talked about making things in a smaller package or you talk about a manufacturing process that reduces your greenhouse gas emissions. Really, what that means to our suppliers is it reduces their costs. The main thing that causes greenhouse gases is energy. So you reduce energy, you reduce your energy bill. You use less cardboard in your packaging, you’re reducing your costs there.

So it’s really helping suppliers understand that, as they go through this process, it’s really about making them more efficient. It’s about enabling them to build and produce a better quality product at lower costs for them, and for our customers. And so, as they get involved and they kind of see what the benefits of that, that are. They are right on board and they become some of the biggest advocates out there, in terms of finding ways to do things better. How can we innovate even more to make our product even better?

So it’s just kind of that process of going through the education with suppliers and letting them know that, this is really a great business decision. It’s, green is good, but it’s also good for the business, as well, in terms of lowering costs and being able to pass those on to customers.

Mike: Well, you know Kory, that is so true. And John and I were talking about this off-air, and before we got you on-air today, shared a little bit, but we’ll share with the audience, at a one-time point in my career, I was working for a major record company. I did the promotion, but part of it, after the promotion side of my job ended, I worked in the distribution end in customer service, and Walmart was one of the absolute biggest accounts that we had.

Now, how does Walmart drive business at that time? Walmart was really beginning, and this was supposed to… this was back in the late 90s. And very exacting about how the packaging of our CDs, our DVDs, our entertainment software, and even our gaming platforms. Walmart insisted on minimal packaging.

Well, it did reduce our shipping cost, number one. It also enabled us to ship more units per pallet. We had to reconfigure a few things, but the folks at our company figured out real quick that while we had to make some adjustments and there was some grumbling initially. It’s like, “Wow, we are getting a lot more efficient in our own business.” Just as you said. I can back that up 100% And we were able to ship a lot more units to Walmart.

Kory: And, Mike, that’s such a great example, especially, with the DVD suppliers that you’re talking about because we brought them in and asked them, “What can we do? How can we make this packaging better?” And, you know, everybody knows what the case of a DVD looks like, it’s pretty standard. Everybody knows and it’s really kind of hard to make any changes to it. But what the DVD supplier that you’re talking about did is they were able to actually cut out some of the plastic insides of the case. And that reduction alone helps them eliminate 28,000 metric tons of greenhouse gas in one year.

So, again, it goes back to reducing greenhouse gas, reducing energy, being more efficient, and that’s one of the things that we’ve realized in our own fleet, as we become more efficient as our suppliers are working with us to become more efficient. Our focus is really on, how can we drive fewer miles? Initially, we started, well, how can we be more fuel-efficient? But then we realized, “You know, it makes a lot more sense to not drive that mile than it is to drive that mile more efficiently”.

And so, just last year in 2009, the last numbers we have, our fleet through all of the different things that they have done was able to deliver 77 million more cases to our stores and we’re opening more stores. We’re growing. So there’s more product to be delivered but they did it by driving 100 million fewer miles. Imagine what the business benefit is right there. That saved the company, just in what the fleet did, nearly 200 million dollars in one year. It’s just thinking things differently than what you’ve always done and using the green is good.

The lens of sustainability is about all the different things that you’re doing. Is there a way to do it differently? Is there a way to do it better? And when you look at those different things, invariably you find out there are better ways to do it and it ends up with a benefit to you and your customers.

John: Well, and Kory, that’s so well put in. For our listeners out there that are near a computer now or are going to be near one soon. I want them to see your great website, walmartstores.com sustainability, so they could see more about what you’re doing. Let’s talk about, you know, sometimes we tackle simple issues on the show, sometimes more complex.

The issue of energy, Kory, seems more and more complex every day, especially, with some of the crazy things that we’ve seen. Tragic things we’ve seen this year, in the gulf and other parts of the world. The issue of renewable energy continues to be a drumbeat you hear about but is yet to be shaken out on how people are going to implement it. How is Walmart going to achieve its 100% renewable energy goal? And how has it been working so far?

Kory: Well, John, that’s a great question about how we’re going to achieve it. And, right now, I’m not sure we know the answer to that question.

John: Okay

Kory: But that doesn’t stop us from looking for ways to increase the amount of renewable energy that we bring in and use in our systems. We’ve got 30 solar sites that we have in California, Hawaii. We’re testing a couple of, probably, our coolest things that we’re doing, we’ve got Sam’s Club in California, and a Walmart store in Worcester, Massachusetts, that has small wind turbines, or what we call micro wind turbines. And they’re actually mounted on the light poles in our parking lots. So there are 17 of them in California, there are 12 of them in the store in Massachusetts.

Those generate, probably less than 5% of the energy needs for those particular facilities. But, again, it’s an incremental step. So maybe one day, you have a store with solar, and with the micro wind turbines, and a fuel cell, and that’s how you reach 100% but are continuing to look for different ways that you can implement renewable energy into your energy mix. And it’s not always just, well, what is the next new idea for renewable energy out there, you’ve got solar, there’s thin-film solar, there’s the micro wind turbine we’ve talked about, we’re also buying wind from a big wind farm in Texas.

So within all of the different categories, there are other categories to look at. We’re committed to working with these various vendors and companies to find out, is there a way that we can help you develop your technology? And, again, with our scale and our ability to test and pilot different techniques and different technologies, can we help bring this technology to market quicker by our use of implementing it? So I think that’s how we’re going to get there. It’s going to be a long process. We still got a long way to go. I think we’ve just scratched the surface and what we’re going to be able to do. But we’re going to play a role in helping develop that and make it available to others.

John: One of the other great trends we’re seeing here, Kory, in the United States is the issue of recycling, you know, right now the average American throws out about 4.3 pounds of waste a day, 54% of it goes to a landfill, 13% of it gets incinerated, and about 33% of it gets recycled. When you listen to people at the EPA and other great, big waste organizations, who are far smarter than I am.

Their analysis is over the next 7 to 10 years. The trend is we’re going to flip-flop those numbers where recycling is going to be about 54% rate, and incineration is going to stay the same, and landfills going to be at 33. How was Walmart going to help in that whole recycling revolution? What are your goals with regard to recycling?

Kory: Well, our goal is, to one day not send anything to a landfill.

John: Okay

Kory: The latest numbers we have for last year is, we sent 64% of the solid waste generated by our facility somewhere other than a landfill, which is pretty impressive because there’s a lot of stuff that comes out of the back of our stores. And what we did, it was maybe 2 or 3 years ago, we started thinking of what’s coming out of the back of our stores, not as waste, but as a commodity. So what’s the value? We really wanted to extract the value out of the waste stream.

John: Right.

Kory: We found that we’ve been able to do that. So we do a number of things. We have a robust recycling program, with cardboard bales. And we have, what we call is our super sandwich bale, briefly what it is, imagine, you can picture the regular cardboard bales, well, now, imagine using that same bales, you put a thin layer of cardboard down on the bottom, then you throw in plastic bags, paperback books, paper, aluminum cans. We’ve got 32 different items that go in there, and then you put another thin layer of cardboard over the top and you bundle that together.

And so, we’re recycling millions of pounds of commodities a month through that. And some of that is actually going back to suppliers, being turned into raw materials, and ending up in products that go back on our shelves. So, there’s really a lot of opportunities out there. It’s just again, thinking about it differently.

John: Kory. Well, that’s really the new trend. I mean, what we call Urban mining. I mean, really, that’s Urban [crosstalk]. That’s the new trend. Yeah, so, I love it. So really, you’re on the cutting edge of that trend and you’re pushing that trend.

Kory: Absolutely. Yeah, and one of the things that we’ve struggled with is, what you do with your organic waste as a large supermarket retailer, as well. And we’ve been working with a number of vendors and we’re looking for solutions and we think we’ve probably come up with a couple of things that are really going to work and really help push that 64% number, even higher. Ultimately, the goal is 100% in the US, that’s by 2025, and globally we haven’t set a time for it.

But, again, think about the scale of Walmart, 8,400 stores around the globe, none of them sending anything to a landfill. There’s a lot of commodities out there now available. If you’re using recycled commodity instead of a virgin commodity when you’re making your product, again, that’s lowering your costs.

John: Absolutely.

Mike: Well, you know, I’m wondering too. And you’re talking earlier to Kory about the diversity of types of alternative energy and you’re talking about organic waste. I’m sure that somebody in the company right now is thinking in terms of possible biomass before bringing some of the energy equation in the line, along with solar and wind, etc.

Kory: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, that would be the ultimate win-win, if we can find a way where we take the waste out of our stores and use it to create energy to power our stores. I don’t know that technology is where it needs to be right now. But, again, that’s something that we would be willing to work to help develop and make it viable for not only us but for others as well because that solves two really big problems right there. Well, it solves sending stuff to the landfill.

John: That’s right.

Kory: The greenhouse gases that are associated with trash it’s decomposing and, then, also energy needs. So there’s a lot of opportunities out there. And like I said, we’ve still got a lot of work to do in this area, but we’re proud of what we’ve done so far.

John: And you’re doing amazing work, and your point about Urban mining is so important that our listeners understand that. When you’re getting back the commodities to the people, so they could use those commodities to make new products from, instead of making it out of virgin ore. We learn, Mike and I, have had ALCO on the show twice already, and the great people from ALCO educated us on the fact that that’s a 95% energy savings when you recycle aluminum, which is an infinite recyclable, as opposed, as you said, Kory, making it from virgin ore.

Kory: Absolutely. And, boy, that number, 95%, that’s just amazing and you imagine you multiply that over every can that your listeners use in the course of a day or a week. I mean, that really starts to add up in a hurry.

John: Kory, talk a little bit about… we’re down to the last 44 minutes or so. Your taglines are amazing, in terms of saving money and living better, and obviously, through sustainability, you’ve proven already on the show how you’re saving the customer’s money and they’re able to live better naturally because they have more money in their pocket because you’re actually creating a nicer environment in the world to live in. Talk a little bit about other engagement efforts you’re making in the stores with your customers, right now, so they feel the whole sustainability movement besides listening to it on this show.

Kory: You bet. I think one of the things that we’re proudest of in that area is late last fall, we started a program, I should say late fall 2008, we started a program where we started donating food to Feeding America, the Feeding America food banks. This was food that was 3 to 5 days before its sell-by date, which is probably another week or so before its expiration date. But in doing that, we were able to provide food to these food banks that they don’t normally get.

We’re talking produce, and protein, meat, and different things like that, and things out of the bakery. And in 2009, Walmart and Sam’s Club in the US donated 127 million pounds of food to Feeding America. And as most people know, the last year or so, it’s been tough economically. And so, food banks really had a big need and that was again one way where Walmart was able to come through and help. And show the customers what the value is of having a Walmart in your area, is that we’re able to help the folks in your local area, especially, when they need it most.

That’s just another example of the different things that we’re doing to help engage. We talk about sustainability, in terms of Sustainability 360. So, engaging our own four walls, but it’s also engaging our associates. We’ve got more than 2 million of them around the world. Our customers, we serve more than 200 million of them a week and our communities, we’re in 8,400 of them around the world. So when you take all of that into consideration, you really have a large potential to do good.

John: We’re down to the last minute and a half and that’s a brilliant point, Kory. You found an amazing way, Walmart has found an amazing way to balance the beauty and the importance of the localness of your brand, but also the international and the global strengths of your brand. So that’s amazing. But do you want to share, we’ve had guests on and we always ask, “Hey, give us a little visibility on the future.” Because we know this whole movement is a process. It’s not going to happen overnight, there’s no one magic bullet, give us, in the last minute or so, one or two pearls of wisdom on the visibility of where you’re taking your sustainability mission in the coming years.

Kory: I think a couple of main points. Number one, is we’re going to continue to make progress and work towards our three overarching goals, that we’ve talked about, and the second one, is really engaging our suppliers and our supply chain to bring some transparency into the supply chain. And from transparency into how products are made and what goes into making them, and making that information available to customers so that they can make better, more informed decisions when they’re in our stores.

John: That is just so well put and I just want to share again with our listeners, go to Kory and Walmart’s great site, walmartstores.com batch list[?] sustainability.

I want to say, Kory, again from Mike and I’s, the bottom of our heart. Thank you for taking the time to come on. Because Mike and I wouldn’t even have this opportunity, but for Walmart inspiring us to come up with green is good, the Green Is Good wouldn’t even be in existence. So I just want to say a big thank you to you and Jenni Dinger, and all the great people at Walmart. Kory Lundberg and Walmart, you are truly living proof, that green is good.

Voiceover: This program will be available for download in a couple of days from our station’s website. Keyword podcast. Thanks for listening, and join us again next week at the same time for another edition of Green Is Good.

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 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 special edition because I’m John Shegerian and I’m here in Fresno, California. And we’re so honored to have you with us today Yaron Dycian, and he’s in Israel today, took the time to have this interview with us. Welcome to the Impact Podcast, Yaron.

Yaron Dycian: Yeah. Thanks, John. Great to be here. Really excited about it.

John: I’m really excited too because you’re doing so many special things that are very important for our audience to hear about the WINT and for our audience members, who want to find everything Yaron’s doing at WINT, you can go to www.wint.ai.

Yaron, before we get talking about this important technology and what you’re doing in water conservation, I would love you to share just your journey, where you grew up, where you got educated and how you even started getting on this journey?

Yaron: Yeah. Actually, I’ve had an interesting childhood. Born in Israel. I was in Israel until the age of around 10, third grade. And then in third grade, my father was a doctor, we flew over to New York where he did his apprenticeship in New York. I was in New York for a year and then flew over to Long Beach, California another year and then flew back to Israel. I finished high school. Everybody here does military service and I kind of did a pretty special program where I studied math and physics at the University. I always wanted to be a scientist. So I did that, then went into a lot of R&D, you know, and many years of products and technology. This will be my seventh start-up at this point. Did everything from e-commerce back in the early days to work for the company that invented the ethernet switch, agriculture, E-commerce, cybersecurity.

And then, you know, I came into this and I said, look, the world is running out of resources and that was maybe three or four years ago when it was well known but maybe not such a big deal. And I said we got to do something. Knowing technology it’s solved many of humanity’s problems in the past. Let’s see what we can apply here and come into this. And I discovered an amazing world where technology is not used so much and can do a lot of good. So, that’s how I landed here.

John: You know, before we get talking more specifically about WINT, your water intelligence products, let’s talk a little bit about Israel. You know one thing, I don’t think the media covers enough, especially here in the United States is, we’re very American-centric. Oh, Silicon Valley, the hotbed of innovation or silicon alley in New York, or San Diego with biotech, but talk a little bit about all the innovation and the creativity that comes out of Israel. Because in my journey as an entrepreneur, I hear so much about innovation that’s coming out of Israel much more than most of the rest of the world. Can you share a little bit about your thoughts and your journey as an entrepreneur in Israel, and now like you said, you’re on your sixth or seventh start-ups, but this is sort of normal for Israel, please share.

Yaron: It’s funny, you know, Israel likes to call itself a Start-Up Nation. Seriously, it’s the mentality here. And the search Israel Start-Up Nation, even our Tour de France road cycling team is called Israel Start-Up Nation.

John: I didn’t know about that.

Yaron: And it goes to the level where you’ve got two kids in school and they’ll talk, and one of them will have an idea in the slang here is that’s a great idea, it’s a Start-Up. That’s what they would tell each other. So, it’s really deep in the culture, you know, go find an idea turned into something, build it. If you build it, they will come. It’s very strongly engraved in the culture.

John: Just from a very young age? You’re saying, from a young age?

Yaron: Absolutely, all think of start-ups. It’s even if they don’t think of a start-up, it’s in the slang. Good idea equals start. That’s how it goes.

John: Wow, and you’re saying it’s a national pride issue to be called Start-up Nation. It’s so interesting. That is so wonderful. Talk a little bit about, so now, you’ve had many successes in your rear-view mirror and you’re thinking about it now as most of us get to a certain age we start thinking about the legacy we leave behind and also where we are as a world, as a planet, as climate changes have become real. And the sciences there. Talk a little bit about how you found this, you chose this part of the environmental intelligence pie to go attack. Why water? And why now?

Yaron: To be honest, this always has some element of planning and some element of luck as everything in life.

John: Of course.

Yaron: So, I was thinking about what can I do as a startup that will change existing Holden Industries. I used to do things for banking, for e-commerce. These are all super high-tech and got always the latest and greatest technologies. But when you look at buildings, facilities, construction, the industry they’re way back there. I’ve got customers who use equipment that was built in the 1960s. So, that’s not benefiting from everything that’s happened over the past 60 years.

John: Right.

Yaron: I said to myself, that’s an area where everything is old. And old means you can you contribute a lot, you can make a big difference. And I started looking around there and a friend of mine came up with an introduction for me to somebody else, to my partner who was going into it. And we spoke and decided to take it. So, you know, a combination of planning and luck. What can I say?

John: Perfect. And I’m so glad you said that because so many successful, entrepreneurs when they’re talking about their success they never give enough credit to luck. You and I both know. When you get to a certain age and level of success, luck plays a large part in what comes together sometimes.

Yaron: Napoleon said it. Don’t bring me, smart generals, bring me generals with luck.

John: I’m glad you said it too because not enough people say it. So now you and your partner come together to put together and to get WINT going and WINT is Water Intelligence. Now, explain what the problem is. As a world, are we wasting water on a regular basis? Not only as people in our household but also, when it comes to like, you said to industrial, office buildings and industrial facilities, is water wasting part of all of our cultures around the world?

Yaron: Oh my God, you wouldn’t even believe it and I’ll get down to examples. But yeah, here’s the thing, water for many, many years has been treated as a commodity, right? You want water, take water. It’s cheap. It’s easy. It’s everywhere. Never mind. So, nothing has really been built to conserve water. Now, we’ve got the statistics, we go into buildings, we put in our systems and we consistently see the waste of about 25%, 25% of the water that goes into a building is waste.

Now, there’s no magic about this waste. You won’t find a little Gremlin stealing the water. You won’t find aliens stealing them. It’s your toilets leaking. Your taps are not well closed. Your irrigation is misconfigured. Your HVAC system is losing enormous amounts of water to evaporation and so on and so forth. It’s just endless. It’s very difficult to find. These are practical day-to-day problems. How do you find all those leaky toilets? How do you know when the irrigation is misconfigured? It just happens. Nobody notices. There’s nothing monitoring yet impossible to find. The result, on average 25% in extreme cases, 70% of the water going into a building gets wasted.

