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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 and we are so honored to have with us today, Mallory Brown. Mallory is a humanitarian filmmaker and the founder of Walk A Mile. Welcome to the Impact Podcast, Mallory.

Mallory Brown: Thank you, John. Thank you.

John: Because we are still living through this COVID-19 tragic period, I am in Fresno, and you are in the beautiful Motor City of Detroit or Michigan. I know you are in Michigan today, but you live in Detroit typically. But it still seems like we are together and we are going to share your message, your great message with our viewers and our listeners today. So I really am thankful for your time.

Mallory: Yeah, I mean, I am looking forward to it. Thanks for having me.

John: Mallory, you are doing great things, very impactful things, and changing the world in so many ways. But before we get talking about the journey you have been on, please share a little bit of your background bio growing up and what got you even into what you are doing. I want our listeners to hear in your own words.

Mallory: Sure. Yeah. Well, I am an adventure travel girl that out and I call myself a female Indiana Jones. People often assume I had parents that were in the Peace Corps or some travel writer parents. I was raised in this environment, but I was raised in a middle class family in Detroit, Michigan. I lived in the suburbs. It was a fairly standard American upbringing. But when I graduated from college and went to a small liberal arts school in Michigan, when I graduated, I rewarded myself with a backpacking trip to Southeast Asia. I went with a friend of mine and the two of us wanted to do a month in Southeast Asia and just backpacking and having fun like young twenty-year-olds do. That was my first exposure to a culture totally different from my own, to seeing what I consider true poverty in the world. It really was a life-changing moment for me. It just opened my eyes up to how much is out there, how much I’ve never experienced, how much I don’t know about the rest of the world. And so I became a backpacker, and I spent the first part of my 20s just backpacking, exploring different countries of the world, understanding what I was interested in and not. That really led me on the path that I am on. It has always been a personal interest. And so when I was 24 years old, I’ve just been backpacking for a couple years and I decided I want to take this interest, this passion of mine and make that my career. And so then I started my own business, and I became a social entrepreneur. I just dedicated my life to trying to still have adventures but also do humanitarian work like create a life that I loved.

John: So you have Walk A Mile project. Explain the kickoff of Walk A Mile, which is a global marathon for women’s empowerment. Explain how that evolves. What was the genesis or aha moment coming up with Walk A Mile and when did you kick that off?

Mallory: Sure. First I will start with what it is. So Walk A Mile is a global marathon for women. It is a documentary series. Marathon is 26 miles, and so Walk A Mile is a 26-episode series. I walk a mile in the shoes of impoverished women around the world in every episode in a different country. I walk with a different woman. I sort of explore the issues that women face in that country. And then every episode ends with a fundraiser. So I raise money to help the women that I am walking with. It is kind of like Anthony Bourdain series.

John: I am just going to say that. That is the cool point that keeps you on. Where did you kick it off and why did you choose that country?

Mallory: Mile 1 was in Tanzania in Central Africa. I had been to Africa before I had been to Tanzania. I loved it, and I found an amazing charity that I wanted to feature that really embodied women’s empowerment. They believe in empowering local women, impoverished women to solve their own community issues. So it is like double impact because you are not only helping women to learn about their income, support their kids, send their kids to school, and all of the normal things you are donating to but then also those women are working on community issues to better the rest of their community. So I love the model of this nonprofit. I thought starting in Africa just like right away where the Serengeti is. It would just be a great kickoff for the series. So that was Mile 1. And the storyline is I walked with a woman named Elizabeth. She is a local Tanzanian woman. Traditionally in Tanzania women cook over open flame. They make a bonfire and they cook food in a bonfire inside their house. The problem is they inhale all this toxic smoke. So when women cook that way, just three meals a day for their family, it is the equivalent of inhaling two packs of cigarettes a day. Actually it is a little known fact, but respiratory disease is the number one killer of women globally because of women in developing countries that are cooking over open flame. So the charity, it is called The Adventure Project. They train local women to make cook stoves and they make them like a pottery piece and they mold these cook stoves that are almost like a camp stove and sell them at the local market. So now women have a contained way to cook, and the smoke goes away from their face and it is like healthy clean way of cooking, and it is also providing women jobs by making and selling these stoves.

John: What year did you start this? What year did you kick off this first walk with?

Mallory: I thought of the concept of Walk A Mile, the marathon, the women. I thought of that in 2017, and the next year I had raised funding and traveled and filmed. So I went to Tanzania in 2018, and then I launched that mile.

John: When you say it is a mile, just so from our listeners and viewers, you walk 1 mile with her or 26 miles with her?

Mallory: I walk 1 mile with her.

John: One mile with her. And then when you highlight her, what is going on?

Mallory: Yeah, it is a mile, but then I filmed a lot of her life and condensed it into a one mile section. And so I turned that as a five-minute video and they are on YouTube so you can watch every single mile on YouTube. You watch this five-minute story, step into this woman’s shoes, and then at the very end, there is a link and you can donate to help her.

