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John: Welcome to another edition of the Impact Podcast. This is a very special edition of the Impact Podcast. I have got with us today, Jason Sundby. He is the CEO and the chairman of the board of Verde Environmental Technologies Inc. They have got a great product he is going to be talking about today. Welcome to the Impact, Jason.

Jason Sundby: Thank you, John. I appreciate you having me on.

John: Jason, before we get talking about what you are doing at Deterra Systems and at Verde Environmental, I want you to first share a bit of your background leading up to this leadership role in the very important work that you are doing right now.

Jason: Well, I appreciate the opportunity to speak with you. My career is long and varied. I started out in the newspaper business and my first job was an environmental analyst. One of my ultimate goals was to work with all of our production folks to reduce the amount of hazardous chemicals that it takes to put out a newspaper. We did that. We went from a large quantity generator of hazardous waste to a conditionally exempt generator. We went from oil-based petroleum based inks to soy-based inks. And so, that is where I kind of started. My employer at the time, I went to the University of Minnesota for undergraduate, and I think they didn’t think I was smart enough, so they sent me off to school again. They sent me to the Harvard School of Public Health. So I came back. That helped me a lot, obviously in that role as an environmental analyst and subsequent roles that I grew into.

Jason: They still didn’t think I was all that smart, so they sent me off to Wharton for a little while. Then I came back from that and I think at that point they decided okay, it is not taking hold so no more education for this guy. So, I worked in the newspaper business for 23 years. I worked in a Fortune 300 company for a dozen years as the Head of Corporate Administration. I left there and formed a small private equity firm called Atlas Capital Partners with five other partners. We invested in a company called Verde Environmental Technologies. It was one of our very first investments and we saw a lot of potential for this. The company itself was started by two very smart chemist and a doctor of pharmacology. So I took a position on the board and about three years later the shareholders and other board members asked if I would take over the leadership role and take on the responsibility of being a CEO. A year later I took on the chairmanship as well. It has been a great ride. It is very easy to get out of bed in the morning when the company you are leading has a mission like we do.

John: You were kind enough to send me in. For our listeners out there that want to learn more about what we are about to talk about, Deterra Systems, which these are just two examples you were kind enough to send me these. We are going to get into this in a second. You could go to www.deterrasystem.com. I have the website up in front of me. Talk a little bit about first the problem that you were solving. When you invested in this company, you are investing because you are solving one of the biggest problems we have, environmentally speaking, in America. Talk a little bit about that first.

Jason: Yeah, you know, it is really a two-fold problem with unused and unwanted pharmaceuticals. People hang on to them. I have seen one study that shows 70% of the four billion prescriptions that are given out every year 70% remain unused. Some portion of them remain unused. A large portion of those are opioids and abusable drugs. So when we set out on this path, it was really for abuse deterrent. That is the “deter” part of Deterra. And the environmental protection piece, the “terra” part of Deterra. So, we were really trying to help. One of the tools, this is not panacea, but it is one of the tools that we can use to really prevent abuse, misuse, addiction, overdose, and death with abusable painkillers and benzos. And because there have been found to be over a 140 different pharmaceutical compounds in our lakes, rivers, streams, and in our drinking water, we needed to work on that. We needed to work on those two big societal problems.

Jason: One thing we are really proud of is that it is a tool that is being used for those two purposes, but we did not want to help with those two big problems by throwing yet another plastic bag on the trashy. Our product renders the drugs inert. They are irretrievable. They can not reach out. But the plastic material that we use is actually made out of a sustainable crop. It is made out of sugar cane, so it has a really low carbon footprint. So as the sugar cane grows in the field, it absorbs the carbon dioxide in the air. So it is part of that cleansing process. It is then turned into resin and used to make the film for these pouches. So, not only is it sustainable in a prop perspective, but it is also made in a manufacturing plant down in Texas that runs on nothing but wind power. And they use a process that reduces the amount of ink that they need to print on this and to clean that up. So it really is a very green product, as green as we can make it today. It is I’m Green certified, USDA Biobased certified, all of those things. Just to give you how long we were looking for this type of film material. We have 13 U.S. issued patents and 33 international patents, and it took us longer to find this green pouch material than it did to get those patents issued. Anybody that has dealt with patents knows it is a long process.

John: A long time. Let us go back and go over the journeys. When you add Atlas and you have Atlas, when did you guys make your first investment and realize these chemists had come up with this good solution, sustainable solution to this very big problem?

Jason: Yeah. The company itself has been around since 2011. We invested early in 2012. We took the Series A. We have been in it from the beginning and it really struck us. Part of our investment thesis is to invest in companies and products that are going to leave the world a little better place than when we found it. So we were five partners that had some success in our careers. But one of the things we wanted to do is not just provide financial support but help grow the company. That is why we would take board positions and be somewhat internal consultants and help them grow and think about things that maybe chemists and pharmacologists don’t think about. You know, marketing plans and things like that.

John: Capital plus wisdom.

Jason: Well, hopefully it is an equal part. I am not quite sure. But yeah, it really worked out well for us in our portfolio. We have a number of companies like this, but this is really the one that we believe has some huge growth potential. Moreover, it is very mission driven. We are trying to save lives and trying to save the environment, and we will do well while we are doing good. How was that?

John: I got it. And so when you invest it, how long from time in investment to launch of the product actually?

Jason: So actually the product itself when it first came out one of the products that they had made was like fentanyl patches and it looked like a big band-aid with a pad in the middle that had carbon woven into it. So you would take this used fentanyl patch, put it on that pad of carbon, pull off the release liner folded over, and it was called CONTRAPATCH. And then early on we realized that actually putting this carbon in a pouch would do the same thing with the patch and it would also do it with pills, patches, liquids, sublingual films, creams, pretty much any form factor. So we really moved away from CONTRAPATCH and went towards. The product was first launched as Medsaway. That product, the pouch product, was actually developed under a two-phase contract with the National Institute on Drug Abuse, part of NIH. So it is a three-party contract. It was NIDA. It was Verde Environmental Technologies. And it was Mercer University’s College of Pharmacy. We would test different types of activated carbon with different pharmaceutical compound, psychoactive pharmaceutical compounds. We would do testing. Mercer University would do testing. We would send in those results to NIDA, and of course they would validate all of that. So that was phase one was to prove the Science. And that is easy. I mean, that is kind of Chemistry 101 early on, right?

John: Okay.

Jason: The second part was great. You know what? We know the science works. We know you can destroy these drugs. We know that they can render them inert. But are people going to use it? So we did usability survey for our NIDA contract and we distributed through pharmacies actually in the state of Delaware. We handed these out, kind of co-dispensed as it were and we will talk about that too. But co-dispensed these pouches to a certain group of people and asked them to do a survey, and we got a great response on the survey. It was in the 20-plus percent range, which is a great response for a survey. And what we found was 96% of those people used it and had no problem using it. So it was ease of use. We had one person that said, “What do I do with the carbon inside?” So we adjusted our instructions and said leave the carbon in. And then we found that an additional 96% of those people used it within four weeks and of those 47% used it within 24 hours, which tells you two things. They do use it and they had unused and unwanted drugs already in their medicine chest if they were to be able to use it within 24 hours of being given a new prescription.

Jason: So all of this being said, the product itself, the science itself has been proven and all of that information, all of our test results, our survey data, we also had multiple, I think we are up to five or six right now, independent studies written up either in JAMA Surgery, JAMA Pediatrics, Mayo Clinic has done a study on it, and those all hang out on our website. We are really proud of our science. And that is the big differentiator between us and other competitors is that we will show you our science. We will show it to you anytime.

John: Your transparency is second to none. For our listeners and viewers who just joined us, we have got Jason Sundby. He is the CEO and Chairman of the Deterra. You can find a Deterra System at www.deterrasystem.com. Drug activation system. So when did you actually go to market? Was it a B2B first or B2C first or both?

Jason: It is actually mainly a B2C and a B2G, so business to government. We started down the consumer path but realized that in the midst of this opioid crisis, trying to get consumer awareness of not only a new product but a new market or that nobody has really talked about deactivated and destroying their unused drugs, it is like trying to boil the ocean. And in the middle of that crisis, you needed to boil the ocean in 15 minutes. So, we followed it back to who are the people that are impacted the most by this crisis. Well, that is payers. That is the healthcare systems, the pharmaceutical manufacturers, the distributors, everyone in that healthcare side. We really looked at and sell to anybody that touches pharmaceuticals. From those manufacturers, distributors, healthcare systems, and I can get into a little more information on that if you would like. Down to pharmacies, to law enforcement, and then ultimately the people that help clean this problem up on the back end. The coalitions and the folks that are trying to end this problem.

Jason: So we have sold into every one of those market segments. We sold at Mallinckrodt Pharmaceuticals. I have just give you a few marquee names. We have sold on the distributor side. We sold to AmerisourceBergen. We sold to Cardinal Health and McKesson. On the healthcare side, we sold to Cigna and Express Scripts, Mayo Clinic. We have sold to Cleveland Clinic all the way down to our partners with the National Hospice and Palliative Care Organization. They use it for end-of-life. We have sold into big pharmacies, regional pharmacies. We have sold to the DEA. We are endorsed by the DEA Educational Foundation and by CADCA, the Community Anti-Drug Coalitions of America. We are really proud of this. We are endorsed by those two CADCA and DEA Educational Foundation. We are endorsed by letter from them where the only product, both have been in existence for about 30 years, and we are the only product of any type, of any kind. They do not even endorse pencils, but we are the only product they have ever endorsed in there exists. And so, we are really proud of those partnerships. They are on the frontline.

John: Jason, you launched about when? A year ago?

Jason: We rebranded to Deterra in 2015.

John: Okay.

Jason: It was when we really started the growth and we had exponential growth ever since then. It has gone from being a low 6-digit company to being in the 8-digit companies. We are a private company, so I don’t divulge all that information.

John: Right.

Jason: We have done that in five years. I am really proud of that.

John: You are not only highly educated and have a tremendous career behind you, but you are an entrepreneur at heart as well beside an investor. So, if this specific journey was a baseball game, are we in the top of the second inning or the bottom of the sixth? Where are we right now?

Jason: Well, as far as accomplishing our mission of getting unused and unwanted drugs out of people’s homes, we are leading off of first.

John: First. Got it. We are on the top of the first. Okay.

Jason: We are at the top of the first. I mean, we have sold enough product now. If used a capacity to a deactivated over, I believe the last number I saw was over 600 million dose of units.

John: Let us talk about it. You sell this to someone and they take it at home with them or comes to their yards.

Jason: Yeah, it is delivered to them and given to them.

John: Right. How does it work? Explain, like I would rip the top open and what do I do?

Jason: Absolutely. I have one as well.

John: Good.

Jason: That is it. If you look at the back, there are three really easy steps.

John: It seems so easy.

Jason: Inside this pouch is a certain amount and kind of activated carbon in a water soluble pod. So think like a dishwasher in detergent pod. You open it up. You add pills, patches, liquids, all the form factors we have talked about, capsules. You fill it halfway full with warm tap water. That opens up that pod of carbon and it dissolves the pills in the capsules. You leave it open for about 20 seconds for the air to come out of the carbon. It is extremely porous. You zip it closed. It has got a double zip lock device on the top. You shake it a couple of times and throw it in the household trash. And again, through that process of adsorption, the molecule of the drug is bound onto the surface of the carbon. It is an electrical bond and it can not be back extracted. It can not be broken. You can not wash it out. So it won’t leach out in a landfill. It is unabusable and irretrievable at that point. Again, with the green pouch that we use, it really is an environmentally friendly way of getting rid of your unused drugs.

John: Given that we are in the top of the first inning, which is just amazing and wonderful at the same time. Do you also have dreams and visions with your board and with your team to take this to Asia, South America, Europe, and other parts of the world? I assume this problem is viewed around the world.

Jason: It is, and that is a really good question. We already sell in some parts of the world. You have to remember, 80% of the pharmaceutical, 80% of the opioids that are prescribed in the world is in the U.S.

John: Oh, that is discouraging.

Jason: We don’t like pain here. We are pain averse, I guess, is the nomenclature. So, we wanted to start in our country, start in the US, and grow up from there. We are having conversations in Canada. We have shipped to Guam. We have shipped to Germany. And a lot of it is through the DOD. The DOD generates unused drugs. And those laws in Europe and certainly on Guam are very strict about what you can do with them. And so, it is easier to ship our product there and deactivate them on the spot than it is to ship them the unused drugs back here and try and deal with it differently here. So yes, our vision is global, without a doubt.

John: I know you have the Gone for Good campaign and the SAFE Project that is coming up in April. Talk a little bit about those for our listeners and our viewers, Jason, please.

Jason: Yeah. SAFE Project is a great group. They are not for profit. They were founded by Sandy and Mary Winnefeld. Sandy was a four-star admiral. He was the Vice Chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Sandy and Mary unfortunately lost their son to an opioid overdose. He had gone through treatment a number of times. They believed he was clean and on the right path. They dropped him off at College. Three days later they got a call and parent’s worst nightmare, finding out that their son died. But he started with opioid painkillers and move down that path. Once he couldn’t get those anymore, it moved on to harder drugs. But a very smart kid. And again, if this can happen to that family, it can happen to anybody’s family, and it does. So, they form SAFE Project. We formed a partnership with them. They run the Gone for Good campaign, and we have done two iterations of it now in 2020 and we are coming up on April again where people go to their website and they will put in their address and we will mail them in a pouch. Actually, I have got one right here. I am never too far from these, by the way. It is, you can tell. So we will mail this out. It is a pouch with some educational material on SAFE Project and it will go straight to your home.

John: Well, that is wonderful.

Jason: Yeah, they are great folks to work with.

John: And in April, you also have the RX Drug and Heroin Summit. Can you talk a little bit about that as well?

Jason: Right. We have been participating in that for about 6 years. This year we are sponsoring a panel discussion. We have a number of really, really good people that have great experience. So just so I can get this right, I am going to read this off. The presentation, the panel discussion, is called Opioid Abuse Starts at Home: How an At-Home Drug Deactivation and Disposal Campaign Can Effectively Fight the Crisis in Your Community. The panel is made up of our partners, people that have done this work and have handed out Deterra. So the University of Houston, Community for New Direction in Columbus, Ohio, CADCA, again, the Community Anti-Drug Coalitions of America. It is moderated by the Honorable Mary Bono. People might recognize that name. Mary was a 15-year Congressperson from California. She is on our advisory board and she is also the chairman of the board of CADCA.

John: Oh, that is wonderful. Yeah.

Jason: That will be a good one for your listeners if they are interested to tune into.

John: Yeah, that is wonderful. That is an extraordinary Summit. We will make sure that is up on our website when we post the show. Jason, we are coming out of this COVID-19 tragic worldwide pandemic. From all the people that you know in business, government, healthcare, law enforcement, has there been an upraise during this very anxious and difficult period in opioid use which then means there is a greater need even for your product more than ever before?

Jason: Absolutely. And again, it is another very unfortunate statistic. During this pandemic, what do we ask people to do? You know, shelter and place. Go home. We are not sure whether they are going to have a job or how that jobs going to work. They have got kids at home that they are trying to teach and fulfill their responsibilities at work. And so, it leads to some despair and a loss of hope. They are very uncertain about the future. And what do people do when they have despair? They look for outlets. They self-medicate. Some people go to the liquor cabinet. A lot of people go to the medicine chest. And those unused and unwanted opioids that are sitting in there are really easy target not only for the people in your home, but for the people that come into your home. So this last kind of rolling 12 months, the number of opioid overdose deaths has risen from 70,000 in 2019. This last 12 months it is up somewhere around 82,000. And it looks like it is going higher than that. So the importance of getting these drugs out of your home has never been more important or timely than it is right now.

John: Jason, is it going to come in date soon? Like out here in California, we have Rite Aid and CVS and Walgreens. Will I be able to go into any of those great brands and just find this on the shelves there soon?

Jason: Yeah, one of the things that we are really working on and there is some really good legislature in a few States, but it is the idea of co-dispensing. We have examples. Mayo Clinic in a few of their facilities is actually co-dispense Deterra. Twin City Orthopedics, which is the fifth largest Orthopedic Surgery Group in the country, co-dispenses and has for about four or five years. But basically the idea is if you are given a script for an opioid, in that dispensing bag at the pharmacy, your little white bag, it would go with Deterra. And I will paraphrase what they say, but it is a little educational card that says, “Look, you have been prescribed a very powerful painkiller. Take them until you can handle the pain with an unsaid Advil Tylenol. And if you have leftover drugs, please use this Deterra pouch to deactivate and dispose of those drugs. Get them out of your home and out of the environment.”

Jason: That has really worked quite well for both of those groups. There is legislation talking about co-dispensing now. And if you think about it, it is kind of like diabetic supplies. So if we want, a diabetic gets insulin or their medication. In that same bag goes testing strips, lancets, things like that. So it is co-dispensing, and it is easily done. So again, I am more of a proponent of people being handed this free of charge and I am agnostic as to who pays for it. There is a lot of money in that. So pharmaceutical distributor, pharmacy supply chain, and I don’t choose sides. All I know is that if we really want to have an effect on the opioid crisis and the pollution of unused drugs, it needs to get into people’s hands and it needs to happen today. So, we are making great progress. We have already seen a couple of State Attorney Generals, other officials, actually take these products and distribute them throughout their State. So they have handed out Deterra. I don’t know if you can see this. My very clever marketing people took my business card and turn it into a label to show that these can be labeled. Anybody can put their name on it. And so, these Attorney General, that was their seal and distributed by on that pouch.

John: Smart. Hey, you know from a business perspective, do you have any competition? Because I have never heard of any competition out there. I have never seen it and heard of it when I was studying for this interview. I couldn’t find any. Is there anything that is really comparable to your great product?

Jason: Well, there are competitors. I will go out so far as to say they are not comparable. Again, we deactivate and destroy the drug. We render it inert. There are competitors out there that suspend it in a gel-like material, but it doesn’t destroy the drug. It just makes it a little less attractive. It is somewhat easily defeated. There are others that actually even use carbon in their process, which they know that we hold the patent rights to that right. But typically they don’t use the right amount and kind of carbon. They actually deactivate the drug. So yes, there are. Because all of these are private companies and there is no way to really try, we believe we have about 80% of the market share.

John: That is great. You know Jason, this has been amazing. You really are solving a huge problem. I am so grateful for your time today and thanks for sending these samples. They will go to good use with our family members and also employees. For our listeners out there, to find and order this very important product, you can go to www.deterrasystem.com. Jason, any final words before we say goodbye just for today?

Jason: No. John, I really appreciate you having me on. This is a very important and timely topic, and we need to get the word out. With your help, we will do that. I want everyone to make it through this pandemic and get back to their lives. If we can prevent people from becoming addicted to abusable drugs and keep these out of our drinking water, that is our mission and that is what we are going to keep working towards.

John: Well, you are winning the mission. And since we are in the top of the first inning of you running this great company, you are always invited back to share the continued journey and success story of the Deterra. You are making a huge impact and that is why I invited you on, Jason. Your company is making huge impact and you are succeeding in your goal as you said at the top of the show to making the world a better place. And for that, I am so grateful. Thank you so much.

Jason: Thank you. I appreciate that. Thanks, John.

John: Thank you.

Jason: Take care.

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John: Welcome to another edition of the impact podcast. This is a very special edition of the impact podcast. We have got my longtime friend with us. He is the founder and CEO of the Closed Loop Partners. Welcome back to impact Ron Gonen.

Ron Gonen: Hey, John, great to be speaking with you again, and thank you for having me on.

John: Hey, you know, Ron you are a very special person in my life because when I started this podcast thirteen years ago when it was just really a radio show back then before podcast became a thing, I did not have a lot of people that wanted to come on and I actually called you and you agreed you were my first guest ever and so having you back on is always a special event for me and I am very grateful to you for all of you have done for me over, I do not know, fifteen years of friendship, maybe it is sixteen years of friendship now. You have both been inspirational but also aspirational and so it is just always a great great event to have you back on the Impact podcast.

Ron: John, thank you for saying that and I could describe you the same way.

John: Well, thanks. And you know today, we are going to be talking about the Waste-Free World, your brand new book that is coming out. It is already available on amazon.com, Barnes & Noble, and other great book stores, but before we get into that, I want you to share with our listeners, our viewers, and our readers who have not met you yet or have not listened to one of our past podcast a little bit about the Ron Gonen Journey.

Ron: Sure, so my journey is one that has always been centered on this intersection between maximizing sustainability and maximizing business success. I have always believed that those things are synonymous with each other and I came to that realization very early on in life through a fortunate opportunity where I grew up with a single mom and had to get a job when I was really coming out of middle school going into high school and my first job was working for a family kind of doing everything and anything around their house. I babysat their kids. I fix the fence. I mowed the lawn and the dad was one of the first green architects in America, someone named Paul Macht and he has an Architecture Firm called Macht Architects, and he started speaking to me in the late 80s and early 90s when I was a teenager about sustainable business practices, what we call today circular economy Green Building and it just made total sense to me. I was actually surprised listening to him that everyone did not build this way.

John: Right.

Ron: And that was my introduction to the world of sustainable business practices. Fast forward, coming out of college, I went to work in management consulting, first at Accenture and then at Deloitte and that was an important stepping stone in my career because it taught me about software. It taught me about technology development and business process, and then, although it was not specifically focused in the sustainability space, it gave me the necessary tools to be successful when I went off and focused on building my own businesses, and that is one thing that I would say to any of your listeners who are in high school or in college and have great aspirations to make a difference in the world, make sure that you also spend time just putting your head down and getting a good education and developing the tools and the skills that you need to match with your passion and aspiration to make a difference, but after about six or seven years at Andersen Consulting and Deloitte, I realized that I now had the skill set to go off and pursue my passion which was this intersection between maximizing sustainable business practices and profits and went back to business school at Columbia business school and developed my first company, which is a recycling company called Recycle Bank that I ran as the CEO until 2010 and then, after I exited recycle bank, I started a small Solar Company and then from there got a very unique opportunity which was to join the Bloomberg Administration in New York City as what was termed at the time the Deputy Commissioner for sanitation, Recycling, and sustainability but the core job description was to really reimagine and rebuild New York City Sanitation Department with a focus on sustainable business practices and eliminating landfill disposal costs. And after that experience, I went on to start Closed Loop Partners, which is what I am doing today and I have been doing since 2014.

John: I also do not want you to leave out that you have also become an educator along the way. Somewhere around 2010, you also started teaching at your alma mater, correct?

Ron: Yes, it was an interesting experience and opportunity for me, so when I got to Columbia business school in 2002 and people would ask me “what are you going to do when you graduate from Columbia business school, are you going to Investment Banking or you going into strategy Consulting?” I would say, “Well, actually, I am going to build a business that focuses on this intersection between maximizing profitability and sustainable business practices. That is what I view as the future of success in business” and people would literally say to me “that is commendable, but how do you plan to pay back your school loans with that as your career.” That is how bad attitude-

John: Wow

Ron: -you know, twenty years ago at some of the elite Business Schools. As it turns out Columbia business school invested in my first business, in my first year at Columbia-

John: Wow

Ron: -they gave me my first hundred thousand dollars, my first investor. I ended up returning about one and a half million to them from that investments though they were instrumental in helping me get my entrepreneurial career launched and hopefully, I was helpful to them and providing them a great return but then, fast forward to 2010 after I had my first exit, they invited me to come back to Columbia business school and build a course focused on entrepreneurship and social impact.

John: That is awesome and you still continue to teach there.

Ron: I took a leave from teaching two years ago.

John: Okay.

Ron: Because I started having children. I now have two young boys at home. And so my family first and then my firm gets a hundred and ten percent of my time currently, but the ten years I taught at Columbia were phenomenal and I plan to eventually go back.