John: Wait a second. You just mentioned five or six things? Toilets, water, irrigation sinks, HVAC. If we think about it as a boat, it’s leaking from so many different areas. It’s incredible. So when you go in, there are so many opportunities to create savings, you’re saying, and that’s what your intelligence does. For instance, I own a factory with a thousand workers. How do you come in and do this assessment? How does your technology take me from 1960? Like you said to 2022?

Yaron: Yeah, so we will monitor the water flows in your equipment, on your pipes, wherever it’s relevant. So, we’ll kind of do a mapping of where we need to monitor water. We’ll put in standard absolutely off-the-shelf water flow meters. And we will read them at a very high frequency. We need that high time resolution. Maybe 10, 100 milliseconds, and then we look at that flow. We look at this flow and we apply a lot of artificial intelligence signal processing machine learning to it. And you can think of a water flow pattern if you think of the flow rate over time that creates a signal. It’s a graph, right? It’s a time graph. You look at this graph and it has a pattern and you can learn this pattern.

Using the right technologies, identify what is good and what is bad in that pattern. What is anomalous? What makes sense? What doesn’t make sense? And when you apply to different use cases from just your standard office building floor or your manufacturing facility that manufactures tons and tons of whatever. You can identify the anomalies and when you identify the anomalies, you can pinpoint them. You can’t always pinpoint them to the exact specific location, but you can give a strong enough hint that anybody who knows that place within 5 minutes to identify the source. And it’s the combination of that set of insights that we bring with the artificial intelligence in signal processing that machine that does the job.

John: Had you applied in your other entrepreneurial ventures you had on– Did you apply artificial intelligence before so you already had an understanding of it? Or was this new to take a problem and to apply artificial intelligence? Was this a new world for you as well?

Yaron: Actually AI, this is the first time I’m doing the AI.

John: Really? No kidding. That’s so interesting. Okay. So now you come into a building, you apply your technology. So then, how does the remedy start to happen? Do you go in then and bring in a group of specialists who then goes in and remedy the problems you found to create the savings or how does the fix actually happen then?

Yaron: So, the fix happens in two ways. The first is, where applicable, we can also deploy automatic felts[?]. If you’ve got something that’s leaking horribly, in Covid it was very apparent. The irrigation system leaked and everybody’s stuck at home, then we shut off the valve remotely. The system does it automatically. By the way, water is also hugely damaging with extremely negative environmental consequences. You blow a pipe from the 20th floor, it destroys everything down to the ground.

The carbon impact of emptying all that destroyed stuff is very deep. Let alone the financial planner. So, you know a valve will solve that. In other cases, you know, it’s not really an expert. All you need is, you’ve got a toilet leaking on the 10th floor, you send the maintenance guy looking for it and it’s not, it’s an expert, you know, to that level or if it’s a production line. They know their line, you tell them, here’s the symptom. Here’s where it’s coming from, here are the three places to look for, that’s what they do for a living. So the staff on-site always knows based on the feedback that we provide, where to find problems.

John: Comparatively speaking, I assume there are other companies that were doing what you’re doing now before, but applying AI and applying machine learning to it gives you an edge. How has that given you an edge and where are you in terms of– What’s the total addressable market for you with regards to what you’re trying to accomplish?

Yaron: Okay, so these are two questions. Let me start–.

John: Yes, sorry. I’m sorry.

Yaron: That’s okay. So, first question is, how does AI give us an advantage?

John: Yeah.

Yaron: And look, we are in computer terminology, we are an anomaly detection system, right? You look for– you train yourself in what’s normal, and then you identify the anomalies and anomaly, the parameters that define the success of an anomaly detection system are to[?] your true detection ratios, which means if there’s a problem, what’s the likelihood that you’ll detect it? You want to be at 100% there but nobody ever is in any system whatsoever.

John: Right.

Yaron: Including ICBM detection. And on the flip side, you want zero false positives. You don’t want the bug the team on the ground with false alerts, or they’re running around and there’s nothing wrong because they’ll hate you pretty soon and you’ll get kicked out the door, right? Now that’s the balance and it got certain levels of– if you ask me insufficient quality before AI was around. And when we started employing our AI and machine learning, we saw a huge jump in the performance of these things. So that’s the difference. We provide better detection and fewer false alerts in dramatic numbers[?].

John: For someone who’s not successful– who hasn’t applied AI the way you have, does AI that you have created here to this problem specifically, does it continually learn? So every time you go to a new building and then you’re actually applying more knowledge now to the next building and continuing to increase the performance and the results of– from job to job, as you evolve as a company.

Yaron: Absolutely.

John: That’s great. That is just wonderful. So let’s go to the second question. How big could this be? Because this sounds like a problem that obviously is not systemic just to Israel, that this is a worldwide problem and you’re really solving something that’s really big here. How big can your company grow in terms of solving this big problem of water conservation and water savings?

Yaron: So, the problem is everywhere. We’ve got customers from the US west coast all the way the far east and everything in between and Europe and whatnot. Everybody’s buildings are doing the same stuff. And you know how big is the market, take a look around. Every building out there, every apartment out there, every manufacturing facility out there is wasting 25% of the water that goes in.

Now, Lake Mead is drying up. What are they going to– How are they going to bring water to Las Vegas or Los Angeles in 15 years? Nobody knows, right? You look at some of the movies online about this and CNN, CNBC, or whatever I mean everybody is freaking out. The problem is everywhere. London is going to become a water-stressed area. So, it’s big. The question the market is pretty big.

John: So, how do– I know you’re a very humble guy, Yaron. So I’m going to just say some of the names, Microsoft, Google, Dell, HP, they use your technologies. Obviously to improve, to impress those kinds of brands and many others. You’re doing something super right. So now you and your partner, you’re entrepreneurs. So part of the balancing act of an entrepreneur, you have a total addressable market. That’s massive, obviously. And it’s important that it’s solved and that these issues are fixed. How do you break down? Because every company has a version of resources or limited resources in terms of how to attack their total addressable market. So how do you go and see the world and break and carve it up in terms of sequentially and efficiently, while you manage your resources, going to attack that total addressable market?

Yaron: That’s a very good question. And the first and probably most important segmentation you do is geographical. We don’t sell worldwide. We do have systems installed worldwide that were taken there by our partners or if we’ve got a multinational who’s using us in one place, there are other facilities wanted. But our focus currently is the US, the UK is number one in Europe and a couple of other European countries as secondary and Israel, of course, that’s our home base. [crosstalk] Beyond that, we’re poor– we’re carefully opportunistic. We’re not making sales and marketing efforts right now, but that will come with the right partner, that will come.

John: Right. Got it. With regards, you mentioned Lake Mead, you mention Las Vegas, you mentioned London. Listen, I’m sitting in Fresno, California. California had a water problem, a long time and it’s getting worse as you point out. This is serious. Is this something homeowners? Is this a technology that eventually homeowners are going to be able to leverage and use to help save water in their homes as well?

Yaron: Absolutely. Yes, we’re installed. Right now is part of that Focus. We are providing solutions to homeowners but mostly through homeowner associations or building management companies for the relatively higher-end, simply because we can’t pick up the whole market but we’ve got some of London’s fanciest apartments. I’m talking, 20 million dollar apartments. They’re pretty nice. I was out there actually awesome. You know, they’re using us, they’re using us both to conserve water and prevent water damage, which is horrific, and apartments as well.

John: So what I love is also you’ve embedded yourself and I want you to explain it more with CBRE and JLL, to the biggest facility and property management companies in the world. What does that mean for the properties that they manage?

Yaron: Both of these companies and many other facility management companies want to bring their customers best of breed advanced solutions in everybody. Just everybody cares about sustainability today, right? I think COP26[?], seriously, I saw a huge change in the way people perceive sustainability and their desire to invest in it. Companies like this who managed for their customers’ properties of endless square footage can bring these technologies to their customers and make them more sustainable and more immune to the damage of water leaks in buildings.

John: Let’s talk about that COP26. You bring up a great point because a lot of people came out with lofty[?] goals but it seemed a little bit like disingenuous kicking the can down the street. What I mean by that is when people came out and said, we’re going to be net-zero by 2050 but wait for a second, as you point out you’re on– we have problems today in terms of water and other conservation and carbon emissions and things of that such. So if I have a building and I use your technology, you’re going to be able to tell me how much I was wasting before I use your technology. How much I’m saving now and I’ll be able to report that to my shareholders and other constituents as well?

Yaron: Of course, we work with some of the names you mentioned before. They’re chief sustainability officers and this is pretty new as well. Right? Three years ago, you didn’t have sustainability officers. Now everybody has, which is great and I mean, that’s part of that movement. Anyway, they look at our data and we provide them reports on how much water we save them every year. We actually use some of them and we look[?] quarterly and they get these reports through dashboards, through our customer success team, and they know I just saved 500 million gallons this year in my facilities.

Now, here’s another thing. So needless to say, after half an hour speaking, how important water sustainability is, but here’s the thing, water has a huge carbon. So when you drink that much water, you are having someone pull it out of the ground, treat it, transfer it, sometimes, hundreds of miles away. Pull it up the building into the umpteenth floor, if you’re on a high floor. Sometimes it gets salinated which is extremely energy-intensive. And then you drink the water or you use it. Well, if you drink it or not, but if you use it, and it goes back into the sewage, then it gets transferred to the sea[?] which is more energy, and then it gets treated and through the treatment which takes up energy. You’re actually releasing carbon– not carbon but greenhouse gases.

So you’re releasing methane and you’re releasing sulfur dioxide. So every cubic meter of water that you use emits, depending on the specific processes of distance and whatnot. Every cubic meter is about 30 to 40 pounds of carbon emissions. So the carbon footprint issue around water and water wasting and water conservation is also massive. In terms of, we’re going to really get to net zero as nations go, as corporations go, as with other organizations go and cities and municipalities go, we’ve got to get this water thing balanced out. So we’re not wasting 20, at least 25% in everywhere we operate.

In fact, you said municipalities, so some interesting statistics. About 13% of US electricity goes into the water. The whole water process, 13% of electricity in the US, some municipalities 70% of their electricity usage goes to water, 70% in some municipalities. So now think you’re going to cut down water waste in buildings by 25%, what does that mean for the municipality? You just cut down about 20% of your electricity bills for the municipality. Forget all the other benefits, it’s just your pure cost.

John: You mentioned what we just saw over at the big carbon conference in Europe, talk a little bit about the investment community. It’s my impression that institutional investors throughout Asia, Europe, and the United States are very interested in investing in the circular economy, in ESG technologies, and companies that support good ESG and circular economy behavior. What are your thoughts on that? And is that going to help fuel the growth of your company WINT?

Yaron: I totally agree. I think it’s another really interesting trend, right? Like we did not have chief sustainability officers three years ago. We did not see that much sustainability investment even a year and a half ago. This is flipped. It’s crazy. It is flipped. Every generic venture capital now wants to put in money into sustainability and there are just– I can’t even keep count of the number of funds that are dedicated to sustainability and ESG.

So I mean the world has changed in that aspect. With all the cynicism about COP26 and the challenges they have, this is super difficult, right? You’re asking countries to make massive changes. The mind shift is going to be super impactful, I think. Companies are now really doing it. They used to talk and it was lip service. They’re putting money into it and they’re investing and this will change the world.

John: Will that help? With all the interests like you said[?] just like the last 18 months or so. And I know it’s going to continue in the years ahead, it’s not going away anytime soon. Will that help fuel the growth of your company faster than you even imagine three years ago?

Yaron: I believe, yes. And I’m very hopeful because look, now people are more interested in buying our products and have the drive to do that. It’s as simple as that and investors are more interested in investing in this kind of technology. So you have to say yes, right?

John: Right. And do you have offices around the world? Or are they mostly just in Israel right now?

Yaron: Israel, the US, and London are where we have permanent offices.

John: You’re a young guy still and you’ve already done six or seven ventures. Is this the last big one or is this just a part of the long journey for your own [inaudible]?

Yaron: I certainly hope it’s not the last one because that’s what I like doing, find a problem nobody solved before. It’s tough. It’s difficult but you’re carving your own way. You’re making things up as you go and you help the world in some way. I hope. I sure hope not.

John: I love what you’re doing. I still love it. I want to give you the last word before we sign off for today, but I’m going to have you back to continue this important journey about water, water intelligence, water conservation, and WINT, your great technology, please. I want to give you the last word before we have to say goodbye, just for today.

Yaron: Yeah, let’s make this a better world is all I can say. Our times up, we are counting time now and I think whatever people do this should be– It’s next generations. It’s our world. It’s our grandchildren’s world. Let’s take care of it.

John: You know, Yoran, you’re the reason we do this show. We don’t take any advertising for it. We’ve built up a big audience over 14 years, and I’m just grateful to you for making the world a better place, a greener place, a more sustainable place. For people that want to find Yaron, his partner, and his colleagues, and all the great stuff they’re doing at WINT, please go to www.wint.ai. We’re thankful for you. I can’t wait to have you back on to continue this journey and continued success. You’re on DCN.

Yaron: Thanks a lot, John. Great being on the show. Had a great time. Appreciate it.

John: 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, live streams, and much more. For more information on Engage or to book talent today, visit letsengage.com.

John Shegerian: Welcome back to Green is Good, and we’re so honored today to have Dave Stangis on, who is the Vice President of CSR and Corporate Sustainability for Campbell’s Soup. Dave, welcome to Green is Good.

Dave Stangis: Thanks. It’s great to be here.

John: If I took the time to read your bio, we’d take half the show, and that’s not the purpose. But, Dave, you were doing this, you were green, and you were leading this movement way before it became cool to be green. You were at Intel for 12 years heading up their CSR program. Can you share a little bit about your history and how you got involved and why you got involved with the whole green and corporate responsibility movement?

Dave: Sure. There were very few people doing this back in the late nineties. My background is in the environmental health and safety arena, and that’s basically what I was hired to do at Intel Corporation. I worked in Arizona in a corporate group, and after about a year, I was asked to try to take a broader role, looking at external affairs in environmental health and safety. All of a sudden, the doors opened up. It was really clear to see what socially responsible investors were asking about, the issues that were in the press. The questions moved from green to diversity and ethics and just good corporate citizenship around the world. So, we took a couple years and really worked hard to create this function at that company. Intel has done great work since then, and we tried to build really a system to manage it. We started small there, and it’s grown over the years. I felt good when I was able to leave, knowing that it would continue. It was a great opportunity to come and start a similar program over here at Campbell’s.

John: That is so great. For our listeners out there, I want to also share with you one of the most important things from your bio, that you were named one of the 100 most influential people in business ethics by Ethisphere magazine. In this day and age, in this post-Enron, post-economic collapse era that we live in, to have somebody like you pushing the movement forward, it’s an honor to have you here today. That’s a great award. I want to talk about something, though, that a lot of our listeners e-mail us and call us about. It’s the issue of being a capitalist and also a tree hugger, and how to merge these two movements together. You have a great quote here that we picked up online. “When I was hired at Campbell, at my first board meeting, I told them they didn’t hire a tree hugger. I wasn’t going to go out and plant trees and clean up the streets. They hired a capitalist, but I was going to go and try to help them become a better company and make money.” That’s what we do here at Green is Good. We share these great stories that those can go hand in hand, Dave. Do you want to talk a little bit about that, and talk about what your evolution has looked like at Campbell’s?

Dave: Sure, yeah. It’s a big point to make, that these aren’t exclusive properties. My point to the Campbell board, they didn’t know who I was. I was an unknown entity to them. The board is made up of a bunch of major shareowners’ family members that are very proud of the brand, and a bunch of ex-CEOs. I wanted to make sure they understood where I was coming from to create this strategy. I was asking for a lot in terms of their buy-in and trust, and it’s always been my premise to try to build CSR and sustainability strategies that really work for the employees, really work for the executives, are translatable to the external world, but that make the company better, that allow them to make quicker decisions, drive innovation, build employee engagement, and make a social impact in the community and lower the environmental footprint. I wanted them to know, and I think that worked with them. We continued to build trust and grow that program. The main thing is that it’s not one or the other. I’m the same person that’s out volunteering in the community and working to drive everything I can in the environment, but I try to do it for a business reason. I think the biggest shift you’ve seen in the last decade is instead of people like me trying to convince everybody to be sustainability professionals, we learn that our job is to make them better at what they do by using tools of sustainability and CSR, so that the supply chain can be better supply chain people and the HR human resources people can be better at what they do in terms of staffing and recruiting. We’re helping them with a whole other set of tools and making better decisions, and that’s really the goal for the company.

John: For our listeners out there that have their iPad or their laptop or some other type of internet device open right now, Campbell’s soup, and Mike, I think you have it open right now. You guys have an amazing site, campbellsoup.com, and there’s a whole section there, many sections, with regards to CSR and nourishing the planet, nourishing employees. Some of the statistics here, what you’re accomplishing over there, Dave, are amazing, such as I’m here on the nourishing the planet site. You’ve eliminated over the past year more than 3.5 million pounds of steel and 1 million pounds of fiber. You’ve recycled more than 84% of the waste that’s been generated. Talk a little bit about all these different segments and what sustainability and CSR looks like now than it did back when you started this whole movement over at Intel.

Dave: Yes, it’s gotten a lot more pointed, in terms of seeing numbers and results like this. Campbell is a company that’s been around for more than 140 years. It’s a great company. People know the brands, they know Pepperidge Farm and V8 and Prego, and they’ve always been doing good work, but they had difficulty envisioning what success looked like in terms of sustainability. So, what we did, and the CEO even challenged me on this, was to create a 10-year agenda. What is it we’re going to stand for? What is it we’re going to try to drive? And we came up with a lot of baseline work and metrics and some strategies around what we’re doing in the environment, what we’re doing in the community, what we’re doing in the marketplace, and what we’re doing in the workplace. We’ve built it into our compensation systems, into our performance reviews, into just the way we talk. The Campbell annual report just came out last week or the week before, the financial report, and it sounds a lot like my report. There’s an alignment, some integration in terms of the way we communicate. But the environmental targets are really ways so that people can come to work every day and know what they should be focused on. Our packaging engineers have actually stretched this goal. They’re willing to try to take on 100 million pounds of packaging over the next decade, and we’re trying to really take the whole environmental footprint of our entire product portfolio and cut it in half over the next decade, to use half as much water per whatever we manufacture, soup, crackers, biscuits, and same cut in terms of the emission of greenhouse gases.