John: Isn’t it wonderful? For our listeners and our viewers out there, to learn more about Mallory and all 26 of these journeys and to watch her videos and to donate to the great organizations that she’s chosen to support, go to www.travelmal.com. It is a beautiful website. I am on it. It is right here in front of me right now, and all the information that we are discussing today is there. Go into the mechanics of this. You are far away from Detroit. You are in a strange land really, and you are also filming. How many people does it take to one plan this stuff, Mallory, and then be executed and make sure it comes off with safety, with integrity, and everybody wins at the end of the day? Is it a one-man show, just you, one-person show, one-woman show, or is this take a whole group of people to make this a reality?

Mallory: So in general it is a one-woman show. I plan everything. I picked the charities, the locations. I have to fund it. It is a round-the-world adventure, so I find sponsorships and corporate donations to fund it. And then I travel with one other person. You will notice when you watch the stories that I am in them. I am the host. Someone is when filming me. I have a cameraman with me.

John: That is great.

Mallory: Yeah, it is a good friend of mine. The two of us travel and we produce everything, just the two of us and then come home and added it together and publish it.

John: I know each one is different and curated differently, but just a round number. How much does it cost to pull off one of these walks? What is your goal for each one? How much would you want to raise? Because I know a dollar goes further in Tanzania and many of these other countries than it would here in the United States, like you say. What is the goal in terms of how much pressure and burden is on you to execute your great and wonderful and impactful vision, but then also how much do you really want to raise? What can you get out of it?

Mallory: Actually, the numbers model is very simple and I will just be transparent with you. So I have a flat sponsorship rate. It is $10,000 to sponsor a mile, and that covers my travel costs. So yeah, I just kind of evened it out for all the places we are going and it is like a flat $10,000 to sponsor a mile. And then when I publish it, the number goes to zero and we start from zero trying to fundraise for the cause. The goal is to raise $26,000 to help you in the ground. It is more money than it costs to send me there and make a whole film.

John: Mallory, how many have you done so far? How many walks so far?

Mallory: We filmed eleven of them, and there are eight of them that are live and published.

John: I want to go through some more than just the first one, but talk a little bit about how close to your goal on the fundraising have you been on those first eight?

Mallory: So it’s funny because when I thought of Walk A Mile I could see the entire thing played out. I could see 26 different stories and everyone’s different colors and cultures and languages. And all these different women from around the world and that the fundraisers would be active all at the same time. They would be raising different amounts to see if you could support Mile 3 if it needed more help or you could support Mile 8. And actually now that it’s launched and you can see all eight of them on my website, it has turned into exactly what I saw. It makes me so excited to see your actual vision come to fruition, but the numbers have been incredible. Mile 3 has actually raised the most. It was in Guatemala. It was a great story about a restaurant and a bunch of indigenous women that started a restaurant. It has raised $29,000. It has been fun to see how different miles take on a different feel. Some of them tell you people’s heartstrings a different way. And actually the most recent one we launched, Mile 8, which the story was in Sri Lanka. We got a corporate matching donor. So there is a great company called Doterra Essential Oils Company. They support women around the world. And so they said, “For every dollar you raise, we will match it and double the amount you raised.” So as I’ve published more and more, it is gaining momentum and every mile builds off of the previous one and grows and grows.

John: So more of the following, for lack of a better term, social media term. The more of a tribe that you build, the easier it is to hit your fundraising goals at the end of it.

Mallory: Absolutely. And people that maybe they heard about Mile. So Mile 7 was in India. If people have a personal connection to a place, they tend to give. So it kind of attracted a lot of Indian Americans or people that like to support India. They discovered that story and donated to that story, and then they will start to watch all the previous ones. So then they watch Mile 6, which was in Panama. And so it kind of exposes people to cultures that they never really knew about, and I can see all the donations coming in. So it’s fun when you see someone actually work their way through watching episode by episode and donating a little bit of each time. And the beautiful part about it and this is really the core of why I do what I do, I know that everyday people really want to make a difference in the world and they really want to help. Most people don’t know what to do or where to give, and they feel like what if they can’t give a lot, we are not a millionaire. If I can’t donate a ton of money, I am not really going to make a difference. I’ve always been striving to create pinpoints where people can insert their little bit of help directly on the ground, and they know exactly who they are helping. So even if you give $10, a hundred percent of the money I raised goes directly on the ground and you can see the woman on the ground that is going to receive this money. Ten dollars, twenty dollars, I mean, the average donation I get is like forty-seven dollars. So you don’t need to be wealthy to do this. You can just give a little bit and it adds up to be $30,000. It is going to change someone’s life.