John: What I love Ron is we have been friends so long now and we have been able to stay friends and work together and help each other along the way wherever we could, but one of my favorite memories of coming to visit you is when you started Closed Loop Partners, I went up probably two or three months into your original office and you want to talk about humble beginnings. I mean, you just had the most humble of beginnings in Closed Loop Partners, but had the biggest dreams, for our listeners and viewers out there, what you have become if not the most prolific but one of the most prolific investors in the ESG circular economy space and for our listeners who want to find your great website and your colleagues at Closed Loop Partners, you go to closedlooppartners.com, closedlooppartners.com, explain what the mission and the vision were at Closed Loop Partners and how you evolve that great brand over the years?

Ron: The focus of Closed Loop Partners is to build the circular economy and find the circular economy as manufacturing without reliance on natural resource extraction to manufacture products and without a reliance on landfills to dispose of products and if you can manufacture using sustainable material science, advanced product design, innovative manufacturing systems, you can eliminate a lot of the cost of extracting natural resources and waste in your system, preserve our natural resources and environment, and maximize margins, so that is the core focus of Closed Loop Partners and our investment thesis is to find companies that are building out these types of systems. The way we-

John: I [inaudible] to interrupt you, you have an amazing track record there though. Just share with our listeners some of the great brands that have invested in your fund there.

Ron: Sure. So our investors include the world’s largest retailers and consumer goods companies. On the retail side, our investors include Walmart, Amazon, and Starbucks.

John: Wow

Ron: On the consumer product side, we have Unilever, PNG, Nestle, Colgate, Palmolive, J and J, 3M. We have the five largest beverage companies including Coke and PepsiCo. One of the world’s largest technology companies including Microsoft is all investors in our company.

John: Wow. I mean that is as great a lineup as you can have because they believe in you and your vision which just goes again, your tremendous career, and what you have done and set out to do, but I interrupted, you were going to go on. So talk a little bit about how it has gone since you started?

Ron: Yes. So we started with that investment thesis and then built the firm out to be structured as an investment firm that has four asset classes.

John: Okay

Ron: Okay, a venture fund, a growth Equity Fund, a credit fund, and a PE fund and we also own an innovation center called the center for the circular economy and that structure enables us to look at the bottlenecks in the system, identify solutions, and then, apply the right form of capital to help that solution scale.

John: God it. We are going to come back to that later on, but again, for our listeners and viewers who want to find Ron and his colleagues at Closed Loop Partners go to www.closedlooppartners.com. Now, for the announcement of the day, your amazing new book the Waste-Free World: How the Circular Economy Will Take Less, Make More and Save the Planet. I mean, Ron, I have known you a long time and your Midas Touch is well known to me and to everybody else around you in your ecosystem, but I will tell you why and I shared this with you off the air. If there is ever a time to come out with a book title and such and on the subject matter that you are covering man you picked the perfect time. This is the time that all seems like when we started on this journey and circular economy and sustainability, we are a little bit early, frankly speaking, but I will tell you your book is right on time because it seems like all the stars have aligned.

Ron: You know, I think preparations and patience is an enormous part of success in any field and so I think that the time that you and I have spent over the past ten or fifteen years in this space-

John: Yes

Ron: -with preparation and patients sometimes I get feedback or comments now that the circular economy and sustainability and ESG are becoming more central to the way we do business. I will get feedback or comments like “that idea you just had or that thing you just said is so timely, so on point, how did you come up with that so quickly?” And I will say “I actually came up with that fifteen years ago, but nobody was listening at that time and I just stayed patient and I refined it” and I say-

John: Right

Ron: -patient and I refined it and now we are here and it is resonating and that has been a big part of this journey is just back to your comment about visiting our first office and how that [inaudible]

John: I will never forget that, never. I will forget it.

Ron: And you know, we tried to be as lean as possible and as focused as possible and as patient as possible and determined as possible and things are now starting to be responsive to our investment thesis and how we view the world moving forward.

John: When did you have the Epiphany or the real hankering to say I want to write this book and I need to get this out?

Ron: It is a funny story. The credit goes to a whole bunch of other people that do not include me. So Alec Baldwin, the actor, has a podcast.

John: Right.

Ron: I will give him a little plug because he has a lot of responsibility for this book. It is a podcast called Here is the thing.

John: I love the podcast.

Ron: Yes, okay

John: I am a big fan.

Ron: So I am a big fan of the podcast too, so I get a call one day and it is from the producer of the podcast and says, “I am the producer of Alec Baldwin’s podcast. Here is the thing.” I said, “Oh great. I am a big fan” and he said, “well, Alec wants to do a show on Waste and Recycling and you have been recommended as the person that he should have on the show,” and part of me is thinking is one of my friends playing a prank me. Pardon me [inaudible] “Hey, this is a great way to-

John: Right

Ron: -get the message out.” So I went on to Alec Baldwin’s podcast and you know, we had a great conversation for an hour about the world of waste and recycling, and a couple of days later, I get an email from a woman who says “I am an accomplished book agent, here is my track record and my bio, my husband and I just listened to you on this podcast, you have a book here. Would you be interested in writing a book?” And I said, “Well if I could get a book contract from an established publisher that I knew could market it and you could help me find a great researcher who could help me write the book, I would be interested.” And so I will give her a plug, her name is Emma Perry[?]. She went out and promoted the idea behind the book in Penguin Random House, offered me a contract and Emma found me a great researcher and then, I went off and wrote the book, but in order for me to get to that point of writing the book, there had to be this confluence of events and other people and so that is the story behind how the book came about.

John: And what year was this approximately?

Ron: 2017, I think I was on the podcast and it took a while to write the book, part of it is it takes a while to write a book.

John: Right

Ron: Part of it is I am the CEO of a growing firm. Part of it is I am a dad to two young boys, so you [inaudible] together.

John: And a husband, and a husband, and a husband

Ron: And a husband, and has a very supportive wife who says, “you can go ahead and write this book.” And so there is a confluence of people and events that had to come together to enable me to write this book and the timing is really good for when it is coming out.

John: And like everything else you do, you take it very seriously. I am just going to show our listeners and our viewers out there, this is the book. You were kind enough to send me a pre, you know advanced copy, so I printed it off and read it of course, but this is a big book. So you just did not take that responsibility lightly like you never do and it is really a great book Ron and it is going to be massively successful because you cover so many important topics that affect all of us. There is nobody that is listening or watching or reading this podcast today that is not affected by the topics that you go through in the book and I want to start with the whole issue of linear versus circular economy, and why is it paramount that we make the move and make the move posthaste to a circular economy behavioral DNA and culture and get away from this linear waste economy that we all grew up within, we know to be true here in America today.

Ron: There are a number of advantages to transitioning from a linear to a circular economy. I will touch on one key reason-

John: Go

Ron: -and that key reason is because the system as it exists today is gamed for the advantage of the extractive industry so oil mining timber and the landfill industries. The system is not set up to maximize transparency and be for the benefit of consumers and taxpayers and society. We have been cheated for the last seventy-five years by being marketed to that you need more stuff and once you finish with that stuff, you throw it out and you go buy more stuff and the problem with that system is every time you are buying something, you are paying a fee for the natural resource extraction for the material that is being used to make that product and then your tax dollars being used to pay for the disposal of that in landfill and that cost has been hidden and tucked away so that consumers and taxpayers would not recognize that the extractive industries and the landfill industries were getting rich on the back of the consumer and the taxpayer and that is one of the main reasons why we should transition away. Now, you will notice I have not said anything about climate change or environment or sustainability in that explanation.

John: Right.

Ron: There are many reasons that I can point to from a sustainability and climate change perspective as to why we should transition, but if that is not of interest to you, you should want to transition from a linear economy solely because you are going to significantly reduce cost in your life.

John: Got it, got it. You know you touch on many important topics in the book. Greengrocers, the sustainable closet, go into some of these and then I love the one I have got one word for you Benjamin, and of course, we know, you know, being at my age at least we all know the graduate and Mrs. Robinson, I mean the issue of plastics is massive. Share some of your thoughts on these critical topics of apparel recycling, plastic, and getting it out of our oceans and all of the wrong places that it is and how you attacked it in your great book.

Ron: So let us follow that train of thought that I had earlier in the conversation about this linear system-

John: Yes

Ron: -is gamed to be for the benefit of extractive Industries and landfill Industries.

John: Right

Ron: During the past decade, there has been this emergence in the fashion apparel industry of what is called Fast fashion-

John: Okay.

Ron: -which is I will make a bunch of cheap T-shirts, a bunch of cheap pants, people can buy a t-shirt or pair of pants for four dollars, five dollars, six dollars, and use it a few times. It is of low quality, so then they can get rid of it, and then, they buy the next product.

John: Right.

Ron: The result is that the amount of apparel in our waste stream has gone from one to two percent to now eight, nine, ten percent.

John: Wow

Ron: One reaction could be [inaudible], it is terrible that there is more waste. Another reaction could be “Well, who is paying for all of that apparel to go to landfill?” We the taxpayers are and what that means is that we have created a system that permits companies to push the cost of managing their product off to the public, so whether or not you are I or any of your listeners where those fast fashion products, our tax dollars are used to subsidize the disposal of them in a landfill.

John: Wow

Ron: That cost should be the responsibility of the producer. I am a big believer of you want to be in the fast fashion business. It is America. It is capitalism. It is a free market, go for it. I am just not willing to pay for the disposal of your product in a landfill. You will be responsible for that. The challenge for those companies is if they have to be responsible for the disposal of their product and landfill their business model does not work anymore.

John: Right

Ron: And that is what I mean by the system is being gamed were a lot of companies and industries have been able to externalize costs that they should be responsible for on to the public. We are a society that promotes ourselves as capitalists while behind the scenes you have got a couple of industries that are collecting our tax dollars and then bragging about how they are successful because they are the titans of capitalism, not so and that trickery and that game have to end.

John: Talk a little bit about how your day job, running Closed Loop Partners in the intersection of the circular economy. The opportunities that are coming across your desk now as opposed to when you started Closed Loop and the acceleration of those opportunities and how does that look right now and what do you foresee in the months and years ahead here?

Ron: Yes. So when we got started, we oftentimes found Innovative Technologies and solutions that nobody else was investing in and they are usually be one in the space.

John: Right, right.

Ron: Now, what we are seeing is a proliferation of entrepreneurs and Solutions in the space and we could talk about the electronic waste base which you know well, which is five, ten, fifteen years ago in the United States. There are only a handful of people working on electronic waste.

John: Right.

Ron: Now, at every step in the chain, there are people working on the collection, sortation, mail-back, some people are doing battery recycling, some people are just doing smartphones, some people are doing every kind of E-Waste, some people are saying I just do commercial, some people are doing saying I wipe your data and then I recycle it and so we are seeing this proliferation of entrepreneurs get into the space because fortunately, people are recognizing that hey there is money to be made here.

John: Right, right, right, right. You know you were so kind enough years ago to introduce me to one of what was then one of your portfolio companies still is in a massive success amp robotics, Matanya Horowitz, and thanks to you, we became the first company in our space to leverage his great technology and Matanya became a great friend of ours. Talk a little bit about some of your portfolio companies and I know it is like your children now, I mean because you have grown this amazing portfolio, you know, who are some of your favorites and you see as creating breakthrough technologies that can scale and really impact the whole world?

Ron: Well, we love all of our portfolio companies even like our children.

John: Like our children.

Ron: Because I am talking about one portfolio company, our CEO does not mean that I love anybody-

John: Right

Ron: And [inaudible].

John: Okay, [inaudible]

Ron: But a couple that I will touch on that we are super excited about is we have a portfolio company called home biogas, which is a company headquartered in Israel that has developed the first household size anaerobic digester, so anaerobic digesters convert organic matters that could be your food waste, could be your biological waste into gas. They have small enzymes in anaerobic digesters that eat the organic matter and release gas and you are capturing that gas.

John: Right

Ron: Large-scale anaerobic digesters have been around for years, most large municipalities of anaerobic digesters at their wastewater treatment facilities, more [inaudible] building large-scale digester for food waste. No one has been able to figure out how to bring it down to the household level and that is important for a number of reasons. One that I will just mention is that in emerging markets you oftentimes do not have the road infrastructure to actually drive what we think of as a waste or sanitation vehicle down the time and the capital required to build large-scale digesters or advanced landfills takes years and billions of dollars, and so similar to what happened in the cell phone or the Telecom world where the cell phone leapfrogged static telecom infrastructure. We think that home biogas can leapfrog traditional sanitation infrastructure by literally going directly into the home and saying you can put all of your food waste even your biological waste into this appliance. It will convert it to gas that you can then cook off of. So that is an example of a technology and a company that we think is massively catalytic and solves a number of issues around the world from sanitation to pollution issues to clean energy to socio-economic issues in a lot of regions, so that is one that we are excited about. Another company I will mention is a company called MOR, M-O-R, it is a company that came out of MIT and Tufts[?] and MOR has created an odorless and tasteless Silk protein that gets sprayed on fruits vegetable, and meat that creates an oxidization barrier to eliminate spoilage. With that type of Technology, you can now eliminate all of the plastic packaging and wrapping that goes into food preservation. And that is one that we did with MIT invested, Bill Gates invested, and we invested.

John: So when does that get commercialized? When do we see that being used in the whole foods in our great supermarkets, we all shopping?

Ron: You will see MOR commercialized in the next twelve to twenty-four months.

John: Wow

Ron: They already passed the pilot stage and home biogas is already being sold in over fifty countries if thousands of systems out there on the market.

John: When you buy it for your house, what is the ROI on something like that on the home biogas?

Ron: Oh, it is very quick. So a home biogas system only costs about five hundred dollars

John: What? I mean, that is less, so every home in America and around the world should be one day buying this system.

Ron: Yes.

John: Unbelievable.

Ron: If you think about the cost, I mean if you think about for the United States when a municipality rolls out a curbside organics program and wants to take your food waste to a compost [inaudible] anaerobic digester or even if they are still kicking up your food waste in the garbage, what is required is a very expensive truck with a lot of fuel, a lot of maintenance on the hydraulics, a driver, it got to drive around and pick up the stuff, drive it to either a landfill or a compost [inaudible] anaerobic digester. If a municipality can strip out all of that cost and just say “hey, John, here is this appliance for your home it is going to take care of your food waste for you and by the way create gas for cooking that takes care of about forty to fifty percent of the waste that an average American Home generates.”

John: For our listeners, viewers, and readers who just joined us. We have got Ron Gonen. He is the founder and CEO of Closed Loop Partners. More importantly for today, he is also the author of the Waste-Free World. You can buy it on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and other great book stores, please do buy and read it. Ron you just mentioned MOR and the plastic issue, are we going to be able to tackle this critical issue that the media covers all the time and clean up our oceans or rivers or lakes, our environment from this horrific problem that has now made its way back even through our water systems across America and across the world, our drinking water systems, what is the future of cleaning up this plastic problem?

Ron: We are going to be able to solve it, but the problem is so expansive and severe. In the best-case scenario, it will probably take us a decade to solve it.

John: Okay

Ron: One thing that is important for your readers to understand about how severe and pollutive[?] the issue is that most people do not realize that plastic is virgin plastic namely comes from petroleum.

John: Right

Ron: When you get plastic in the water system that you are digesting or in fish that you are eating that is exactly the same as digesting gasoline. It is exactly the same. So that just gives your listeners a sense of how dangerous to our health this is and that gets again back to my comment about externalizing cost is you have lots of people around the world who get sick because of the amount of plastic that we digest and it is our Healthcare System that has to deal with that.

John: The aftermath.

Ron: That is not how capitalism should work out. An even more acute example of that and this is one of the reasons why the plastic issue I think will get solved is you are now seeing the plastics industry run up against another powerful industry. So it is no longer the Plastics industry against environmentalists. Now, you have got the plastics industry running up against let us say the hotel and tourism industry where somebody builds a billion-dollar Resort in Southeast Asia and people pay top dollar to come and stay at that Resort, and all of a sudden you got plastic rolling up on the beach. You got your customers coming to you and saying this is not what I paid for I am not coming back and I am going to give you a review that you got plastic rolling up on the beach the owner of this billion-dollar resort is thinking themselves, “but you do not understand customer, I am not at fault for that. I did not put the plastic there. I do not want the plastic there.”

John: Right

Ron: See the tourism industry started to say this needs to get resolved because it is eating in my profit. The same thing with the fish industry, if you get people who say, “you know what I am not going to eat fish anymore because of all the plastic that is in it, or maybe my family is just going to eat one piece of fishless a week because of all the plastic issue” that has huge ramifications for the fish industry, so you can see the fish industry also say we got to keep our oceans clean because that is a direct correlation to my sales and so you are seeing a confluence of self-interested parties say “we got to get this done” and that is oftentimes how-

John: How change happens.

Ron: -how change happens, so it will get solved but it is a severe and massive problem that in the best case scenario it is going to take us about a decade.

John: When people read your new book the Waste-Free World, if you boil it down, Ron, what is their take away? If I am on an elevator and someone says, how is that new book? You just read the Waste-Free World, what do you want my takeaway to be so I am able to share that message with others?

Ron: There is an economic system called the circular economy that will drive a lot more prosperity if we can eliminate the linear system we have been operating under and transition to a circular economy. It is about prosperity and how we achieve that prosperity and we do that by developing circular business models.

John: It seems though, you know given the political times we live in with the Biden presidency and the interest level both from Asia and Europe that the stars are aligned for this to happen are the next four years make it or break it in terms of us breaking through and making a permanent breakthrough in that model?

Ron: I do not know that I would use the term Make It or Break It because I think that there is a number of influential players.

John: Okay.

Ron: I would say is we have a generational opportunity-

John: Okay

Ron: -right now because you have got the Biden administration that is very focused on this. You have got the EU that is very focused on this.

John: Right

Ron: You have got a number of investors that are very focused on this.

John: Right.

Ron: Consumers are focused on it. You have got local Regulators focused on it. So you have got this confluence of interested parties all ready right now to work on it. It is a generational opportunity that if we do not take it, it is not to say it make or break, it is to say that it would be a lot more challenging and the cost we will end up incurring would be massive.

John: Ron, you have done so much over the years and now with Closed Loop Partners, what is your vision in the years ahead with Closed Loop? How big can Closed Loop be? How big can that portfolio grow? How big can your funds grow? We already have the who is who of what is what in terms of institutional and corporate investors? What is the future of Closed Loop double and tripling in the years ahead five times, ten times, what is going on?

Ron: Yes. That is a good question. We view the transition to a circular economy as the biggest transition of capital from one system to another since the Industrial Revolution. We are talking about hundreds of billions of dollars that will transition from production using virgin and raw material to production systems that are using recycled material or product design software that eliminates waste. So from an opportunity standpoint as a firm, we would like to be the leader or one of the leaders in that multi-hundred-billion-dollar transition. That is the aspiration. On a day-to-day basis, we just focus on delivering results for our investors the way we told them we would for that particular fund with a belief that if we do a good job for this set of investors on this fund it will lead to them becoming larger investors in our next fund and more investors joining us and slowly but surely will continue to build value, but we can never take our eye off of what do we need to get done today?

John: And with that, I am going to leave it for today and for our listeners and viewers out there to find Ron and his colleagues, please go to www.closedlooppartners.com to buy his new book, the Waste-Free World which I have read and I love and I think is really important for everybody to read right now given the times that we live in. Please go to amazon.com, Barnes & Noble, or other fine bookstores. Ron Gonen you are not only a great friend, but you are an inspiration throughout my career. I just want to say thank you for all you do to make the world a better place. The world will be a lot worse off without you. I wish we have fifty of you but thank God for you.

Ron: Thank you John and great to be on your show again and look forward to continuing to build value together in the future.

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

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

John: Welcome to another edition of the Impact Podcast. I am John Shegerian. I am so honored to have with us today, Joey Miller. She is a psychotherapist. She has written this great book called “Rebirth.” I welcome you today, Joey, to the Impact Podcast.

Joey Miller: Thank you so much, John. It is great to be your guest.

John: It is wonderful to have you and this is a very important topic, one that is not covered a lot in the mainstream media. Before we get talking about this, I would love you just to share your background and history leading up to becoming a psychotherapist and how you even got here.

Joey: Thank you so much. I am currently based in Chicago. I am practicing at Wellsprings Health Associates, which is a multidisciplinary psychiatric practice, and while I do practice across the board seeing individuals and couples, my main focus tends to be reproductive psychology. I also focus on loss and trauma and women’s mental health.

John: Wow. How many years have you been practicing and doing this great and important work?

Joey: Just a little over 2 decades.

John: You do not look old enough to be doing this [inaudible].

Joey: [laughs] You are very kind, thank you.

John: That is a good thing, but I totally believe you. We were chatting a little bit before we tape this podcast, and I was sharing with you my own personal story. Before my wife and I had our two beautiful children, in between our daughter and our son, we lost two children along the way. It still stays with us to this day, so when I was asked to host you on the podcast, it really resonated with me. I really want you to know that this is such an important topic not only personally, but, when I got to read your book and start studying this more, I was absolutely shocked by the numbers. Could you share with our audience in order of magnitude the sheer numbers of how much of a problem this really is and a crisis?

Joey: Absolutely, in the United States alone, there are an estimated 2.2 million pregnancies that end annually in loss. When we look at that and we break that down a bit, there are an estimated 10 to 20% of pregnancies that we believe end in miscarriage which is defined as a loss prior to 20 weeks gestation, and approximately 1 in 100 pregnancies end in stillbirth or loss greater than 20 weeks gestation. Worldwide, those numbers only explode when we look at them globally that the World Health Organization estimates annually there are 6.3 million pregnancies that are lost every year worldwide and an additional 4.1 million infant deaths which is defined as the death of a baby or a child under one year of life. These numbers are pervasive, and this is a very real issue. Even though we do not talk about it as much as we should, this does affect a significant population every year.

John: Joey, when did you take your classic training and education and shift into this critical problem? When was that? When did you have that all aha moment that this should be your focus because the magnitude of the problem really warranted your attention?

Joey: I began my career working in adult trauma and emergency medicine and had a lot of exposure and experience working with crisis intervention, sudden injury, death, or life-changing events. I did that work in Chicago and then was eventually recruited by the largest birthing hospital in the state of Illinois, Northwestern Memorial Hospital, to focus on the other end of the life cycle, working with women and with partners and families who experience the death of a baby or the loss of a child either during pregnancy, during delivery, or afterwards. That was a little over 20 years ago, and I worked to build a program. Now, more and more hospitals do have what we call a perinatal loss program, but at that time it was really novel because, again, it was not something that was discussed.

Joey: Even as early as the 1970s that when a woman experienced a stillbirth, it was very common for hospitals to take the baby away and not even allow the parents to see the baby, thinking that somehow their grief would be exacerbated if there was an opportunity to see and hold and touch. Over the years we found that these attachments are very real, and some parents do choose to spend some time with a deceased baby. Over the course of my professional career, I have seen attitudes shift. I have seen practices shift and it was wonderful to be on the ground and working actively to create and then grow a program to provide support. I started approximately 20 years ago and then continued work to flush out services, resources, raise awareness and deepen education.

John: It is still so fascinating that until I read your book… Again, your new book is “Rebirth,” and I really suggest to our audience, if this is a problem that you have been faced with or have a family member or a friend that has been faced with this, this book is really worthwhile. I got a lot out of it, but it was actually very emotional for myself to read it. Our losses were 27 and 25 years ago, and those losses have never gone away. It is something that I have just chosen to push aside or ignore or just push down in one way shape or another, but this book really covered the topic in such an elegant and informative and beautiful way and also offered a lot of hope. What made you write this book? Obviously, your practice is very busy. What was your aha moment to write this book “Rebirth”?

Joey: I loved my work working with trauma patients and an emergency medicine. When I started working on the other end of the life cycle, my patients captured my attention, and then they captured my heart. Again, there was not a lot of conversation if any about pregnancy and infant loss, and I really felt that the story needed to be told. So, in the book, I have included 25 excerpts of my patients’ stories that really underscore the individual nature of trauma, of tragedy, of depression, anxiety, and the pathways that many of my patients took to finally becoming parents. I just felt it was so important to shed more light on this issue and in so doing open the door for supports for families who oftentimes, again, received very little if anything from society. I have always shared with my patients, I do not think the goal is to get over losing a baby. I think the challenge is to learn to live with the loss. Unfortunately, society continues to this day to sometimes minimize or misunderstand these types of losses, thinking “This was early. This happened before you really got to know the baby. You will get over this. Go on and have another child.”