John: When did you start at Campbell’s?

Dave: I’ve been here just a little over two years, so I haven’t been on the ground long at Campbell. I came in Labor Day 2008. I did my first full-blown strategic plan for the executives and the board of directors within the first couple months that I was there, so they put me to work right away. We’ve been running fast ever since I got there, but I have to say, we’re really still at the beginning of this journey. There’s a lot we need to do. There’s a lot of great things going on at other companies and other sectors that we’re learning from, and we’re trying to help our suppliers and some smaller companies and even some of our customers advance their strategies as we work on this.

Mike Brady: You know, Dave, just looking at your corporate mission statement, it gives our listeners a really good idea about how all-encompassing Campbell’s vision towards the future is. You just joined the company, as you mentioned, a couple years ago, but the mission statement, which is not much older with the companies than your employment there, “Together we will build the world’s most extraordinary food company by nourishing people’s lives everywhere, every day.”

Dave: And that word, that first word, together, is the thing we say is the most important inside of our company. It’s another reason we built the CSR strategy. The other thing I told the executives when I came is I’m not here to reinvent your mission or create a new set of strategies for the company. I’m here to build something that is integral to the way you’ve done business for years, that kind of amplifies your ability to do more, to be better in the community, to be better in the marketplace, and that’s why we framed this nourishing concept across these pillars. We built systems to bring every employee, the workplace destination goal, is that every single employee has a role in these strategies going forward. They don’t have to guess what their role is in terms of sustainability; they know what to do. It’s part of their performance objectives.

John: That is great. Now, it’s interesting what you just said. A couple themes that we’ve heard before, that this is really not an overnight type of situation; this is a process, and you’ve started implementing this 10-year process and you’re two years into it. Dave, one other thing you shared that you’re learning from others and others are learning from you. You have a unique position, the Vice President of CSR and Sustainability for Campbell’s Soup. Ten to 15 years ago, that wasn’t a typical position in corporate America. Are you working, and is there a working group among high-level leaders with that similar position across corporate America now, where you guys all share best practices?

Dave: It’s amazing what has transpired over the last 10 years. When I was putting together the case for Intel to try to convince Intel to move in this space, I think I found one other person, and he’s still in that job, a great guy named Bob Langer over at McDonald’s, but that was it. Over the last 10 years, there has been an explosion of people like me. Almost every Fortune 500 company not only has maybe one like me here at Campbell, maybe teams, maybe 10, maybe 20, maybe as small as three, but you can’t find a company with a strong brand reputation, a good consumer promise, without somebody like me working around. If you don’t, there’s people like me helping you, as another company, set it up. I don’t view these things as competitive. In certain areas, the real critical decisions that affect the marketplace, I may not share, but I’m always having conversations with other companies about how to set up strategies. We share information all the time. There’s more meetings than we can go to every day, where there are people like me sharing this information. I have to turn down, and it’s not just me, everybody in this space has to turn down probably more opportunities to engage than we have time to go to.

John: That’s wonderful. So, really, there is a best practice sharing among the folks that are running corporate America in the CSR space.

Dave: Yeah. I mean, every week I’m at meetings. A couple weeks ago, I was at a meeting in Wisconsin, and it was a cross-sector, not just in the food and beverage sector, where we’re sharing great ideas and we’re borrowing and sharing what we do best and other companies are picking up on it. I was at a meeting just last week with a bunch of executives like me in our sector, and we’re talking about what’s going on at the trade association, what’s going on internationally, what are we doing with our customers, how are we strengthening our supply chain. So, it’s intrasector, it’s outside of the sector, it’s across the whole business chain now.

John: So, now you’re into this for two years. I’m reading another great staff from your wonderful website, campbellsoup.com. For our listeners out there that want to go and read all the great things that Campbell’s is doing, and as Dave pointed out earlier, that also has to do with Pepperidge Farm, V8, Pace, Prego, and all their great legacy brands that are comfort food to all of us here across the United States. For instance, over the last year, you guys have invested more than $6 million in environmental sustainability projects. Now that you’re there two years and really are up to it in your armpits and beyond, what’s going on at the corporate board level? What does the board say now, and how has the buy-in been at the board level?

Dave: It’s been great. I’ve done two full-blown board presentations each year. We did a full strategy presentation last year. This past year I did one that was much more focused on issues and trends in the marketplace and how they’re driving behavior and performance in high-level business and then within our sector. So, what we’re doing is we’re really bringing them up the knowledge curve in terms of strategic corporate social responsibility and sustainability because, number one, they’re really proud of the company, so they want to understand this pride they have, why is it there, and what does it mean in terms of equity in the marketplace, and how can they leverage it to be better? And, they also want to understand how it’s being managed in their company because they’re looking at financial issues and human resource issues and expanding to emerging markets, and they want to see this fitting in. They don’t want to see it as some standalone process that’s off on the side that’s just looking to get credit. It’s about how do you make all of these other parts of the business better. We’ve done updates periodically with them, and we do these full-blown hour-long education sessions with them, and it’s been great. They’ve been a great board. Just like I said, a bunch of businesspeople on there and a bunch of people that are really proud of the company, and it makes a difference. You mentioned the investment that we’ve made in environmental sustainability projects. We’re going to continue to account for some of these numeric issues where we have direct financial inputs that we can show and communicate both to our board and to the external world.

John: Obviously, they have to be proud of you because here over the past year, it says Campbell’s Soup has been named to the Dow Jones Sustainability Index in Corporate Responsibility Magazine‘s 100 best corporate citizens list, so again, your efforts and their efforts and, as you said, together, you are making a difference and making really great strides towards your goals.

Dave: Yeah. We’re not doing this for the recognition, but the recognition is great to have. The two that you mentioned, the Dow Jones Sustainability Index and the Best Corporate Citizens list, have really interesting methodologies behind them that companies like Campbell, I’ve used them for years over at Intel and now Campbell. It’s a way to drive improvement and to strengthen programs, but small-medium companies, any company on the planet, can use these tools to continue to look for ways to continue to drive continuous improvement. There is no endpoint. Whenever we see the finish line, it’s just a mirage. The bar keeps getting higher every year. We’re all running at it, and it’s a marathon. It’s kind of a sprint marathon, and we know it. The people that are in my role at other companies know we’re in this for the long haul, and we’ll be doing it as long as we’re working here.

John: You bring up a great point. So, go back, then, to the corporate board issue with regards to your amazing CSR expertise. Truly, you’re one of the founders of this whole movement on a corporate level. Is this going to be typical, and is this going to be much like the financial auditing Sarbanes-Oxley standards? Are boards going to look at these metrics as as important as financial and auditing standards that are out there now?

Dave: I think there are a couple dynamics. Several companies may not have formal presentations like I have with my board, and I have a very interactive relationship, but some companies actually have committees that are chartered to look at environmental sustainability as part of their accountability at the board. You’re going to see that more going forward. The other thing I think you’re going to see, now that we have accounting experts, we have financial experts on boards, I think you’re going to start to see corporate social responsibility or sustainability experts on boards that give advice to the board that challenge the in-house expertise and drive it even more. If a company may come out with a new product or is changing its financials, it will get challenged at the board to make better decisions and to try to justify what it’s doing. I think you’re going to see that in the corporate responsibility space as well. Boards are getting it. They’re getting more training, and companies are actually starting to figure out ways to build this into the board’s cycle.

John: Got it. From Campbell’s point of view, when you go back and look at the genesis of them getting involved here, how did they come and find you, and why did they do that? Was that at the board level? Were they hearing that from their consumers out there? What was the impetus for them to go create this position, when it didn’t exist before?

Dave: One of the reasons I came is they have an extraordinary leadership team. They’re a set of corporate officers that the CEO, the executive team that’s running the business, they were not toying around with, that’s the wrong term, but they were figuring out how does it work. They had done a bunch of external scanning. They had taken a look at other reports and other companies that they thought were highly reputable that they saw this trend coming. They tried to get their hands around it and figure out how can we organize it, how do we put the people and resources together? They spent a long time publishing their first report, which was before the one you’re looking at today. It was a printed version, a very good first report. It’s all about who they are as a company. But going through that process, justifying why they needed to put effort into this program, they had conversations at the board, at the CEO level. It was also clear to them that they didn’t have the competencies in-house to create a world-class program. They know they wanted it, they knew the pieces that they wanted to have in that program. They weren’t exactly sure where it would go in the organization, but the biggest thing, I think, is they didn’t know what success actually looked like for Campbell’s Soup. They didn’t just come to me. I’m sure they interviewed a bunch of people and tried to find the best they could and the best fit, but they wanted to find people that had experience taking a program from scratch and building it to world-class, and knew how to find success and point people in that direction. I think that was really what they were looking for. They realized that after going through probably two years of scoping and communicating and sharing best practices inside the company.

John: For our listeners that just joined us, we’re here on the line at Green is Good with Dave Stangis, who’s the Vice President of CSR and Sustainability at Campbell’s Soup, one of the greatest brands to ever be born here in the United States and that exists around the world right now. Dave, one of the things you just said, you’ve started now two programs from scratch, and that’s unbelievable. We get a lot of e-mails here from across the planet, but especially across the United States, and people want to know, what is the biggest obstacle to starting this at their company? Does it matter that the company, as large as Walmart or as small as an upstart, how do you go about starting this? How does this really work?

Dave: There’s tons of obstacles. There really are challenges every day. I think if you look at it, my suggestion when I talk to companies, is number one, really do an assessment of where they stand, what their strengths are, what their weaknesses are, internally and externally. Look at it as a business strategy. If you’re going to execute on going to a new market, launching a new product line, consider this the same thing. It’s not just a bunch of activities over on the side. Do a full situation assessment. Figure out what it is you’re going to stand for as a company. What are your communication plans? What are your metrics going to be? How are you going to get internal enlistment and buy-in? How are you going to develop a communication plan that everybody is going to understand both inside and outside? That sets up, basically, a domino effect in terms of resources and staffing. It’s still scary and it’s still daunting, but if you take a step-by-step approach at developing a strategy to help the business be better, not just translating what we’re doing today so it sounds good, that’s really the goal. Again, if you wait until it’s perfect before you take your first step and do your first report, you’ll never get there. It’s really just starting to take steps, realizing that you’re never at the end, and trying to drive improvements each year, annually, whatever it is. If your strategic planning cycle is annually or every three years, build it into the system. That’s really the goal, and the smallest company can do it.

John: That’s hopeful. For our listeners out there, you can go to campbellsoup.com and see all the amazing things Dave and his team is doing. One of the great pages here is called nourishing our consumers. Mike and I were looking at that earlier today, and Mike’s on the site right now. I actually printed it off. I just love how you guys have evolved your great brands I remember growing up with and I still eat. Over the past year, you offered 90 of your soups at healthy sodium levels, including your condensed tomato soup. You’ve joined the Healthy Weight Commitment Foundation to help reduce obesity. I mean, really, like you said earlier, Dave, you’re underlining, and Campbell’s is underlining, the word “together.”

Dave: Yeah. People look for their food to do everything these days. We have one of the best portfolios from a health and wellness perspective, yet we had challenges in terms of communicating what that meant to the consumer. I want our consumer over the next 10 years to go in the store and know every product we make is the best that it can be for them. They don’t even have to read the back of the label. That’s kind of my goal, so that there’s a choice for people that are looking for something to feed their kids. There’s one for them, there’s one for the rest of their family, there’s maybe snacks, there’s great food all times of the day, juices. Getting the messaging and the facts and being authentic about what we have in terms of products for people in the marketplace today that are affordable, that close nutrition gaps, is really important. We still have a lot of work to do in this space. We’re working on it day in and day out, both in terms of innovation and research and development, as well as communication to the consumer and to our customers. There’s a lot of work to do here, but I really think it’s critical to our success in the 21st century, and I think that’s the conversation I had inside the company to try to continue to get the focus on it. They’ve been focused on it for years, too. It’s where do we take it?

John: Dave, we’re down to the last minute-and-a-half. A lot of times we get a lot of students from around the United States. After your show airs, there’s going to be a lot of people reaching out to us. What happens is the people out there want to know how to become the next Dave Stangis. How is that? What is the process? What’s the evolution, and where is this going? Because now so many universities have environmental health and safety programs, they have CSR programs. For the kids out there, for the youth of America that want to now become part of the green revolution and the solution, what advice do you have, and what last pearls of wisdom do you have for our listeners out there?

Dave: Sure. The main thing here is they actually have more opportunity today than we did 10 years ago. Not only do these single positions exist, Vice President of CSR and Sustainability, but the really innovative companies, the forward-thinking companies, are trying to build this into everything they’re doing. What I’m telling students and professors, because I don’t want a professor to train 1,000 students to go out and get that one job that isn’t there tomorrow, but to really think about what is they do best? Are they best at finance? Are they best at materials or packaging or optimizing logistics and supply chains? If you can take what you do best, take it to an organization or an agency, a federal environmental agency or a non-profit, there’s going to be more and more ways to bring sustainability into the workplace in every job. We have finance people working on it now. We have advertising people working in sustainability. We have packaging engineers that didn’t go to school for sustainability, but that’s what they’re doing today. There’s just a lot more. Everybody needs to change, I think, the way they think a little bit about it, and not look at just the one role to change a company, but if I don’t have that one role, how else can I play and make a difference every day at a company? That’s really what students want. They want to take their passion, now, and take it to work, and not just hide it in the desk drawer. They want to live it. That’s what leading companies are starting to figure out, is they’ve got to give everybody the outlet in a strategic way to help the company be better.

John: Well said. Mike and I just want to thank you for your time today, Dave. You really laid it out clearly, and we’re so lucky to have you running the CSR and sustainability program at Campbell’s, one of the great brands to ever be born here in this country. I just want to thank you again, and we’re going to have you come back again one day and tell us how the process is going at Campbell’s. You are really an inspirational leader and are truly living proof, Dave Stangis, that green is good.

Dave: Thank you, guys. It’s been great. A lot of fun.

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 John Shegerian and I’m so excited to have with us today, Edward Lando. Edward’s the co-founder and managing partner, Pareto Holdings, and Edwards coming to us from Miami while I sit in Fresno, California. Welcome, Edward to the impact podcast.

Edward Lando: Thank you very much, John.

John: It’s an honor. I’m so honored to have you on. You are a fascinating human being and so interesting and we’re going to get into that in a little while, but I had the great pleasure of meeting you recently at the Goldman Sachs three-day event up in Napa Valley, and it was just so inspiring. My wife and I just were so inspired by what you’re up to. I just had to have you on the impact podcast. And before we get into, everything you’re doing at Pareto Holdings for and for our listeners who want to find you there, they can go to www.pareto20.com

Share a little bit of your fascinating back story. Where you grew up, how you got to Miami, and all the stops you made in between?

Edward: Sounds great. And I’m honored, so thank you again for having me. I grew up despite my accent. I actually grew up in Paris, France. My mother is French, my father is Canadian from Vancouver, West Coast. I grew up in Paris, it’s been my first eighteen years there and I went into college in the U.S. I went to Wharton undergrad and Philly. I taught myself how to code there. I was definitely interested in the classes, but I think I was more immediately pulled to building things on my own with my friends. And so I taught myself how to make websites. I taught myself that I make apps and I started tinkering on side projects with my friends. I would say that’s the most valuable thing I got from college. It’s those relationships. And I think we went through dozens of projects when we were undergrads. Some of them really just projects that we launched over a few days and others became small-side businesses. And then, when I was graduating in 2014, I had a couple of different companies going on. And one of them went through YC in summer ’14, y combinator. It’s called Gulf Predlics[?] the company. It’s in gulf tech, essentially a Bloomberg for the government that I started with a very close friend of mine who teaches statistics at Warden. It was not my idea, I just really wanted to work with him. He’s one of my closest friends and absolutely brilliant and I taught him at a code. He’s very sharp, and so he picked it up very quickly. We built a prototype. We got into YCE and he left that company for several years and it actually sold about a year ago as a great outcome.

But so that was the first sort of serious company that I worked on and then help do a couple of other things after that. Teamed up with another close friend of mine, Bobby Ramesh, who was working in private equity at the time. We started a coding boot camp together to help college kids get the experience that we got learning how to code in college. And we did that for a few years. I started investing at that time. Our boot camp was mostly bootstrap, but, but started growing nicely. And we also raised a little fund to do larger Investments and larger checks. And then a few years later, I was the first investor in and I helped them start a company called Misfits Market, which is in the online grocery space. That company has done very well and he’s let it incredibly and it’s now nationwide and it’s raised a couple hundred million dollars. And over the years, I’ve been essentially lucky to help start a couple of other things and then make a few hundred investments in startups. And these days, I’m in Miami. I’m here doing a lot of work with the business partner of mine, John Andrew, who started Shutterstock. And we’re making a lot of Investments, almost one a day and startups, and then we’re building new companies.

John: So let’s go back. It was parental Holdings, is it fair to call it an incubator of sorts?

Edward: Yes, people have all sorts of different names for things. They call things like [inaudible] is accelerators studios and all that stuff. My point of view is Pareto Holdings is accompanied to NLC[?] And John and I contributed capital to this company and out of this company, we both invest and we helped create new things. I don’t really have a name for it. It’s more of a vehicle through which we do our work together, and we’ve hired a great team inside Pareto that works with us. So that’s what it is. And that there’s a funny story as to why it’s called Pareto.

John: Let’s hear it.

Edward: The Pareto Principle is essentially often linked to the 80/20 rule which is an Economics concept that explains that 80% of the returns that you will get from something often come from 20% of the work. And so often people talk about power law. Essentially, another way to say it is most of the stuff that you do is not that useful, but then a small percentage, 20% of what you do. And actually, I would argue, it’s more like 95/5 of what you do is actually leads to all the outcomes. Perhaps in dating. If you go on a hundred different dates, none of them really matter, but then on one of them, you find the person you’re going to get married to. That one date was worth all of the effort or if you make five-hundred investments and one of them is in the next Google. That Google investment will lead to all of the returns. And so all of the other investments will be negligible in consequence. We like that concept in terms of thinking of things to build and things we invest in because power law and extreme power law to some extent dictate a lot of what happens in venture and start-up land[?].

John: Understood. Is the genius lies within the knowing where which is the 5% of which is the 95, and do people get lost in the 95. Thinking that they’re in the five and do the right to people who actually know what they’re doing knowing they’re in the five?