John: For our listeners and our viewers that have just joined us, we are honored and excited to have Mallory Brown with us today. She is a humanitarian filmmaker, the founder of Walk A Mile. We are learning about the different miles that she has been on already. Filmed eleven show, posted eight. To find Mallory, go to www.travelmal.com. It’s really simple. It is a beautiful website. All the information, all the videos, and how to fund, and how to support her future adventures are all there. Finding the sponsor, the 10,000 up front. You know Jim Collins in Good to Great talks about the flywheel effect. Now that you are 11 into it, I can imagine finding the first 10,000 was much more difficult than it is going to be to find the twelfth 10,000. Or am I missing something in between here?

Mallory: No, you are accurate. So Walk A Mile is not my first campaign. I’ve done ones in the past. And so I would argue that my actual first sponsors like way back when I was 24 years old, and I was doing my first ever travel fundraiser. It was hard to try to get someone to trust you. And actually now a lot of my sponsors, my corporate donors, are people that have watched me work for the past six years. They know the quality of work I do, how dedicated I am to this, but this is a lifelong commitment for me. The videos are beautiful. I think I have a talent in filmmaking, but there are also a lot of really talented filmmakers. I think my actual true skill is finding the cause and finding the women and finding these incredible stories and having people open up to me on the ground and let me into their homes. I am physically there and so my eyes and ears that are hearing it and seeing it. And so I have a way of connecting with people, especially people in different cultures and countries and getting people to trust me with their story. My sponsors, they know that about me. A lot of them have supported campaigns I’ve done in the past and they look to do new things in the future just because it is a unique style and it is a very personal one to me. So yes, I mean, I think that the longer you are at it, the more you’ve proven yourself. I’ve now been fully self-employed. This is my full-time job. I’ve been doing that for 10 years and I think after 10 years people take you very seriously. You’ve proven that this is not just a trial thing. I mean, I am dedicated.

John: You know Mallory, like I said at the top of the show, we are still living through this overused word but unprecedented and very strange COVID-19 tragic period for the whole entire world. Not just the United States, but the whole entire world. I assume you have not been traveling during this period and continuing to film. So how did this intermediate your vision and goals? And when do you think you are going to get back at it? And what are some of your thoughts now that you’ve had probably some space in between as to not going back to a pre-pandemic new normal? But someone like you, I would assume, has given a lot of thought and reflection on what you’ve been doing and you are going to find a way when you get to the other side, when we all get to the other side as science is winning to do a new better in your execution of your original vision and goals.

Mallory: Right. Yeah, I mean, COVID-19 turned my whole life upside down. I used to travel internationally every other month of the year and then all of a sudden I was home. It put a big pause on Walk A Mile. I took some time in the spring. I didn’t publish any new stories because I also knew that people who were my donors, my viewers, the people that normally watched my work, you know, they were struggling to figure out their own normal and what does life look like now and what is my financial situation going to be personally. So I didn’t launch a fundraiser for a while because I didn’t want to add another issue to the pot. Everyone was already facing so much hardship that I didn’t, you know, here is another story of someone that needs help. But actually in August of this year, so it had been a solid five months where I hadn’t launched anything new. I got word that the woman I had filmed in India, who I had her story. I already filmed it. I had already been there. I had already added it. I was just sitting on this film waiting to see when could I show it to people. She was really struggling because of COVID because she is exceptionally immunocompromised.

Mallory: Her storyline is actually she is an acid attack survivor. She had acid thrown on her face, which is a brutal type of violence in India. And so it was a medical story. She is in Mumbai, which Mumbai was being hit very hard from COVID-19. And so I launched her fundraiser because she desperately needed the help. And it was like I couldn’t wait to sit on the story any longer when I had the potential to help her. It was amazing to see that when I launched her story, people were eager to donate and they were like awaiting the next Mile. I had a lot of people write me saying like, “Oh, we are so glad to see that you are still doing this and you didn’t give up and you didn’t stop your vision for it.” You know, COVID has changed things. I haven’t filmed anymore. I haven’t been able to travel at all, but it makes people look at the world globally. I think that is a beautiful outcome that we are going to get from this is you realize that we are all interconnected. What happens in China matters in the US, and what happens in the US, it matters in the UK. We can’t pretend that we don’t live in this interconnected world because we do. And so I think it has opened people’s hearts to that a little bit more.

John: You did share with me before we went live on this podcast and this video that given that it is going to take a while to successfully combine the vaccination process around the world with herd immunity to create a safer and better world with regard to COVID and things to calm down a bit, you already have as part of your break in your great mission work and humanitarian work a very interesting adventure planned for next year. I would love you to share that with our viewers and listeners today.

Mallory: Yes. As I was sitting home not able to travel, my boyfriend and I actually we thought of a different adventure we could take in the meantime. We are both from Michigan and live in Detroit. We actually sold our home and bought a sailboat, and we are going to spend the next year sailing around the Caribbean. So we decided to go on an international adventure together. The crazy part is that neither of us are sailors. So we wanted to learn something new and learn a new skill and be out there in the open sea and just have that freedom. And so we bought a 46-foot Beneteau sailboat and we are setting sail on January 6. We are heading to the Bahamas.