Joey: Well, many of my families can and do go on to have another baby, but another baby never replaces the deceased baby. Also, for many women, there is an attachment from the moment of conception that the grief is a reflection of that. It is not necessarily based on the length of gestation. It is more based on the depth of the attachment, especially for couples who go through fertility treatments, who are intending to conceive and sometimes spend months and years that they are attached the moment they have a positive pregnancy test. When that pregnancy ends prematurely, it is not just the physical loss of that baby, but it is the loss of many of those hopes and dreams. In order to grieve and then to begin to take some of the steps forward, it is important to first recognize and then validate that loss is real.

John: For those who just joined us, we have got Joey Miller with us. She is a psychotherapist. She has written this book called “Rebirth” and you can find Joey in her practice, if you have this issue or a friend or a relative has this issue, at www.joeymillermsw.com. What are some of the greatest challenges that a couple face when this tragedy happens?

Joey: I think it is really to be seen and to be heard that, again, these losses are very real, but they are so individual that I can have 2 patients who experienced a miscarriage or stillbirth and the meaning that is attached to that loss looks very different. As a society, it is not necessarily encouraging people to sidestep their grief. It is listening. It is providing support. It is acknowledging. It is validating. While the grief can feel overwhelming at times that many of these couples know they want children, they want a family, and so it is a very steep challenge to have acute grief against the closing window of reproductive opportunity, that if couples waited until they felt 100% better, they would wait the rest of their lives to try again to conceive. So, many couples are faced with grief and loss but also extraordinary pressure that if they are going to think about trying again, they have a very limited window in which to do so.

John: Joey, in order of magnitude, the problem is massive, and before you wrote this book and I had the chance to read it, I never realized that your kind of practice even existed. Given someone like me who believes that seeking help and having a coach in life, a psychotherapist or psychologist, is a form of strength and not of weakness, are there people who refuse to or do not even know where to find hope like you and help like you and are suffering in silence, and part of the underpinnings of you writing the book is trying to reach them as well?

Joey: Yes, historically, there have been a lot of barriers to people seeking mental health supports whether there was stigma, embarrassment, shame, financial barriers, geographic challenges. I practice in Chicago. It is a metropolitan hub and not everybody has access to specialty providers. This may be one of the very few positives as a result of COVID, that my practice has converted to all virtual or telehealth appointments. That has really opened the door for many people who might not have access to someone locally, a specialty provider, that it is becoming much more common for people to seek out supports, and there are many more avenues in which to do so. The stigma has also started melting away. As a nation, we are dealing with more depression and more anxiety across the board, and more and more people are seeking mental health treatment, which is, again, helping erode some of the stigmas. I am seeing that, even just in the last year, that has shifted in a very positive way that there are many more opportunities than ever for people to seek individual or couples counseling, join us support group, and they can do so from their own home now.

John: Because of the pandemic, one of the blessings of this tragic period is that your practice has opened up, and people could literally be seeking your help from Los Angeles or London or wherever they need it because you can now see people over Zoom.

Joey: There is much more opportunity and networking and collaboration within the professional community which I see as a great positive. Well, that does not take the place of in-person appointments.

John: Right.

Joey: It certainly is a bridge until we are able to resume in-person office appointments.

John: Is your area of expertise of growing area, and since you broke through in 20 somewhat years ago and decided to take on this issue, have you seen it grow widely comparatively speaking to 20 years ago?

Joey: Absolutely. I am cautious about my response that even though I have seen growth, there is absolutely more work to be done here. I am grateful for different public figures who have come forward and expressed or disclosed that they have experienced a loss. That also helps further remove the stigma and opens the door for women and their partners to seek help.

John: What is the largest cause of death if there is such a thing on the infant category, the one year or under? When my children were infants, there was a lot of media back then around sudden infant death syndrome. Is that still a big deal or are there other causes of death that are potentially preventable?

Joey: Absolutely. The March of Dimes has really focused on their Back to Sleep campaign or placing infants on their back when they go to sleep in an effort to reduce the risk of SIDS. SIDS or sudden infant death syndrome remains an issue. It remains one of the leading causes of death, prematurity. With more and more medical and obstetric and neonatal technology, we are able to better support preterm and premature deliveries. 20 years ago or 40 years ago, if a baby was born around the point of viability, there was no expectation that that baby would be able to survive. Now, with all of the technology and the neonatal intensive care units, we are able to support earlier and earlier deliveries, but, again, there is still more work that needs to be done here. The messaging here is I try not to focus on the leading causes of death, for example prematurity or SIDS, because there can be either… There are so many.

John: Right.

Joey: There can be issues of infection or injury, complications surrounding the placenta or membranes or cord. There are so many reasons why and how these losses can occur that I am cautious of focusing on one because I think they all need more attention.

John: Right. For people who are seeking you out, is it mostly couples or is it the mom herself? How does that break down in terms of your practice? I am fascinated because, originally, when I started reading over your practice materials in your book, I thought it was more female basement[?]. I got a lot out of it myself as being a male who went through this. What does your practice look like in terms of breakdown?

Joey: I have a nice mix of both that I see individuals both women and men, that sometimes it is the father who presents, who comes to me and says, “I am hurting, and I am feeling really helpless. I cannot do anything to help my wife feel better. I cannot change the circumstances. I am needing some help to talk about that.” I oftentimes have grandparents who contact me saying, “I [inaudible] double loss. It is the loss of this greatly anticipated and desired baby, but I am also seeing my own adult child hurting.” Sometimes I do work with families, but I think one of the important messages here is it is not just the woman who is the patient, that both parents are impacted even though in very different ways.

Joey: I love the name of your book “Rebirth” and when I think of you and I have read your website… Again, for our listeners and viewers, to find Joey, go to www.joeymillermsw.com. There is a ton of information on it. I have it up in front of me now, but I have gone over it. I really feel that although this is such a difficult topic, you represent hope. Can you explain? Getting people to the other side and part of why this is so important, that this is truly a book of hope and your practice is one of hope and help.

Joey: Thank you. I believe that is my strongest and most important message here, that for the unfortunate parents who experienced the loss of a pregnancy or death of a baby, they have learned all too well that pregnancy is not a promise. Even the words that we use when we are pregnant, “I am expecting. Yes, I am expecting that in 9 months, there will be a happily ever after.” That is is not the case for the majority of people I work with, but one other statistic that I want to share is that the overwhelming majority of parents who lose a baby, approximately 80% will go on to conceive again and have a healthy full-term pregnancy and baby.

Joey: That is not to suggest that another baby makes up for, takes place of the deceased baby, but there can be life beyond loss. It is helping parents and families grieve the loss of a desired baby and an intended baby work through layers of depression and grief and anxiety as they dare to think about trying again and then help them manage through another pregnancy and through a subsequent delivery. So, I think even though we sometimes get stuck in the numbers of loss, which are very important to talk about, I also want to showcase that 80% saying there is that possibility. There is that chance, and even though that road might feel very difficult… Even in your family history that you share…

John: Right.

Joey: …proving that it is not impossible.

John: Well, it is not only impossible. If there is anything that I was embarking on, Joey, and I had an 80% chance of success, that is a lot of hope right there itself, right there, the sheer numbers. I forgot to ask you earlier, and I meant to ask you, given that a family is its own ecosystem and you bring up the topic of not only husbands and wives and grandparents, which is fascinating to me, are sometimes predecessor children also included in your counseling? I am sure the impact is also felt to them. There is much confusion with them, and they were expecting a little brother or sister. Are they also included sometimes in your practicing and your counseling as well?

Joey: Absolutely. I do a lot of work with parents who have siblings to a deceased baby working with age-appropriate recommendations in terms of how to counsel a 6-year-old that he or she is not going to have a little brother or a little sister coming home. It is especially challenging when parents have lost their confidence and huge pieces of their identity after a loss for them to be able to go on and parent a sibling when they are grieving themselves and maybe not feeling that they are operating at capacity. There are a lot of different recommendations that I can give to families beyond just the 2 parents, the mother and the father, or a same-sex couple, especially if there are other children at home as well because, again, when there is a tragedy, when there is a loss, in my experience, it impacts the whole family.

John: It does[?]. I also want to give out as a public service to anybody who is suffering and feels at the end of their rope, please call either 1-800-Suicide, and that number is 1-800-784-2433; that is a National Suicide Prevention lifeline. We want everyone who is suffering who has not sought help like from a great Joey Miller or read her book yet, please reach out. That number is 724, and it is a lifeline. For those who want to find Joey, again, please go to www.joeymillermsw.com. Read her book. I have read it, it is a great book. There is a lot of hope in here. As Joey said, 80% of people who have suffered tragic losses, including our family as well, are going to find hope on the other side that there is going to be another baby.

John: Joey, we call this the Impact Podcast because we want to always have great people like you who are making an impact, who are making the world a better place for doing great things, and you are included in that. Even though this is a very difficult and tough topic, it really warrants covering, and we are so grateful for the important work that you do, and there is a great book that you have written. Thank you for being a guest today. God bless you and your practice. Thank you for being a guest today on the Impact Podcast.

Joey: Thank you, John. It has been my honor, and I am so grateful to you for raising the awareness. Thank you.

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 the marketingmasters.com.

John Shegerian: This edition of the Impact podcast is brought to you by Engage. Engage is a digital booking engine revolutionizing the talent booking industry with hundreds of athletes, entrepreneurs, speakers, and business leaders. Engage is the go-to spot for booking talent for your next event. For more information, please visit letsengage.com.

John: Welcome to another edition of the impact podcast. A very special edition of the impact podcast, we have got with us today legendary reporter, ESPN reporter Shelley Smith [inaudible] hey, Shelley.

Shelly Smith: The crowd goes wild.

John: I have been— I am the CEO of your fan club. So welcome to the podcast, Impact podcast and thanks for being here with us today.

Shelly: My pleasure. Thanks for inviting me.

John: Hey, Shelley, you have been doing this quite for some time since 1997.

Shelly: I am old John, just say it. Tell everybody I am old.

John: I am too. We are together kid. We are in the same generation. So it is all good. It is all good. Can you just give a little bio on your background to our listeners out there? Go ahead.

Shelly: Yeah. I was a print journalism major at Nebraska. I went from there to Japan and I was a Stars and Stripes as a print writer and then I got the big interview with Ben Johnson who nobody even knows anymore. That is how old I am. He was a sprinter who tested positive for steroids and I flew with him on a plane from Seoul to New York and I got the only interview with him.

John: Wow.

Shelly: And from there, it just took off. You know, I joined Sports Illustrated full-time and then ESPN came calling and wanted me to crossover. I had never taken a television class never ever ever. It was all well, learn and be stupid and I have been at ESPN ever since. They convinced me to give up Sports Illustrated and I have been at ESPN for twenty-some-odd years now, and I do not know how we count them because if we count the part-time here [inaudible]. I have won six Emmys.

John: Unbelievable which puts you in legendary status. Six Emmys. Six, that is a lot for anybody’s career, come on.

Shelly: I was you know, the best one was two years ago when I won for Jake Olson, who was the blind long snapper at USC. And it was a great story with Nancy Devaney who is a great producer and I could not believe we won. I had two nominees in the same category [inaudible] why of all the years do I have two nominees? I could not figure that one out. Could they just spread them out a little bit? With Schuye LaRue, who was a homeless basketball player.

John: Which is another great story because I follow all your stories and that is like you were put in like Sophie’s choice of the of sports journalism that year.

Shelly: I was doing some good work and now I am doing nothing. Well, now I am a writer for the Chargers, to cover the Chargers and I do injury reports and I do— I get to write features every week though. I had missed writing. So that was good and it has been good. I had one, you know, Justin Herbert is the Phenom out here and [inaudible] well Los Angeles and he has been— he has saved my season because I was going to be so miserable but he is delightful. The bad thing about this is that we cannot talk to anybody. We cannot go mess around with the coaches. We cannot talk with the players. We cannot talk to anybody. So it is like everything we do is on Zoom, which I now hate, and…

John: Like us all.

Shelly: I had Zoom next [?]. Yeah, like one year. I mean one week I could not move because my back was so stiff, but we get through it and it is not going to be forever. And that is what I keep telling myself, it is not— did not think it would be this long but I know it is not going to be forever and we are all healthy and safe and have jobs.

John: Thank God. That is right.

Shelly: So I feel very fortunate right now.

John: And I have to say this to you. You do not know this, but I owe you a huge thank you. And when I meet you in person one day which will happen. I am going to give you a hug and a kiss for this one because of you, Jake Olson, I got to meet Jake Olson because of you.

Shelly: You did?

John: Because of your coverage on him and not only did we meet, I became his business partner and backer in his technology venture Engage and that is all because of you Shelley Smith.

Shelly: Oh I did not know that. Yeah. Yeah.

John: That is because of you.

Shelly: No, it is not.

John: It is.

Shelly: It is because of Jake. Jake makes his own world spin and he will do whatever he wants to do and he will be president and he will win the Masters one day. He will be the first blind golfer to win the Masters.

John: I love that you are…

Shelly: I just hope I am around to see it.

John: Both of us. Both of us and by the way, when— I love the part of that documentary when you say, by the way, he chose USC but he also got into one other college, Harvard. That was the best.

Shelly: Right. Exactly.

John: That was the best.

Shelly: My other favorite part because you know, I had cancer, three different types of cancer and I had breast cancer when I was friends with him and I lost all my hair and we did a story together about cancer and he, of course, is blind but he would not know it because he looks right at you. He does not have the blind stare that a lot of people have because he is used to having sight. So I said to him, we were sitting next to one another on a bench and I said, what do you remember about my hair? and he goes real long flowy, well I am like well, give me your hand and I took his hand and I wrote [?] it on my bald head and he goes, Oh my God. Yes, that is my head now and he goes well because I will always think of you as having hair, and I said thank you, Jake. He is just the sweetest, nicest kid ever. He is not a kid anymore. He is an adult.

John: Not a kid. He is an adult.

Shelly: But I have known him since he was twelve. Yeah.

John: Wow, I mean, the fact how you covered that whole thing and documented that and I got and I am old enough and I am old enough like we discussed that I even read your book back in the day of Just Give Me the Ball. So I am you know because I go…

Shelly: Oh gosh.

John: Yeah, so I have read your books. I have read your books and that is why I get to be the CEO of your fan club, but I want to go back to the beginning, you know.

Shelly: All right.

John: This is— we are seeing an explosion today of these wonderful female sports journalists, Mina Kimes, Katie Nolan, Sarah Spain, and all these lovely people, unbelievably qualified and brilliant, but you were doing it way early before it was cool and before and while it was still a very very male-dominated industry, how hard was it? How much adversity and how much of that even still exist 23 years later?

Shelly: It does not and it was not that hard and it was not anything I was not used to. It was just what I wanted to do. So I did it and I did not care what anybody thought or said and there was no bullying. There was no, well the 49ers kind of had a problem. [Inaudible] It was clogged quickly. I mean I got shoved into the showers and Bubba Paris. Yeah, Bubba Paris was like this is what you want to see. I was like, no, I do not. So I just close my eyes because he is a big guy, but that was the only time that I ever had trouble in my newspaper the San Francisco Examiner, which I loved working there, took good care of me and there is nothing now that women cannot do and we could not— we did it back then too, and I was not the first. So quit saying I was a legend or whatever.

John: You were a trailblazer. You were a trailblazer.

Shelly: No. I do not want to listen. Do not say that. I hate that word.

John: Okay. All right.

Shelly: No, I was not.

John: All right.

Shelly: There were a lot of women before me. I did not do [?] anything. All I did was do my job and that is all I am doing now.

John: Did you loved it? and you just push through everything.

Shelly: I did. Yeah. I did.

John: Yeah. If you were to choose a sport to say, John, I covered everything that I have to but this is my favorite. What is your favorite sport?

Shelly: Anything in the playoffs. I love any type of competition, you know, the highest form of— I love covering the Olympics because there was something going on every day and that was always fun, to go and run around and see somebody win a sprint or a marathon or actually I covered bowling in Seoul as well and I am like yeah get the 7-10 split for your country. I just love what I do and I love and I have loved it ever since day one and I never get bored, well I do get bored. I would have been really bored if it was not for Justin Herbert [inaudible].

John: He has made it fun for everybody because he— I mean to how he— you know again, I am giggling but it is not funny at all. The fact, the day I remember watching the game where they just literally handed him the ball and just said you are going in without any— basically without any reps that week or anything else and on the first team and to go in the game and play that first game the way he did then the second game and then the third is just literally almost unheard of.

Shelly: He is smart a kid. He is a smart kid and if you do not understand what a 4.01 is because I never got close to that. He won the Academic Heisman, that is how smart he is and he is not a great interview. He says all the right things we hate that. But he is doing the right thing, but we do not get to know him because we cannot talk to anybody. I talked to his parents. I talked to his college coach. I have talked to everybody I can think of to do features on him, but it is really hard to do things on Zoom because first of all, you are doing them with ten other reporters who will get everything that you get so to get anything unique is really difficult so you have to be creative and that is what I tell the students I teach, is you got to be more creative, you have to find ways to get a hold of his parents, find the old teammate type of thing and that is what we are having to do now, but it is hard. It is really hard John.

John: You mentioned teaching. What do you teach and where do you teach it? And is that a great part of your life right now?

Shelly: Well, it is on zoom and [inaudible]. I teach at USC. I teach television journalism class and I teach sports commentary. The TV kids are, some of them are smart but the sports commentary kids are way smarter than me and I have to keep altering the syllabus because they are so smart and they think rationally and they think outside the box and they all want to succeed and they all want to— they all think I can get them a job. That is the biggest thing and of course, I cannot but it is fun. It was but it was much more fun to do it in person when you could look them in the eye and talk to them and I am still friends with a lot of these kids who have taken my classes. I have been doing it for I do not know four, five years now.

John: Wow.

Shelly: And it is rewarding. I was not going to because it was a lot of work to grade twenty papers, thirty, and ten projects, video projects.

John: Right.

Shelly: That is a lot of work but then I saw the progress that the kids made and that made me feel so good that these kids were learning and actually advancing and I said, okay, I will do it again. That is what has been every semester [?].

John: Shelley is a paradox when it comes to teaching because I get to teach not formally like you at an institution like USC a great institution but in terms of teaching the next generation of entrepreneurs that come either work for me or I go partners with, sometimes I see a role reversal. So it is sometimes I get confused but it is a lovely type of confusion. The teacher sometimes you do not know if you are the servant or the servee and sometimes the teacher and student relationship flips on you and there is so much to learn from that next generation coming up. Is that something that happens in the formal situation that you are in terms of USC institution and teaching the next generation of sports reporters?

Shelly: It is the same, it is absolutely the same as when I was in college. You teach them how to report and that is what you know and tonight [?]. I mean this class I am jumping on in a minute. They do not know what leads are, they have no clue and I am like, are you serious? You are a journalism major and you are in grad school because I have graduate students and undergraduates and you do not know what a lead is and you do not know how to capture somebody’s attention. So that is what we are focusing on this semester, is just great leads at but reporting is reporting and I do not care if it is for TV or vlogs, r magazines or whatever but reporting is reporting and that is what I try to team them and that is the same as it was when I was in school.

John: Is it easy— Is it easier to reach people now compared to when you were just starting out as a reporter and there were no social media obviously back then. Is it easier in terms of when you are teaching young people to reach out and work a lead or create their own lead in terms of they could go on and if they want to interview someone they can literally go on and DM that person compared to where you and I used to have to go through intermediaries and agent, whatever they call publicist and also is it harder now for students to actually reach who they want to cover or is it you know, or is it easier because of social media and the other tools that exist today?

Shelly: Well kind of both because there are so many people trying to get to Justin Herbert for example so many people and you cannot really reach them on social media, but most of the time it is easier, but you have to still have the same reporting skills that I learned and how to look up phone numbers and how to look up addresses and I remember even sending flowers to a couple because I wanted them, their interview, the things that we do, the way that we grovel is still the same and it is easier but it is harder. It is harder now because of the pandemic because you cannot go, you cannot just go and hang out by someone’s locker which is how I teach [?] myself, ESPN teaches us, give us something that only you can get because you were there and that is extremely difficult. So that is when I said you have to be more creative on how you get your information and how you get to the subject.

John: You know, Shelly. I do not want to finish this interview until we cover a very important and personal subject that our listeners really need to hear about, your battle and winning and not surviving but thriving and beating cancer. Talk a little bit about that battle and that and you are getting to the other side not as a survivor, but as a thriver.

Shelly: Well, thank you. Thank you very much for giving me the opportunity. I had three different types of cancer. I had uterine, breast cancer, and melanoma which would have killed me in two years had I not found it. It was on my back shoulder. So I never thought and they found it while they were examining my breast cancer and taking biopsies and they were like, oh you need to have this looked at. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay, that would have killed me in two years because melanoma is nothing to play with. It is very very serious and Holly Rowe had melanoma and she had a much harder fight than I did. My fight was relatively, I do not want to say easy because I had a lot of infections, a lot of bullshit but I had friends who came out and took care of me and I made it through and I made it through four rounds of chemo probably eighteen infections and thirty rounds of thirty doses of radiation. It was not fun and it zapped my energy but I did not work. I watched all seven seasons of The West Wing. That was my big accomplishment and so it is what it is and you just put one foot in front of the other and you just move in the direction they tell you and you do what the doctors say, and that is why this virus terrifies me because people are not doing what the doctors say. Do what the doctors say. They know what is going on. They know better than your cousin Judy and whatever. Do what the doctors say and that is all I have ever done and I am doing it now and I am still on medication and but I am good. I am in a good place.

John: Wow. That is awesome. You and I are of the generation that we remember when Betty Ford first made breast cancer— put breast cancer and platformed it for us and early detection. Is that still a thing?

Shelly: Oh yeah.

John: Is that something that you need to keep sharing with this generation of women out there that early detection is still critical to survival and getting through this.

Shelly: In any kind of cancer, early detection is the key. Prostate cancer, anything else, and it is like I was the first female at ESPN, I guess on air, I do not know to get cancer and I went bald on TV. And actually, it was great because I was in Hawaii and it was really windy. And otherwise, my hair would have been just a disaster. So I like I am a bald object [?] and I just did my hit and I moved on and I just— I did— I refuse to feel sorry for myself and I refuse to give in to the infections which were way worse than the chemo. But yeah, it was a long time coming but now it seems to be a normal thing and one in eight women will get breast cancer. And that is a lot, so you have to— early detection is huge and if I had not had early detection, I do not— I would not be anywhere because I had no, I did not have a lump. I did not have any kind of abnormality. I can speak [inaudible] and I just went in to get my annual check and the look on the lady’s face was like, oh my God, and I am like what? what? and I had to wait for I went to Oklahoma for the playoffs and I came back and my doctor called me and said and they all know what I do. So they are all big sports fans and he says we think we found a small bit of cancer in your mammogram. And I said what? because oh by the way, where did the Lakers get? Who did— what pick did they get? And I said, I am a little preoccupied right now maybe I can answer you tomorrow, it was just, it was surreal for a while.

John: Shelly, last question before I let you go today. How you have won six Emmys and you have done these incredible stories and I have been a fan of all of them including the Jake Olson story and the other story that year that was up for an Emmy. That story is also just stuck with me forever. But you did one on yourself, it was called Triumphant and that documentary talks a little bit about that. And what did you learn doing a documentary on yourself as opposed to having somebody else to do it on.

Shelly: Well, it was a lot easier because I do not have to do any of the work, they just came from Seattle. Came in and just followed me around, they end up staying at my house because they did not have hotels or anything. I said just stay at my house. So we had a great time. We barbecued, we drank. It was really that part was fun, but it was also scary going in for that first checkup and not knowing what they were going to say. And so that part was frightening and having to wait for the results was probably the worst part of it all and once I got them though, I was like, extremely happy.

John: That is awesome.

Shelly: I just said like and I hate like, I hate people who say like, so.

John: You know, Shelley.

Shelly: Talk to one of my students last night, I said do me a favor do not say like ever again.