Edward: I love those questions. I think there are a few answers. One of them frankly is, my point of view is that a lot of early stage investors think that they are smarter than they are and a lot of them try to be too smart. So you hear of some saying, “I passed on this company because I couldn’t understand why this market opportunity was that compelling.” Or whatever it was but these people were clearly impressive. It turns out I think that they’re very humble with early-stage investing and thinking it’s messy. These people are smart. They’re going to hustle, they’re going to sort of find their way, is often a better way to do it. Because no matter how smart you are, I don’t think it’s possible for you to be able to predict every market or everything that’s going to happen.

However, another part of the genius is the terms of making larger investments or choosing what things to build. Yes, you can be a little bit thoughtful about which markets you pick. It’s a mix of being humble and thinking the next Google can come out of anywhere and you sort of like a highly motivated team. On the other hand, if we’re going to spend a lot of our time building something, there are probably certain markets that will do better than others.

John: So interesting. Edward, I get it. Because of this platform and the show, I get to interview so many interesting people which helps me stay connected to really what’s happening. And one of the real exciting reasons that we had you on, is when Tammy and I met you, you were not only both fascinating and interesting, but you talk about Misfits. We already know numerous of the brands that you’ve created and helped co-found and helped scale. And Misfits is just another wonderful example. But when you say you’re doing approximately one investment a day, that velocity sounds both overwhelming and just very, very large.

How do you manage that kind of both incoming pipeline and decision-making to get to choose what becomes an outcome of potentially one a day?

Edward: Yes. It ended up happening because of compounding. So I started Angel Investing about seven and a half years ago. I started because I knew smart people around me that I wanted to invest in that I knew from college or that I met on the West Coast in San Francisco at Y Combinator all these things. And I was just like, “You’re smart. I don’t get to build a company with you every day, but I would love to take part in what you’re doing.” And then I usually would commit fairly quickly, not ask too many questions and just believe in the person, try to help them make other intros, and then hopefully if you like working with you, they make more and more introductions and that’s how you build-up to faster velocity. I’m now I think between myself and Pareto, which is my angel vehicle with John at nearly five hundred investments.

I think the answer is to how to track all these things is by being very good at allocating your time. If we make smaller investments, which is the average a sort of like a “smaller investment” like an angel check will be helpful, will commit very fast with what within one call, will be helpful, will make a few intros for you will answer to your email when you ping us. We’re not going to build your company with you every day because we don’t have the time to do that. If we make a much larger investment and sometimes we read in seven-figure checks which is a lot because it’s our capital. Then we’ll spend a lot more time of the company or helping build a company we’ll spend a lot more time with the company. So I think it depends. Two years ago or one and a half years ago, this had never happened to me, but I was still living in New York and I was just doing like fifteen meetings a day or something with a lot of these founders and teams and I loved it. But I was starting to not feel great because I felt overstretched. I had meetings every thirty minutes or forty-five minutes. I was drinking a lot of coffee a day and I had a couple of panic attacks. I had never had those before. But I was sitting in meetings with people when I started freaking out or sensing that not feeling well. I knew that I had to change something about the setup of the way that I and now we operate with our team. And so I teamed up with John, we hired a couple of amazing people full time, on our investment team, they helped us review things. They’ve done hundreds of calls with us to sort of see how we look at the company is. We’ve created a better system to scale ourselves. And now we have really set of talent teams with a recruiter at Paredo that helps the companies that we work with higher. And we’re trying to build up more systems to be helpful while having the machine not break.

John: I love it. I come to Miami once every couple of months on business. The next time I come I’m going to invite you to dinner. Now I must say, take me to your office one day. And if I go to your office with you, is there a big wall of all your investments and how you’re tracking them? How do you track five hundred and how does it look in terms of you and John’s universe? And how often do you guys get together?

Edward: We see each other several times per week. I would say there are some days where we were just on the phone, but we were texting every couple of minutes. I think to answer the sort of post or question, we should probably have all the companies up there. One, you spend more energy. We’ve really doubled down on our model, which is to try to be the first high conviction investor that you will have anywhere in the world. I would say, the most exciting part of our investment activity is what we called the Pareto precede program where we tell companies, “Hey, you might be very early. You might be alone as a founder or you might have a small team and you’re tinkering on an idea or you’re just getting started anywhere in the world. Anywhere doesn’t matter. We’ve had applicants from all parts of the world. Apply. Fill out this quick form. If we find that what you’re doing is interesting or your background is interesting, we will do a 10-minute video call with you. And after 10 minutes, we will decide whether we do your entire precede round or not.” And often, we try to buy about 7 to 10% of the company. But those companies we spend more effort on because we’re higher conviction were the first Investors. In terms of tracking those, frankly, we’re building systems. We have a couple of different CRNS that we use now. But we’re really working on sort of creating more efficient things. I hold a lot of the stuff in my head, which is not that efficient, but we’re going to build a better machine.

John: Edward, you’re twenty-nine, which blows me away. Only in the most genuine and affectionate sense because we know that genius can come at seventy-seven years old. We know that Ray Kroc didn’t invent McDonald’s til in his mid-50s. And we also know Zuck created Facebook when he was eighteen or nineteen and put pimply-faced kid at Harvard. But what I love about you, what’s so attractive about you and I’m sure what draws other people to you as well is your unabashed courage. Where did you get that from? Does that was mom or dad an entrepreneur or was Grandpa or Grandma? Where did you even get the absolute courage to go from Paris to the States? Move around the States from great cities from Silicon Valley to New York to Pennsylvania. Now, to Miami, it means four of the greatest regions in, the nation. And to partner up with who you’ve partnered up with and make this kind of velocity of investments at your very tender age. Because when I was 29, it’s not like when you were you’re 29, you’re probably going to live to -If you look at the Actuarial tables, now- a hundred or more. [crosstalking] When I was twenty-nine, how not to die?

Edward: Read the book.

John: I see it right behind you. I’ve read that book.

Edward: This is the topic I’m very interested in and I’m reading a lot in the space right now.

John: I’ve read that book. I love that book. It’s a great book.

Edward: This is probably the topic that I’m most interested in. I would love to start a company in longevity, and that’s another topic. But first of all, thank you. I think…

John: Where does that come from? Because everyone wants to be the next Edward. Everyone wants to be the next Tesla and Musk or the next Bezos or Gates or Sara Blakely. But everyone’s courage is in short supply. Where did you [crosstalk] get it?

Edward: You’re putting me in great company. Thank you. I think the answer is a couple of things. One is some people and myself included are lucky in that we grew up with the safety net. My dad is retired but is a successful journalist. He worked for thirty years with sixty minutes producing with Mike Wallace. He’s a very accomplished journalist. I had an example of someone very successful in his field. My mom is retired as well. She had me at forty-two. She started her own business, fairly well with it. And I think I grew up knowing that if I failed, I could go back and comfortably live at my parents’ apartment in Paris and not starve. I think that that certainly [crosstalk] that is a huge advantage. A lot of people don’t have that starting advantage. I think that’s the first thing. It’s knowing that you have a safety net.

Some people, it helps them a lot. Other people, if they have too much of a safety net and if they’re too comfortable early on, you see that sort of like spoil them a bit and not give them the drive. I think I was in the sweet spot where I was comfortable enough. I also went to a very good high school in Paris where people were either really smart or really rich or both or whatever. And they’re surrounded by people who are the sons and daughters of very, very wealthy and successful folks. And I think it made me want to go out and achieve a lot.

I think the other answers are, there’s a little bit of an existential answer, like why not be courageous? I think a lot of people think that their lives are not as risky as they actually are. There’s no way to live life in a non-risky way even if you have a stable career. It’s dangerous to be a human being. Things can happen to you every day. You can get hit by a car, you can get sick, touchwood[?] you don’t. All sorts of things can happen to you. My point of view is you might as well take the red pill and do something or do something courageous or try to do something courageous because we all know where we’re headed anyway, and so why not try to do some insane stuff while we’re here. I think that’s another answer. And then I think that the main thing that I’m grateful for that motivates me that energizes me, is that I get to work with very, very incredible people. That’s the best thing I got out of college by far, is there are a few of the people that I worked with over and over where my closest friends I met there. I get to now do a ton of great work with John and the rest of the Pareto team. I think that part of my motivation is maybe a couple of hundred years ago we would have been nights going on an adventure in our horses or whatnot. And I think today, this is the equivalent. You’re going on adventures with your friends building companies and seeing what you can do in the world.

John: When we get back to the topic of one [inaudible] in a second for our listeners who just joined us. We’ve got Edward Lando today. Edward is the managing partner and co-founder of Pareto Holdings, you could find Edward and his partner, John, and their colleagues at www.pareto20.com.

And when we sat down with you, and we’re visiting over a little bite to eat in the Napa Valley, you made us lean in when you shared with us that you were one of the early people and co-founders of Misfits, which, of course we said, we love that brand and we use that brand. But you also shared with us one of your latest ventures called Goody. Can you share with our listeners what you’re doing with Goody, how you came to find it, and what your mission is there?

Edward: Yes, absolutely. And it’s timely because we have our Goody executive off-site happening in my house downstairs right now.

John: Perfect!

Edward: I think I told you this, I keep a very long list of ideas. There are many things that I would love to be able to work on in my life. And one of them over the last few years has simply come up over and over, which is an easy way to send gifts to people that I care about in my life. I love sending gifts. I have people that I care about in different countries, all over the U.S And in different contexts, professional, personal, all that stuff. And it’s always a lot of work to send a gift. I don’t have their information. I don’t really know what they want. The brands that are available are not that cool. Not that interesting. I know it’s not [inaudible] clever point of entry into building a compelling e-commerce company. Eventually, about a year and a half ago, I teamed up with a very close friend of mine. Who’s an absolute product genius, Mark. And I’d already worked on some things with Mark. He was wrapping up his work at another company. He was finally on the market and I was like, “Oh my God, I need to team up with him.” And we built a prototype for Goody which started off as an app that allows you to send a gift in 10 seconds or less. You open it, you pick one of the products, you tap someone from your contacts, you add a note, it sends it to them. They receive it. They can enter their address and other stuff. They can enter what size the shoe they are. If they wanted the chocolate cookies or the vanilla cookies. You don’t have to pick that for them. And if they don’t want the cookies, they can swap them for something else. So that was the premise we launched as a purely consumer product.

And then, we noticed very quickly that companies love using us. Because every company in the world needs to send gifts to their employees. Both their employees. So both internally and then also their customers, externally sort of like to help close deals or thank them. A lot of the solutions that exist out there pretty clunky not that good. Their selection is not that good. I’m sure you’ve received many holiday gifts from standard companies that you work with financial providers accountants that are like coffee beans and like an ugly mug, or whatever it is and you throw it out. Why not send something you better. It’s not necessarily much about the product. Although, our products are very cool. It is also about the message we really value. We were thinking of you at this moment or if you’re a new employee joining a company or you’re celebrating a milestone. It’s helping sort of be this happiness and engagement platform for employees. So that’s the TLDR. Our business is B2B and consumer, although I think we have more of a focus on B2B now. We’re essentially power and companies to make their employees and customers happy.

John: When did you launch it and how’s it going?

Edward: We launched in mid-December of last year. So we launched eleven months ago. A little bit less than eleven months ago. And it’s going very well. We built an amazing team of thirty-two full-time people and we’re pure software. The team gives us a lot of leverage and we can do a lot of damage with this team. They’re really, really good at we’ve raised three rounds of funding so far with index ventures and [inaudible] great Angels like David Solomon from Goldman Sachs. We did another round recently with SoftBank and we’re growing. There are other players in this market who have been around for years. As usual, a lot of good markets. There’s a bunch of players out there. I think we’re very unique because we started off as a purely consumer company. In the same way as when Sachs arrived for messaging, for businesses people were like, “Wow, this is much better than what I’m used to.” Or when Figma arrives to help people design a lot of things. Those are much nicer than the other folks out there. When Notion arrived for note-taking or when whatever, suddenly people had companies realized they’re allowed to have standards that are the same as at home. When they go back home and they use regular consumer products. The standards are really high because it’s very competitive. Usually, they’re used to clunky software at work because that’s what it is. I think we’re building a consumer-grade employee happiness platform and gifting platform for B2B that has not existed before.

John: For our listeners and viewers who want to find it, they could go to ongoody.com.

Edward: Indeed, yes.

John: Let’s talk a little bit about what interests you. You’ve got so much run. You have a great history behind you and have created some wonderful businesses already which again just continues to be informative. And as you say it also creates velocity in terms of your investment Thesis. What is interest in you? I saw that book behind you. I was going to ask you I’m glad you pulled it down because I’m very interested in that space as well “Longevity.” I’ve read that book. I think that book is wonderful. What are the two or three key topics that you and John, over the next twenty-four to thirty-six months are fascinated by and interested in really doing something meaningful in that space?

Edward: We have some overlap with John and then we have some different areas of interest, which is exciting.

John: Okay.

Edward: John, for example, is particularly interested in mental health, mental well-being, and all that stuff. And so we’ve been looking at that space. He wants to start a company in that space, you know that for sure. John also had a dream about a video game that he wanted to start and woke up and message a couple of unity developers in the area and we ended up starting a video game company, which is just pure fun, and why not? It’s exciting and it’s just totally different from anything that we would explore[?] before. I tend to be attracted to consumer ideas. I really loved building things that people around me can use and love. I think it’s fun. I think perhaps it comes from having grown up in France, where a lot of the things that you admire are luxury brands and sort of things that you recognize those around you versus you know has a growing up in Palo Alto or it might be Robotics and other things like that. I like consumer ideas. And then I also believe that if you are in the position where you have the comfort of being able to work on whatever you want to work. You’re not required to work in something just to pay the bills. Then why not work on the things that are most important to the human condition? Why not make the world better and it sounds like a cheesy thing a lot of entrepreneurs talk about. But I do think that there’s a lot of overlap between things that make the world better and great businesses really you can make a lot of money. And, of course, there’re examples of businesses that make a lot of money that are bad for the world, which I would not want to work on.

I think that Misfits is a great example of a company that does great good for the world that prevents food waste that gives people affordable groceries. I think that Goody is an example of something of a product that makes people smile and feel valued. And when you use it in your personal use case a lot of people report feeling like a warm feeling after sending or receiving a Goody, just feeling good. Like they have a connection with a person or employees who received something for their great work. They’re told that they’re really valued and appreciated. I think that it’s a nice sort of way to make people feel valued and loved. The things that I would like to start, I’ve always cared a lot about healthcare. It’s something that we obviously are all impacted by and as we get older, we’re more likely to get some bad diseases and eventually one of these problems will kill all of us and it’s a big deal. I don’t know if I want to necessarily make us live forever, but I do think that why not help people live longer healthier lives. Why not give people the option of getting older in a way where they’re still fit and they can still move around and feel good. And not feel like they’re sort of losing their capacity to do things. So that is a problem for me. All things aside, you get the luxury to work on whatever you want to work on. That sounds fascinating like helping people live longer, healthier lives.

John: You want to democratize the blue zones of the world?

Edward: It’s funny because I’m actually just finishing that book. I’m just finishing the…

John: I told you I’m very interested in this space. That I’ve been very interested in quite some time and working in it in and around that space for quite some time. But is that close to what the…

Edward: Yes, and people should know whether this is actually not planned. It’s funny that you mention that book. I’m literally finishing it right now. Well, the Blue Zone thing is fascinating, and that the premise is that there’s a couple of areas in the world where people generally and there’s a higher rate of centenarians people who live a long and healthy life and healthy centenarians. And what are the common points? And the TLDR is that some of the common points are; that they have a sense of purpose in their work, that they have a sense of community. And that these people do not feel isolated from the world, their friends, their loved ones as they grow older, they’re not ostracized. Of course, there’s some element of like what they eat, which is better than eating junk food. There’s some element of doing healthy physical exercise.

These things are lifestyle things, which I think should be democratized. I think that people totally take care of themselves. I’m drinking turmeric tea here because why not. I think that there’s also hard Science stuff that you can do in terms of maybe replacing organs, or in terms of other sorts of drugs that you can actually take that people are arguing can make you live longer. We’ve already invested with Pareto and several longevity companies. And I would love to start a consumer-facing longevity company that just helps people just overall have a better life.

John: It’s desperately needed.

Edward: And it’s crazy. I’m curious, if you have an opinion on this, I’ve always asked myself like, why do more people not work on this? Because there are so many smart people building businesses in the world. And I love a lot of them. But like for example, I’m wearing little lemon pants. Little lemon is an amazing business but at the end of the day, you’re just making athleisure. Athleisure at the sort of like you’re making clothes and that’s great. But there’s a difference between doing that and building a company that helps people live longer and healthier lives. Why do you think more people do not build these types of important businesses?

John: It’s because sometimes I think it’s very hard. It’s hard and they see that it’s hard and they go for stuff that’s easier. They going for stuff that’s not going to have that much friction. I don’t think it was easy starting. When you read the story and you watch the rise of 23 and me. That was no easy, even though they had unlimited money, obviously, for who they were. But what they’re creating is really what is going to become, targeted medicine company. Targeted with one of the greatest gene pool bases on the planet. I just think it’s tough stuff. And I think also you’re fighting the machine of all the [crosstalk] massive advertising that we all grew up with. Pushing on us, McDonald’s and fast food, and Oreos, and all the wonderful comfort zones that we all grew up with. So, you’re up against it, but I’ve been studying this space. I became a vegetarian when I was seventeen. I am fifty-nine now, Edward. Started plant-based eating around half thirteen years ago. And I know I work with Longevity doctors from my own self. I have MDS and then I have MDS that are holistic Longevity doctors. And there’s so much runway there. It’s really unlimited opportunities there.

Edward: I’m healthy eating. We at Pareto we owned the domain name fastfood.com and we would love to start a healthy food brand around that. We think that that could be very fun. But it’s interesting. Several of them are more successful companies that I’ve been the chance to be a part of like Misfits or another one called Catalina Crunch, which does keto, cereal, and snacks are helping people. Essentially replaced bad habits of eating with good habits, which I think is one of the huge Longevity opportunities.

John: My dear people, I know that brand very well. I love it. I brought it over to my daughter’s house. So my granddaughter could enjoy it. And my wife doesn’t. Nobody in my family knows the difference that that’s not a junk food cereal versus a keto-based cereal with very low sugar in it. It’s unbelievably tasty.