John: Wow. And will you be connected still and be able to communicate with all of us here on dry land, or are you going to be taking an electronic sabbatical as some people call it?

Mallory: A little of both. So we won’t have internet when we are actually sailing, when we are out on the water. But I am a marketing brain and I like to brand things. And so we’ve created a name for the adventure and if you want to follow it is called Sailing Zenos, Z-E-N-O-S, which is the name of our boat. We have Instagram and Facebook, and we are going to post videos and stories and updates. We named the boat Zenos because it is short for the word zenos sign, which is the feeling that time moves faster as you get older. And so we named the boat as a way to savor the moment and not let time pass you by. As we are both getting older in life, it is our attempt to slow down time for a year and just live in the moment and then as make the most it.

John: Zenos?

Mallory: Yeah, that is an old English word. It is English actually, but is just very uncommon word. And so we named our boat after it.

John: I’ve gone 58 years and never heard that word, so now I just learned something new today. Mallory, that is awesome. I love it. I love it.

Mallory: Same.

John: And then when you return and Netflix is offered you a huge special about your boat travel, I am sure by that time, would you then in 2022, January or February 2022, then kick off the next Miles, the Mile 12 and beyond?

Mallory: Yes, as soon as it is safe to travel. And from my perspective, first there is the vaccine and borders need to open. I mean, I physically can’t go if I even wanted to, but one that is open. I deal with people that are living in extreme poverty. So they are the poorest of the poor around the world, and access to medical care is very limited. It will be interesting to see when we can connect those worlds again because they will not be the first in line to get a vaccine. So we will have to see what happens. But whenever I can resume, I will be off again and filming. I have my whole lineup waiting for me.

John: So Mallory, you’ve planned already and executed 11 of these adventures and trips and miles so far. Do you have the next 15 already outlined for 2022 and beyond?

Mallory: I have a rough outline of where they are going to be. I know that I want to represent every culture around the world, so I took a world map and broke it into sections and said, “Okay, I want five of them in Africa and five of them in Asia, some in the Arctic and some in the jungle and different languages and religions.” And I wanted people to see the full spectrum of the world. I even did one domestically. So there is one in the United States. And just to show an equal representation of women everywhere. So I know where I want them to be and I have different themes and nonprofits that I have worked with, but we wait to lock down the details until I am actually going to go. Like the specific woman and storyline because that changes so much and it is something two years from now could look totally different.

John: Have you done one yet in the United States and are you planning to do one here in the United States?

Mallory: I’ve already done one.

John: Okay.

Mallory: I did one in Detroit. I had to my hometown.

John: Yeah, you have to. That sounds great. How did that work out?

Mallory: It was great. It was a story of a woman, her name is Ebony. It is a nonprofit that hires homeless women out of Detroit Homeless Shelter and then gives them a job. They are all mothers, so it is all single parents. The job is that they sew winter coats and the coats transform into sleeping bags. And then those are given away for free to the homeless community. So it is a common way to structure nonprofits where you are employing people in need to try to uplift their own lives, but then also they are doing something giving back related. So these women are homeless themselves, but they are creating a product that is given to homeless people.

John: For our listeners and viewers who just joined us, we are so excited and honored to have with us today, Mallory Brown. This is one of the greatest, greatest stories we have ever been able to platform on Impact. To find Mallory and all her great work with Walk A Mile and her other ventures, please go to www.travelmal.com. Very simple, travelmal.com. There you can donate, sponsor, watch the videos. She has the first eight of eleven up. It is just a tremendous story. Mallory, a couple questions. Out of all the next 15 that you are going to, what is the most exotic or level of difficulty place you think you are going to end up going to on the back half of 2022 and beyond?

Mallory: Papua New Guinea. I’ve never been, and I’ve always wanted to go to Papua New Guinea. It is very traditional. They have tribes, and people are still painting their bodies and doing their traditional tribal rituals. The challenging part about it I imagine is going to be having access. I think that is always the biggest challenge is that a lot of communities, especially people that are in need or people that are if they’ve suffered in some way or they are victims of some crime. I’ve done a lot with refugees and I don’t blame them, but they are very cautious about having foreign strangers come into their life and film them. So having people trust me and the camera and being authentic in front of a total stranger, that is the hard part. I think that will be challenging in Papa New Guinea. In any really traditional culture, there is definitely some trust you have to build first.

John: You’ve done already eleven, and life is so interesting in that. You know that old adage, “Man plans and God laughs.” Which of those first eleven that you filmed, but I know eight or up, which of those eight have gotten the most views and is that shocking to you, and which one has raised the most money? And is that also similarly, what did you learn from which one has raised the most capital so far?