John: You know, we are still going through this very tragic COVID-19 period and you were kind, so kind to give us this time today. I want to leave you with the last word. You have left a lasting impression on me and all the viewers that have enjoyed your work or and readers over the years. But this, we all need to still get to the other side to hopefully a better future, but I want to leave you with the last words before we sign off for today.

Shelly: Listen to the science, be happy, do what the doctors say, and live your life. Live your best life and whether that is being sick or not being sick. Hopefully, it is not but do what you want to do. Do what your passion tells you and you will never go wrong.

John: Shelley Smith. You could find her at Shelly ESPN. She is triumphant and she is made an impact on me and all of our listeners and viewers around the world and her fans around the world in the last twenty-three years.

Shelly: Both of them.

John: Thank you, Shelley Smith.

Shelly: Thank you, John.

John: Have a wonderful and safe holiday and God bless you.

Shelly: I will.

John: And good health in the future. I will continue to follow you like I always have.

Shelly: Thank you so much.

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

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

John: Welcome to another edition of the Impact Podcast. This is a very special edition of the Impact Podcast as I have my long-time friend on with us today, David Abel. David, welcome to the Impact Podcast.

David Abel: Nice to see you, John, a long relationship which I treasure.

John: Yeah, me too. 30 years or so, you and your beautiful wife, Brenda Levin, have been both inspirational and aspirational to Tammy and myself, because it is just incredible, both of your careers and what you have accomplished and still are accomplishing. It is just an honor, always, to have you on to be talking about the current state of affairs of where we are and where we are going. I always learn from you. For our viewers out there who have not met David before, he is way beyond just a Chairman and the Founder of the VerdeXchange. If you have not ever heard of the VerdeXchange before, you can go to verdexchange.org.

David, you have been on the show before, but share with our listeners your fascinating background before even founding the VerdeXchange fourteen years ago, and then the lead-up to founding it, why you founded it fourteen years ago, and where we are today.

David: John, I would be happy to give you a version of the roadmap. I have been doing this for forty or fifty years. Mostly, I would say I am a product of the 60s, studying economics, and eventually law and education, but interested in being a social entrepreneur. I wanted to be entrepreneurial, but I was very committed to the civic sector, what was called a Coro Fellow in the 60s, went on to run that organization. It is a made-up word, but it is an organization for 90 years that has been a vehicle for preparing people for civic life. In fact, today, there are 4 Coro graduates and there are twelve in a program every year in 4 cities. They rotate business, labor, government, political campaigns; therefore, US senators that are Coro graduates, Feinstein and Padilla in California, Bennett in Colorado, and Kaine in Virginia. Four out of 100 when the program is pretty small is a testament to that real-life training in what we call the Civic Arena. I was a product of the 60s, a product of that training came back to run that program, and then got involved as might expect in the 80s in cable television. I did the marketing and representation for multiple companies in twenty franchise battles all over California and outside California because your meshing local agendas and local values with the promise of cable television. That led me to be asked to do 2 or 3 other things which have defined my business career. One is to help a small cab company by yellow cab in Wilmington, California, and become the keep cab franchise for the ’84 Olympics. That cab company grew to be the largest cab company in the Western United States, and it grew a new entity called SuperShuttle which was a shared ride vehicle to and from airports. It was in over 20 cities around the country. About 14 years ago, that company got bought out. I was liberated. I was a Board Member, Shareholder, and advocate for them. My son had become a green advocate coming out of Stanford and I needed to figure out a way to have a 15-minute conversation with him. Somebody asked me to fill a hole in the Convention Center’s agenda and we created a green tech conference called VerdeXchange. Why VerdeXchange? Because Antonio Villaraigosa just became Mayor and we did not want to call it Green Exchange, so he said “VerdeXchange”, as he often corrects me when I say the term. That was inspired, in part, by what General Electric was doing at that time. I remember being on the stage at then NBC owned by GE with Immelt, the President/CEO of GE, and 15 CEOs on the stage with them, from railroads to all kinds of companies involved with him. I said, “This is not the green environmental movement that I remember from college. This is something that tends towards a trillion-dollar or more economy. I am interested in it.” That became our model. The VerdeXchange became a global platform in California looking at energy, water, transport, finance, now many other things like Blue Tech, ESG, and trade agreements and their impact on climate change. It always was a cross-platform vehicle. It had 50-some panels over two and a half days. You were a part of those in the early days.

John: Yup.

David: We had receptions that the Japanese and Canadian Consulates, they were part of that program that allowed people to build business relationships. Our theme was always what is impacting the market. What is in market, about to be in market, and needed in the market in this cleantech environment. You and I have both seen an evolution over 14 years of those markets. I just was corrected by my friend, Congressman Earl Blumenauer, yesterday who said, “It is not a trillion-dollar market which was on our website. It is a multi-trillion dollar economy. You know that really well.” That has been a part of my life. Not only the part of my life, we publish, involve civically in a number of organizations, and play a serious role with those organizations. I have taught at USC down at San Diego and at UC San Diego on regional issues, equity issues, and economy issues. That is a part of “I am still a social entrepreneur, but it is evolving with age, and now I am with two shots, I am liberated.”

John: David, explain a little bit to me and our audience, though. Social entrepreneur is really a new term. It is literally something that started evolving late 90’s and the 2000’s. You were 30 years ahead in your desire to be a social entrepreneur. Where did that come from, family member, mom, dad, or other family members, or is it just a sign of our times of JFK’s famous words about “Do more for a country than what we are asking our country for”? Where did that emanate from and how did you even think of that? It was not part of our vernacular back then.

David: Yeah. I will simplify it by saying, I am a child of main street merchants who grew up in the mid-’60s. I studied in the London School of Economics, traveled Europe and Asia, was art when Robert Kennedy fell in South Carolina for 2 years working on the issues that mattered. I believe in the power of the market and private sector, but I like to harness it to the public and civic agendas of our time. The marrying of those two was the vehicle for talking about being a social entrepreneur. I do not think I could have worked for an ARCO, AECOM, or whatever; I would rather have my own firm which was deeply involved in all those companies. I have been a Board Member of NASDAQ companies and private companies as a vehicle to do that, but I am not an institutionalist in the sense of a private sector company guy.

John: I got it. You love policy. You are so good in the policy stuff, I give you so much credit on that. For our listeners and our viewers, to find the VerdeXchange, please go to www.verdexchange.org. You have a conference that I am going to be involved with coming up at the end of the month, but talk a little bit more now about the differentiators. Why is VerdeXchange different than other green conferences that exist today? Who is your target audience, and how does it keep evolving and succeeding so well?

David: John, I would say that it is because, unlike most green conferences, it really is focused on the marketplace, on market makers.

John: Okay.

David: We are only interested in policy as it impacts the market. We are interested in entrepreneurs, initiatives, and product lines. When we talk to BMW, it is about how they are watching what the City of LA is doing with respect to mobility because that is influencing their whole production line. When we talk about water, we are talking about the change of direction from importation to reliance on recycled water, which is in the Southwest in California. When we are talking about the GRID, we are not talking any longer about how the PUC is reimbursing PG&E and SC&E; we are talking about how it has to be a two-way grid, and how we are going to decentralize that grid and rely on it at the same time. When we are talking about water in the oceans, we are not talking about as a Marine Institute, we are talking about the promise of Blue Tech and of technology in the ocean. I will give you one example, we have Geotech thinking about how we find our way with maps in our car from one direction to another using satellites, but underwater, you cannot use satellites. What are the technologies that are being stolen from JPL and the defense industry to be used in the new sectors of undersea exploration and development? When we are talking about ESG, it is bursting onto the scene as a material driver. We had panels with NASDAQ, the Toronto Stock Exchange, and other companies for years and had small audiences. Now, I think we would had have a giant audience, as you well know, as Morgan Stanley, Price Waterhouse, and everybody in the world realizes, it will drive markets and the behavior of companies. We are doing that environmental justice has become a new part of what we are doing because it is a part of life. We just had 3 webinars on green hydrogen, what hydrogen and what is exploding in that market of renewable green hydrogen, both globally and as an alternative to large-scale manufacturing industrialization processes. All these are new and they are evolving at breakneck speed. We like to have the people in the room who are the market makers driving that, or who want to copy or scale those technologies. That is the thrust, the centerpiece. I say the last is, from day 1, we have had a global perspective. The Japanese, Canadians deeply, Europeans, Koreans, Aussies, New Zealand, are all have been a part of our conference. All of them have come to the California marketplace, and all of them have two-way agreements. Israelis have just taken a big piece of bird exchange in the marketplace as well. It is global but focused on California, and California, we think, is a leader in this market.

John: What does the future hold for carbon credits with regards to creating an exchange where offsets are acceptable and also purchasable? Is this part of what is going to be happening in terms of climate change in the future, David, or not so much?

David: Well, John, that is a leading question because I could turn it back on you, you know more about it. You have been an expert on one of our panels, but we have had the California Treasure to be a part of this. We have had Federal Tax Policy people be a part of these conferences for years. We have talked about carbon capture and some of the largest investment funds in California, US Renewables, who really believe that this has a promise. Again, I am, the general, am bringing the talent together and I would turn to you and say, “John, what is the opportunity here for your company in terms of credits?”

John: It is a huge opportunity and very exciting. This conference is going to be online.

David: Well, it has been online, John, instead of our conference being always in the last week of January for the past 14 years. This year, we could not bring people together, a thousand people together, in a Downtown hotel from fifteen different countries, as well as California, so we went virtual. We have spread it out over time and have been doing webinars since November, all the way through March, a couple at a time on these various topics.

John: Right. Given that science is winning and we are going to be living in a post-pandemic world, God willing, in 2022, what are your feelings in person and relationship building and being nose-to-nose versus leveraging wonderful technology that you and I are sharing today?

David: It is a great question, John. I am 74, so I am biased towards that impersonal “over a coffee” or “over the reception” of the Japanese Consulate, building relationships year to year that grow are followed up. I have to admit doing these webinars and bringing people together who are from the four corners of the globe onto one panel is pretty powerful, but the follow-up in the maturation of those relationships, I wait to see whether they are still as strong as the ones that are developed in person. By the way, I traveled, as well, not only to the Milking Conference, which you are familiar with, but 2 major conferences all over the globe, building relationships; not so much to go to the conference, but to build those relationships. I find those experiences as very powerful. We will have to see what the balance is of the advantages and disadvantages of being so Zoom-centric.

John: Yeah, it is a great point. Talk a little bit about that, David. We are living in both very interesting and exciting times right now because it seems like the world is caught up to us. You and I were talking a little bit off air before we started this podcast, and you were very early in what you were doing with VerdeXchange. For our listeners who would like to find David, his colleagues, and the great work that the VerdeXchange is doing, go to www.verdexchange.org. You were very early and could have easily gone away, but your tenacity would not allow that. We were living in some points during the last 14 years where not everyone was truly “their feet wearing word following their lips” like she will say that. Now, with the new Biden administration and the excitement around ESG and circular economy, it seems like the world is caught up with guys like you and me. It is a very exciting time to be both in our positions and doing the work that we do, and we both enjoy. What does that mean for you at 74? Seventy-four is nothing now, David, it was when we were kids. Now, when Warren Buffett is still crushing it at 90, 74 really sounds like about 55 did when we were about 20. What does that mean for the future of the VerdeXchange by the administration, and everything else green that are happening around the world right now?

David: Well, I will make a quick comment and then try to answer your question better. What helped us survive in the difficult years was international interest in our platform. They loved being under a larger umbrella with significant connections to the leadership of California’s clean-tech energy economy. All those officials have been an integral part and personal friends from the beginning. They would not let me fail, not let me stop. That continues, but now again, the energy is coming back in these sectors and the opportunities to keep it going. I would say that I like you seeing the new Biden Administration come in and seeing the Senate and Congress in the position it is right now, could not be more bullish about the opportunities in almost every one of these sectors, on energy, water, transport, green tech, housing, and the built environment, and building back better. All of these subjects, and the role that I was introduced to four or five years ago with Admiral Denim[?] again, who was number 2 in the Navy under Obama and has become a Senior Adviser to us, on what the role of the military is in moving the agenda along on climate change and clean energy and technology, have exposed me to and made me bullish about these sectors. Why not be a platform for sharing what is going on in the world and raising the bar for people’s expectations about both quality and opportunity in these sectors? You all know that politics plays a role in many of the discussions about procurement. We want the politics not to be the only metric in these decisions. We want to push the envelope every time the decision is made to steal ideas from Denmark, Japan, Korea, South Africa, or wherever. We want electric recharging to be from the streets as they are in Israel, not just from charging stations. Every innovation we can share and bring to the attention in this market, we feel positive about.

John: Interesting. Given that we have been friends for 30 years and I had the honor to work with your family, especially Brenda, back in the day of the Yelling Company and Downtown’s Revitalization, it was a very exciting times. Unfortunately, we also had to live through the Rodney King riots, and last summer, we had to live through another tragic period in American history. I read a great line, recently, by Senator Cory Booker. He said, “If America has not broken your heart, then you do not love her enough.” How hopeful are you in terms of, “I know you love our state of California” and “I know you love our democracy more than most people I have ever met in my entire life”? Where are we now, where are we going in 2021 and beyond in terms of the success of this experiment called the “US democracy”, and are you hopeful about the path ahead?

David: Well, first of all, I am a Californian so I am generally optimistic. Secondly, California is pivoting. We are going to have to find a better balance as we experiment and push the envelope. If you look at the leadership changes in the regulatory agencies in the State, an all-woman State Transportation Commission, all-woman Department of Water and Power in the City of LA, the largest municipal utility in the country, the leadership of the legislature; I am fond of the old-timers, but there are new generations coming every 30 days; we are trying to pivot as we find our balance. After we pivot, we will get better at it, but as a Californian, I have lived in South Carolina and other locations, so not everybody does it the same way, we are trying to pivot to get a hold of the future and harness it for our advantage. I am bullish, I understand the pitfalls of some of this. Sometimes, experience is cast away in favor of representation, but it sorts itself out. Again, I conclude as a Californian, I am bullish.

John: That is good. I love that hopefulness. For our listeners and viewers also, to see the panel that I am going to be involved with policies and technologies for California waste for recycling crisis, you can go to VerdeXchange.org. David, do you have any other plugs you would like to give for your great platform and organization before it is time for us to wind it up today?

David: Well, just the secret and spelling out VerdeXchange is what we did in year one, is we spelled V-E-R-D-E-X C-H-A-N-G-E because we wanted to emphasize the market nature of the exchanges. I think you have done a terrific job of sharing this platform and opportunities. We welcome you to participate. We have been, like the Milking Conference and others, a pretty expensive ticket in the past, but not this year. When we went virtual, our sponsors stepped up and so it is pretty easy to sign on, register, and be a part of this. We will see what happens next year when we try to find a blend between Zoom and in person, but we welcome you all to participate. There are 2 on March 30th, one has to do with the GRID and its security and transmission, and the other, waste and recycling. We are delighted to feature you and focus on e-waste, organic waste, and plastic waste, all of which are hot topics nationwide, globally, and in California, especially. We would welcome your participation and the relationships that flow from this conversation with you.

John: David, like I said, it has been 30 years of inspiration for me. You are the reason I started this show. This show is just a mission for me, but someone like you who has made an impact in their entire life is just an honor to have you back on today. You are always welcome here, and it is very humbling to be asked to participate in your wonderful VerdeXchange platform. Thank you, again, for being a guest today. I look forward to March 30th and sharing that day with you, as well.

David: Thank you, John.

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 trajectory Energy Partners. Trajectory Energy Partners brings together landowners, electricity users, and communities to develop solar energy projects with strong local support. For more information on how trajectory is leaving the Solar Revolution, please visit (trajectoryenergy.com)

John: Welcome to another edition of the impact podcast. This is a very special edition of the Impact Podcast. We are so lucky to have with us today David Osborne. He is the CEO of Virgin Pulse. Welcome to Impact David.

David Osborne: Thanks, John. How are you doing?

John: I am doing great. You and I are still living through this tragic covid period. I am sitting here in Fresno. I believe you are on the East Coast in Boston or Rhode Island area, but I still feel like we are sort of sitting next to each other in an office and it works. We were talking a little bit off-air before we started and this technology seems to be working out for us.

David: Yeah. The only difference is you are in the warm and I am in the cold right now.

John: That would be true. Okay, I cannot make that up. For our listeners out there. This is going to be a timely show. Virgin Pulse is doing very important things in David. I want you to go through all the important things that you are doing in Virgin Pulse with you and your colleagues. Before we get into that share a little bit about the David Osborne story. How you even got here, and what was your background before being named the CEO of Virgin Pulse?

David: Sure, I am happy to. I was in private equity for a while not as a deal guy, but as an operator. I have had a lot of experience running software companies or pieces of software companies. I was working for a company in New York that was a majority owner of Virgin Pulse about six years ago. Insight Venture Partners, a great company. They said “Hey, look at we got this opportunity. We got this company called Virgin Pulse, they just acquired two companies. Two competitors are theirs. That executive team is fantastic. They do not have a ton of integration experience”. I have integrated lots of companies and bought lots of companies. “Could you jump in there help them integrate and then come back?” and I said sure. Then I joined. About six months later I just said I do not want to come back. I love what these guys are doing. It is a great business, set of people, team, and culture.

I saw this opportunity to not just consolidate this industry, but fix it or at least innovate around it. I do not think that the healthcare industry is necessarily fixable right now. I never look back and they appointed me CEO about eight to ten months after that, and here we are.

John: Let me see if I got this right. I read a lot about you. I read a lot about this great company for our listeners out there to find Virgin Pulse. I am on their website now. It is a gorgeous website full of tons of information go to (www.virginpulse.com) You are the world’s largest digital health and well-being company serving over 7 million employees at 3100 companies.

David: Well, we are close to 50 million members now on the plateau.

John: Oh!

David: Yeah.

John: 15 million members?

David: Yeah.

John: Okay. Wait a second. Let us step back. Talk about when the journey started for Virgin Pulse. How is it invented[?], Richard Branson’s involvement.

David: Sure.

John: Where are you in the journey now, and what services do you offer that you think are compelling to get 15 million people at over 3,000 companies? It has got to be some kind of compelling great services you offer.

David: Yeah, Richard Branson started the company about 15 years ago, more as an activity-based company, like just a get active I think it was.

John: Yeah.

David: They have changed names and Brands a few times. We just kind of transformed that from activity to almost everything health and well-being. Health and well-being are not just about getting your steps in. It is mental resilience, financial wellness, sleep nutrition. We went down that path for a few years and then about three years ago. We need to take this to the next level and help members navigate the complexity of the Health Care system at least domestically, and get into more ROI-driven population health, and on how do we solve for gaps in care and solve for health outcomes. I was talking to somebody the other day, and I almost equate it to. I have been on record saying this before. Almost like the taxicab industry, that is a broken industry. One could say if you have ever tried to get a taxi cab at five o’clock in New York when they are on their shift switch?

John: Yeah.

David: Impossible right? Companies like Uber and Lyft did not try and fix the taxicab industry. They just innovated around and we are doing the same thing. We do not think we can fix the health care industry, but we can certainly innovate around it. We can put everything health and well-being, and employee engagement, and navigating the complexity of the Health Care system from like I said, activity to sleep, nutrition, digital therapeutics. A benefit navigation care guidance on to one platform that people can come back to, and just kind of get it all in one shot. That is what we have done, and that is where we are going.

John: I am so intrigued. I am the chairman of our company here. We have got a thousand employees. I was reading all about you studying the website, all your literature, and about you. This would be something we want to use. Who makes decisions on these kinds of critical issues. Is it the Chairmans or CEOs or is it Human Resources directors? Whom are you pitching to? Who are you appealing to on a day-to-day basis when you are out there doing business development?

David: Yeah. Sure. It generally rolls into the head of benefits. Employers and payers by the platform as a benefit for their employees. They roll it out as a benefit. There is extrinsic motivation, they will give incentives. It could be a discount off your health premium or an influx of cash stipend into your HSA. Like just get healthy. We all know that a healthy employee shows up at work better and ready to perform at their Peak. We usually sell them to the benefits area. However with the pandemic and Covid-19. It is certainly reaching the c-suite, and I think we are seeing CEOs get more involved with health and well-being and trying to figure out how do we do what is best for our employees and keep our employees healthy and safe.

John: We are going to come back to help in covid and everything that regarding wellness and let us go back to the issue of culture. Corporate culture. How are you involved with the corporate culture issues, and why is called keeping corporate culture set advertise within the company, message outside of the company, and maintaining it, actually working on it. Why is that so important to what you do?

David: Yeah. I think it is really important. I think it is changed to, as you know everybody has been working from home for a long time.

John: Right.

David: I think the whole work from home Dynamic is forever changed, even post covid. If I think about our company, we have about 1,500 employees.

John: Okay.

David: About a third of them are remote. They are not around in the office.

John: Okay.

David: I think remote hiring has become a big thing now.

John: Right.

David: You read all about Silicon Valley. Years ago, a programmer sitting in Charleston South Carolina is not going to pick up a phone when Palo Alto calls them.

John: Right.

David: Now they are going to pick up the phone and can work from home and do this great job. I think that remote hiring is bigger than ever and we are going to do more remote hiring as well. If the third of our company is remote after this pandemic, I am guessing John, probably we are going to want to stay at home regardless?

John: Right?

David: In third, they are going to want to come in, and it is almost like the center of excellence concept. They are going to want to come to the office. Driving a good culture is critical in that environment. I think it becomes more critical, and if I think about what the pandemic, I will approach your question a little bit about with the pandemic has taught us if you do not mind?

John: Yeah. Go, I want to go into that.

David: I think we communicate better now to our employees than we ever have. We have no choice. We do daily stand-ups. I have switched our town halls from a quarterly town hall to a monthly town hall. We almost like to over-communicate if you will. I think that companies, as they venture into a more flexible work from home policy, which was hard for us John because we had a very collaborative environment. We have got this beautiful office in Providence, Rhode Island. We built it from scratch.

John: Right.

David: We took over a building.

John: Yeah.

David: It has got this great background.

John: I have seen it. It is gorgeous.

David: [inaudible] I call it Silicon Valley for 21 dollars a square foot. It is an amazing place. But at the end of the day, we had a culture of collaboration. We celebrated wins together. We learn from our losses. But as we go into the post-pandemic world, we saw that a lot of people are going to want to work from home. We have proven to ourselves that our people can be very productive at home. They really can. The question now is how do you step to your point? How do you create or continue with this great culture that we have? I think it is to be more transparent which we are. Communicate better, which we’ve done. Be more agile. Think about new ways of thinking. Think about new ways of collaborating. We celebrate success with our employees more than we used to. We focus on health and well-being as you can imagine. We do a lot more Social Challenges to keep everybody engaged around the world. We just make sure we have the right kind of remote work from home policies, procedures, stipends if you will, and all that kind of thing.

John: It is interesting what you have said. We do the same thing. I used to have quarterly town halls and I do it monthly, and it works. Because of the unique position where you sit in David. You have 15 million members over 3000 Corporate clients that you represent the data that you must be picking up. Do you believe your path forward represents how other companies are going to be moving forward as well in terms of those who are going to stay at home versus those who are going to come to the office is that just unique to your company? which it was used in a certain way and other companies might break differently. What are you sensing from the other CEOs and your constituency based on whom you represent?

David: Yeah. There are two questions there, and they are both really good ones. The data part on our number one is that what other CEOs are doing with work from home. I think everybody will have flavors of what I just said.

John: Yeah.

David: I don’t think anybody is going to go back to a model of forcing people to come back to the office.

John: Okay.

David: Remote hiring is like I said is becoming bigger. We are going to see most companies try and meet employees where they are, and just try and do good for them more than anything. Salesforce came out with something today that was very similar to what we are doing. You are going to have a remote, and you are going to have people that are going to come in. You are going to have people that might want to come in just a couple of days a week. I love the idea of if you are close to an office and you can come in. On post-pandemic, let us not do Zoom calls with clients from our bedroom anymore. Let us go to the office to do it. That would be great. If that is step one if we get out there.