Edward: You want to hear that 30-second story of how our company started?

John: Absolutely!

Edward: My friend, Krishna went to Wharton a few years before me. He was a dual degree student at Wharton engineering, a really smart guy. People who have gone to school with him said that he was probably the smartest person of their year. He worked at a Quant Hedge Fund. He was really suffering for a while trying to start an auto insurance company and could not get it off the ground. He needed to raise too much money to do it and wasn’t able to get the traction. And then after a while, he got fed up and he said, “You know what? I’m going to solve one of my own power problems. I have diabetes.” Which he does. “And I’m tired of not being able to breakfast or snacks. And so I’m going to build a brand that allows me to do that.” And he started people thinking he was crazy. He started baking the cereal in his own Kitchen in New York in his tiny little kitchen. And a lot of the people who had been interested in backing him for the auto insurance idea were not interested in this market. Because who wants the back of cereal company? Not to pat myself on the shoulder but I told myself that I still wanted to work with him because I believe in him and I was his first investor and then help him raise some more money. And of course, now that brand is nationwide and doing incredibly well, which goes back to the earlier point of when you do early investing you cannot be overly analytical. Sometimes you have to be a little loose and say I just believe in this person.

John: The theme that I keep hearing from you though is that you’re somewhat less analytical and you trust your gut and your knowledge of the people more. And what I love about, what your thesis is you bet on people more than just even subject matter that they’re working on.

Edward: Yes, it’s a little strange. I both loved and regret it doing Wharton as an undergrad because it’s such an analytical place to go when you’re eighteen and you’re doing accounting and sort of intense finance and sort of like different models and spreadsheets. I think it might be more interesting to study Physics or Creative Writing or History, or Classics at that age. The people who come out of their office[?] and just incredibly hard-working and analytical, and sharp. I enjoyed those subjects. I enjoyed studying Finance and looking at public companies. But I’ve always loved looking at startups in a little bit less of a rationally disciplined way. And more than an intuitive way, which is strange. You sort of hear a lot of this term of pattern matching. And having done five hundred investments at this point, I’d probably taken over ten thousand meetings, probably more. For better or for worse, I hopped on the phone with someone or I meet with them. And very quickly within a few seconds or a minute, I know whether I’d like to invest in them. That’s not necessarily the same process that you use to figure out what company you want to build. But as far as figuring out whether you want to invest in someone early, I think that that is one of the better methods.

John: It’s fascinating. Since you’re so interested in Longevity, have you adjusted your lifestyle with all the information you’re taking in on Blue Zones? And obviously, you mentioned it’s approximately 7 Blue Zones on the planet right now that they talk about in the book. And the different algorithms that have proven to work for these centenarians and how not to die. What have you absorbed into your own lifestyle at twenty-nine years old, where pretty much most twenty-nine-year-olds you meet still feel indestructible and are carrying on and all sorts of ways that obviously going to catch up to them later on. What have you done to start walking that walk?

Edward: Well, first of all, I think one of the risks that I have and a lot of people have in the U.S. and when they work in a challenging career is, I have a lot of stress. I’m sure you have a lot of stress as well. A lot of things happening. And so that’s one of the things that I’m trying to manage, but there are all sorts of ways of doing that. I’m lucky in that I work out every day. Living in Miami has been great for that. I am going to go play tennis later. I get to play tennis for an hour or two every day. I tend to love eating a healthy Mediterranean diet. I try to order from a plate. I don’t really get the chance to cook much, which is not good. But I tend to order from places that have healthy Mediterranean food. I’m French so I enjoy drinking red wine and I drink it almost daily, which might seem insane but I actually went to see my doctor a few weeks ago. I was asking him that different doctors are different opinions, and I’m sure your Longevity doctors have their own. But I asked about drinking and he said, “I don’t know if doctors ever told you this. There’s a J curve for drinking.” Which essentially is a chart that shows the expected mortality rates and so on with men and women.

Some studies show you’re going to live longer if there’s a correlation between having a couple of drinks today and living longer. For men, I believe it was 2 to 3. For women, it was more closer to 1. There can be a debate around this, but it might be linked in terms of having a couple of drinks a day just simply helping people relax, loosen stress, and then also sort of antioxidants that go with that. Then also alcohol breaking down things and fights diabetes and other problems like that.

I think that’s another one. And then I do think maintaining its link to the people that I get to work with or that I’m maintaining very close social relationships is the most important thing. I’m sure when you like everyone else, when you feel [inaudible] and not close to your loved ones and not loved, you’re not going to feel good. When you feel warm and surrounded by people that you love you feel good. It’s pretty simple, we’re kind of like plants. We want to get food. We want to have sun exposure, all that stuff. These are some simple ingredients at least for part one. I think there’s a lot more that can be done.

John: It’s funny you bring up your friend who started the cereal company because he had diabetes. The New York Times just reported a fascinating story. I believe a part of the beginning of game-changing in long-term healthcare, the issue of stem cells. And they talked about this weekend. They wrote a huge article on the first stem cell breakthrough when it comes to diabetes and patient number 1 literally type 1 diabetes fully resolved with the stem cell breakthrough that they’ve made, which is the thing massive.

Edward: That’s incredible. I wonder what lab or a result that this came from. I know someone else very interesting in this Longevity space who believes that there simply is not enough funding that goes into some of these efforts. To some extent, yes, you need to make these lifestyle changes, but then you also need to back these scientific experiments and you need to give them more exposure. Because a lot of these breakthroughs are going to happen in the lab like fighting diabetes, fighting diseases, printing new organs if they fail whatever it might be. I think you just need to actually get the right ideas and people fund it.

John: I’ll send you that article later today. So you have it and you could read it. I think you’ll enjoy it and get a lot out of it. And explains the labs that it came from.

We have a lot of listeners and viewers are going to watch us around the world and say, “I want to apply to Edward’s company to get funded. I want to make sure this is done in an orderly way. Walk them through again what your expectations are and how to even apply on your website. To even have their voice heard.

Edward: If you want funding for your company, you can go to pareto20.com. And there’s a form for precede funding and you can apply. And then, if you want to talk to me about Longevity, anything like that, you can either direct message me on Twitter. I’m at Edward Lando. You can also email me to [email protected].

I want to start one or several companies in Longevity. I want my back to a lot of companies in healthcare. That’s definitely a space of particular interest. So please reach out.

John: And for our listeners and viewers who also want to partake in and enjoy your newest brand, Goody. They can go to www.ongoody.com. [crosstalk]

Edward: If you’re a company, you can go there. And you can sign up for a business and start gifting to your employees or to your customers, especially with this holiday season. If you want to use it in your own personal use case, you can go to the App Store on your phone and just look up Goody. And we are the gifting app on there.

John: Edward, when you write the check and this is something you do a lot. So that’s why I’m going to ask you. The young entrepreneurs, of course, are very happy and it’s a big day in his or her life. What are the parting words on that day that you give them once you write that first check? What’s the guidance that you give them for what is becoming the beginning of the journey?

Edward: A couple of answers. I would say one is, you can learn from what other successful precede funds and programs have done. I think Y Combinator does this well. I believe that the reason that these programs do well is that they simply encourage people to push harder in their programs for a few months. There are all sorts of these accelerators. They just encourage them to work harder. They create a little bit of a sense of competition with their other companies around them. Everyone’s reporting and weekly growth metrics and they feel like that the push more. So people make a lot of progress when they’re put in cohorts and when they are asked to quantify their progress in some ways. Encouraging people to quantify things as hard as that might be early on. Reporting on it [inaudible] to us, not because we’re going to do anything necessarily. But because we’d like to keep them accountable for making some progress as one.

People make fun of me, my friends make fun of me for I use the word aggression a lot. And I love people who push more or more aggressive. I think people should move faster generally than they actually move. Most people do not have enough of a sense of urgency. I may be particularly allergic to that because I grew up in Europe and I think that Europe is wonderful, but it’s a little bit too slow. I love it. When I go to back home to France or when I go to Italy you enjoy your meal and it takes forever. You’re asking if you can get the main dish now or whatever. Let’s wait until the first course is fully done. They’re taking their time. I think you need a start-up plan to move faster. So, that’s another thing.

Another word of encouragement. In general, you’ll be a little bit crazier. As you said earlier, people build all sorts of businesses. I think a lot of people don’t allow themselves to sort of be ambitious enough and I do really believe that. And I guess once we invest, it’s too late to have them change often or change what they work on. I think that it’s just as hard to build a very ambitious company as it is to build like a decently ambitious one or maybe just a tiny bit harder to build a rocket company. You might as well do the hard stuff.

John: I love it. And for that, we’re going to leave it, but we’re going to have you back. Edward, to share that just Journey you’ve got so much to do in front of you and you’ve already done so much in the rearview mirror, but we want to have you back here to continue this discussion for our listeners and viewers again to find Edward, John and their partners and colleagues go to www.pareto20.com. You can go to find Goody, go to ongoody.com. If you really want to see a fun website with a lot of inspiration on it. You could check out Edward’s omelet[? ]website at edwardlando.com. It’s got a lot of inspiration, a lot of what drives him, and a lot of what’s informed him in his very young, but very successful life.

Edward, thanks for making the impact you’re making. You are truly an inspiration, and I’m so grateful that you shared some time with us today on the Impact podcast.

Edward: Thank you, John. Let’s catch up at some point in 2022 and see what progress we made.

John: 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, live streams, and much more. For more information on Engage or to book talent today, visit let’sengage.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 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 John Shegerian and I’m so honored to have a very, very long-time friend with me today, Father Greg Boyle. He’s the founder of Homeboy Industries. Father Greg, welcome to the Impact Podcast.

Father Greg Boyle: It’s great to be with you, John. Good to see you again.

John: Great to see you. Thirty years, when they, when it says in the Bible “blink of an eye”, man, they had it straight there. They had it really straight. So, it goes fast. Father Greg, you are known around the world for the Homeboy Industries and all the great work you’ve done with the kids in East L.A. and way beyond East L.A., and the speaking you’ve done around the world on this topic of love, of kinship, of transformational opportunities for our youth. But before we go there and also, today we’re going to be talking about your new book, which makes a great Christmas gift— the whole language, the power of extravagant tenderness. Tell us a little bit about your background Father Greg, where you grew up, how you got your calling to the Dolores Mission in Boyle Heights, and how we even got here?

Father Greg: Well, I’m from Los Angeles and my parents were from Los Angeles and their parents were from Los Angeles. So, a lot of generations here and family of eight. I was educated by the Jesuits so that kind of I was intrigued by them. They were prophetic. This was during the Vietnam war, I admired that and they would drag us to protest against the war, and then they were hilarious. So, for me, it was a combo burger of hilarity and prophetic that I liked. So I joined the Jesuits like the Pope is a Jesuit. So then, I studied and educated myself here and there and everywhere. And then I was assigned to the poorest parish in the city of Los Angeles, Dolores Mission. I spoke Spanish so… And it had the largest grouping of public housing West the Mississippi. It had the highest concentration of gang activity anywhere. We had 8 gangs in my parish that were at war with each other. And so, that’s how I… But I didn’t set out to do anything. I didn’t feel particularly called, I mean, I didn’t even know what a gang member was until I started burying kids in 1988.

We started the school and we started the jobs program mainly trying to find felony-friendly employers, and you were one of those felony-friendly employers. I remember trying to get a homies who were to be janitorial there at Grand Central Market many years ago. And then when we started all these crews and 1988, maintenance crew, landscaping crew, all made up of rival enemy gang members. And then the bakery came in ’92, and then homeboy tortillas right after that. So, anyway, I didn’t set out. We have special people come here to the headquarters, which is our 4th location, and it’s huge. Fifteen thousand folks a year walk through our doors, and now we have 10 social enterprises. But people will say, “Wow. How did you think this up?” and the truth is nobody thinks anything up. You evolve, you…

John: True. I’ll give you some of my memory. Of course, you and I both were in L.A. and we lived through what was then called of course “revisionist history”. It has a way of changing what things are called or what things mean, but when we were living there it was called the Rodney King Riots when we lived through the horrific period of early Spring of 1992. And that was a very weird period. I remembered now, my partner was my boss. I was just the number 2 guy at the Grand Central Market and we lost the guy. No one wanted to be in downtown because that’s where the riot started. We had the Bradbury Building as you know, we have the Grand Central Market, and that we lost the guy, the husband, and wife, who owned that practically brand-new tortilla. I harken back on you. I had watched you and I don’t remember when. It could have been 3 months prior to the riots. It could have been 6 months. My memory is a little foggy there, but I had watched you interviewed back then on 60 Minutes.

Father Greg: That’s right.

John: Back then, as you and I know, because we’re old enough to know this 60 Minutes was the place. There was no Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, Twitter, it was the place. There was no social media. So, people got their news and were moved by trends and things that were being highlighted on 60 Minutes. And you were one of those, really, you were in rare air. I remembered watching you be interviewed like, “Let me call this gentleman and see if he wants to bring his program,” which you had already started like you said in East L.A. in ’88 and bring it over to the tortilla. You were kind enough, on my cold call, to come over. We had coffee at Pascual Coffee, which was right across the aisle from the empty tortilla. You had the unbelievable courage and openness to say yes to this concept and yes to this idea. As you know much better than I do, the most repeated phrase in the Bible is “Be not afraid.” I always was so impressed by you because you started introducing me to your board in East L.A., the Proctor Pastoral Board and you introduced me to Mary and Peter, and Michael and all these wonderful human beings. What I sense with you was this courage and fearlessness. Where did you get that from? What informed you? It’s one thing to become a Jesuit priest. It’s another thing to be assigned to the poorest parish in East L.A. But you had this openness and courage and fearlessness that I think has carried you your whole lifetime because the success you’ve made and the impact you’ve made on hundreds of thousands of young people, and also people like me— and we’ll get to that in a little while— has been immeasurable. So, where did that come from? Where was that in your DNA?

Father Greg: Well, I don’t, you know, I thank you for that. I mean, I don’t always particularly feels fearless, but I am kind of a mantra, you know, where I just pray be fearless for me, and then you kind of feel sustained whenever you feel distressed and give us this day our daily bread. Everybody has distress. So you just hope to be more and more, a sturdier soul in the world where you can withstand things. But for me, it’s never, any of this work has never been a grim duty. It’s always been delighting in people. I mean this morning I, just in my office, just belly laughs, and people are so smart and people are so tender and people are so thoroughly unshakably good. So it’s a joy to kind of be with people as they discover the truth of who they are. And together, we all love each other into wholeness. We all walk each other home and that’s kind of the goal. So but yeah, you’re right. The thing about in scripture, 365 times one for every day is one form or another of “be not afraid.”

John: Honestly, and we’re going to… I think about you. And when you think about the people in your life that made the biggest impact, you’re the one who’s made the biggest impact, and I’m going to talk that more later on my life. Actually, you and I are going to have a chance to be together in the near future. And I’m going to be introducing you and I’m going to talk about it more when I do that as well. But you wrote “tattoos on the heart”, which was a wonderful book, I read. And then you wrote “barking to the choir”, and now you’ve written, and I’ve just read over the last weekend this wonderful book, “A whole language, the power of extravagant tenderness”. Tell me about this latest book and why it’s important for you to get down your experiences and your feelings and where you think we’re at in this journey into books? And why this book is so important being it’s your latest?

Father Greg: Well, I don’t know. It’s a little bit like this headquarters here where I’m sitting, how do you think it up? Well, I don’t know.

[Laughter]

Father Greg: It sort of involved. The same thing with the book. The first book was, I had a storehouse of 20 years of stories and I thought… And people said you should write them down. And so I did. I never thought I’d write another book and then Simon & Schuster asked me to write another book and so I went. So the first book was in me. The second book was asked of me and the third book was kind of a combo burger of both, in me and asked of me. So and it’s a Trilogy and as much as it’s my power books, the power of boundless compassion, the power of radical kinship, and then the power of extravagant tenderness. So they’re all kind of have the same structure, they’re essays. They’re me thinking about subjects like death or the church or Pope, or God or whatever it was.

They’re just a vehicle to… Somebody called me a writer the other day. And I certainly don’t feel like one. I’ve written three books, but I don’t identify as a writer. I’m kind of more of a… I tell stories and I preached. So I’m at all our detention facilities in LA county. they’re numerous, and then prisons beyond that. I always preach and I always tell 3 stories in my homily. So these things are all collections of that kind of stuff.

John: You know for our listeners and viewers out there, first of all, I highly recommend this book as a wonderful Christmas gift. This is our Christmas special for the impact podcast. So I highly recommend this book and we’re going to also have some special signed copies from Father Greg to give away to some of our listeners who write into us.

You just talked about radical kinship. I want to read you a quote. Something that’s a paraphrase of something you’ve said it historically. But I want you to break it down for our listeners because I think it sums up a lot of who you are, and what drives you. If you go to the margin to make a difference, it’s about you. If you go to the margin for them to make you different, it’s about us, the word for that is kinship. Can you break that down for our listeners and viewers who haven’t had the pleasure, the joy of meeting you and seeing you do your great work, Father Greg?

Father Greg: Yeah, you know, you go to the margins because that’s the only way they’re going to get erased. So you don’t go there to fix, or rescue, or save people, or even transform lives. Here at homeboy lives get transformed, but I don’t do it. I don’t transform people. We don’t do that for each other, but it happens in a kind of a culture in a context of tenderness and that’s our methodology. So that’s the hope.

People talk about burnout. If you go to the margins to make a difference you’re going to burn out because you’ve allowed it to become about you. But if you go to the margins to be made different, to have your heart altered, to be reached by people, then it’s about us, and it’s eternally replenishing. You’re never going to burn out. So that’s just never going to happen.

I learned that lesson early on probably 10 years in. I’ve never been close to burnout since then and I think it’s because you just can’t ever allow it to become about you. Then it’s not about success or failure. You know what Mother Teresa says, “we’re not called to be successful. We’re called to be faithful.” So you just try to stay faithful to a methodology, a way of proceeding in the world. And then success is, I don’t know, God’s business, but it’s not my business. And so it’s not about evidence-based outcomes.

I just had a group of students here doing an interview and they were saying, talk about your failures. I go, “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” I mean, I don’t believe in failure, but I also don’t believe in success. I just believe in you find the methodology, the way you want to proceed and you try to stay faithful to that. But if there are successes, then there are failures. If there are good people, then there are bad people and I don’t believe in any of that. I believe we’re all unshakably good and we all belong to each other. Now, roll up your sleeves and do the best you can.