Mallory: I don’t even know which one has the most views, but I think it’s the Detroit one.

John: Really?

Mallory: It doesn’t surprise me actually because most of my audience is Americans and they really like to give back in their home.

John: Got it. It makes sense.

Mallory: You know, loyalty to helping Americans. So that makes sense to me. And the one that has raised the most money is the one in Guatemala, which was surprising to me. Very surprising because I think Guatemala, I don’t know that it pops up on our radar so much or that people think of it. I don’t know, but it was the most successful. The women themselves there, it was a group of indigenous women that started a restaurant and they used their only skill, which was making tortillas and then taught how to pack themselves, how to cook food that tourists visiting Guatemala might like, and opened up a restaurant. It is a beautiful story, and it is a pretty positive one because they’ve kept their traditional life. They still wear their traditional dresses and they are very beautiful in Guatemala. Colors weave together, but they had modernized a lot in order to progress their families. I don’t really know why that one did so well, but I think people really loved that it was so uplifting. In each mile and each story, I break down what a donation will buy. And so if you donate to the one in Detroit, a $120 sponsors one sleeping bed coat. So it kind of gives people a target of a donation to give. In Guatemala, the number was $53 and I am like maybe that resonated with people because my average donation is 50 so people gave $53, and that fed a local for a year. Yeah, it is kind of random which one’s take off and which one’s don’t, but it is interesting to see how people respond.

John: So in the next 15, how long will it take you to complete the 26? Obviously, you are going to start somewhere back in 2022. How long after that will you be done?

Mallory: I don’t really know exactly.

John: Okay, but what about approximately? Is that a year, or is that two years of filming approximately?

Mallory: Three years or something.

John: Three years? Okay.

Mallory: Yeah.

John: So you are a young woman. You have a big vision. You’ve already done so much in the rearview mirror. Mallory, beyond the 26 miles, the 26 women, the 26 countries, the 26 stories of strength and impact, and truly that is a lifetime for many people. Obviously for you, at your young age and energy, when you go to bed at night, when you are just meditating, what’s next? What are you dreaming of next that you are going to do to change the world and make it and live it a better place?

Mallory: I have a lot of ideas and a lot of them are Walk A Mile extended. You know, I am already writing the book of Walk A Mile and I would love to create a full-length feature documentary of the entire journey. I have the whole business plan for that. But the big message, the takeaway when people hear my story or they watch the videos is that I am one person who decided that I can make an impact and I can go do this grand journey and meet women and change their lives. There is a lot of inspiration in that story. My confidence or my openness or the fact that I have big dreams and I go for them. I want to be able to empower other people to do that themselves. One of the best compliments that I’ve ever received, and it wasn’t really a compliment, but it was these two young college students reached out to me saying they wanted to raise money for an orphanage in Mexico and would I do a campaign for their orphanage. And I couldn’t do one of my campaigns for it, but I gave them some tips as to how they can make their own video and how they can start their own GoFundMe and how they can do it themselves. They created a video, and they followed my exact model. Like if you watch any of my episodes, it is 5 minutes long, you will tend to find a pattern. I open them the same way. There is an exact time, and then that is when I ask for donations. There is a way that the music goes. There is a hook.

John: Like you said, you did the Bourdain. You did a Bourdain. There is a flow that you get used to and we get comfortable with because that makes us all more excited to come back because there is some logicality to it that you’ve created.

Mallory: Right, and that familiarity. You can tell that it’s us. They followed it to a tee, and it was so amazing to me that they studied my work and recreated it in their own way, and they raised a $12,000 for this orphanage. And that is really the legacy that I would want to leave is to empower other people to go after their own dreams and help other people and be more philanthropic and be more giving and create their own campaigns.

John: I do this show for the exact reason that you just said. As a mission, I don’t take advertising dollars. We have now built a huge audience for over 13 years. And it is not only to honor great and important people like you, but it is truly to inspire those behind you. To be informed about how one person, just like you said Mallory, you are just one person, but the ripple effect of change and impact and betterment that you have created in your young life and you’ve got a long runway in front of you, is just simply incredible. Who informed you? Who have been two or three great inspirations? Well, you know them personally or you followed them in terms of their careers historically that have inspired you to do this deep and important and actually challenging work that you’ve undertaken.

Mallory: I have a lot of mentors. I know some. I just followed others. There is incredible humanitarian. There is a man named Levison Wood. He is a huge inspiration for me. He walks long lengths. He walked the length of the Nile and he walked the length of the Himalayas. He is an adventurer, and he writes books about his experience, and they are all about cross-cultural connection. I look up to him a lot. A lot of documentary filmmakers who I look up to. The people who encouraged me personally. My parents were incredible supporters. They only ever pushed me to go for it, and I was raised to just live big and not have regrets and dream and explore. They have been incredible to me. They gave me the inner ability to do this. I remember telling my parents, “I was 26 years old, and I wanted to go spend four months in Africa.” And my mom was like, “Okay, I will drive you to the airport.” I mean, they were really, really supportive. And also everyone I’ve done business with. My videographer has been with me for eight years and he is as committed as I am. So I just surrounded myself with people that believe in it as well.