John: But that is interesting. I like that. Okay.

David: Yeah. No more FedEx guys ringing the doorbell. We got to meet employees where they are. There are still people that are homeschooling for example.

John: Right.

David: People can be productive at home. We need to make sure that we are flexible as we can be.

John: For those listeners and viewers that have just joined us. We are so lucky to have with us today David Osborne. He is the CEO of Virgin Pulse. To find David and his great company and colleagues. Please go to (www.virginpulse.com) David, I do not make this show political, never have in 13 years, but we just came out of very different times. Politically speaking. We are talking about health and well-being now, and now we have moved into the bite[?] of administration where Kamala Harris, the first woman vice president half black half Southeast Asian talk a little bit about the times that we live in, and diversity equity and inclusion having a huge part of health and well-being of corporate employees.

David: Sure. Well, I think diversity and Equity inclusion is the linchpin. It is not an input like how many hours did I sleep that night. It is all about employee well-being candidly. If these are off, then the company is off. If these are off no one is well. No one will feel safe, and heard at work. No one will feel like they are compensated appropriately at work. No one will feel they have a path for growth. If these are off I would argue and say no one as well. We have to foster radical inclusion candidly. The data is there.

Companies that are great at diverse a conclusion just are better, and they are more successful. I think organizations need to be intentional in embedding DEI into all aspects of their culture. Like I said it is not an input. It is not a bolt-on. It is just part of your culture. It has to be part of the organization and I love it candidly. It is a great recruiting tool. I read an article a while ago that 8 out of 10 candidates that were interviewed said that inclusion is one of the most important things when choosing an employer. That is just the way it is.

John: That is great. I know you have this digital platform called home base for health. I want to understand what that means from Virgin Pulse and all of your members. Is it also going to continue to expand because of COVID, and now what we are all doing with Hydro, Mira, Peloton, and all the opportunities that we now have found to work at home. Workout at home instead of going to the gym with.

David: Yeah. Sure. The home-based for health is really where we are driving our platform. It is the one place to go for everything health and well-being.

John: Okay.

David: Whether it is an activity, sleep, nutrition, mental health, financial health, women’s health, family health, digital therapeutics dealing with diabetes prevention and cure, hypertension, gaps in care, population health that you benefit navigation. Everything that is health and well-being, and navigating the complexity of the Healthcare System. It is everything that you can imagine on one platform where people go to every single day. The beautiful thing about Virgin Pulse in our platform is our members that are on the platform come back and use it 60% of use daily, which is unbelievable. It is a number we are proud of.

I am an ex-college golfer. I do not know if you have read that. I used to sit with people. If you play golf once a year, you would not get any better and [inaudible] off once a month. You would not get any better. Health and well-being are the same way. If I took care of myself once a year once a month, I would not get any better. I would probably get worse and atrophy from a health and well-being standpoint. It is a daily activity. It does not have to be massive. The platform home base for health is very personalized. What you might be focused on John today could be sleep and stress, and I might be focused on activity nutrition. The platform uses artificial intelligence to understand who I am and who you are and it will roll out know data content programs that are very specific for you to work on that day or that week or month. It will do very different things for me based on what my numbers are and what is important to me.

John: David we did get a little personal before we got on the show, and I said how great you look, and it is so nice to meet a leader. You walk the talk. I said you look about 40, you told me you were a little bit older. I am 58, and I try to live. Now I am wearing my Garmin watch that counts my steps. Does this make our lives better or is it just made us a little bit obsessive-compulsive? Does that make me a little bit more cuckoo when it comes to that stuff? or is that a good thing that is making me more cognizant of what I am doing, and making me get my 10,000 15,000 steps a day, and forcing me to be the best self I can be?

David: Yeah, I think it is a good thing. You do not stare at your garment all day long, but it is just data, right John?

John: Right.

David: Not knowing how much is like I wear the Oura ring right? I am focused on my cleat right now.

John: Yeah.

David: I think it is just understanding how am I sleeping. When do they go to bed? How many hours did I sleep? That is important to me. How much activity or how many steps did you get. That is important to you. We collect about 12 and a half billion data points a month from our members, and that allows us to feed it into artificial intelligence machine learning. Offer up recommendations, and because our recommendations are so spot-on, and because we are so good at getting people to use the platform and follow those recommendations. We can show outcomes, and change lives for good and deliver an ROI that the industry needs to see. I think it is a good thing, John.

John: Okay. It is a great answer to the question. Now, let us talk about what you have seen, what we have all seen those who have been paying attention obviously during this covid-19 tragic period we have so many breaks in the healthcare system that we did not realize before. Maybe someone like you realize it because that is your that’s the world you live in. But a Layman like me a business person entrepreneur did not realize how chaotic and how broken our system is. I do not know if you have gotten the vaccine yet. I have not gotten the vaccine yet. But there is so much misinformation out there. Is it part of what your evolution is? Are you going to continue to push technology to help bring services and opportunities just like we are going towards personalized medicine? Will your platform State Cutting Edge in terms of delivering the best services and best opportunities for health care for your constituents and members?

David: Yeah. Absolutely. We invest heavily in Innovation every year, and every year we invest more in RND. We are not done with our home base for Health Vision, but we are getting close but to your point, people are going to come out of this pandemic somewhat broken. Whether it is mental health. It is a huge impact right now on employees. Substance abuse is on the rise, obesity is increasing, and musculoskeletal issues are becoming more prevalent due to people just not being active.

John: Right.

David: I used to say that sitting is the new smoking. You just got to get active. Our platform offers up tools and resources to establish new habits in this what I would call new Norm. It is personalized as I mentioned. It kind of meets employees where they are, and what is important to them. More importantly, it makes it easy for them to find. Whether if you have an EAP program or coaching or activity, nutrition, mental health, etc. Make it easy to find employees who do not want to log on to 10 different things to figure out how to get healthier and how to get better, and then the whole isolation component.

John: Right

David: The Social Challenges and bringing your organization closer together to continue to be involved as an organization and as a person. I think that is important. We will continue to innovate as fast as we can and bring a home base for Health Vision to completion.

John: Before we talk about the future. I just want to ask you because you and I talked with both walkers to stay healthy especially during these times with Jim’s clothes and stuff. How many steps a day is ideal now? I know it is very personalized and everybody is different but if you were to say because I am like you. The desk I am sitting at right now is a standing desk as well. I happened to be sitting while I interview you. But if sitting is the new smoking how many steps a day just to get our blood going is good to do?

David: Well. Yeah. Well first and foremost, I am not a doctor.

John: Okay.

David: I can cite the research. I strive for 10,000 steps a day.

John: Okay.

David: I try and do something a little bit more active whether it is running on occasion, not daily, but probably at least three or four times a week. But to your point is you can stand all day long and not have one step as you can imagine. But it still allows the circulation to flow through your body. So I think a combination of just not sitting all day. Steps, as well as standing if you are working nine or twelve hours, is an important combination if you will.

John: We talked a little bit off-air about plan phase[?] eating David.

David: Yeah.

John: 2010 I had a common friend say “hey, can you interview this guy” who wants to get a little visibilities his name was Ethan Brown, and even at a little company called beyond me and he was just starting it. Of course, I interviewed him, and I had them on again in 2013, and now we know we are beyond meat[?] is. Is plant-based eating and better eating a part of our future for everyone who wants to be their best self?

David: I hope so. There is no doubt that you can get all the protein you need from a plant-based diet. You know this John you are a vegetarian/vegan. I cannot remember where you are and your specs, right?

John: Right. Pretty much.

David: You can get everything you need from a plant-based diet. You do not need to go out and eat cows all day long and have these mass farming activities. I do not want to be political on your show either.

John: Right.

David: I think I am a big fan of plant-based eating. I cheat every once in a while.

John: We all do.

David: I am not opposed to having the odd steak here and there.

John: Right.

David: To your point, I try and stay more plant-based and I feel healthier than I have ever felt.

John: David, in terms of an ROI. From a real business and bottom-line perspective. Healthier employees mean healthier company means better Revenue better profits.

David: Yes.

John: When your business development people are speaking to guys like me or my director of HR, how does that equate? Can you just without going into strict numbers, what does it look like when you say hey John it is going to cost this much. But here is what from our other 3,000 clients. Here is what we are seeing there. They are all seeing a lot of benefit in 15 million members. Are the numbers compelling when it comes to healthier employees?

David: Yeah. No doubt. I think that is one of the key aspects of home base for health to be able to ingest claims data, and figure out how do we solve for gaps in care, and how do you think about population health, and health outcomes. Right now we are showing that we are saving just north of about a thousand dollars per employee per year. That might not seem like a lot but if you have 20,000 employees, that is 20 million dollars.

John: Gosh.

David: There is a massive ROI, I think the bigger point is how do we get to focus on not just using claims ingestion, but also to figure out true gaps in care. True harder ROI and get in front of people that have potential problems looming.

John: David. I do not like it when the media talks about all we cannot wait till science wins, and we all get vaccinated or get a herd immunity or some combination thereof, and we go to a new normal. I think New-Normal is such a defeatist term. I like the terminology New-Better. Talk a little bit about where you are going to take Virgin Pulse in the years to come and your home base for health which I love one place for all the information. How do we all get to a New-Better when we get through this very tragic covid period.

David: Yeah, Not to be too repetitive but the home base for health, and the one platform that has everything all-encompassing from Health, Well-being, Employee Engagement, navigating the complexity of the Healthcare System, and driving Health outcomes, which is what it is all about. That is what we are striving for.

John: Got it. A guy like you who understands software, data, and scaling. You do not join something just to manage it. How big can this get in the years ahead?

David: Yeah. I think it can get really big. We are going to have a fantastic year. Most CEOs talk about bookings and revenue and Evad[?] on, and those are bad words by the way. Evad[?] is not a bad word.

John: Right.

David: But the bigger we get candidly the more lives we change for good and we just had our company kickoff, and one of the questions. We had a lot of really fun questions with nothing really serious, but the only kind of real serious business question was (Hey Dave, in 15 years from now, I am a brand new person in our client success group, you are handing over the reins of CEO to me. Where do you see us in five years?)

John: Okay.

David: I said (Well. Honestly, I would love to see us have a hundred million members on our platform. Not 15): That is a lofty goal. But I think it is a good one. That is almost a third of the country which would be pretty exciting. To be able to change that many lives and businesses for good are really what our mission is all about. Our vision is great. Our vision is innovation and getting a home base for health complete and having as many members on that but the mission is changing lives and businesses for good. Having a hundred million people that are healthier and happier, and showing up for work more engaged is pretty exciting. You think about 75 or 80 percent of the workforce is not engaged. This is even pre-pandemic. They are just not engaged at work. Being healthier and happier helps with that as well.

John: I hope your goal comes true because we got a hundred million people on Virgin Pulse. We are going to have a healthier and better country.

David: Correct.

John: I just wanted to thank you for your time today. I want to encourage our listeners or readers and our viewers to go to www.virginpulse.com.Find David and his colleagues and find a way to become a new better instead of a new normal. David Osborne, you are making a great impact. You are making us all be better be our best selves. Thank you for making the world a better place and thank you for being with us on the impact podcast today.

David: Thanks John, I enjoyed it.

John: This edition of the impact podcast is brought to you by engage. Engage is a digital booking engine revolutionizing the talent booking industry. With hundreds of athletes entrepreneurs, speakers, and business leaders. Engage is the go-to spot for booking talent for your next event. For more information, please visit (letsengage.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 we are welcoming back my good friend Scott Schober. Welcome back to the Impact Podcast, Scott.

Scott Schober: Hey, it’s great to be back, John. Thanks for having me again.

John: Oh, yeah. And you know, even though you are in New Jersey today and I am in California, it is nice because we are friends and we are in the same industry really in so many ways, so we get to feel like we are almost in the same room. So, it is just great to see you. Technology really does work when it works this well, so thanks for joining again.

Scott: Great to be here and you are right. Cybersecurity seems to really now touch all our lives, touch all of our businesses, especially with this COVID problem. Working remotely all of us and being on Zoom and whatever it takes, we have to be careful and keep things secure and keep our company’s information protected.

John: For our listeners and viewers and readers who haven’t had the chance to get to know you yet as the president and CEO of Berkeley Varitronics Systems and also as an author and cyber expert. And we are going to be talking about your new book today. We talked about your last book on the last episode. But before we get to all that stuff, share a little bit about your background, your family’s background, your pap, your brother, and how you guys came to do what you do, and now why you are really running one of the most important companies to keep us safe not only in the United States but around the world.

Scott: Yeah, absolutely. It is kind of a unique situation where a small family business which you just don’t hear a whole lot about it anymore. So, I am very proud of that to carry that on. We are celebrating. It is our 48th year going into 49.

John: Wow.

Scott: So almost 50 years in business. It was founded by my father, Gary Schober. He also had his partner, his father Bill Schober, was part of the company a long time ago. He has since passed away, which I talked about in this book, Senior Cyber, a little bit. He was 99 years old, just a short of his hundredth birthday. He was a technologist. My father is really a self-taught. I call him a genius who knows technology. He is like Steve Jobs or many other innovators. A Musk or anyone else that comes to mind. He has got that unique uncanny ability to look at a complex problem and finding a solution. That really was the birth of our company. Berkeley Varitronics Systems was founded in Berkeley Heights, New Jersey, not far from the Bell Labs headquarters there, where it is really a think tank of engineers. Companies would come to us over the years and bring us a problem. We would craft and design a unique niche solution that solved their complex problem, and then hopefully it led to production and follow-up orders. It spans a lot of different industries. But primarily, we focus on wireless technology and a lot of the spin-offs of that security implication, keeping our companies’ computers and everything on the network safe from hackers that are trying to pry and get in. So that is kind of the backstory in what brought us up to where we are today. A lot of heavy focus now on wireless threat detection tools to stop cell phones, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth coming in to secure DoD facilities anywhere where classified information is or confidential information is. Our tools are used to keep that area safe. A lot of cybersecurity plays into that and educating people. So, it is my mission to educate people, business owners, consumers, even seniors. With my recent book Senior Cyber, I am trying to get the message out there and keep people safe.

John: I love it, and we are going to talk about it. We are going to get to Senior Cyber in a second. Who are your typical clients? Is it large corporations, small corporations, government entities, or all of the above?

Scott: Yeah, a little bit of all the above. More of a focus toward the government agency. So the common acronyms that we may hear, the FBI, the Secret Service, the CIA, many DoD branches globally that we are selling to where they are, again, guarding that classified confidential information to keep the nation safe. But also a lot of other businesses. These could be companies working with the government. It could be universities. It could even be small businesses. A lot of small businesses are using our tools to keep their company safe, so they are not compromised with their credit card, skimming devices, and a whole slew of offerings that we make to keep the wireless aspect secure for them.

John: Wow. That is awesome. So now let’s get to your new book. I mean, you are prolific. You are an author. Is this your third book? Am I right?

Scott: Yes, this is my third book. My first book was Hacked Again. It is about the story of my company being targeted, myself personally being targeted and hacked repeatedly, and all the misfortunes and mistakes that I made that I share with the reader so they don’t go down the same path and make the same mistakes that I made. And as I did that and educated people, I learned this problem is now widening out. It is not just cybersecurity people that are being targeted. It is everybody. It is all of us that have credit cards and small businesses and whatever that we have that they can get in and steal our personal information. So it has really become everybody’s business. And hence, the genesis of Cybersecurity is Everybody’s Business was my second book. I identify the niche area, dealing with my parents, helping them with friends. My grandfather is I shared throughout Senior Cyber.

There is an area of untapped education and that is often overlooked in that Senior. So, perhaps somebody that is my age where they have aging parents that still are active using technology, the internet, smartphones, they need some help and guidance and hopefully being bold and empowered a little bit that they can use technology for good and not live in fear of scammers and hackers. That is really what was the genesis of getting Senior Cyber written. I blew the font up a little bit. My eyes are getting a little bit soft and difficult to see. And I think the senior audience appreciates that, too. It is an easy read. It is not deep-dive technical or bearing acronyms. It is hopefully relatable things that as you grew up in your generation that you could understand a little bit better and relate to and use technology for good and not be in fear.

John: So I read your book. I love it. Of course, this is a topic that is near and dear to my heart. So let’s go into it. We now know why you wrote it. I mean, cybercrime is on the rise. If I am not wrong Scott or if I am close to the truth, $3 trillion, the bad guys got away within 2015, $6 trillion in 2020. The trend seems to keep rising. So you are in an industry that solely needed for your skillset, and the information that you have put forward is solely needed. What can seniors do to protect themselves? What are some of the greatest hits of information that are in this book that people should be learning about?

Scott: Yeah, it is a great point. It is ludicrous how the scams are rising, how much money is being stolen, and especially towards seniors. I should point out first. Maybe I kind of asked myself this question, why senior? Why would seniors be targeted? Well, there is a huge population of seniors. Number one throughout the United States, especially the Baby Boomers and many seniors that are still using technology actively. And as they are doing it, they are not always that comfortable. And what are they falling for? It is the very common things that you and I talked about, other people talk about. Phishing scams that are toward the top of the list, and they are often catered toward a senior to have them give in from an emotional aspect. It is something like a scam with the vaccine. They may receive an email and it says register here to get your vaccine for COVID and they are thinking, “Oh, wow. I am waiting for this. I am waiting for my doctor or someone to reach out to me.” Just click here. They click there. It redirects them to another website and asks them for some personal information. And that is the beginning of the scam as they start to siphon this information where they could then try to take out credit in their name.

They could try to attack their bank account or some other scam that they are trying to orchestrate. So phishing scams are really scary. And again, they are targeting that group of seniors facing the emotional issues. And oftentimes seniors tend to have a little bit more disposable income. They have a little more time on their hands. They tend to be a little bit more trusting. So if you think about all those facts, what happens they may be a little bit more likely to give in. The same is true with phone scams. And especially this time of year John, you think about the IRS we are filing. People are e-filing. They are encouraged to thinking about stimulus. They are thinking about getting their refund. Well, guess what? Hackers are going to be very busy in the next few months trying to, again, target seniors. So seniors got to be very careful if they receive a phone call asking them for confidential information, somebody claiming to be from the IRS, and email again with a phishing attack claiming to be from the IRS. Just click here and enter this information. So, a lot of this is more cautionary type of information. So seniors don’t go to the next step. They stopped. They investigate. And then they ask a trusted family member or they pick the phone up and call to verify and to make sure something is not a scam, so they are not duped out of their financial savings.

John: The COVID issue, it is just like you said, exposes us to these scammers. Is it because scammers in the cyber world are looking for soft spots? And the anxiety and the confusion that this has created, that COVID has created, has then opened up more soft spots for them to take advantage of? Socially speaking, has that become really what is going on here?

Scott: Yeah. Absolutely. In fact, case in point, about two weeks ago I was up at my parents’ house helping them out with some things, and as I mentioned they are having some health challenges and so on and so forth. We were talking about the vaccine and when are you going to get it or waiting for a phone call or email or something. And right then the phone rang, my father picked up, and he was, “Oh, somebody is calling about the vaccine. Hold on. Let me give him our names.” And I was like, “Stop. Stop. Wait a second.” And sure enough, it was a scammer. And when he hung up he was mad and does, “What is going on? How could these people be so ridiculous where they actually target seniors and fool them because I was so focused on the vaccine and getting it? I am not even thinking about being scammed.” And that is the point. We have to slow down, stop, and really investigate the phone call, the email, the text message that we get, the letter in the mail. Whatever means they are using to get to us, we have to be careful. Family members, I think also with this book. When they are reading and hopefully, it will empower them to step up a little bit and have those good conversations with your aging parents so you could talk about things. Because sometimes when you become a victim, you are embarrassed.

When my company was hacked, I was embarrassed. I don’t want to tell anybody about it. Finally, it was a story that broke on Associated Press. They wrote a whole lot of tutorial about it, and I shared the information in hopes that other people won’t go down the path I went. But seniors sometimes are a little bit private. They may not want to show that they gave in or they made a mistake. They gave the credit card information over the phone. They are embarrassed and they may be a little bit prideful. And that is okay, but if a family members have that conversation with them, “Hey Mom. Hey Dad, if you do get a phone call before you give any information, jot some information down. Ask them their name. Ask for the phone number in case we get cuddled. A little bit of investigative work and then say I will call you back and then give me a buzz.” In that way, it kind of slows the chain down and now it is usually the scammers that are trying to make the time that this is of the essence. You got to give me this information. You can lose your chance to get the vaccine. You are going to miss out on this lottery prize, whatever the scam is. So if they make it seem too good to be true and they got to react quickly, that the flag should go up there. So have that conversation with your aging parents so you can tell them to slow down and let us discuss this together just to make sure you are not duped.

John: Scott, this book, I read the book. And for our listeners out there, I highly recommend it. Read it. If you have a parent that is aging, read it yourself and share the information with your parent or give it as a gift to your parent. This is just a great book. I learned a lot from it. The great thing about it, what you do is you give so many real-life examples in it so it becomes very understandable to see how we can all get duped. All of us. It doesn’t matter what age. Frankly speaking, I am 58 years old and I learned a lot like how to better protect myself here. Talk a little bit about debit cards, credit cards, gas pumps, and ATMs. How can all of us, but especially seniors, but all of us protect ourselves better at those critical junctures that are being exploited all the time?

Scott: Yeah, it is a great point. It is something I learned too in just even the past years of doing my research. When I go to the gas pump, I am so used to it and so accustomed. Just take out the credit card and pay via credit card. The big fear we have to be careful of, the millions of gas pumps throughout the United States, there are skimmers that are put in there. They either slid down in the neck of the actual pinpoint of sale terminal or their Bluetooth scammers that are put inside the gas pumps that you cannot even see. So when your credit card goes in, the transactional go through. You pay $20 or $30 in gas, but at the same time they are copying your CVD data, your credit card data, that number, the expiration date. Hackers will then wirelessly transmit that to their laptop. They will sit 75 or 100 feet away from that gas pump and will get hundreds of stolen credit cards from each gas pump. Every day the average gas pump with a skimmer in it, it is about a $116,000 that is actually accumulated before we would actually find the skimmer. That is the estimate which relates to what billions of dollars in stolen credit cards just at the gas pump alone. That is scary.

What can we do? There are a couple of common sense things that we could do. Not everybody likes it. But we always often trade convenience for security, security for convenience. I paid cash at the gas pump. Why? They can’t do anything. You pay them cash. You don’t get your credit card skimmed. The laws for protecting credit cards at the gas pump are not there yet. They haven’t forced the petroleum industry to upgrade, to have more secure chip-and-pin technology. We think about it. We said, “Well, no, my credit cards got chip-and-pin on it, Scott.” Sure it does. But what are you doing? Your credit card slides in and it still has that mag stripe on the back of it. So as long as you have a mag stripe on the back of your credit card, you can be a victim. With a skimmer, it just reads that credit card data author. It is not secure. It is decades-old technology that is insecure. So use cash at the pump. You are much safer.

It is a little better at an ATM machine. Why? Because you have an additional layer of security besides cameras and lights and things like that. You have to enter in a pin code. So you kind of think of that as multi-factor authentication or two-factor authentication. Another layer of security. And of course, if you are going to be using an ATM, use your hand to cover up if you are going to enter your PIN code so that in case they put a pinhole camera, they can’t see what you actually type in. The cyber thieves are embedding that in little plastic bezels all around the ATM machines so they could steal that information as well as sticking skimmers inside the ATM. Not as prevalent as the gas pump. They go for the easy hacks first. They are going to fill up all these gas pumps with thousands and thousands of skimmers, steal our cards until they are upgraded. Once they are upgraded, then they are going to migrate to another hack. So just using common sense and caution there. I personally minimize the use and try not to use an ATM. I would rather wait till the weekend, go into the bank and take out some cash. Keep that in my wallet. Keep that in a safe locked away, and use cash as much as I can to minimize the chance of being a victim with a debit card or credit card.