John: It served you. Well, that way of operating has obviously served you really well. For our listeners and viewers of just turned in, we’re so honored to have with us, Father Greg Boyle. He’s the founder of Homeboy Industries. To find Father Greg, all of his colleagues, and learn much more about the great work he’s doing not only in East LA but around the United States, with all these outposts and around the world in terms of his speaking and sharing his stories, please go to www.homeboyindustries.org. Or you could also find his new book on the “Whole language, the power of extravagant tenderness”, amazon.com, Barnes and Noble, and other great bookstores in your local community or online.

Father Greg, we just all live through another black mark episode on American history, of course, you and I were in L.A. at the same time when the Rodney King riots happened. And then last year we live through the summer of last year, the spring of last year, the tragedies in Minneapolis and way beyond across America. And in one way, I was watching television and thinking to myself and watching the news that man in 30 years, we haven’t even come that far. The systemic racism in America, things haven’t improved. I’d love to hear you’re take given that you’re a great leader and great leaders know how to define reality and then give hope. I’d love you to share your vision on what happened on your take, first of all, what happened last year and how far we really come since the riots that put us together in ’92 and where we going from here as a country and as a people?

Father Greg: Yeah, I mean, I think we have made progress. I mean Barack Obama used to say, “if you don’t think we’ve made progress then you’re not paying attention.” And it’s true. I look at gang violence in Los Angeles County. When I met you, we had 1,000 gang-related homicides in Los Angeles. So, what’s happened to that number since? Well, that’s been cut in half and cut in half again. And chiefs of police would certainly include homeboy as a having had a singular impact on public safety and in Los Angeles. And that’s because right about the time I met you, we started to, there was no such thing as an exit ramp. So you could just say no to gang violence, but there was no way for gang members to get off that crazy freeway.

John: Absolutely. [crosstalk]

Father Greg: Yeah. And then you had it.

John: Yeah, you became the facilitator for that, your organization.

Father Greg: But then it was like even symbolic. So even if folks didn’t walk through our doors, they knew that such a place existed and they knew that there was hope.

John: Right.

Father Greg: And so that was kind of key so that change things. I also think people are starting to see things differently. And I hope that we get just as we’ve had a kind of a more sophisticated take on crime in general. The largest gang and the largest mental hospital on the planet Earth is LA County jail, which should tell us something about how wrongheaded our approach has been. But we think it’s about bad people doing bad things, but it’s really about despair. And it’s about traumatized people and it’s about mentally ill people. So if we infused hope for folks for whom hope is foreign, or if we helped heal damaged people, or if we deliver mental health services in a culturally appropriate way, we make even more progress. But nobody’s ever found a treatment plan that was any damn good, that was born from a bad diagnosis. You and I remember the days when the diagnosis was bad.

John: Right.

Father Greg: And now we’ve really changed the diagnosis which is hopeful. And racism is, I think how our mental health crisis presents itself. People can act out in a way that’s really quite alarming, but nobody healthy engage it. Nobody healthy engages in violence. These aren’t rational acts but coming from healthy actors. Even yesterday, it feels unrelated. But you have a fifteen-year-old kid who kills people at a school in Michigan. And police are going [inaudible], we can’t find the motive. I go, “well, imagine a motive that would make sense to that action.” He got a D on his math test. There is no motive. Nobody healthy does such a thing, right? So rather than demonize him, how do we help people and help ourselves even in terms of sensible gun laws? How do we help each other? This is an indicator. It’s a symptom that were not well and none of us are well until all of us are well.

I think it’s important to… The homies here always talk about find the thorn underneath. So you want to find the thing that undergirds all, vexing social dilemma that kind of has us all scratching our heads. And we belong to each other and everybody’s unshakably good. Begin there, and I think we’ll make progress.

John: I grew up in Queens, New York. I grew up in integrated schools in New York City. And when I first met you, you broke things down, so simply for me. And you made it clear to me what mission we were on. Of course, we were doing the tortilla together. So you said to me, John these young kids that are either gang impacted or already have been involved with gangs and are trying to get out. You said, “if they don’t get out of that gang life, they’re going to end up in one of two places.” You made it real clear to me, jail or dead. And those are obviously horrific options. Excuse me. And then you laid on me you’re unbelievable tagline which is still probably rings more truth today than it even did the day I met you in ’92, that nothing stops a bullet faster than a job.

And it’s that simple in many ways. I know, there’s like you said so many other layers to societal, systemic, legacy, mental, and other mental health issues, and other things that layer into this. But just the simplicity of a job is such a genius way of approaching this and getting people to want to lean in and participate and support your great organization. How is that tagline that you created now over 3 decades ago, more true than ever before?

Father Greg: Well it’s interesting though. When we listen to gang members, they’d say, if only we had a job and so nothing stops a bullet like a job was born.

John: Right.

Father Greg: That’s one by listening to gang member. I think once we knew gang member, then we went, “Oh, this is about healing.” An employed gang member may or may not go back to prison or educated one may or may not. But then we… Fifteen years ago, we came to the conclusion that a healed gang member will not ever re-offend. Will not. And once we knew that we thought “well, what if as a society we no longer punished wound, but we sought to heal it.” Then we set about to do that. So that kind of changed a lot of what we did. We have therapy and groups and it’s the whole culture of the place and tattoo removal and all these other services that help people inhabit the truth of who they are.

So our program now is 18 months and it’s parallels the time it takes for infant to attach to a caregiver. So it’s what were engaged in really is attachment repair. So how do you repair what has been severed? So that people can be sturdier. They can be resilient and then they leave us after 18 months. And now the world’s going to throw at them what it will, but this time they’re not going to be toppled by it.

John: Right.

Father Greg: But if they were just employed, that’s what we were trying to find. We’d started to discover that. Now, you know that guy, we didn’t find him a job. We found him a career, but then his lady left him and it send him in this spiral and now he’s doing 125 years to life at Folsom. So that happened and it made us kind of question what the emphasis is. So now it’s kind of human-centered. The traumatized are more likely to cause trauma then we discovered that the cherished person will be able to find their way to the joy there is in cherishing themselves and others.

It kind of shifted probably 15 years ago in midstream, which was good. We were learning. Even in the early days, just before I met you, I did a lot of shuttle diplomacy, with the 8 gangs that were at war. [crosstalk]

John: Right. I remember.

Father Greg: Yes, ceasefires and truces and peace treaties. And I always say I don’t regret that I did it but I’d never do it again because then you learn. You learn that this the kind of… If you work with gangs it’ll just serve the cohesion of gangs. And it supplies oxygen to gangs, and you don’t want to do that. So we’re kind of like a rehab center. It takes what it takes, and in recover, you have to walk through the door. We don’t coax you or we don’t even invite you. If everybody knows with 120,000 gang members in LA county, every single one knows who we are and what we do.

John: That’s true. [crosstalk] [inaudible]

Father Greg: But they have to walk through the doors otherwise it doesn’t work.

John: Father Greg talked a little bit about how big you and your colleagues have made Homeboys since ’92. Since where is it grown? How big is it now? And I’ve been to the headquarters, I’ve been to the bakery and had lunch with Tom down there a couple times and but how many young people are you working with on a regular basis that are matriculating through your amazing program? And then how many seeds have you set? And I want to go back to that in a little while, after you answer this question, how many seeds have you set for other outposts around, the nation around the world?

Father Greg: Yeah, maybe I’ll begin with that part. When we first moved here, we’d get delegations. Like I remember, the [inaudible] came in, the stakeholders, mayor, chief of police and they wanted us to airlift homeboy into Wichita. This would have been 2008 and we had to decide, do we want to become the McDonald’s of gang intervention programs? But we decided not to do that, so we said, “Hey, we’ll give you technical assistance. So start your own thing. You can be a partner with us, just don’t call it Homeboy Industries because I have a hard time enough, raising money for us. I don’t want to have to worry about [inaudible].” So they started, I remember it was called the Central Cafe, and so was modeled on Homeboy and it was a gang members, and they start to add things after they started the restaurant. Things like therapy and classes and that kind of thing. And so now we have what we call the global Homeboy Network. So they’re 350 programs modeled on Homeboy, 300 in the country 50 outside, and they all have names like Braveheart Industries in Glasgow Scotland.

John: Wow.

Father Greg: Or Rise Up Industries in San Diego. They always begin with some kind of business, rise up has kind of manufacture stuff. But they all kind of have embraced the methodology of Homeboy. So we gather every August for 3 days and people gather. We did it virtually last year and the year before. And we just kind of share best practices and people report on their progress. And so it’s a way of proceeding that we’re finding too. It’s not just obviously gang because not everybody has gang stuff.

John: Right.

Father Greg: Sydney, Australia notes for disaffected youth and in Detroit, it’s for homeless and in some other places addressing the mental health issue. So people look at intractable social dilemma, and then they say “well, this is a methodology that may well help us.”

John: Understood.

Father Greg: So we have at any given time, 500 trainees, probably and then another hundred core and another hundred senior staff.

John: Wow, and with regards to fundraising, you mentioned that, you know, it’s hard enough to raise money to do the great work you’ve done. You’ve almost had to constantly also be fundraising at the same time besides managing all this enterprise that you’ve created, different businesses, and then the health care, and mental health care services that you offer. How was the fundraising gone? Talk a little bit about that journey, not just today, because I know some great things happen over the last year, which I want you to talk about, but I know it wasn’t always easy no matter how much great publicity came your way for the important work, you’re doing a lot of people were excited about what you’re doing, but wouldn’t write the checks. Explain climbing that mountain.

Father Greg: Well, the first 10 years, from ’88 to ’98 is what we would call the decade of death. And so when we began, the gang members obviously for those 10 years were highly demonized by everybody but especially law enforcement. So if the gang member was the enemy, then it was a short hop to demonize this priest for helping the enemy. So the friend of our enemy is our enemy. [crosstalk] [Inaudible] That was clear for 10 years. We got hate mail, death threats, bomb threats. Never from gang members because it was always clear to them. But you know. And then that changed, so we went from tough-on-crime to smart on crime and that the opposite of tough was not soft, but smart. And so that changed. It really did change and it had an impact on the numbers. Once we got through that decade of death. But it was hard like you said, people didn’t write checks. So we had a moment there in 2010 where I had to lay off 300 people and we just couldn’t, it was just really hard. So we had to make hard decisions. And now, we’re 40-million-dollar annual operation. And we have 10 social enterprises, mainly restaurants, bakeries, silk screening, which has been around for 27 years. And then Homeboy electronic recycling, which you know very well and have been very helpful with guidance. And so all of them employee of gang members and every person who works here has to work with multiple enemies. People they used to shoot at so it’s not only just a paycheck. It’s gets to put a human face on their enemies.

John: Father Greg, I know we have a time. We have a time…

Father Greg: I have to go meet with the Secretary of Labor. So he awaits me.

John: And I am not that important. So I’m going to let you go in a minute.

Father Greg: No, I’d rather be with you. Thank you very much.

John: You haven’t changed at all but I do want to say.

Father Greg: [Inaudible] see you in a bit.

John: Yeah, we’re going to see each other. But I do want to say this, I think as part of the story that gets lost a little. And this is really important that I want to share with you because this is a very personal part. When you and I got together, there was no such thing. It wasn’t taught in any University and the two words, social entrepreneurship never were used together. And you just by who you were and the impact you made on my life and my wife’s life and what you taught us going into Homeboy tortillas. And then post that experience, we decided as a husband and wife that we never wanted to do a another business that just made a profit. It had to have a purpose, a greater purpose, and a greater mission.

And one thing that I’ve enjoyed so much over the years is tracking some of the people that are like me that were affected by you. So, for instance, what I mean by that is, Jackie Robinson said “a life is meaningless except for its impact on other lives.” And you have not only had a massive impact on all these homeboy and homegirl lives, but just think about all the Kabir Stokes, and Andrea [inaudible], and John [inaudible] and Tammy [inaudible] that you literally molded and impacted to want to become social entrepreneurs. Before they resent before it was ever a thing, and never ever even a title, but people who just wanted to make the community better they lived in but make a profit along the way as part of the process. And I wonder how many John [inaudible], Kabir Stokes, Andrea [inaudible] that would come forward that said it’s because of Father Greg Boyle. There’s I’m sure a Cadre, hundreds if not, thousands of us that you’ve created. Now just think about my recycling company, before I had a recycling company, I democratize student lending online with a company called financial aid.com. That was because of you. And then I invested in a company called Engage because it was led by a young tech guy who was blind. When’s the last time you turned on Bloomberg or CNBC or the New York Times and saw a tech guy running a big company who was actually handicapped? And there’s 61 million handicapped, marginalized people in this country.

So like you said, it’s not just about gangs. It’s going to the margins and addiction centers, homeless, handicapped and so many other areas that we’ve taken the light that you’ve shared with us and then been able to exercise it in so many other ways including with gang impacted youth as well. But like you said, the margins exist in so many areas of society. And there’s so many of us that are graduates of the Greg Boyle School of social entrepreneurship mission-based work, that it would be fun one day to get us all together because I know Kabira personally, she’s a good friend. I know, Andrea personally, and I know there’s lots of others of us out there that adhere to the Greg Boyle School of wisdom and thought and I just want to say thank you for that because, without you, none of what I’ve done would have existed. So that’s why I was really excited to have you on today.

Father Greg: Likewise John. It’s an honor to know you and I look forward to seeing you in a matter of a day or so.

John: For our listeners and viewers out there to get involved, to donate your time, money, or otherwise go to www.homeboyindustries.org. Father Greg, all his colleagues are there. You can donate your time, your money, and other things. There’s a lot of ways to get involved, please buy for the holidays or post-holidays, the whole language the power of extravagant tenderness. It’s on amazon.com, Barnes and Noble, and other great bookstores. Father Greg, God bless you. Thank you for what you’ve done for my family. Thank you for what you’ve done for Los Angeles and everyone you’ve touched over the last 35 or so years. You’re a blessing. I wish we had thousands more of you, but unfortunately, we don’t. And I wish you continued great work, and I can’t wait to give you a hug in person. I get to introduce you in the near future.

Father Greg: It’s good. Thank you very much, John. Stay well.

John: Take care. Bye-bye.

John: 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 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: Hi, this is John Shegerian. I never could have imagined when we started the Green Is Good Radio Show back in 2006 that I would grow into a big podcast called “The Green Is Good Podcast.” And now, we’ve evolved that podcast to 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.

Voiceover: 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, and Mike it’s so great to be here in the studio with you today.

Mike Brady: Well, good to be with you too, John, and how have you been this past week?

John: I’ve been great. I was on the road a little bit and I was in Korea, actually London, and New York. And I know you love planes.

Mike: I love airplanes.

John: So, I want to talk a little bit about what’s going on in the world with regards to what we just saw with regards to this volcanic ash and the airplanes in the– my gosh! This is unprecedented.

Mike: Yeah, the Icelandic volcano is talking to a friend of mine a few weeks ago. And this story was really first starting to break. We don’t think about how the tiny micro-fine particles get blown into the air or ingested into jet engines. That’s why so many planes were having to divert to Ireland for a while. But then, because we have a sealed system in our atmosphere, eventually, all that volcanic debris is going to find its way to every corner of the universe almost and we’ll be breathing those particulates.

John: That’s what they were saying. I don’t know that much about planes but I was seeing one set of an airline has said that they’ve been flying through it and without problem, but now they’re actually saying NATO Jets went through it a couple of weeks back, and there was damage to their engines from the fine particulate. So you’ve been speaking–

Mike: Exactly! Causing some major maintenance headaches and it’s very expensive for those turbine blades. They ingest that and it can really just– it’s just amazing!

John: I tell you what when we taught, you know, this show is so relevant, Mike, in terms of the issues of sustainability that we talked about, you know, people, planet, and profits, and just that issue itself. The ash comes up from Mother Earth, an act of God and an act of nature, and now, the ramifications with regards to business in terms of all of our lives and in terms of the prophet that surrounds business and the planet, it’s fascinating. It hits all of the issues that we talk about every week on this show.

Mike: Yeah, you disrupt travel, you can disrupt business which disrupts commerce, people’s livelihoods, and it’s a trickle-down theory. It really is.

John: Yeah, and you know, the more I travel, Mike, and I’m very lucky to travel on behalf of our company to go meet different thought leaders or business folks on these situations and partnerships. The world is getting so green, and really the world is flatter and flatter. Everyone is concerned about how to not only talk a good green talk but walk a great green walk. I actually went and met in London our friend- who was our guest before, Chris Ingham Brooke. And what a fantastic young man who’s just doing brilliant things with his website, Environmental Graphiti.

Mike: You know, what? I’ve been on Chris’s website, John, several times since, and it really is just so much fun! You just open up a whole new vista on so many different things, so many different topics in you, right? You find out the connectedness, the connectivity of everything on our planet.

John: And then the people in New York who are getting New York greener and greener all the time, and that’s what we had meetings with over there and then. Back over to Seoul to meet with our partners at LS, Nico, and other potential partners who want to green their companies and green the planet more. Compared to when you and I were much younger, the world is truly Friedman’s, right? The world is so flat. When we take time to think about it, we really have more in common than we have different from each other.

Mike: Well, you’re so right about that. And what do we got planned for the show today?

John: Well, we have 2 great segments today. In the first half of the show, we have Derrick Mains on to talk about his new venture, GreenNurture. And in the second half, we have one of the greatest brands in the world, The legacy brand, Hewlett-Packard. So I think if our guests want to come on back, they’re going to hear a double whammy of great shows on Green Is Good.

Voiceover: 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. And today, we’re so honored to have Derrick Mains who’s the founder and the visionary, and the thought leader who created GreenNurture.

Welcome, Derrick. Thank you for joining us today on Green Is Good!

Derrick Mains: Well, thanks, John. I’m glad to be here.

John: Well, you know, Derrick, instead of reading your amazing biography, I want you to share with our listeners to start with your history in the Green Revolution. This is not new to you. You’ve already been heavily involved and creating all sorts of differences in making the world a better place prior to GreenNurture. Share with our listeners a little bit how you even got to this point before you had this epiphany to start GreenNurture.