John: Mallory, you know, so many young people get caught up. I am at the age now where I am lucky that I am blessed to be able to mentor so many young people. And sometimes, and I’ve explained this to them, the teacher becomes a student and then the student becomes a teacher. There is so much, if you stay curious, so much to learn in this great world if you leave yourself, your mind, and your heart open to experiences. What I find as a common theme so many times is the fear factor. Where did you learn to either lose or obviously at a very tender young age of 26, just literally bypass create some sort of a mental jump over your fear gene because you don’t seem to have any trace of it?

Mallory: Well, thank you. That is a huge compliment.

John: It is. It truly is because people get stuck just on that. Just on that. Not that they don’t have great visions. Not that they don’t have the dough or the backing or supporters. Just that factor itself trips up so many people on the way to their goals. You don’t have it. Tell me why.

Mallory: Couple of reasons. I remember very specific moments. I remember reading an article when I was first deciding whether or not I wanted to start my own business and it was written for young people, women actually, in the workplace that are afraid to ask for a promotion, which was not at all my situation, but I just took inspiration from this article. It was saying, “Walk into the room, sit down in front of your boss, and pretend that you have no fear. And if you had no fear, you would ask for the promotion and might get it, you might not, but at least you asked.” And the problem is that most people are too afraid to ask. But to pretend that you have no fear, I thought about that a lot. It was like what would you accomplish in life if you had no fear? If it was just one like a sense that you didn’t have? And I did that for a while. I was actually pretending. Like when I would go into meetings or I was asking for sponsorship. A lot of times I have to call the nonprofits in a foreign country and they speak a foreign language, and then I could call them. I am still nervous to do it. It is pretty terrifying, but I was just like, “What if I have no fear, how would this go?” And I got so used to doing it just like repetitive practicing just throwing it out there. I learned that I am either going to get what I want. Like I am going to win and it is going to go my way, or if it doesn’t like it didn’t really hurt me at all. The loss was not a big deal. And so I just learned not to live in fear.

John: Great.

Mallory: Yeah. And I actually give this analogy a lot that I live my life like I am at the edge of a table kind of leaning off the side and I got really comfortable just on this almost falling overboard that I just live there permanently. That is just my natural state.

John: Humanitarian work is different than what we all are raised in many ways to cherish. We’ve made icons in this world of the Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos, the Google boys, Zuckerberg, Steve Jobs, now of recent time Elon Musk. They get canonized. They get idolized, and that is okay. We are the Innovation Nation. But somehow we’ve left behind humanitarian work as a higher calling. Money seems to reign supreme as the social media and all the vanity metrics that come along with social media and getting likes, or whatever goes on TikTok or Instagram or Facebook. I am not even clear anymore. What is your take away when I read your book one day because I know you will write that book? What do you want our listeners and our viewers to take away that you have learned and also love so much about what you do, encouraging others to do similar type of humanitarian work, which truly is a higher calling?

Mallory: I’ve learned that connecting with other people gives you more fulfillment in life than you could have imagined. It is interesting you bring up money because humanitarian work is actually very driven by money. Like I am trying to raise funds to help people and I’ve asked people for donations. And a lot of the way that I choose my campaigns is that I am helping people in extreme poverty. So we talked about money a lot. It is interesting because you kind of get two takeaways from that. First is that you realize how much we have and it is truly unbelievable that we live in the top one percent hands down. You don’t really realize that until you go out and you see the world and you know that the average annual income for a human being like a working person is $6,000 a year, average.

John: Unreal.

Mallory: That means that there is so many people that are less than that.

John: Right.

Mallory: We look at $6,000 it’s like you can’t even survive on that. And that is the average. So you realize how well we actually are, and it gives you a sense of like how much you have to give. But also on the flip side it makes money so not important because you go meet people that made $12 today and they have a family and kids that love them and the house around them, and they don’t need as much. And so it is this weird dichotomy of realizing how much money we have and how much money we have to give, but then also that you don’t even really need money in the long run. It makes you ponder everything, but it certainly like for me in doing what I do and the work that I do and the people that I met and seen, I don’t value money the way that my generation does. To me, living a life, acquiring as much as I can for myself seems so boring.

John: For what?

Mallory: My own, like a third house and two cars, and why?