John: Scott, when you read the newspaper, every other day there is another breach. Home Depot, Sony, Marriott, the list goes on of these really wonderful brands that we all come to love and use and enjoy their services and their goods that they sell. But they are breached and they have massive losses of information, of capital sometimes, of goodwill we know. If they can’t protect themselves from the bad guys, how can we as small business owners or entrepreneurs protect our businesses in America or even our households? Are we all that much of a risk and they are going to get us regardless of what we do?

Scott: John, you make a great point. Nothing is a hundred percent secure, and I often thought about that too. If you look at JP Morgan got hacked years ago and they spent $500 million. They committed after that hack $500 million to keep it secure. That is one of the most secure banks in the world. You don’t hear about them getting hacked now because they spent the right money in the right areas.

John: Right.

Scott: Sometimes we hear about these in the headlines. Home Depot, they target someone and so forth. After the fact though, they instill good security. So the same is true about us. The onus is on us to protect our own personal data. What do we sometimes do that causes weaknesses in the chain? Well, poor password management. That is a huge problem. Look at password reuse. More than 50% of users around the globe still after all the preaching I have done and everyone else in the industry not to ever reuse the same password on multiple platforms. What does that mean? When we go on to whatever it is, our Facebook account, that password should not be the same password as our online banking password. Why? Because if and when Facebook is compromised and that password is obtained by a hacker and sold on the dark web to the masses, the highest bidder, they take that password and they put it into automated software that then goes out to every bank site, every social media app, every stock exchange program, and tries that same password to see if somebody ever used it on multiple platforms. That is how they really get in easily to so many different accounts. Then they change the password, take over our account, siphon the money out, sell the information. The problem goes on and on and on. So, a unique long and strong password for every single account is key. Easy to remember? No. If it is a common word in the dictionary, it is a bad password. If it is a short five or six, even eight-letter, numeric password, it is not strong enough. I always use 15 characters, numbers, uppercase, lowercase, and symbols to make a password.

John: So Scott, you are saying human nature, and this goes for me too, want to use same password so we remember it and we could use it for all the different things that we get to enjoy. Our Netflix account or Facebook account or Bank of America account. But that is absolutely runs counter to how to protect ourselves. So we should maintain a little written book that travels with us where we write down what we have created for each of these different entities and platforms and use that to keep ourselves safer.

Scott: Yeah, and that is exactly what I do. I do a combination of things. So I actually have a little black book, and then I issue before layers of security. So I write down when the password was created. Long and strong obscure password, which is a pain to do, but I do it. And I keep that locked in a safe, locked in an office, locked in a building with alarm cameras on and so forth. So again, layers of security so nobody gets my passwords. At the same time, a good password manager is worth using once your passwords get up to a certain point. More than about 25 password, that is really hard to manage. There is a lot of great password managers out there which are really applications where you need one single master password to get in and then you have access to all of your secure passwords. I use Dashlane. It is a great program. Easy to use. It is affordable. And there is a lot of other good ones out there. So, I don’t want to knock any one company, but you really want to take some time to evaluate, read some of the reviews about password managers. It is worth getting one if you have a lot of passwords that you manage. That way you have a unique, distinct password for every login, every account that you have. It is a pain in the butt. It does take time. But that is life, because that is what the hackers have done. They made a hard life. It is very difficult. So let’s make their lives even more difficult so they can not access and get our private information.

John: You know, Scott has a macro issue. GDPR got past May 2018, and it has come to America in a very meaningful way. There is Federal Legislation that hasn’t gone past yet, but they are kicking it around and something will get passed. But the states have taken upon themselves to now create more privacy and data protection laws to protect the consumers that mimic GDPR than ever before. Four states already have them passed. Every state has some form of legislation going. How is that good for us, and how should we be thinking about our data going forward? Whatever is on our cell phone or tablet’s, on all of our devices. And given that internet of things is exploding and we are all wearing wearables, we are driving EV cars that have become computers on wheels. We have Nest, Alexa, and Ring in our house. How do we now not lose our minds but also be very, very sensitive to these issues?

Scott: Yeah, it is a fabulous question. I talked about this often and I encourage a couple things. A lot of it is just more cautionary things. When we talk about the world of IoT, the Internet of Things, in our smart homes, smart cars, smart lives with all our wearables, be cautious not to just buy the latest and greatest. Why? Because they are oftentimes low-cost consumer-related devices and the security is not necessarily built-in at the development start estate. So what happens is it gets out to the market and then they say, “Oh geez, we just discovered there was a vulnerability in this.” And they don’t have a way to upload the firmware to add a security patch to solve the problem. When our computer has a problem, what happens is we upgrade our iOS or operating system from Microsoft or whatever platform that we are using to take care of the security vulnerabilities on a regular basis as well as applications on our smartphone or laptop, whatever. It is hard to do that on an IoT type of device. So, be cautious before you start plugging all these different things in.

Now again, the newer devices, they are getting better and better. I have to say I do use some of them myself. I use a Nest. I use Wyze Cameras. I am using some of the intelligent digital assistants now that are coming into the homes. The Alexa’s of the world and Google’s. So, these things are good, but just use caution when you set them up. Long and strong passwords. Make sure that again, it is tied into your Wi-Fi network with a long and strong password. WPA2 encryption is there. You are not using default passwords out of the box, which a lot of people still. I make it my goal every time I travel anywhere. I go into a neighborhood. I am on a business trip. I always scan to see what are open Wi-Fi access points and I always find at least one. And I kind of laugh and say, well, some people just don’t get it yet and they leave things open. It is not secure. Default passwords, easy to hack in. So, take the time when you are setting up those devices. And that way, to your point, it will protect us in this world of big data out there.

And one other point I should add is to be careful not to be too quick to use free email. If you are just sending general correspondence and things, a Gmail account and Yahoo account, that is okay. But oftentimes we are trading. We are getting free email. Why is it free? Because they are reading and have access to the content of that email and they do get breached and compromised. Look at what happened to Yahoo. Every user that used Yahoo, well, your email was compromised. The content of that email was compromised. So people have access if we are putting credit card numbers, banking information, codes, pins, Social Security numbers, whatever. It is not really private. It is not confidential, and it is out there to the public. So use caution. It is okay to pay for an email service and a provider if it gives you more security, even if it cost a little bit of money. With the point about smartphones, we are all using that. Be careful not to download every app. Some things are great. You want to download Candy Crush and play with it, but guess what? If you haven’t played with it in a month or two, guess what? Get rid of it. There is no need to keep it on your device.

John: Right.

Scott: That I always share with people. The average mobile phone user in the United States, if you have to read the terms and conditions that you agree to download those apps on your phone, would take you three months just to read them. Yet you agreed to those. Did anybody actually read all those terms and conditions? No. And yet what do they say? They have access to your contacts on your phone, Geo locations where your pictures are taken, what you entered in the browser and the search engine on your phone. You are giving them permission to see that information and of course they are abusing that and selling that through the app. So the apps, they will give you oftentimes for free. Why? They are trading you, taking away your privacy and your personal information because it is all for sale. So again, good housekeeping is necessary on our smart devices to get rid of stuff declutter that we are not actively using.

John: Beyond this great book Senior Cyber, and again, Mother’s Day and Father’s Day is coming up. I urge our listeners and our readers and our viewers, buy this book. Give it to your mother, your father. Give it to a senior that needs it. Learn a lot from it yourself. I read it in one night. I learned so much from it. Beyond this great book, which you can find on amazon.com obviously and other great booksellers. Scott, I know you do a lot of other great work. Share a little bit about what you did at Berkeley recently and saving a gentleman’s life in a snow avalanche. I think in the Swiss Alps or somewhere in France or something. It just a great story and I want you to explain how far and wide security is and how your business touches people’s lives and makes an impact on a daily and regular basis.

Scott: Yeah. Absolutely. And we are super proud of it. We develop a device that is called the Wolfhound-PRO. It is a cell phone detector. It looks for cell phone signals that are transmitted out of our mobile phone, and it is coupled to a direction-finding antenna. And what happened in this story and it is a true story and it is a recent story, just happened a few weeks ago. There was a family traveling along the base of some mountains in Val d’Isère area of France, and there was a huge avalanche that happened. The mother and two children got away safely, but the man, the father, actually got trapped. Two and a half meters of snow on top of him, which is several tons. Fortunately, he was by a tree and I can see kind of huddled near the tree and it formed a little bit of an air pocket so at least he could breathe. Right away that the villagers panicked, and they saw what happened and they knew that he was trapped and the mother and the kids were panicking. So they form a quick search team, and search-and-rescue was called in with local law enforcement. They had a team of about 130 people. And what they do is, if you are familiar with that or you may have seen it on videos or whatever. They form a line for search-and-rescue. And they get some poles to poke through to see if they could find perhaps where this man might be before he can’t breathe anymore and gets crushed from the snow.

So 130 people, they form this huge line. They go over the area. They couldn’t find him. They brought out search dogs. Unfortunately, he was buried so deep that the dogs can’t pick up the scent through the depth of the snow and the moisture. Well, there was somebody on search-and-rescue that happens to have our tool, the Wolfhound-PRO. He pulled it out and all of a sudden he started scanning and he sees on the screen the signal strength intensity and he sees the man’s phone pinging that is trapped beneath the snow. And he said, “Guys, come on back here. I got a ping right here.” The area they just searched and walked over. They frantically dig. And it was approximately 2 hours and 50 minutes later from when the avalanche happened, they got to the guy. Dug him out, rushed him to the emergency. The next thing, he survived with just minor scrapes and bruises and he is alive today. And they credited it to the miracle of the Wolfhound-PRO which we were so blessed and privileged to be able to hear that story and then see that our tool is used to actually qualify and save a life which just makes you feel good that technology I find often is misused by cybercriminals and hackers and people just doing bad stuff. It is nice when technology can actually be used for good and it saves lives. It makes you feel great.

John: That is awesome. And that is why I have you always on this show and you are always welcome back here, Scott.

Scott: I appreciate it.

John: Because you always make an impact on our listeners and our viewers. Your tools are important. Your books are really important. Your information. This is one of the biggest issues in the world today. Cybersecurity, data security, protecting yourself, your business, the Entity you work for. In this situation, Senior Cyber, you get to protect your parents. Who is more important than your parents and your children? So, Mother’s Day is coming up. Father’s Day is coming up. Get this book, Senior Cyber. Scott, I am so grateful to you for making the impacts that you make. You are always a welcomed guest on the Impact Podcast. Thank you for making the world a better and safer place. I can’t wait to have you back on again, my friend.

Scott: All right. Thank you again so much for your kindness there, John. Keep up the great work you are doing too. I appreciate it.

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

John Shegerian: This edition of The Impact podcast is brought to you by Engage. Engage is a digital booking engine revolutionizing the talent booking industry with hundreds of athletes, entrepreneurs, speakers, and business leaders. Engage is the go-to spot for booking talent for your next event. For more information. Please visit letsengage.com.

John: Welcome to another edition of The Impact podcast. I am John Shegerian. I am so honored to have with us today, Dr. Nayan Patel. He has written a great book. One that I have read myself, ‘The Glutathione Revolution’. Welcome to The Impact podcast, Dr. Patel.

Dr. Nayan Patel: Thank you. Thank you, John. I appreciate it.

John: You know, Nayan, we were talking before we started taping this. My readers, my listeners, and viewers can see that I thoroughly read your book. I marked it all up. I believe in active reading. Marking up a book, encircling things, and underlining things. Before we get talking about this important book, can you share a little bit about your background? How did you even come to discover the benefits of glutathione? And why did you even write this book?

Dr. Patel: The discovery started being as a compounding pharmacist making medications and working with doctors and patients to design all the drug therapies. And, of course, the first thing that came to mind was, “Can you please make some vitamin C that is absorbable and works really good?” Nobody could dream of doing glutathione because it has never been done before. We succeeded in making vitamin C but it is cost-prohibitive for people to buy the product. And so, we took it upon ourselves, myself, my pharmacist, and my researcher. I said, “Hey, let us do this product together.” So, that is the history of how glutathione came in because somebody asked us to make something. But the background starts from my early days at USC.

John: Fight on, doc. Fight on. Got it.

Dr. Patel: Thank you. It exposes you to think outside the box because if you follow the norm, you are behind somebody else versus if you step away from the pack, then, you can think and do something that can heal the world one day.

John: Wonderful.

Dr. Patel: So, that is the whole process that started this whole journey. It really gave me a jump start when I had my own pharmacy company to really make an impact.

John: How many years ago was that when you started realizing you are onto something really big that can change people’s health, wellness, and outlook on life?

Dr. Patel: That was thirteen years ago when I first discovered glutathione. Before that, I was trying a few things here and there and trying to go with the motion as what they were asking me for me to produce something that they have been asking me to make. But this was something that I did on my own and gives me the ultimate pleasure of, “Wow, we did create something that is brand-new and has never been done in the world before.” That was exciting.

John: Now, you wrote this book. And again, for my viewers and listeners, this book could change your life. Most of my viewers and listeners have been following my podcast for years. I really stress health and wellness in my life. I have been a vegetarian for over forty years and a vegan for over twelve years. I work out every day. I have been taking myself, orally, glutathione for a long time. This is just the bottle I brought in from my house. When I read your book, it changed even my perspective on the importance of glutathione, how it interacts in your body, and what benefits it could have. First, I would love for you to share with our audience, what are glutathione and GSH? What is it really?

Dr. Patel: GSH, which is glutathione in a short form, is a protein that is produced by humans in abundance. Our body produces this as a primary defense mechanism for the whole body. It is there to remove all the oxidative species, toxins, the exposures that we have from environmental sources, and, basically, keep our body clean at all times. So that, in a nutshell, is glutathione. Based on the function it does, it has been given different names. It has been given the name of the ‘mother of all antioxidants’ and ‘mass detoxifier’. And, it all depends on the function it does. It is a multifactorial molecule the body produces. We, as a human being and as a race, have tried to manipulate our body to function better instead of giving the resources our body needs because the body is enough. It has everything it needs to function properly and defend itself.

John: So, what happens? It is fascinating. In the book, you talked about so many different things from psoriasis to autoimmune diseases to Parkinson’s. Many things happen when our glutathione levels are low. Can you share what are some potential benefits of making sure our levels are correct? How do we figure out, first of all, where our levels are? And then, how do we correct them?

Dr. Patel: The glutathione in our body gets produced and has a very short life. It stays in the body for, maybe, four or five hours at most. If you do a blood test, you are going to hit and miss it. You may do a blood test when it is just about to get produced and you miss it, the levels are perfectly normal. Yet, if you do it four hours later, the levels are back to zero. So, it is very difficult to pinpoint what levels of glutathione you have in your body. At the same time, if you have an abundance of glutathione in your body, does it have negative effects? And, there are none at this point. If you have too much glutathione, it is still okay. If it is not enough, your body will not be able to clean itself up. That is what I call ‘lab testings’. It is to know how much glutathione you have in your body. But the key is, as we age in this modern-day society, we are so much focused on mental, physical, and chemical stress. We do not eat. We are always on the ‘go-go-go ‘ and our body is constantly under pressure. Under pressure, our body produces a lot of oxygen species and has inflamed from the inside because our body cannot get rid of all these toxins that have been produced internally by ourselves. Hence, even though the glutathione levels could be normal, it is not enough based on our lifestyle at this current point. And so, what I say is instead of figuring out how many levels you have or what levels you do, if you just follow the plan to eat the right foods, drink the right water, avoid all the toxins like alcohol, or something that we are not supposed to take in a regular basis, see if that makes a change in your life. If it does, the body is recovering. But the thing is we always look at a two-part issue, right? We want to supplement glutathione, and that is one way. The other one is, “Can we reduce the amount of toxins or the stress that we put on a body so we do not need that much glutathione on a daily basis?”

Dr. Patel: And so, people always think about and say, “Hey, what do I do to increase glutathione levels?” I always think, first of all, “What can I do so that my need for glutathione is not very high?” Then, “If I need a certain amount and I cannot produce that, I need supplementation at that point.”

John: Fascinating. For our listeners and viewers who had just joined us, we have got Dr. Nayan Patel with us. He has written this great book, ‘The Glutathione Revolution’. You can find this book on amazon.com, Barnes & Noble, and other great bookstores in the United States and around the world. You also can find Dr. Patel at www.aurowellness.com. Nayan, we are all under stress. We are living still during this COVID-19 tragic period so we have external stresses that none of us have ever experienced before. Does keeping our glutathione levels up help ward off stress and some of the diseases that are caused by external stress besides internal stress?

Dr. Patel: Yes, it does. There have been a couple of studies that have been done especially for people with COVID. People that have COVID, traditionally, have low levels of glutathione, to begin with. And there was one study that has been published, I believe it was in Europe or Eastern Europe? There it shows that the levels of glutathione are very low. But we are experiencing a tremendous amount of stress that we have never seen before. Mental stress more than anything else. Our eating habits have changed to the point that we are not eating the right types of fruits and vegetables and what we call the rainbow color foods on a daily basis. If you do not do that part, we are not doing our part in maintaining our bodies’ optimum function. Our need if glutathione is probably at an all-time high during these times than I have seen before. We talked about chronic inflammation leading to autoimmune disease. Autoimmune disease to me is, “Well, the doctors do not think what is wrong with you, but the cause is your body is attacking your own body.” I said, “Well, the body is not designed to attack yourself.” So, that means you are lacking something or, you have too much inflammation in your body that needs to be brought down so that your body can think as, “Well, it is not me that is self-destructing. Maybe there are outside sources that is doing this for us.” Glutathione to contract autoimmune conditions, diseases, or issues is paramount as to how we can optimize our levels of glutathione.

John: In your book, ‘The Glutathione Revolution: Fight Disease, Slow Aging, and Increase Energy with the Master Antioxidant’, you talked about different types of glutathione. I never knew this. All these years I have been taking oral, I did not realize you could also get it intravenously, and also, via spray and gel. Can you explain how our body absorbs all different versions? And what should most of us be doing? What do you recommend in your great book on how we should be taking on glutathione to help us improve our life?

Dr. Patel: Absolutely, John. Thank you for asking that question. Even my doctor friends and my pharmacist do not understand what I am talking about half the time. Glutathione is a large molecule, so a protein. It is a three amino acid chain protein that is a large molecule. What happens when you eat proteins? When you eat proteins, your body will break them down into three different amino acids, then, the body will take those amino acids and try to produce proteins again. So, when you take glutathione by mouth, it does not matter if it is in a capsule form, or some emulsions, suspensions, or liposomes. All kinds of variations of glutathione that you can take by mouth, everything gets broken down into amino acids and the body would try to build up again. The other option is you have the intravenous forms of glutathione, which is currently not been approved by the FDA. There are doctors’ offices that do use compounding pharmacists to use this product. That goes straight into your venous system but keep in mind what I told you earlier, glutathione has a very short life. It is about three to four hours. When you do an intravenous form of glutathione, the life of the glutathione is only about ten to thirty minutes. Unless you can take a shot every thirty minutes for the rest of your life, you are not going to get something meaningful out of that one. It was not until thirteen years ago when we discovered this technology and we reduce the gluten particle size to something small enough so they can go through your skin. We developed this technology to basically stabilize the glutathione at room temperature in the water molecule and put it into this technology where it reduces the particle size and gets through your skin. So, for the very first time, we are sending an intact amount of protein through your skin and into your body.

Dr. Patel: In a nutshell, my mind started going crazy. Back then, I had some hair but now I am completely bald because I was thinking way too much more than I had to. And even though discovering the molecule was hard enough, putting it into the clinical application was a monumental task for us. I was thankful to all the physicians and all my professors that trusted me and helped me go through this process. Today, we have a lot to share and that just told me why I had to write this book because it is just too much information for me to share.

John: I have never seen spray before and that methodology. Where can our viewers and listeners of The Impact podcast find the sprays that you say are very helpful for such things as scarring, surgery, Psoriasis, for absorption the right way, and these many uses you outlined in your great book. Where can they find these products?

Dr. Patel: John, I am sorry for the shameless plug for myself.

John: That is okay.

Dr. Patel: The sprays are patented. We have worldwide patents for these products. Our goal is to have two different product lines. One is for skin conditions because people have a tremendous amount of skin issues that are related to autoimmune conditions. The website is auroskincare.com. And my passion, of course, I work with physicians all around the world that is towards the wellness side. And that that website is aurowellness.com. Over there, I work with physicians. If your listeners are interested in learning more or talk to the physicians. Had the physicians talk to me, we can design plans for them. Absolutely.

John: That is wonderful. As I mentioned, I have been a vegetarian. I am fifty-eight now. I have been a vegetarian since I am seventeen. I have been a vegan for the last twelve or so years or more, mostly plant-based. Talk about what you talked about in your book about the eating do’s and don’ts. What should we be eating? What should we not be eating to maintain optimum health and wellness, Doctor? According to you, what you have learned over your illustrious career.

Dr. Patel: I always believed that people should do what I say, and not what I do. I said, “Well, that is not going to work.” Because people are going to look at me and say, “What do you do?”. And so, I cannot tell what people should do. I can tell them what I do and see if they can mimic a part of what I do, and hopefully, that is good therapy because I do believe that I live a healthy lifestyle as much as possible. I am a vegetarian myself. I became a vegetarian five years ago until the time I used to eat meat, maybe, once a month? It did not matter a whole lot.

John: Right.

Dr. Patel: But I said, “Do you know what? If I am going to preach what is right for me, I had to do the part.” So, I stopped and I am very much into fruits and vegetables and eating a healthy balanced meal. That means you got to eat all the different colors of fruits and vegetables. If you just eat the greens every single day, you are going to miss out on a lot of antioxidants as well from the other colors of the products as well. So, eating a multi-colored product of fruits and vegetable is what I advocate. I have some outlines in my book, but again, that is something that I do on a daily basis. You have got to keep life simple, right? And we have learned from so many people. If you just think about it, you wake up in the morning and this is what you are going to eat every day. Then, you do not have to think about it. Wake up in the morning and take your fruits and vegetables. If you have time to eat them and put it in a blender so you just make a smoothie out of it. But the key is when you make a smoothie out of it, people do not realize that when you chew is when you produce enzymes. So, if you drink it, you are not producing enzymes. I am stuck myself taking a smoothie in the morning with some enzyme capsules again. I have to juggle my busy lifestyle. As much as I want to do the right thing, I compensate for things I cannot do. If my patients are not going to do what I ask them to do, I tell them to, “Do what you can and supplement the glutathione with it. Supplement the enzymes with it. Supplement the acids that go with it.” I do not want them to rely on the medications, but I want them to use them as supplementation for things that you are not willing to do.

John: Nayan, since your book has come out, how has the response been? The people that have endorsed you are just some of the who’s who and greatest people in medicine. Dr. Mark Hyman, Dr. David Perlmutter, and Dr. Daniel Amen, one of the greatest brain people on the planet. The response and the people that are endorsing you are just a who’s who in the medical field. How has the response been from your readers?

Dr. Patel: Again, these are physicians that I admire and I was fortunate for them to endorse my book. But the biggest pleasure I got was from Dr. Daniel Robinson. He was my professor of clinical pharmacy at USC. He is currently the dean at Western University School of Pharmacy in Pomona, California. When he read the book and he says, “Man, I am a big fan of you now.” I said, “Dr. Robinson, you taught me. I am here because of you. ” And the biggest pressure that happened to me is when he told me that he bought several books for his own family members and gifted them for Christmas. That just brought tears to my eyes because for the very first time, now, the professor is telling the student, “I like your work.” So, that is the biggest joy I have today.

John: I am not a medical professional, but I do take my health and wellness seriously, as does my family. And after reading your book, I am convinced that if this was a baseball game, Nayan, this is the top of the first inning. This seems like this revolution has only just begun and that there is much in front of you in terms of spreading the word and getting more people to balance this important antioxidant in their system. Do you feel that this is just the beginning as well?