Derrick: Sure. So, I’ve been involved in sustainability from a corporate level for I guess about 6 years or so. A lot of times working with large organizations- Fortune 10, Fortune 1,000 organizations on sustainability initiatives. A lot of that focused around extended producer responsibility of who’s responsible for something after it gets sold, and then in addition to that, recycling initiative, so what happens to a product after I sell it, and what’s my responsibility in making sure that that product been recycled? Way back in the day, when I went to school, I actually went to ministry school. I was studying to go into that field and that’s where I really got interested in sustainability. It really sparked me that I thought, wow! We have a responsibility to protect this planet, and it really came from that where I started to get excited about sustainability and was just fortunate that about 6 years back was able to work in that field and it’s been great ever since. And I’ve met a lot of great people and have been very fortunate to make a big impact and be able to help people become more sustainable, help brands become more sustainable, and help them to become more aware that their products exist for after, on the balance sheet, you know? They continue to exist in perpetuity and they need to be handled and taken care of appropriately.

John: So, when exactly did you have the epiphany for GreenNurture, and for our listeners out there, GreenNurture.com, which is a great and wonderful website. When did you have this epiphany? And how long for entrepreneurs out there who listened, and how long did it take for you to put it all together and get it actually launched?

Derrick: So we formed the company in January 2009 and that was right after I sort of came up with this idea. The idea simply came from understanding that companies were really good at external communication around sustainability. And for my experience, it did a very poor job of engaging the people that collected paychecks to actually participate in that effort. And so it’s taken a long time! We’re talking now, we’re into 14, 15 months of development. And of course, when you first start out, you think, “oh, I can push this thing out into the market in sixty days!”

And you learn very quickly that technology, although it moves at the speed of light, it actually takes some time to get yourself up to that speed…

John: Sure. Sure.

Derrick: …to get things moving. So, you know, we did a lot with development, the product has developed over time. We’ve been very fortunate to have some really smart folks that we got involved with that said, “Hey, look! We think there’s an opportunity here and we think we can develop this out, and instead of it just being one thing, let’s try to create sort of a TurnKey application that helps companies deploy sustainability initiatives and helps them do it in less than thirty minutes!

John: So, explain. Who is your typical client? Who do you want to get onto GreenNurture.com? Just so our listeners understand from A to Z. We want to understand what is GreenNurture.com, and who was it built for?

Derrick: Okay, so let me tell you “who first.”

John: Sure!

Derrick: I think it’s any company that has a staff of ten or more people. And we have been talking with companies that have twenty people and we’ve been talking with companies that have a hundred thousand employees. It’s really anybody that falls in that genre. We are a very TurnKey application. So, in about 20 minutes, you can deploy a sustainability initiative to the people inside your company that really harness their collective intelligence and gives them a voice, and empowers them to find ways that the company can become more “Green” and save money! Because Green usually goes hand-in-hand with that. If we become more efficient, we’re becoming more “Green” but we also are saving resources. So, the application really helps become that sort of think tank that captures the collective intelligence of the employees through a social media platform and then rewards them because rewards are important. You and I, John, we’re sort of tree huggers. So we’ll do it because it’s green. But the average Joe out there is actually going to say, “Hey, what’s in this deal for me?”

John: Before we get to the incentive parts which is wonderful, so you’re saying, in short, GreenNurture.com and the social application that it has can a company and take them from talking a good talk into walking a good walk and make their DNA much more green than it historically had been?

Derrick: It’s about culture with us. We look at it from a cultural perspective. Shifting our culture, and I can convince somebody to go turn the light off. But if I can change the culture inside the company so that when anybody leaves a room, they turn the light off, that’s a whole lot better than one single action. It’s about engaging the people inside that company to shift the culture into a culture that’s one of sustainability and just conscious consumption. I think we have a lot of people sleepwalking, you know? There was recently a Gallup study that says, seventy-one percent of the workforce is in some form of sleep while they’re at work. They’re on autopilot and waking them up and saying, “Hey, look, you can participate. You can be a part. You can have a voice. You can get a reward and you can make an impact on the environment. Collectively is very, very important.

John: Okay, so now break it down because you’re a great public speaker, and I know you’re on the road a lot speaking and giving and sharing your views on this. So, tell our listeners and share with Mike and me why it’s so important to engage 2 things, both the company and the employees and what’s in it for the company when you’re selling the company, and what’s in it for the employees when you’re selling the employees on joining into your GreenNurture.com platform?

Derrick: First of all, what’s in it for the company, well, I think there’s a couple of different things. Number one- cost savings, number two- brand recognition as a greener and more desirable brand. People are looking for that in the companies that they frequent anymore. I think increased productivity and profitability are very, very important. Gallup Human Sigma study, which is a book that was written a couple of years ago says that companies that have engaged employees to grow earnings per share two and a half times faster than their competitors. So getting people engaged, getting them in a process is very important for that company. Having people there that are actually thinking about ways to move the company forward is really important. So to the company’s– from the employee’s perspective, the benefits can be multiple. Certainly, they can get a reward. They also feel like they’re empowered, which is important. We probably all worked in jobs at some point in our life where we knew we were just a cog in the machine. We had no voice, we had no ability to share our ideas. So just giving people that ability to share their ideas, makes them feel wanted, increases their retention rates, and also, helps them feel like that there’s a culture and a community inside their company. So people get excited about that. When you give people, when you empower them, what tends to happen is they tend to become more engaged and that interaction goes beyond just sustainability. It goes to my interaction with customers. We’ve probably all been on the phone with a customer service person who’s having a bad day. It’s apparent very quickly–

John: Right!

Derrick: …if they’re not engaged in their work. So really, creating that culture inside that company, I think just benefits everybody. It makes the company more profitable which gives more job satisfaction and more job security to employees, and it helps a company really become more competitive in today’s market where people are looking for this kind of thing.

John: On the company side, we got cost brand recognition, productivity, and profitability, all great things. All that Mike and I talked about on the show with our guests with regards to the sustainability movement, hit all the 3 basic modes which are people, planet, and profit. So now, on the employee side, you have empowerment and engagement. Talk a little bit about the incentives because all the employees saying, “what’s in it for me?” So, when you’re talking about incentives where else does your social platform on GreenNurture.com allow the employees to get rewarded?

Derrick: Reward is really important. You can’t expect everybody to do it just because it’s green. I always talk about I’m a tree hugger, but my brother on the other hand, well, not so much. We’ve got to put the carrot on the end of the stick and coax him in the right direction. What we did is we created a partnership with a company called Recyclebank. Some of your listeners are likely familiar with Recyclebank. But for those of them that aren’t, Recyclebank has a technology that takes your blue bin at home and replaces it with one that has a radiofrequency identification chip. So it has a little microchip in there, that every week when the garbage truck comes past, it picks up your recycling, weighs it, and instantly deposits points for you that are then available for you to redeem it, thousands of retailers nationwide. We piggyback on that system and use the exact same currency so that people at work can earn these points for the actions that they do. They put in their idea, they vote on someone else’s idea, they comment on something, they participate, and they receive points that they then can take out and redeem- these thousands of retailers for products they buy every day. Not everybody shops at Whole Foods and buys coffee or whatever it is. But, you know, some people are going on stake. So we’ve got to give them the incentive that fits their personality and where they are.

John: That’s brilliant! By the way, a second, Derrick, but do they need to then have that tag put on their garbage can if they’re part of GreenNurture and part of this recycling program that you’ve created or can they avail themselves of the points without even the tag?

Derrick: They can avail themselves of the points just by using GreenNurture.com.

John: Wow!

Derrick: So if it comes to their community, all the better! They can get points in a couple of different ways. But let’s say, in Phoenix right now, it’s doing a rollout of Recyclebank.

But not everybody has it. So we have companies that are starting to use it that are in sensing their employees knowing that somewhere down the line when that comes into their employees’ neighborhood, we’re going to be even doubly excited to participate because now it’s not just what I do at work. Now, it’s what I do at home as well.

John: Wow. Mike and I are smiling here because we had the great CEO of Recyclebank on our show already, and he was just wonderful and inspirational to us. We love Recyclebank. We’re so happy that you’ve made a partnership with them.

So, you reward them with these points and they can actually have something tangible. So, basically, you’re incentivizing them for behavioral change?

Derrick: Exactly.

John: And you’re finding that to be a successful mode?

Derrick: Yes!

John: Great.

Derrick: I mean, you know, Pavlov proved it with his dog, right? If you give the right treat for a long enough amount of time, eventually, you’ll modify the behavior, and that you’ll get what you want, that sort of controlled response. And we’re excited about that because it’s sort of a way of thinking about sustainability that goes– a lot of people put things on the roof- solar panels or water cisterns. This is about getting inside people’s heads and helping people become more sustainable. And that doesn’t just translate to sustainability at work. It translates into every aspect of their life. They are not just “Green” at work. They do the right things beyond that because that’s that learned behavior. They’ve learned, okay, this is good. I get rewarded for it. So they translate that into other parts of their life.

John: So, the recycle points really bleed over into their home life which then, of course, influences, inspires their children to start thinking greener. And Green becomes just part of the DNA of the family and of the company.

Derrick: Exactly.

John: So why don’t you tell us a little bit about– Mike and I’ve read a lot about what you’re doing, Derrick. And talk about your recent demo. What did that mean? And how did your presentation go there and what’s happened since?

Derrick: Sure. So demo, for anybody who doesn’t know, it’s a pretty elite technology conference that hand-selects about fifty companies a year that they bring in and they allow them to launch live to the sort of media as well as investors and the technology community, particularly in California, although it’s a global event. And we got hand-selected this year’s first green technology company ever to be awarded the opportunity to go and present the demo. It was a great experience. You get 6 minutes on stage in front of all the cameras and the people in the room as well as hundreds of thousands of people watching globally. And you’ve got these 6 minutes to show off your presentation and tell the world about what you’re doing. And it was a great, great experience. We got just incredible responses from mostly, large companies- large technology companies that have thousands or tens of thousands of employees that really recognize what we did and said, “Look, every day they’re out looking for needles in haystacks.” They’ve got a hundred thousand employees and we’re always looking for the next most innovative idea. They have no tools or mechanisms to capture those things. When they saw what we did, they said, “oh, this is a way for us to find those ideas that we know are just walking around out there, but nobody has the ability to share them.” So, we’ve seen great traction in that. We’ve seen users coming into the system. We’ve seen municipalities really getting interested in saying, “Hey, is this a way that we could save taxpayer dollars?”

John: This might be a silly question, Derrick. But, you know, this sounds so unique and Mike and I have so many fascinating guests on our show. We’ve never heard of anything like this. Do you have any competition? What does that horizon look like?

Derrick: There is no competition right now. And we have, of course, some patent protection, to make sure that we can keep those guys at bay as long as possible. But, you know, we feel like it’s a completely new market segment and we call it micro sustainability. Macro issues are things that are handled by governments and large corporations. Micro issues are the things that you and I can do each day. So, we feel like we’re the first one. We haven’t identified any competitors whatsoever on the landscape, but certainly, with the amount of attention that we’re getting from media as well as investors, we know that it won’t be very long.

John: Well, we want to go back to that. But Mike and I want to understand something. There are listeners out there who owned companies, who are involved, or employees that companies to understand how they can avail themselves of your great services in your great site, GreenNurture.com. So, Mike and I, let’s just pretend for a second. We own a chain of fifty car dealerships called “Mike and John’s Car Dealerships” and we come on your site. How do you engage us and how do we get involved?

Derrick: Right there on the site, you can actually read all about what we do, you certainly can pick up the phone and talk to us at any time. We’re glad to explain what we do, but we also have a very TurnKey system. So anybody can go to the site and get a free 30-day trial just by clicking on the, you know, I want to try it out button and they can go right into the system, right there. Upload their employee database directly into the system, set a date that they want to start the application to work, and bam! It’s sort of the Ronco set it and forget it by mentality. We certainly don’t want them to forget it. We want them to go in and reap the benefits of it, but they can deploy it very, very quickly and get the employees engaged in sharing ideas in literally less than thirty minutes.

Mike: You know, I’m on the side right now, Derrick. And I love the logo which John has seen before it. It’s a thumbprint that looks like a tree and it’s green. So, I mean that just speaks volumes. It’s a great visual representation of what your vision for the company is. As in saying drilling down through the site and just going through there are some great articles that talk about sustainability, the GreenNurture’s platform, and how individual employees can get their companies involved. I’m thinking of this, it’s like a 21st-century suggestion box. Do you know what I mean?

Derrick: We call it a virtual suggestion box on steroids.

Mike: It is that and so much more because obviously, what’s in it for the company is saving money and becoming more profitable. That’s one thing that can help as you mentioned and addressed earlier in the show. For some job security, for the people that are working there in a time of excessive reductions in force, everybody’s worried about their job. Well, I mean, if the company is making more money than ever, chances are pretty good. If you had something to do with that, by making a simple suggestion and save the company money, you will be rewarded, not only with some job security, but you can get the recycle points from GreenNurture as well as maybe whatever that company offers you as an incentive for a great suggestion.

Derrick: Absolutely. Listen, there are stories abounding right now in the employee engagement field of companies that have started to ask their employees for suggestions and have found multi-million dollar savings from a 19-year-old kid pushing a broom or found that the Uber influencer, there’s a book out called the Rudolph factor that talks about finding these sort of individuals inside your company that actually are Uber influencers. And there have been stories of public companies that have found that some 19-year-old cashier is the voice of the company. These are the people that have the right personality in the right sort of know-how to communicate with people. And being able to identify those people, as not only good for business, it actually is great for management. You can look and say, “Hey, this is an up-and-comer, somebody who’s influential in our company that actually has a voice, and look how well they communicate through the platform and look how people engage with them.” You can find those individuals and promote them through the platform.

John: That’s so brilliant, Derrick. Now, Mike and I always talk about how the world truly is flat compared to when we were youngsters growing up, and I just got back from one of these international trips and how everyone is really going green and wants to do more green things. Are you finding– because it’s a website, obviously, and you can reach everyone in the world. Are you finding interest outside of the United States in your wonderful product?

Derrick: We sure are! And you know, from a business perspective right now, we need to focus on execution here stateside, but we’ve already heard from a number of organizations both in Europe as well as in Asia where regulation is becoming more and more prevalent. Cap-and-trade is still in the talks here and in those countries, it’s being demanded. Regulators are saying you either do it or you go out of business. And they recognize that capturing the power of what we call Human Sigma, capturing those kinds of ideas, and engaging the cogs inside the organization, the people to actually help the company become more sustainable are critical. I tell a story. A lot of people talk about Leed certification and I say if we build a Leed-certified building in Fargo, North Dakota, and it’s the most energy-efficient building in the world, and it’s 2:00 in the morning and the guys in the dock want to have a smoke. And it’s 20 below zero out. Instead of going outside, they open up the dock doors. It really doesn’t matter how great my building is…

John: Right.

Derrick: I got huge gaping holes. You’ve got to get the people to interact. You’ve got to make them a part of the process. It cannot just be the technology of “oh solar panels will fix everything.” Solar panels are great, but if people aren’t properly engaging with those things, it’s all really irrelevant.

John: Well, that’s important. So, let’s go back to that critical point you just made about get the people to interact. We’re down to the last couple minutes of the show, unfortunately, but let’s talk about, you know, the iPad just came out and it’s massively successful, Derrick. What’s in the future for GreenNurture.com in terms of new platforms and mobile apps?

Derrick: So, listen, I’ve got my iPad laying here in front of me. So I’ve got my iPhone and my iPad laying here because we are working on some of those things. One of the things immediately that we saw when we came out into the market, companies contacting us and saying, “not all my employees have web access every day. I have truck drivers. They’re in their trucks. I have janitors who are working out on the floor.” We are developing right now. We’ve got some mobile apps in the works that will allow anybody with a cellphone to interact with our system. And we’re still trying to figure out, is that by a picture message? Is that via text message? Is that through a mobile site? But we’re doing that on the phone side, as well as on the iPad side. We’re looking at some things, and one of the things we do with our system is we have an assessment tool and a walkthrough tool that companies can use to find sort of low-hanging fruit. So how about we make an iPad app for that so that people can easily sort of walk out onto their manufacturing floor or walk around their facility and find these little individual things that can save them money. So that’s the next generation of our application, and something that you’ll be seeing this summer is really at a focus on mobile. Because people aren’t always– we’ve got to go to where the people are all the time, and everybody’s got their phone all the time, pretty much.

John: You’re right, Derrick. We’re down to the last minute. You were Green before it was cool to be green.

Derrick: Just being Kermit for a while there, I think.

John: Yeah, exactly. But you’re also a great entrepreneur. So, in the last minute, give a couple of one or two pearls of wisdom to our next generation that listens to our show and downloaded from Apple iTunes, or listening to it, on our Clear Channel network. Well, give a couple of your pearls to the entrepreneurs out there and inspire them.

Derrick: Yeah, so I would say the 2 things that I’ve learned over time and over multiple businesses. Number one, you got to be resilient with your vision. You’ve got to be able to see the horizon and you’ve got to just keep working towards it, no matter what the sidebar conversations are, you’ve got to know what the right thing is to do and how to move the company in that direction.

John: Perfect.

Derrick: The second part of that is you’ve got to have advisors, and I probably– to a flaw, have given up more percentages of companies that I’ve been involved to, to smart, smart, smart people- the smartest people I can find. I want them in my boat. And I’m willing to give them a piece of my company for a piece of their time, and that is extremely valuable. Too many entrepreneurs are too focused on “I have to have 100% back with that.” I would much rather have a few percent of a billion-dollar company than 100 percent of absolutely nothing. Find the smart people, engage them, get them involved in your business.

John: Well, Derrick, you know, we’re going to have you back in the future to tell about how wonderful and how large GreenNurture.com has grown. For all our listeners out there, go to GreenNurture.com. Show your boss, and use it, and get involved with the companies that you’re involved with. Derrick Mains is the CEO and Founder of GreenNurture.com. We’re honored to have you on Green Is Good and you are living proof that Green Is Good.

Voiceover: 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, wasn’t Derrick inspirational?

Mike: Well, you know, I’m just looking at that GreenNurture.com website and thanking anybody that’s listening to the show over the weekend. Probably, one of the first things you’re going to do if they’re smart when they get to work on Monday is check out the site. Probably, check the site out on your home PC if you’ve got one, but Monday, just look it over and have some ideas and maybe talk it over to the boss or you might even surprise somebody and surprise yourself. This could be one of the best career moves you’ve ever made.