John: A couple of thoughts. You grew up in Detroit. I grew up in New York City. I’ve had to travel massively on business travel. Not to this exotic places as you, but some very fascinating places whether it is Manila, Hanoi, Seoul, all these wonderful places around the world including all around Europe, North America, South America. When I was a little boy growing up in New York and you were growing up in Detroit, tell me if this is not a similar experience. You get to feel that the whole world is like where you grow. Everywhere is like New York, right, because that is where I grew up. Everyone live like this and work like this and the energies like this. And you start showing up in places like Manila or Hanoi or anywhere else in the world, including Mumbai and Dubai, and you start where I’ve been and you start realizing the perspective that travel gives you become so personal. I also feel that you are so much more an interesting person because of your travels and unique experiences now, and people are drawn to interesting people who have stories but actually done things. Is that analogy somewhat akin to what you’ve lived in the last 40 years of your life?

Mallory: Absolutely. Travel has opened up my world and my mind and my perspective completely. I’ve seen a lot of the world. I mean, I’ve been to 52 countries. So I’ve seen a ton of the world. The more you see, the more you realize there are different ways of doing it and the world does not revolve around you and there is a lot of people and cultures and mindsets out there. It makes you a more humble person. The other humanitarians I meet, the people that run all of these charities are doing incredible work on the ground. And back to your original question as to why they are not idolized is I think also they don’t pursue accolades. They are not trying to become known or famous. That is not their goals therefore that is not the result. But they are beautiful, wonderful people.

John: Right. I agree with you. You are, besides Indiana Jones, you really are living the Bourdain life. You get to walk with these great people, eat with them, learn their culture, political, and economic surroundings. And that is a fascinating thing. A friend of mine once told me as we were talking about raising our children and giving them experiences. Some people are of the mind that our kids can get everything from a laptop or a tablet that they need to know. But a friend of mine 12 years ago whispered in my ear one day, he goes, “John, you will never know unless you go. Just go wherever and encourage your kids to do the same”, which I’ve done, and it has been much to their benefit. Including look at you 52 countries, you get to live like a global citizen. You have a perspective that is way beyond probably 98% of the people you grew up with in Detroit or in Michigan.

Mallory: Yeah, a lot of people who might have daughters that are in college or they looked at me kind of like a resembling of their own daughter. “My daughter wants to study abroad, and I am terrified. Encouraged me to like be okay with her going and living in another country. My dad wants to do a mission trip and church wants to send her to Honduras and I am nervous for her to go.” And I always say, “Imagine it’s your daughter wanting to fall in love. She could get hurt. She could get her heart broken. That is horrible. But are you going to withhold your daughter from finding love? That is a beautiful, enriching thing in her life. There is risk associated with it for sure, but you want your daughter to experience that in life.” And it is the exact same thing with travel and just seeing new things and people are so afraid of. They focus only on the risk, and there is so much to gain from doing it.

John: You know, Mallory, what I want to do is couple things. One, we are going to keep continue to follow your adventures. For those who want to follow Mallory and donate and fund her future humanitarian work with regards to Walk A Mile, please go to www.travelmal.com. To also learn more about what Mallory is doing next year on the Zenos, what is the website that they go to for the Zenos?

Mallory: So that is just social media. It is on Instagram or Facebook, and its Sailing Zenos.

John: Sailing Zenos. I learned from you today and it is such a great lesson as well. I do this Impact Podcast, I never realized but because of the zenosign, now that I am 58, it is a just a greater way that I get to reach more people and share great stories like yours and great people like you Mallory with the listener base and viewer base we’ve built up over 13 years. So I am truly grateful for you. I want to have you back at least twice more. I want to have you back when you get back from the Zenos adventures, obviously, and I want to learn more about that. And then when you finish Mile 26, I want to have you back to talk about the rearview mirror and more lessons learned while you do Walk A Mile and you continue to make your five-minute films and build a lifetime of memories. You are always welcome back here at the Impact Podcast. I am grateful for all the important work that you’ve done so far. I know you are going to continue to change the world for the better in the years ahead. And you just be safe and God bless you and your boyfriend, and you get home safely from your Zenos journeys in the next year ahead. Thank you again, Mallory Brown. And again, you can find Mallory at www.travelmal.com. Thank you again, Mallory Brown.

Mallory: Thank you.

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.

Martin Luther King III: Hello.

John: Hello, Mr. King. How are you today?

Martin: I am pretty good. How about yourself?

John: I am great. Thank you so much. And thank you for taking time out of your very busy schedule. I know you are in the middle of two very important political races in Georgia. So this is really special. A very, very special moment.

Martin: We are happy to do it and then very good to see you.

John: Well, before we get going I just have to show you something. This video is so important to me personally. It is 51 years in the making. Here is the book that my mother brought me when I was eight years old, seven years old.

Martin: Wow!