Dr. Patel: You just asked me a question about my research because when this thing developed for the first time, I said, “Oh my God, this is history now.” And when I started using the practices, I said, “Do you know what? This is just the beginning.” I need to figure out these super different ailments I still have to work on. And so, using the technology, I have currently worked on different molecules and see if I can do the same thing with some of the harshest chemicals that are out there that their body produces internally that they cannot get from outside sources, mainly, NAD right now is huge. We have been working countless hours trying to stabilize that and go through your skin again for the very first time. We are working with companies and stem cells to see if we can figure out instead of getting stem cells, which is a large molecule, “Can I work with exosomes or something that our body can accept without having any concerns?” So, again, we are using technology to develop a product that our body produces internally and give it back to them. I am not interested in making a product that is a brand-new chemical that can be patented and try to deliver to the body. I want to empower my body to defend itself That is my slogan.

John: That is wonderful. There is a multitude of benefits that are discussed in this great book. Two of them. But one is that glutathione helps cleanse your liver. Is that correct? Did I have that right?

Dr. Patel: Yes. Absolutely. So, glutathione produces high enzymes in the liver. And again, that story maybe is in there or maybe it is not that there. I forgot which story end up in that book at the end of the day. But the story was we had a bunch of people that consume a lot of alcohol. And of course, alcohol goes to your liver. People all know about alcohol and things like that. When they started using the glutathione, they were still buzzing but they did not have that much hangover the next day. So, for the very first time, we realized, “Oh my gosh. Am I really promoting alcohol or for these young kids?” I was getting little mixed reviews, but at the same time, I realized that it is all about the liver. If I make your liver healthy, your body is able to process those toxins. Alcohol is one of the toxins that we readily consume because we think it is good for us. But in reality, it is the worst thing that we can drink.

John: That is really bad. Glutathione also helps ward off, potentially if taken in the right doses, Dementia, Alzheimer’s, and even Parkinson’s disease. There has been a lot of credible studies with regards to the benefits of glutathione in warding off those horrific diseases as well, correct?

Dr. Patel: Yes. Those are primary concerns because of oxidative stress, oxidized cholesterol, and oxidation in your brain. You cannot reverse it. So, that is the reason why we cannot treat Alzheimer’s, Dementia, and Parkinson’s. The only thing we have hope for is prevention. Prevention.

John: Well, this has been wonderful, Nayan. Again, for our listeners and viewers out there, if you want to find Dr. Patel and his great work. please go to aurowellness.com to find this important and great book which I highly recommend and I have read thoroughly. I have marked it all up and made notes in there. ‘The Glutathione Revolution: Fight Disease, Slow Aging, and Increase Energy with the Master Antioxidant.’ You can find this at amazon.com, Barnes & Noble, and other great book stores around the United States and the world. Change your life. Start taking this great product. Dr. Patel, you are making an impact. You are making the world a better place. You are helping to make us all live healthier and better lives. I thank you for your great work. I thank you for your time today. You are always welcome back on The Impact podcast to share your journey.

Dr. Patel: Thank you very much. I appreciate your time today.

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: Welcome to another edition of the Impact Podcast. I an John Shegerian, and I am so honored to have with us today the CEO of Recyclops, Ryan Smith. Welcome to Impact, Ryan.

Ryan Smith: Hey. Glad to be here. Thanks for having me.

John: It is just great having you. I feel like we are in the same room. We had a little chat before we went live here, and you are sitting in Utah and I am sitting in Fresno because we are still living through this COVID-19 tragic period in world history. It is so nice to be able to be together, and share your journey with our listeners and viewers today. Before we get talking about your great company Recyclops, can you share a little bit about your background leading up to founding and growing this great company of yours?

Ryan: Yes. I have always been environmentally conscious and cared about this. I grew up here in Utah and Utah is one of the most gorgeous states in my opinion.

John: It is.

Ryan: I think that kind of lends you towards that. I am an eagle scout, and so that kind of also… Done a lot of camping and hiking. The truth of the matter is I had not thought that much about recycling. I had lived here in Utah and then, I had lived internationally a little bit and kind of seen recycling in different states across the world. I had not thought that much about it, and that changed when I was in college. What really changed was the fact that I moved into an apartment complex that did not have recycling. Suddenly, it was like this thing that has always been just there… It is like I never think about running water because I have running water, but it is like when you are in a place where you do not have running water, it is like “Wait a minute. Well, this is a pain.” That is how I felt, like suddenly I could not recycle.

I remember I bought on campus through a vending machine. I bought like a Sprite, Coke or something. I went back to my apartment and when I was done with it, I was like going to put in the recycling and I just moved in. It was like, “Oh, we do not have recycling in this apartment.” It is like, “Okay, so let me go outside to the dumpster. I am sure there is recycling.” I did not even consider that there could not be. I get out there, no recycling. I put the bottle in the trash can and I still feel guilty about it. I did not realize that was inside me, that I know this inherent desire to do the right thing. I really felt strongly that that is the right thing to do and that really got my mind thinking, “Hey, what? Am I living in the most ghetto apartment complex?” I was not that far off, to be honest, but I looked around. I went to friends’ apartments and I was not alone. None of them recycled.

John: What college did you go to? I just want to see what college you are talking about.

Ryan: No. Here is the thing. It does not matter what college I went to, and this is what blew me away. I went to BYU. Love BYU. Super glad I went there. Awesome. At first, that is what I thought. I thought like Provo, Utah sucks. Like what the heck. And then I thought, well, maybe it is just Utah. Maybe Utah is not good at the environmental thing. I started doing more research and it was like, “Oh man. This is not a Provo thing. This is not a Utah thing. This is not that United States thing. It is an apartment thing. Apartments struggled to recycle.” The more and more research I did, the more I saw that across the globe, apartments really struggled to recycle. That to me is like man, that is a huge problem. There are so many apartments in the United States. There is very little data on what recycling is and is not happening in apartments. Based on the data that we have been able to gather, we estimate that about at least sixty percent of apartments in the US do not have access to recycling. Maybe there is a park nearby that they could go take it to, but convenient access for residents. That was really the beginning of my journey into the recycling space. I saw that and thought, “Man, that is a problem that needs to be solved.”

John: It is important that we go step by step. We have lots of young people or other people that want to be the next Ryan Smith, want to be an entrepreneur. For our friends and our viewers and our listeners out there that want to find Ryan and the great work that he is doing with Recyclops, please go to www.recyclops.com. So you see the problem, but also, now, it is time to figure out can you come up with a solution? Is the solution profitable, and therefore, is the solution also scalable? Walk us through how long that process takes before you start to figure out how to launch Recyclops.

Ryan: Funny enough, I called right after this experience that I shared with you where I threw this bottle away. I walked through and saw some other apartments did not recycle. I called my dad, and my dad works in facilities management. He has had a good amount of exposure to recycling with that. I called him and I was like, “Dad, I am going to start a recycling company.” He was like, “Horrible idea. Do not do it.”

John: Horrible idea. What kind of encouragement was that?

Ryan: Do not know. What the heck. What he had seen was the… He had actually supervised a small recycling facility. In that, he saw that the facility was burning money. It was not making any money and he said, “Hey, there is not money to be made in this.” The funny thing that happened was for two years, I did not do anything. I did not do the recycling thing. I did not start a business. Nothing. I mean at this point, I was twenty-one years old. At twenty-three, I was actually still in school. I took a two-year hiatus from school. I served a mission for my church in Russia. All of this kind of started right after I got back from Russia. I did a semester of school, lived on-campus and on-campus had recycling. Off-campus did not. I decided a couple of years in or after this experience, I was like, “Okay, I want to start a business.” I decided I wanted to give entrepreneurship a real go. Recycling, I had a bunch of different ideas and decided that recycling was the thing I wanted to do.

With that, I started looking at how to make this work. I have been giving the advice like “Hey, there is no money to be made in this.” I realized very quickly that the money to be made in it is not what most people think and that is like, “Oh, I am going to sell this plastic bottle and make a buck.” It is like no, the plastic bottle costs a lot to transport, sort, all of that. Generally, more than that bottle’s worth is not getting you to the point where you are making any sort of decent income on that. I saw that you can charge a service fee. That is how trash is handled. You charge a service fee to pick something up and you do that. Recycling handled that the same way. That is what I need to do. This needs to be a business that is not making money from a material. We are making money from a service fee. That right there kind of got me over that hump of like, “Oh man, I should not start something.” No, I can financially make this viable. And then, it came down to trying to understand why do not apartments recycle. Why is it not happening? I talked to tons of apartment owners trying to get an understanding of it. I got like a petition with like thousands of students saying they wanted recycling at their apartments. Did all this, went to apartment owners and they were like, “Oh, cool that students want that. We do not really care.”

John: When did you launch it officially? When did the Recyclops won?

Ryan: I launched Recyclops in 2014.

John: How has the journey gone? Is it gone as you expected or talk about the zigs and zags? What is the real Mission? How are you trying to democratize recycling for the consumers that want to really be part of the solution and not the problem anymore?

Ryan: Yes. I love that you said democratize, because that is something that we are really focused on. I kind of opened this rabbit hole with apartment. I saw apartments are not having recycling. It is solvable. We solved it on a local scale. Did not really build a solution that could scale up. It was really good on micro, but as you got into macro, it did not quite work. I started looking around and discovered there were some other places in the economy were recycling just was not happening. One of the ones that still today surprises me. We had a family-run business reach out in a small City about twenty to forty minutes from where I was operating my small business. They reached out and said, “Hey, our municipality does not have recycling. Ten years ago, we started a little program. We signed up some neighbors. They pay us ten bucks a month. We have a suburban and a trailer that we go pick up the recycling with the three young boys who had kind of done the labor force for it. Kind of like a paper route type job. The kids have all grown up and now, it is like we want the recycling to go on but we do not want to necessarily do it.” We ended up taking over that operation.

It opened my mind to this world of like how is there a municipality… Like an apartment that is privately owned by some investor, okay, I can understand. But a municipality? What? Did some digging, did a random sample of a thousand cities in the US and saw that recycling was not happening in a ton of cities. As you got to the outskirts of Suburbia, recycling just starts disappearing, and as you get into rural, it is gone. That was about thirty-four million households. On top of that, you have the sixteen million apartments that we were already looking at. Suddenly, we are talking fifty million households, thirty-eight to forty percent of households in the US. That moment right there is when it is like, “Okay, I need to stop thinking around the apartments in Provo and take this to the next level, because this problem is huge. Our mission kind of stemmed around that saying, “Okay. We want to bring environmental solutions to places that do not have them, starting with recycling. This can be done because this little family-run business in Mapleton, they were doing it. Mapleton, Utah, just a small town. I thought if they can do it there, I can do it anywhere. It is just trying to figure out how and that is when I started thinking about how do we make this model work and started looking at different things that I had seen.

My sister lives in New York City. I saw in New York, all the recycling is bagged and cardboards put to the side. That worked way better for this kind of hands-on solution that they we were doing in this city already. We switched to that so that the plastic usage from bags was equivalent to the life of a bin. Over twenty years of plastic bags, it was equal to how much plastic is in one bin. We were like plastic-neutral on that front. We feel okay about that as long as we are making sure the bags are being handled properly and this, logistically, is way easier for us. What that really changed for us was that, suddenly, instead of having to own a trailer and a suburban in Mapleton, Utah, I could hire anyone and any vehicle help pick up this recycling because it was self-contained in a bag. You did not need any specialized equipment. We kind of took an Uber approach to it and said, “Hey, I am going to hire local independent contractors. I am going to find cities that do not have recycling programs. I am going to hire local independent contractors to go pick up the recycling. I am going to find the customers. Connect those two together, and then, I will make sure that the recycling gets from that community to the nearest recycling facility, which sometimes is twenty minutes away. Sometimes, it is four hours away.

John: What was the number one thing you decided that you were going to focus on recycling?

Ryan: The number one part of recycling or?

John: What items were you going to recycle?

Ryan: The focus was kind of the traditional paper, plastic, cardboard, and metal. Super focused on traditional household recycling. The intention of, eventually, starting to look at some of these other things like e-waste, food waste, textile and whatnot.

John: Now, right now, on your website for our listeners out there that want to find Ryan and his great company Recyclops, go to www.recyclops.com. You are in Arizona, Colorado, Ohio, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Texas and Utah. In seven short years, you have grown quite a lot. How is that growth trajectory looking and where can our listeners or viewers, if they want to become part of the Recyclops community, how can they get involved?

Ryan: Yes, we are growing super rapidly. Ohio is on that list on our website. We actually launched in Ohio tomorrow. Woo-hoo. That is exciting.

John: During a pandemic, you are growing.

Ryan: Oh, yes. We have actually doubled between March and November. March and April were a little bit tough, but then we got our bearings, adapted some.

John: If anyone does not say March and April 20 20 was not tough for them, they are just not telling the truth here. Let us be honest. [inaudible] we were headed in March and April. That is to be expected. But you are saying between March and November, you doubled in size. That is incredible. My hat is off to you, man.

Ryan: Yes, it has been a blast and the thing that is so exciting for me is we are bringing recycling to places that it has never been. You think about who does not have recycling, I mentioned it is kind of some of these more rural communities and man, you look at who lives in more rural communities and who lives in apartments and it is not, generally speaking, the upper class. These are middle class, lower middle class. It is funny that you look at who does not have access to recycling and it is like that population like man. So, we really do feel like we are democratizing it and creating accessibility to people who just do not have a habit and everyone wants to recycle. If you are in a community and you do not have recycling in your community, or maybe you have recycling but you cannot recycle glass.

In February, we are launching in Alexandria, Virginia and Kansas City, Kansas and Missouri and in Nashville, Tennessee, because none of those communities have glass with their city program. We are launching a glass-only program in those areas. If you are in a city that does not have anything or you are lacking something, let us know. I mean, we have the ability where you can sign up and request the location anywhere in the country. I will tell you what. That is how we get started. I had a random lady call me up from Beaumont or actually from Orange, Texas. Orange County, Texas is at Southeastern Texas, but two hours from Houston on the Louisiana border. No recycling there. She calls me up and says, “Hey, I want recycling in my community. I heard that you guys could help.” We said, “Yes, if you can get a few hundred households to sign up in Orange County, we are there.” Two weeks later, she is reaching out and saying, “Hey, you have gone viral locally. You are on both deal in the front page of both local newspapers.” Literally, within a month of her reaching out, we were picking up thousands of pounds of recycling from homes in her city.

John: How do people contact you though if they want to bring Recyclops to their community? Is that something you want people to reach out to you?

Ryan: Reach out. Actually, on our website, you can sign up. There is a request form where you can just asked us to come to your community. We have people requesting that everyday and I will tell you, most of the places that were operating in today were because people requested it. That is for us the lowest hanging fruit is people are asking us to come, we will come.

John: Explain how Recyclops works for people who want to mechanically understand your what goes on really in Recyclops. How does your system work?

Ryan: You sign up on our website. From there, you are put into the system, you are put onto a route and our driver has the smart routing app. Your first pick up, you will put out recycling and bags from your home so that we can still pick up your recycling. Immediately, we will deliver roll of Recyclops bags that are more uniform and a lot easier for us to make sure they get recycled. We will drop those off at your home, and from there, you get charged on the first of every month. We pick up the recycling. It is anywhere from twelve to twenty-five dollars depending on where you are at or if you are sign up for weekly or every other week. If you want glass service, kind of different levels there. It is simple. I mean you sign up once, we come every week or every other week. You put your recycling in these bags. It is really easy. You have your recycling rate in your kitchen. You put it straight in. Bags has drawstrings. Pull it out. Put it there and off you go.

John: That is awesome. I love entrepreneurs like you, Ryan, that not only disrupt old models or change the world or make the world a better place, but you are doing all of the above. This is also a job creation business. Talk about people who want to become drivers for you around the country. How does that work?

Ryan: Yes, that is something that is super important to me. I love the environmental impact. I am definitely environmentalist. It is hard to beat the human impact. That is really cool about driving for a cyclops. We have some drivers who would have a hard time getting a job elsewhere, whether they are autistic or they are disabled in some way. Even like you look at some of these kind of low skilled jobs, they are just tough still. Like working at a fast food restaurant, some of these are hard. It does not matter if you are kind of in that category or if you are on the other side and you are saying, “No, I could work anywhere and I just need some side hustle. I am trying to earn some extra money.” All of that fits for us and our average drivers are making twenty-five dollars an hour. They are using their own vehicle, and so there is some expenses associated with that, but people are netting seventeen to twenty dollars an hour, which is pretty dang good.

John: It is a great wage to start with.

Ryan: No, that is exactly right, and you can do better. We will have drivers who buy a trailer or they borrow trailer from their uncle or whatever. Suddenly, they are picking up a lot more at a time and they are making forty bucks an hour. It is pretty fun to see.

John: For our listeners and viewers who have just joined us, we got Ryan Smith with us today. He is the CEO and founder of Recyclops. You can find Recyclops and Ryan’s great work and colleagues at www.recyclops.com. Ryan, when you go to bed at night and now you know, you have a business that works. You have crossed over. Where do you dream about how big this could be in the next three to five years ahead? How big can this really get? You are a young guy. You have tons of runway in front of you. Is this a big idea that can really be national in almost every zip code across America one day?

Ryan: Yes, I very much believe it is. I look at this and say we want to be servicing at least a million homes in the next three to five years. We are kind of we are well on our way there. I already mentioned that there is thirty-four million kind of rural, semi-urban homes and sixteen million apartments. I think the potential is much bigger than that. Another piece of something that I cannot help but think about. We look at where environmental services are lacking and one, that is not just recycling. I look at a city, almost any city in the country and you see, “Hey, what do you do with your Styrofoam?” Chances are you cannot put it in your bin. What do you do with your old computer? Your old cell phone? Chances are you cannot put them in the bin. We look at this and say, “Cool. There is all the households who have nothing.”

That is target number one, but then we all have all the households who do not know what to do with their plastic bag that their bread comes in. They do not know what to do with the lid or all these small plastics. We call it hard-to-recycle plastics. Most city programs are only accepting bottles, milk jugs and laundry detergent jugs and maybe a yogurt container. Everything else, your city probably does not want it. It means it is going to the landfill. We are saying, “Hey, we want to launch hard-to-recycle plastic programs all over the country.” We want to partner with top brands and help them recycle better, so that things are being truly circular. I had a meeting today with a package manufacturer. We are working on a program to try and get their packaging from consumers households straight back to them, so they can turn it straight back into that packaging. It is fully circular. That is what I am excited about.

John: If we had a conversation, you are always welcome back on the Impact Podcast, to talk about your growth and your success because it is so inspiring. Three to five years from now, you can literally be in every state and be much bigger than you are today.

Ryan: Yes, we fully expect it. I mean, like I said, we are launching in Ohio tomorrow, I guess. Tomorrow, we launch in Ohio. We are launching in Virginia. We are launching at three new states next month. We are going for it, and we really feel like we are onto something and there is an opportunity here to make a huge impact and to be a profitable business while we are at it.

John: Hey, there is no you cannot save the world. I say this to all young entrepreneurs that come to me all the time for advice and guidance. There is no shame in saying you cannot go save the world unless you make a profit along the way until you created your own sustainable venture. If you are not sustainable, you are not going to go make an impact. You are not going to make the world a better place. I think it is wonderful that you are profitable and growing.

Ryan: Amen. For me, that is the thing is that it is great. I love nonprofits. Nonprofits are wonderful. We chose not to be a non-profit because I wanted to make sure that my business did not need charity to thrive, that we could thrive on our own and we have been able to do that.

John: Hey, Ryan, you have been able to do a lot more than just that. For our listeners out there to find Ryan to sign up as a driver, to ask Ryan to come to your community, go to www.recyclops.com. Ryan Smith, you are making a big impact. You are making the world a better place. I wish you continued success and thank you for being a guest today on the Impact Podcast.

Ryan: Thanks for having me. Super enjoyed chatting with you.

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

John Shegerian: This edition of the Impact podcast is brought to you by ERI. ERI has a mission to protect people, the planet, and your privacy. It 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. I am so honored to have with us today, Commissioner Ed Grayson of the New York City Department of Sanitation. Welcome to the Impact Podcast, Edward.

Edward Grayson: Thank you so much for having me John. It is a pleasure to be here today.

John: And this is so much fun for me. I’m sitting in Fresno today. You’re sitting in New York City, but it is like 2 Queens guys getting together and having a conversation over a New York City cup of coffee. This is a real honor because you are doing such great work, and for our listeners who have not had a chance to get to know you yet or meet you, this story was just in The New York Times, such a wonderful story. He always wanted to be a garbage man, now he is the Commissioner. I would love you to just say in your own words, growing up in Ridgewood, what did that mean you always wanted to be a garbage man? How did that even happen? And how did you end up where you did today at?

Edward: Thank you for that. Yeah, It is pretty interesting. So, the reason why I always wanted to be a garbage man is basically it starts out familial. My dad was a garbage man. When I was growing up in Queens, especially around anywhere, garbage man was an okay term. It is not a joke. I’m an engineer. My dad, in my neighborhood call him the garbage man, and know what, it had no negative connotation to it. It was okay.

So, my dad worked for the Department of Sanitation as a garbage man, and the interesting thing about it is that it’s they kind of, to paraphrase that in the story is at some point, I was in the fourth grade and the teacher, she went around the room, a very nice room and she asked everybody what they want to be when they grow up. You could imagine a little Johnny wants to be an astronaut and wants to be a baseball player, wants to be an international superstar and they get to me and I stand up very proudly I said, “I will be a garbage man”. And by the way, I got to tell you that it was an interesting exchange because, in fairness to her, I think that she may have wanted to take it in a different way just in case I was self-limiting. She probably had the best of intentions except I don’t think she realized she was about to sort of insult my dad. So she says “Well, why would you want to be that?” And I said, “Oh well”. So, then I answered this “My dad is a garbageman”. She said “Well, maybe there is something…”, like she kind of was trying to lead it down a path of well, “…Maybe there’s something else you want to be”. I was like “No!”. So, we had this interesting exchange that you know kind of set the tone for that whole school year. It was like, “What are you talking about? What is wrong with that?”. And from then on, I really did.

I always… Naturally, I love my father. But I I love the trucks. I love everything that they were doing. And then interestingly enough, everybody in my neighborhood, everybody in Queens and my section of Queens any way, at some point you got to a certain age where you were close to about turning 18 and everybody in the neighborhood’s father worked the city or civil servant and you have to take the civil service exams in New York. So, you want to work for the city, you have to take the test. That’s how you get on. As a rite of passage, you would go every Wednesday’s, you have to buy the newspaper and look for every test that was going to come out, and you would wait and you get the temporal list of when they are going to be. So, I signed up to take all the exams, every single agency, transit, everything, you name it, I took the test. When the test came out I took it, and I got a score that was in the eligible pool so that tranche, and, lo and behold, a new career was one. At that point in time, my father had already been retired for almost a decade.

John: Oh wow.

Edward: So, I never got to share the joint temple. We have people now, we have legacies on the job the same way that like the police department has legacies and far behind. We have a lot of that. I never shared a truck shift so to speak, with my dad. He’d already been gone. One of the best pieces of advice he ever gave me when I started my journey with the department was, I said, “I am on your job.” he said “No. You are on your job. My job is over” I said, “Oh wow”. It sets the tone. There was never any expectation. I just knew that he works so hard, he went in every day and he was so dedicated and that’s really how I set the tone there.

In addition to him, when recycling started in New York City, the Department of Sanitation actually at the forefront. They started to bring on community outreach people and my mother, oddly enough, in a completely separate and parallel track, because my parents are divorced, so they were already in a separate household. So, my mother applied to the Department of Sanitation to become a community outreach person, go out and teach people how to recycle in the mid-late 80s. So my mother was on the team of people that actually went door to door, delivering the pails and trying to solicit it and handing out the literature and doing community meetings and all this outreach to try to get people just to start the original recycling program, even before it became a law in 1989. So she was on the front steps.

So it is a very interesting thing to have both representatives because in New York City, in the Department of Sanitation, we run a paramilitary. That’s how it is. It has got ranks and ratings and running like the Army. So, when you first get hired, you are a sanitation worker. You have to take another civil service exam to become a sanitation supervisor which is equivalent of a captain’s rank. You wear a captain’s balls when you walk around because I use supervising a specified area and a certain number of cruise. So when you think about our rich history, so the department of sanitation is a hundred and forty years old this year. We’re about to turn a hundred and forty and when you think about the department was formed in 1881 and then in 1895, they revamp the entire department and the person that they brought into re-design how we would service New York City all those years ago. He was former military. So he changed it from you know specified work crews into a completely ranks ratings rose yet to stand at attention and all that stuff. So yeah completely revolutionized how it’s been and we’ve been running that same model in a way and naturally we new technology and new innovations and all other stuff. But basically the same those core values of having run like a milk, like more of a military operation every day.