John: Yeah, Mike is right. I mean, this is the type of website that you should email up in your company. Email to your business partner, email to your boss, your superior, or to the CEO, or if your company has a chief sustainability officer already, email to that person because this, we can all do a better job at making our company’s greener. This is your opportunity. So, Mike, I agree with you.

Mike: This is an opportunity for you to become a real rock star at your job.

John: And this goes to the second half of our show. HP Hewlett-Packard, one of the greatest brands on this planet, was born in California and born in the USA, a great success story. They have been one of the great green companies. Walking the green walk, talking the green talk way before it was ever cool to be green. So this is part of why Derrick’s website is so important because other companies are realizing you just can’t talk about it. You can’t fake it anymore. You got to actually live it. You got to breathe this. It got to be part of your DNA and culturally, it’s great for your company and your employees, and basically, it will create as we learn from some of our past, great guest, Ray Anderson, and others. It creates a culture of profit and productivity which then sets you way far apart from your competition.

Mike: And John, you’re so right because if you do it at work, that becomes a habit which you tend to take home with you and it really is true. Once you start forming more positive habits like that, they have a way of spreading virally throughout your whole thought process. And if you’re not if you’re going to use a recycle bin for example at work, at the end of the day, you come home and “oh wait, I was going to put this in the recycle.” “We don’t have a recycle bin, honey.” We need to start doing that. It really does permeate everything you think and do.

John: That’s right. Mike. And that’s the great part. You know, once it becomes your DNA at work, culturally, it will become your DNA at home and inspirationally, you’ll get to inspire your kids in the next generation, and literally, it becomes easy and part of their regular lives which is where we need to go here in our great country. So, I think the second half of the show is going to be amazing because we have a woman and a guest named Michelle Price, who’s not only one of the leaders in sustainability issues at Hewlett-Packard, but she, herself, is living it. And she even is going to talk about not only what she’s doing at Hewlett-Packard. But we’re going to do a little teaser today. She has a book coming out called 42 Rules of Green Marketing and we’re going to even tease that. She doesn’t even know that. But that book’s coming out and we’re going to tease that and then we’ll have her back on later this year to talk about what about that green book. So, I think everyone’s got to come on back in here. Michelle Price at Green Is Good.

---

Voiceover: 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. And we’re so honored today to have Michelle Price on. Michelle is the manager and of the worldwide environmental strategic, marketing, imaging, and printing group at the great Hewlett-Packard company. Welcome, Michelle!

Michelle Price: Thank you so much for having me.

John: Well, you know, Mike we had a little chance to chat with Michelle before we came on air, and we were blown away. She not only holds that huge title at Hewlett-Packard which we know has a lot of gravitas and a lot of pressure and a lot of responsibility, but she’s also a wife, mother, and currently, an author writing a book called The 42 Rules of Green Marketing which she’s promised already to come back on the show later this year, and talk about that great book that she’s writing.

Michelle: Yes, thank you. Looking forward to it.

John: Michelle, thanks again. You represent truly a great American brand that’s done so much to expand our influence around the world and our brand awareness, and we’re so thankful for the time that you have today. But Hewlett-Packard is one of those great companies. In the first half of our show, we were talking about a new online company that’s helping companies get green. But way before the green revolution ever took hold here in the United States, Hewlett-Packard was true– not only talking a great green talk but walking a great green walk. Share a little bit about what’s been going on at Hewlett-Packard and what you do there.

Michelle: Sure! So, from an informant HP perspective, HP’s been focusing on environmental sustainability and responsibility for more than fifty years. It dates back to really the founders of the company and the type of people that Bill And Dave were. But also, in 1957, they actually made a commitment, an external commitment where they established a global corporate citizenship objective focused on the environment. This was something that was really important to Bill and Dave and continues through the DNA of the company today. A couple of interesting dates for you, it was in 1987 that Hewlett-Packard was one of the first companies in the IT industry to establish a recycling program. And it was in 1991 that we formalized our design for environment program where we have product stores on every design team across the company. And that’s something that I’m really proud of. Because every product that is designed by Hewlett-Packard has been thoroughly vetted by these environmental professional stewards. And you know, the focus has been around reducing the environmental impact of not just Hewlett-Packard but we do ourselves, and we call that our house. But what we’re doing for our customers in their house and delivering products that help them reduce their energy, save money, and all kinds of great ways to help customers reduce their environmental impact. And it’s been a focus of the company for a really long time.

John: So, wait a second, Michelle. Way before it was ever cool or mandated to recycle here in the United States, Hewlett-Packard in 87 started recycling?

Michelle: Absolutely. And today, we have recycling capabilities in more than fifty countries around the world. We take our own IT equipment back as well as our competitors’ IT equipment. And we recycle our own original HP print cartridges as well.

John: Wow, wow, wow! And then on the design side, which so many companies now are playing catch-up with their electronics, you said in 1991, HP started developing and designing their products to be more sustainably created and built so they could be recycled easier and have a less impact on the environment?

Michelle: Absolutely. And actually, interestingly enough last week, we just introduced a new laserjet product. It’s called the HP LaserJet Pro P1102. And that product actually has a great claim. It’s actually the world’s most energy-efficient laser printer on the planet.

John: Wow, that’s amazing! You know, Michelle, we talked about people, the planet, and profits here. And we wanted to go back to you as a person. How did you get into this position at HP? You’ve been there now, approximately, twelve years. How did you evolve into this position to grow up a tree hugger? Were you inspired in college or did this evolve just naturally in HP? How did this happen?

Michelle: I did not grow up a tree hugger but I love trees! I’m probably pretty close to a tree hugger now. And for me, personally, I actually have been in this role for about three years. And it started with me being on the environmental or sorry– the strategic marketing team, and there was an opportunity, and I jumped on it where I was able to represent marketing in defining the environmental leadership strategy for the imaging and printing group. And so, what’s interesting is, as I’ve talked about, we have a history and legacy of environmental and social responsibility, but we’ve been very quiet about it. And so, I actually had an opportunity to step in and figure out and frame-up, how is it that HP should be going out? What is our marketing strategy in our go-to-market plans? And how do we take this amazing story and history and legacy and products and pull it together in such a way so that it resonates with customers and they really begin to understand our brand? And what HP is delivering and how we’re delivering real products, tangible products to help that customer in reducing their environmental impact as well as saving money?

John: So, this was three years ago you’re saying?

Michelle: Yes, and still, I’ve been in this role for about three years. Now, me personally, and I mentioned that I wasn’t a tree– I didn’t grow up a tree hugger. A new convert, if you will.

John: That’s okay!

Michelle: I heard an interesting statistic a number of years ago that said, the number one driver of a person going green is having a child, and that’s true for me. That’s absolutely true for me. And I’ve recycled for years. But after having a child, I began to realize that the choices I make not only affect me, but they affect my child and my children’s children. And so, as a consumer, really make a lot more conscious decisions. I buy organic every single time that I’m able. If there’s an organic choice, I will choose that organic product or that organic food. When I’m purchasing products, I really consider what I’m buying and how it impacts my family as well as the environment. I want to buy from companies that I feel good about buying- some of these are good environmental and socially responsible companies that are considering my health and the environment. And that’s why I’m proud to work for a company like HP. Because I know that HP is an amazing social and environmental responsible company and has proven that through our history as I said.

John: We’re going to go back and talk about HP’s Green DNA in a little while, but I want to go back to this legacy issue that you well point out about the domino effect of the decisions you make. So let’s go. You said you had a son five years ago and that helped inspire you to make more green decisions. What inspired you to write the book?

Michelle: What inspired me to write the book? It’s interesting. When I first started in my environmental marketing role and, really, I think more, and got me farther along my path of my environmental journey. But from a marketing perspective, I was looking for the secret sauce. So the secret sauce of trying to figure out, “How do I market Green? What does it mean? How do we talk to customers? And how does HP position our story?” Well, what I came to realize is that there’s not a secret sauce. It’s just marketing. And in fact, one of the rules in the book is titled, “Green Marketing is still Marketing.” And, you know, I went down this interesting journey and I began thinking, I want to document this, everything that I’ve learned. I’ve learned a tremendous amount from a lot of industry experts. I’ve read lots of their blogs. I’ve met them in person. And I just really wanted to share with others that are beginning their journey or are already along their journey, some of the learnings and insights that I’ve learned from other people.

John: So, you’re the person responsible for taking HP’s offline, amazing Green DNA, and bringing it into the Facebook, Twitter world, that now existent?

Michelle: I do, I’m out there on Twitter and, you know, I can’t take credit for all of the great words. But, yes, I mean, ultimately, my role is to define the environmental marketing strategy for the imaging and printing group. And we have lots of great people that are in the social media world who are out there on Facebook and Twittering on the environment.

John: Let’s talk about then the green big part of it. Let’s talk about the Green DNA and HP’s corporate culture. Explain about what goes on both on-campus and off-campus that shows the great knowledge– that HP talks a great green talk but walks are great green walk. Explain that culture in that DNA.

Michelle: Well from an internal perspective, HP does a really good job of educating employees on different environmental topics. And so, I’m based in Vancouver, Washington for example. And during Earth week, we had a series of events happening where there were some sessions on Greening your work area as well as Recycling. And then they also had a local vendor fair where local companies come in and show off their green products and ideas. And then we also had an HP biker commuter contest as well as rally and then even bike, tune-ups. And, you know, it’s interesting. HP, really, does engage with the employees from an environmental perspective. Another example is they have environmental series where you can actually sign up to take a class. And a few years ago, I took a class- Healthy Baby, Healthy Planet, and each of the different topics is focused on the environment. And then also, HP has HP Eco Solutions advocates. These are people that are interested in learning more about our environmental legacy who want to just understand more about what HP is doing, also, a great training ground for training employees, who may not be in an environmental role, but are interested in learning more about the environmental topic and potentially representing externally HP at events or being able to talk with customers.

John: So it must be easier to be green in such a green and wonderful city like Vancouver.

Michelle: It is a great city to be green and I’m actually in Vancouver, Washington which is right across the bridge from Portland, Oregon. It really is being in the Pacific Northwest. They make it easy here to be green.

John: So, how does HP share best green practices among all the campuses of HP’s around the world? How does that interchanging of ideas and inspiration work?

Michelle: Well, we have in Vancouver and each of our sites. We have an employee network and in those employee networks, there is a person who represents the Vancouver employee network, for example, with all of the other sites. And then also, on our internal website, you can go out and find out any information about any of the other campuses. So Boise, Idaho, for example, or Palo Alto, California, or will begin Germany. So there’s lots of sharing where you have representatives from each of those sites that share best practices across the group.

John: How about with your consumers? How do you work back and forth the information of their desire for more environmentally responsible products? And also, as you well put, what didn’t exist three years ago or so, when you started this and your messaging of how environmentally responsible HP really isn’t has been, how does that interchange of ideas work? And how do you get that feedback from the consumers at large and then share back with them what you’re really doing?

Michelle: We know that consumers want to hear about our environmental social responsible story. It gets a bit overwhelming when you start talking to consumers because there’s so many different companies out there, kind of shouting green messages and it’s easy to not really understand what are the right ones and what are ones that may be a little misleading.

John: Great point.

Michelle: And you know, what we know is that consumers want to make the right choice, they want to do the right thing. But you also have to make it really simple for these customers. If you make it really hard or complicated, we’re all human, you know, creatures of habit. We’re going to be less up to do something that’s difficult and complex. We already have way too many competing priorities. And so, we try to make it really easy for customers to go green. One of the ways that we helped customers understand the environmental attributes of a particular product is through the HP Eco Highlights label. It’s a label that we introduced about two years ago. It appears on web pages, it appears on the packaging, it appears product-specific and it tells you the environmental attributes of that specific product that you’re purchasing.

John: Wow. So on any HP product now, they can see this Ecolabel?

Michelle: It’s not on every product. You actually have to qualify for it and we have it on consumer products, SMB products, and Enterprise Products across the company in our server business, our services business, a PC business, as well as our printing business. It’s a label that the products actually have to qualify to achieve…

John: Got it.

Michelle: …to receive that label and then that product team can actually promote it.

John: Michelle, how do you keep your ear to the ground? What are the consumers asking for in terms of environmental responsibility? Now, what is the feedback you’re getting as to what their wants and needs are? Or what they think is the most important thing to them?

Michelle: I have to go back to easy. They want it to be easy. And, you know what, we hear a lot is that consumers want to make the right choice. But all things considered equal? The environment is going to be the tiebreaker. So, price and quality, and performance are the number one purchase drivers. The environment is behind those. It’s still important, but again, it has to be a tiebreaker.

Mike: Well, you know, it’s amazing, Michelle, because when you were talking about just rolling out recently, the pro P1102, I looked at that and you talk about making it easy for the consumer. That is simply a USB cable that gets plugged in from your notebook, your netbook, or your desktop. No installation CD is required and the consumer can start printing in as little as two minutes. And now, I’m looking at your Eco highlight site. Talking about the HP Deskjet 2660, less waste per– it’s created from 50% recycled plastic.

John: Wow!

Mike: Even the packaging, John. You’re going to love this. A hundred percent recyclable and the HP60 cartridge bodies contain at least 50% of recycled plastic. Michelle, John, that is really walking the walk.

Michelle: We really have an amazing recycling plastic program happening. So as you mentioned, the printer is made from 50% recycled plastic. We’ve introduced a number of printers that have recycled plastics in them. And then that cartridge that you talked about the HP60 cartridge, that’s actually made from a closed-loop recycling process. And what we do is we take original HP supplies that are empty, return them to HP through the HP Planet partners program. We take that cartridge and we recycle it. and we actually shred it, and then we separate the pieces and parts, and then we take the plastic, and we add recycled water bottles. We mold that into new original HP supplies. HP has shipped over 555 million inkjet cartridges made from that closed-loop recycling process.

John: Wow, that is amazing. So, HP is leading the way with regard to reuse and recycling.

Michelle: Absolutely. I’m really proud of that closed-loop recycling process because that’s something that when you’re talking about using recycled plastics, for example, if you can’t just take recycled plastics and say I’m going to make a printer out of this. Actually, those printers have to pass fire, health, and safety standards as well as the high-quality standards that customers expect of HP. And that was something that the engineering team worked on. It was over 5 years. I mean, it took a lot of engineering R&D and same with our inkjet cartridges. You’re talking about pretty small cartridges that really have to perform to the quality and standards of HP, and to be able to take plastic– and a lot of times what happens with plastic when you recycle it, you actually downcycle it. So you take it from something and then you actually take it down. What we were able to do is take a product and make the same product. And that’s why you can call it a closed-loop.

John: That’s fascinating, Michelle. Because Mike and I have had a call on the show as we have other leading brands and they talk about the infinite recycling ability of aluminum and other metals. But you’re so right. Plastic is much more difficult to work with so that really must have taken huge commitment and huge research and development to make that work.

Michelle: It did. It was really smart people. We’re talking Ph.D., environmental scientists, chemists, some of our brightest minds at HP to work on that process to make it come to fruition.

John: Hey, you know, Michelle, we have about 4 minutes left and we want to ask you for a crystal ball on HP. Obviously, you share with us already the amazing facts that since 57, 87, and 91, you’ve been leading the way and have been really the leading brand when it comes to design and recycling. And now that we know the big television companies are coming out with 3D televisions and Apple’s coming out with iPad, and now they’re coming out within the next generation in the months to come. Give our listeners a little crystal ball. And what’s in store for HP in terms of futuristic products and the sustainability movement?

Michelle: You definitely continue to see HP focusing on developing products and bringing products to market. So, the example earlier was the Deskjet, the 2600. And that product focused on the recycled content of the printer, the cartridge, the packaging, and there were a lot of aspects of that printer, and you can continue to expect to see from HP that’s the same type of focus where we look at our products and say, “How can we take more energy out of them? How can we make them more sustainable?” A couple of examples are, that we have a goal to reduce the energy efficiency of the printing– actually, of all HP products by 40% compared to a 2005 baseline.

John: Wow!

Michelle: And that’s by 2011. And then we also announced a goal around having by the end of 2011 using over a hundred million pounds of recycled plastic. And so, what you’re seeing is a real commitment to continue to raise the bar upon ourselves, and to continue to challenge our product development teams in a very positive way to continue raising that bar. We also have announced some goals around our paper. So we have a paper policy and it refers to the papers that we buy to print collateral for trade shows, as an example, the papers that we use internally and as well as the papers that we sell to our customers. We have a goal to, also, as part of that, have 40% of our paper FSC-certified.

John: Wow. And now we have two minutes left, how about a pearl of wisdom or two for our listeners out there? Our young listeners who want to become the next Michelle Price? What is the pathway to become you in a small company or a large company? Because there’s a lot of people out there that want to reinvent themselves and become part of the Green Revolution, become part of the solution, instead of being on the outside of this great opportunity.

Michelle: I think that you can impact what your company is doing no matter where you are in the organization and no matter who you are. I mean, I think you find an area of passion and you just grab onto it, and if you’re at it, whether it’s a large or small company just figuring out what is it that you can bring to the table? So, for example, if your company is not doing anything to reduce your own environmental impact, think of ways that you actually can help the company reduce impact. Maybe you go out and build the business case for your company to begin recycling aluminum cans! Maybe, it’s as simple as saying that we want to be able to reduce our environmental impact by utilizing our lighting more efficiently and putting in sensors in our conference rooms. Go out and work with the right people. Do some little easy business case studies to prove how you can reduce your environmental impact. I mean, I don’t know that you have to have– you just figure out what your passion is and your area of expertise, and then overlay the green ones on top of that and figure out what it is that you can do to help your company. And again, I don’t think it matters where you are within the organization.

John: That’s great, great news. And we asked you earlier, we want you to come back at another date, and talk some more on these issues and all your great green marketing ideas. We want our listeners out there. Like Michelle said, “It’s a tie-breaker. So, on cost and quality, look at HP and all the great things they’re doing with regards to environmental responsibility and sustainability.” And we just want to thank you again Michelle for coming on. We know you’re so busy. You were tremendously informational today. You were also wonderfully inspirational. And you, Michelle Price, are living proof that Green Is Good.

Voiceover: This program will be available for download in a couple of days from our station’s website. Keyword- “podcast.” Thanks for listening and join us again next week at the same time for another edition of Green Is Good.

John: 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, live streams, and much more. For more information on Engage or to book talent today, visit letsengage.com.