Every day is a new attack. Every day is a new, you going after this sector, this frequency this and that’s why we’re really good, in fairness and a lot of things that are strategic deployment based. We have a plan every day of how we’re going to attack the city and how, it’s funny to attack, but how we’re going to achieve our mission. It was speak every single day. There’s a plan without it. It’s one thing to know tonnage and trends and what not, but you have to have a plan of how you’re going to navigate the terrain, may call the service commitments, get it all floated, get all the trucks back empty. There’s a lot involved.

Most people when they look at it, I mean, you’re an industry insider, you know how intricate it all is, how would you be moving parts but you would be surprised how many people have no idea to have zero connection from what happens right after they get from the kitchen to the curb. They have no idea the network of things that are going on in the background the trying to find come to a final resting place at waste.

John: I want to go back to the thing they think of a second but first I want to go back to Mom and Dad. Are mom and dad still alive with us?

Edward: I am blessed to say that Mom and Dad are both 75. My father’s retired in Florida. Loving life. He did very well for me is good. And my mother is here in New York with us. But yeah, they’re both long retired and they are both thankfully healthy, and I’m okay. I’m blessed to have them.

John: So Ed tell me how proud are they now? You’re the Commissioner of Sanitation New York. I mean, it’s Mom was in recycling before was ever cool to be green. Dad did started at the ranks, you did and became a supervisor like you said a captain. How proud are they now of their son?

Edward: Both of them are beaming, I mean, I have to tell you that there was never a… it was interesting thing. My parents were pretty simple. They were work hard do the right thing. They both cared about the community. So in addition to whatever they were doing for their living, my mother was a community activist. She was on the local school board. She’s spent so many years trying to give back to the group in Ridgewood Queens. She loved Ridgewood, the whole Ridgewood Glendale area, the community board. So the city is broken up into community boards. We lived in Community Board 5 in Queens and my mother was a member of the community board. That’s who she was. So to her, if you were going to be somewhere you need to be giving back. You needed to be doing more. It was never just about us, What else could we do?

I mean, my mother has done so much for the education. She’s always champion kids’ education and that was her big thing. That’s why she fell in love with the recycling opportunity because it was the ability to teach people stuff. She used to love giving in classroom presentations. She was at the forefront of going to all the schools in New York City and teaching people with prop should be holding up bags of “this is recyclable, this isn’t” really just going all out with it and my dad to.

My dad was the kind of guy where he was the neighborhood handyman if somebody needed something a very handy guy that could build anything to fix anything, very talented man when his hands and he would always be… he was at somebody’s house, whose washing machine broke back in the days before everything became a disposable world and you changed screens and windows and there’s something you change lock cylinders are not the whole lock and that’s what the people would call my dad, this doesn’t work.

I remember as a kid. So it’s a funny thing. We didn’t grow up in… we weren’t financially challenged both. My parents are working. We have modest household. Nothing to say to, knock around folks. That’s how we would describe it here, right? But we had, I don’t want to say, we had TVs because your people would throw TVs out all the time and sometimes my father was the first E-Waste recycler. Let’s put it that way. There was more than, it was a couple of TVs that didn’t find a way to the back of the truck if you know what I mean. But that’s because some people didn’t know this was back in the day when used to just change the picture tubes.

John: Right.

Edward: But what if you were the guy who knew that a $1 tube, you get your whole TV.

John: We’re in business. That’s a good deal.

Edward: So it’s interesting I think of how many things are… that life the way my parents were were always about what more can you do? Very much for…

John: They were thinking outward people. They were thinking about other people than themselves. They were out on thinking.

Edward: All the time them.

John: Well, thank God because they got to live to see you become the Commissioner.

Edward: That’s also a very strong, they are. Back to your question…

John: So listeners in our viewers who just joined us. We’re so honored to have with us today in New York City the Commissioner of Sanitation Ed Grayson, the New York City Department of Sanitation, a fine man. All his great colleagues and all the great and important work they are doing, go to nyc.gov/dsny. I want to go back to what you were talking about. The cluelessness, unfortunately, of some people who take for granted a hard and immense amount of work you do on a daily basis. I want to give some numbers, correct me if my numbers are a little bit off but on a daily basis you have 10,500 tons, approximately of residential and institutional garbage in New York City and 1,700 tons of recyclables every day that you have to manage and take care of and get rid of…

Edward: That’s about that’s right about the average. Yes, that’s the the scope of the daily work. Yes.

John: Unbelievable. And also what people don’t really realize and I realized later in life is that also under your leadership, it comes down to also clearing and keeping clean the litter and the snow off of approximately give or take sixty three hundred miles of streets.

Edward: Correct.

John: Sixty three hundred miles. I mean, even when you’re a kid like me who grew up in Little Neck very similar to you in Queens, , another part of queens and in New York City as our backyard, I never think of it as sixty three hundred miles. That’s a huge. So how many employees under you that you manage to do all of this delicate dance all the time?

Edward: So the department has about 9,500 employees in total and the front lines. So the men and women behind the trucks the men and women who supervise that operation all the field staff. So everybody we were talking about the two tranches of the uniform and we have the the non-uniform support staff. There is about 7,000 members of service, a little over 7,500 actually close to seventy five hundred members of service that are in a uniform. And it’s a very interesting dynamic and we make sure we have the sanitation workers supervisors and the chiefs and that whole uniform side and then we have countless mechanics. We have this incredible trade staff to skill trade in addition to the that number of employees. So almost let’s say depending on the budget year, so to speak, anywhere from 9,500 to 10,000 employees, but it’s also this enjoy incredible fleet of trucks and it’s incredible footprint of properties.

So we have garages for every community board that we service and we have you know offices and satellite dispatch locations because we don’t fit in every place. So when you think about it, it’s just this huge bit of real estate, a very big network of buildings. So then you have building maintenance and boilermakers, You don’t always think of how vast and how much you have to have on an operations front between physical plant into administrative offices and then naturally, there’s we sometimes… when you’re in the thick of it you think of you… we forget to mention everybody that’s back at the house. We have this incredible team in our fiscal services and HR and we think about you know, I know we’re going to get into it, but you think about what’s been going on through the pandemic right?

Some of the most… you talk about what’s essential. For us, there’s the essential of the essential and the meaning… it’s one thing to completely champion everybody on the front line out their day-to-day, right? Another sub setting, inside our own department of heroes are literally that that team and HR and fiscal services who were there to make sure that benefits were in place and paychecks were going out because especially now at the height of the pandemic when you think of it’s so interesting when you think of the term critical and essential. Yeah, you need frontline people to be out there in our world moving those piles, but in the end they’re doing that on the basis of their commitment but also on the faith. And having people in the back of the house that were also working from home and doing everything necessary to make sure that all of those administrative functions were happening so critical.

John: And working for home for the first time in the history of the DSNY this was unprecedented. You’re, I mean, to manage, what you manage and the Balancing act in the delicate dance that you were doing. How did… obviously the COVID tragic period has affected all of us both personally and professionally and otherwise. But as a leader, Ed, how do you manage also fiscal challenges that you’re faced with while you try to manage keeping up the services that people have you know a little bit taken for granted, but at least I’m minimally have come to expect also?

Edward: I have to tell you that I have never been prouder to be a member of the department. So I’ve been with the Department almost 22 years. I started behind the truck work my way up to being the Commissioner. I’ve never been prouder this department. So my… it’s that part of the resume only think of the things that you’ve seen in my tenure with the department, 9/11, things that we were apart of the aftermath and we had people from day one there and we stayed through the absolute last bit of film that went. We reopened the fresh kill site to become the sorting site for every bit of debris left in or a million and a half tons debris sorted with the OCME and the FBI task force and know when you think about what was going on there into your fast forward a few years and I’m just trying to admit secret pain and for you.

John: Yeah.

Edward: Just a tremendous undertaking. I was three years on the job and I worked in Queens and we got putting bands and we had to come down and do your part and at ground zero and that’s just what we did. Then we had dedicated teams down there for months, helping in every possible way, holding debris, using equipment to help dust suppression, keep things safe. Everybody else down there believe it or not because we have such an intricate in network fueling system and we have we maintain fuel trucks to make sure that we can operate at all times. We were fueling all of the equipment that was down a because you couldn’t take it out of the site. Everything that was in that became a quarantine zone and everything had to happen inside.

So the whole area of Manhattan, so when you think about it, there’s a lot of amazing people spend months and months down. You fast forward a few years, every between then and that instance and all of the incredible snow events that have happened huge blizzards and then into Hurricane Irene, Hurricane Sandy. These were the front line responses that we were at the forefront of all of them. There are certain instances in New York City where we become the first thing first responders because we have to give access. We have to give one heavy equipment and that’s what we have. We have our tractor operators and people that have these unique skills payload operators that can come in and do some incredible work right at the time that you need crucial access to get in for life and limb first responders and it’s an interesting thing.

So when you think about moving into this pandemic, we were coming in every day. We’re not missing a day. We’re doing everything we can. We’ve taken our lumps as have a lot of other. Industries, agencies, critical workers and first responders with the whole world. We’re all going through this together. This is yet another example of… it’s an interesting time when you are a victim and a responder at the same time. And every snow event, meteorological event hurricane response, and now to the pandemic, we’re all living through this together. We are all dedicated workers but we’re going in…

This is the kind of period of time in New York that’s been so interesting. It’s that what we start to really appreciate who is critical, what is critical? Because I cannot… Listen, I will always champion my workforce. I will champ but on the same token, you know who was critical also, that man woman stocking the shelves in a supermarket because people were worried about food supply and you think about that like everybody, you find your new definitions of what’s really important. It’s an interesting thing in times of tragedy and that’s what this pandemic. It’s a tragedy. A global and a national tragedy and when you think about how people have come together to try to change, in behavior change that’s been going on and the humanity that’s out there for the pandemic response. You see this these new changes, so it’s been difficult, but we were so committed to get our job done.

We’ve had eight fatalities from COVID. We’ve had about 15% of the workforce or a little over 1,400. We’re nearing we’re rounding the curve near 1400 and have employees test positive for the virus. We opted at the height of the first wave back in April admitting, we had up to 25% of the staff out for either, you know COVID or COVID-related quarantines. So we have a dwindling workforce. We had operational goals to hit like we kept and you’re doing everything you can to motivate. You’re doing everything and this is where the dedication of the workforce and more importantly the dedication of the frontline supervisory staff to try to keep morale high daily. To send the message and get people to absorb the message that you are critical. You are essential. Essential doesn’t mean expendable. We need you in every single day.

Sanitation, just by the nature of the work, we’re a PPE-oriented business entity. You’re always wearing gloves, you always wearing boots. We have a lot of functions prior to pandemic where we’re going on every day and just because of the nature of the business, we are wearing a mask. So we had certain stockpile built in but then at the height when we started getting low with mess just like everybody else on the east coast when that first tranche of one masks and then even for us to to say unequivocally to work with our workforce and come up with we were doing bandanas, we were doing things differently simply because we wanted it. We wanted to have those masks for health care front line. They look at we… because we would talk to our own workforce just remind them if anything happened to you like we… one of the things about sanitation work, the industry, is it’s much of its a whole bunch of people working to change that.

We’re the most dangerous jobs in the world like whether there’s a pandemic or not, it’s just a dangerous job. So the likelihood of someone getting hurt and then needing medical attention, that’s how you have those conversations. We need the nurses to be in. We need we need them to be there because I need a doctor. It’s a weird thing like this, there’s always the, in fairness, you wouldn’t mind certain swap out professions on in a pinch. We’ve all seen those disaster movies, but I’m sorry enough for a doctor if I can get one like anybody could just can’t step in you know for certain things. So it’s that, it’s trying to keep morale high. It’s trying to navigate weird waters on as far as than the aftermath of that if you can get through that in the physical plant.

Because let’s face it everybody we all know, think about the change in our world now. We talked about telecommuting, we talked about a few things, but if you’re an industry like ours, I can’t pick up the garbage from home. Okay. So now and now most physical plants that house large dispatch, you have a lot of room for the equipment, but you usually sacrifice the personnel space, meaning you build locker rooms that are very efficient. It’s not six feet between lockers in a locker room. Everybody could just think about you even if you don’t know what it’s like to be a sanitation worker or someone who goes… think about high school, think about a locker, think about the gym, like you don’t have….like there’s nothing,

So when you think about how do you manage large lots of people who come in and want to have a change of clothes and want to write. At the end of the day, you’re looking to show it was trying to adjust schedules, adjust collection times, and then you got to think that the entire network of that and we back to how intricate it is, a lot of people… it’s behavior. When you think about it, so it’s 12,000 a little over 12,000 combined tons a day of material on in a specified area that we told the public to put it there. Now, we have a service commitments. Now, there’s that estoppel between you and the public and also you talked and then the interesting thing is we told you to put it there and while you’re okay that we came, us coming now at two o’clock in the morning when you were just about to hit sleep that’s going to stick in your craw.

So, you know, what you think about this this the fluidity of what we’ve all come through together. So that’s why it’s not just the department’s had to make these adjustments. The public has made so many adjustments. We’ve been working with them. They’ve been working back with us. I applaud everybody across all industries who have really, especially response providers as well. We’re really had to change the way that they’ve operated in a world that has been also completely a little, there’s not a ton of firmament. You got to be very… right now is the time where you have to be a lot of very flexible. I know one of the things…

I’m glad you asked me about the budget simply because here’s a primary example of a misalignment of things. It couldn’t come at a worse time. Let’s put it that right.

John: Right, right.

Edward: I don’t ever want to sign up for a pandemic again and I hope that for all of your listeners that we never ever have to do this again. I wanted to end. I hope we never do it, but talk about a weird thing where, at about exactly the time that we we all as a group as that thought everybody try to work from home and let’s do like who didn’t agree with that? We don’t have a handle on these, let’s just stay home. Stay home. Work from home. You can work from home, work from home. Except that… that was the exact time that everybody is going to need to upgrade their computers and get a different printer. And again, if you’re still printing and get all this new tech, it was great except for me. That was the exact time I ran out of funding to run my E-Waste recycling program.

John: Right.

Edward: So right at the exact time that we had more E-Waste that was going to turn over and everyone got green, I know don’t have a good mechanism to help you do that. So right there, there’s a misalignment of good, nobody’s going to disagree with that’s a good move for public safety. Now, it creates a portion of the waste stream at the exact time that is now increasing for operates that I can’t do because we were doing this great program. It was expanding and we were finally able to get some E-Waste at the door, at your curb.

John: Yeah.

Edward: Pull it out we could come get, you make an appointment, we were coming to get it and we didn’t have the funding to continue that program.

John: Let us be clear. John Doherty, Kathryn Garcia, now you. Those I mean, you’re filling big shoes and great people. John is a still a living legend. I got the pleasure of getting to know John. Kathryn is just amazing and I got to know her. Now, you, I mean all the experience family background and you also, all these years either… and I know you’re a humble guy. That’s just how Queens guys are I just know it. I mean, oh that’s my that’s my background. But the E-Waster program, let us be clear, is one of the trademarks successes of DSNY, it’s the most successful residential E-Waste recycling program bar none in America, maybe the world. And like you said the the tragic COVID period created a misalignment in need versus ability to service. I mean just nuts.

Hey how about vaccinations? We’re all now trying to get back to hopefully a new better head. How is the vaccination process been going with your department in New York City?

Edward: Well, I would like to show the vaccines and right now there’s the vaccinations to New York City. They have, we thought were following the guidelines from the State and there is specific categories of employees and classes of employees that have been included. And as of right now, as of this conversation, my front line workers, the men and women who do the residential recycling, they are not included in the current category. They are not included. We have a facet of law enforcement and we have a facet of healthcare workers that work for us that they’ve been included and we’re waiting patiently.

I have to tell you that right now to the city at this exact moment and every day the mayor is pushing for more and more vaccines to be made available. The number of doses in the city to be made available. There is not enough to go around. They’re really playing, they’re trying to have the best strategy to include the most vulnerable people. As it stands right now, I will always champion for my workforce to get vaccines. I want them at the front line. We’re very anxious to be included widespread and I think that we’re looking forward to that. I’m also looking forward as the city just for the whole city for and and the recovery of New York City, for more and more people to get the vaccine so that we can find what that new norm is because right now I don’t know.

Everybody is trying to recover from the pandemic and there is these incredible programs to try to have a recovery for all and try to really get out there and really rebuild from this, some incredible programs and and try to make sure that that New York City gets back to where it needs to be on so many levels. So when I…

John: You wanted to be head in… we’re going to get through this. Science is going to win and God willing, end of the summer, early fall, the vast majority relieving or get herd immunity or will get a combination of herd immunity with the vaccines. I feel good about what they said. There’s 1.2 million of us in America getting vaccinated every day, that’s going to be good for us. So where, as a leader and as someone who has lived this for his whole life of growing up with parents both recycling and as a supervisor for DSNY and now you yourself as a career man in this and now the Commissioner, where are you going to take this to be a new better in 2021 and beyond? How are we going to get to a new better because new normal I feel is just is a term that’s almost like a give up term. I think people like you who are progressive and big thinkers are going to take us to a new better. Where are you going to take us to a new better in 2021 and beyond?

Edward: I think that the big thing is, I think one of the moments that could be… I don’t know how to describe pandemic and then see that the term like silver lining but I think that in the end, the adaptive change that is going on in everyone’s life. The things that we never thought you’d do, you’re doing.

John: The resiliency that we’ve all shown together.

Edward: When you think about this forced evolution of what’s happening on how you be… Forced evolution… so usually things of slow period of maturation and yet now we’ve all kind of hit that and we’ll have to all and somebody much smarter than me one day we’ll look back and and and think what was lost and what was gained in that increased warp speed of maturation, but inside that as well considering that we’ve all had to really look at so many other things in our life. This is exactly the time to get people to change their behavior. So meaning one of the challenges that we’ve always had here is in we have we have great goals. You need brought up. Commissioner Doherty was here when recycling started. He wasn’t even the Commissioner yet. He was ushering in that age, but then in his entire tenure as our Commissioner, he champion recycling. And then when we got Commission Garcia, she just took it to the whole next level.

John: All right.

Edward: Residential will get… the organics program, 0X30, the entire campaign. These are big things, these are great things, the E-Waste program. These are great things that took us to another level and when you think about it, all of that do was still hoping for behavior change. And I don’t mean it like that. They did everything that they could with that small maturation of behavior change. And now, both of them also face times where they had the reduce their footprint because the budget and now I am in charge of the department and we retrenched off foot printing further because it was further along independent.

And now you say to yourself, even though you’ve lost a step right now though, there are a lot of people rethinking how they live, how they behave, what’s right for me and I think that while we look for new and it’s not new norms, it’s the new better. While we search for the new better as you said, it’s great way to put that. Always search for the new better. Now, we may have the more willing recipient to behavior change for what they do after they get over the divine power that everybody has in their hands on when something is trash.

Most people don’t even look at it that way. It’s an interesting way to put that but when you’re you literally walk around daily with this incredible divine power that you hold in your hand to say this is waste to me and then the hardest part I’ve always thought of getting people to make the right decision on what they do with that is that it was tough enough to make the first decision.

John: All right.

Edward: If people were like making a couple of this unit, they don’t want to make it once you do you think it’s and now once that I’ve decided it’s waste, I have to pick which container it goes in. Now I have to pick am I going to hold on to it because I want to put it on the right day of the wrong day. And while those are tiny obstacles, I find that it’s those obstacles that’s been the struggle for a lot of places. Specifically in the municipality when you’re trying to do large-scale municipal programs, it’s different when you… we have a link we’re playing against the landscape that we do not have complete control over and never will. So we really need that buying. We need synergy with our clients so to speak on the public that they have… for you think of the most successful recycling and reclamation efforts that have ever happened, they were I hate to say it, they were joining war efforts.

When you think everybody had… you talk to the older generation of World War 1 and World War 2 and they thought we got to save the metal because they thought that they could make more armor because we had the save, preserve the way of life. When you think about it, some of those things, the textiles, and the reclamation of things that were all for an effort. That was a national belief that the way of life was in jeopardy. And if you can somehow channel them into letting people understand that the waste stream needs to be managed. The decision, but it’s not managed as in you just put it out, we’ll figure it out after that.

You have to make some good decisions. You have to think about every every part of it from the shelf to your life usage of X thing, where you know variable, into then the disposal back and there a lot of good things that can come while we have a small window of opportunity to talk to people who are now thinking: Wow, that’s a new norm. That’s a new thing. That’s a new policy. I could adapt to that. And it’s only be in this in this intricate time of how do we take the next steps forward thinking while there’s a lot we’re going to have to mourn, what can we praise? What can we do next? So that’s something that I think that I want to I want to look at. I want to in my tenure in this role, I think I want to number one, focus on employees morale. We’re nothing without them. The pile does not move itself. I’ll never forget when I started here. We all die, it doesn’t move itself and it never will. It’s one of those things so and you think about that and how do we keep the employees engaged? How do we keep them? Knowing that zero-waste…

You think about because zero-waste lifestyle. And one of the things is also ensuring to the men and women that work for the department in and also the subsidiaries and because we work a lot of community groups and trying to convince everybody that the concept of zero waste does not mean zero job, does not means your opportunity. It means that we are going to work even harder. It means that we are going to do even more.

John: Right.

Edward: But you got to remember that sometimes it depends on how it’s thought of, how its explain that it’s trying to get by in both from the people we service as well as the people who do the service for us and letting them… I think this expansion opportunities. I think that that we all have a lot to get past so I don’t know the temporal moment, but I think that if we can have that running out of have those talks do what we can do. I always… one of the terms that I appreciate what sometimes gets also misused is you think outside the box.

John: Right.

Edward: But in some cases you need to think inside the box because there’s about an inch of room left in if we can get it. There’s so much that is underutilized in that one inch that’s left in that box. When you think about how people have had to retrench they have augmented their entire lifestyle. So to try them to get them to do something that seems completely out of “I’m not doing that” but yet on the same token, they might do the four or five little things that they weren’t doing before out of convenience or out of it didn’t matter like I don’t know and now they’ll do it and it’s inside the box. So it’s not that moonshot, but you can get people doing excellent behavior change in a smaller footprint only now because they’re doing it now.

People are washing their hands now more than ever. As silly as that is as a comparable more than ever before, people are washing their hands, right? So now that’s something that we could have done every day was always there. There was always soap, there was water, there was. It’s been there all the time but people are washing their hands, people are thinking about things that they’ve never thought of before that I would argue are completely inside the box. There’s nothing fancy about and yet more and more people are doing that. So when you think about that, that’s the same level of gains on good thought process building. Setting the new chore of building blocks on how people can behave and interact with the waste stream, make good decisions that are more sustainability-based, make good decisions when they are presented with a proposal for behavior change and rule change and municipal governance where 9 Zone, okay, that makes sense only because right now they have to take in a lot and maybe the door is open for those kind of discussions.

John: Hey, for listeners out there that want to find Ed Grayson, Commissioner Ed Grayson and his great colleagues at the New York City Department of Sanitation, go to go to nyc.gov/dsny. Ed, thank you for your time today. It’s been a joy and an honor to have a fellow Queens guy on with me on the impact podcast. That might be a first for me actually and also if there’s anyone who’s going to take the DSNY to a new better, it’s you, Ed Grayson, I’m telling you. I know John Doherty. I know Kathryn Garcia, and I know New York City because that’s my hometown, and I just loved our time today, and I’m so excited to come be able to meet you in person one day and anything I could do to help to support your efforts. We’re here to support because New York City should get to a new better, and I’m so glad you’re leading the DSNY in that direction. Thank you so much for all your time today for making the world and New York City a better place.

Edward: John, thanks to you. It’s been an absolute pleasure.

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