John: When this was published. Step Up had many, many books like this about Abraham Lincoln, George Washington. This was the book I read the most. This was the only one of all the Step Up books that I kept because your father meant that much to me and I just wanted to show you the original book and that is why this interview means so much to me. Also, as I look back on my life before I started this company, ERI, I realized who influenced me the most and I thought it was your dad and over our front door at this facility since the day we opened sixteen years ago is your dad’s words. “Everyone can be great because everyone could serve.” And that is how we work here. That set the tone for our culture, for all our visitors, for our employees every day. So I just wanted to share that with you. That is how important your family has been to our family; being my family, and the company’s success and family as well. You set the tone and you set the culture and it means that much to us.

Martin: Wow! That is very powerful and means a lot to me personally.

John: Well, it is the truth, but we are going to talk about you today and the times that we live in and again, it is so humbling and it is an honor to have you here today on The Impact podcast and the impact that you made with your family. We are going to get into that a little bit. And that is what I want to start with, family. When did you realize that you were part of such an incredible family that had such a societal impact both here in the United States and around the world?

Martin: I would have to say that I am sure subconsciously as a very young child, I realized that. But consciously probably would have been at the time my father was killed and that was because every person who was running for public office from Robert Kennedy to President Nixon, they all showed up at our home to pay their respects, all of the candidates and many of the individuals in the entertainment community. Harry Belafonte was very, very close to my father and mother, and so he was in and out of a home over the years. But Sidney Poitier, Sammy Davis, Bill Cosby came, and Robert Culp at that time, at that time he was probably one of the few black Americans who was on a television show The I Spy Show. And of course, I believe the governor of New York, Governor Nelson Rockefeller at the time who later became vice president, of course. The list goes on and on Aretha Franklin, but Aretha Franklin was close to Dad because her father Reverend Dr. CL Franklin was close to my grandfather. So when that happened and to see countless numbers of just everyday people who came to pay their respects and lined the streets. I think that was when it really dawned on me. That Dad had really been doing some very, very important work.

John: Mr. King, you were ten years old at this time, ten years old. You were 10. At that moment, at that tender age did you realize you were part of a family and destined to follow in your father’s footsteps? Or was that an evolutionary process?

Martin: I think it was an evolutionary process. I am thankful that my mother always said, “look, you do not have to go to Morehouse College as your father did.” Which I did end up going to, “you do not have to be a minister as your father,” which of course I had not felt called to the ministry. “You do not have to be a civil and human rights leader”, but I ended up being in the area of civil and human rights. Mother just told me, “be your best self and we are going to support you.” I am so thankful for that. But I guess it was a little later on in my life. Maybe when I got a little bit past college is when I truly realized. Because the first thing I did was tried to work in the private sector in the hotel business and I did not really enjoy that. I knew I was a people person. It was a nice experience as a management trainee in a hotel but I decided that I would go to politics. So here in Georgia, we have County Commissioners, I think in California they are Supervisors. So I ran for that level of office. mid-level office, and was very successful in my first run. And in order to give something back to the community to nourish my growth and development. From then, I led several organizations including the fourth President of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference that my father co-founded in 1957. I was the fourth president after Dr. Joseph Echols Lowery who had been there for twenty years. Then I became the president of the Martin Luther King Center and later on an organization called Realizing The Dream, and now I am the chairperson of the board of an organization called The Drum Major Institute.

John: Talk a little bit about that. What is The Drum Major Institute?

Martin: The Drum Major Institute started, actually my father and his lawyer Harry Wachtel started The Drum Major Institute back in 1961. It was actually Drum Major Foundation at that time, and the purpose of it was to raise money to bail people out of jail. And that was its only purpose and after dad was killed, probably after ’68 it sort of was dormant for a while, and then back in the 90s, Harry’s son, Bill Wachtel, myself, and Ambassador Andrew Young re-founded and named it The Drum Major Institute as opposed to Drum Major Foundation. And at that time it became a New York-centric think tank for about fifteen years. And now my wife, my daughter and I are the next iteration of Drum Major, and today we are focused on the eradication of poverty, racism, and violence in our society which my father defined as the triple evils and we believe the tenants of the values of peace, justice and equity are the answers. So we are building up to be a global organization to impact and create a peaceful world where we learn to live together without destroying personal property.

John: So you are carrying on the family tradition of working within the family with your wife, Andrea, and your daughter, Yolanda. They are part of this institute and working with you just like your family has worked together historically to affect huge societal impact and change.

Martin: That is absolutely correct. And I think that the dynamic that makes us slightly different is that it is my wife and I, and our daughter who is twelve years old and although she is still in school. She has chosen to be an activist thus far, of course. She may change her mind, but I doubt that very seriously because she already charted a course. She spoke when she was 8 years old at the March For Our Lives. She is now twelve this year on August 28th. We did the 57th anniversary of the March on Washington and she spoke there. She is now 12 years old. So she has taken an activist role concerned about climate change, concerned about the homeless, concerned about just the conditions that her colleagues and her other young people have to go through. And so she is in the process of launching an organization under the Drum Major Aegis called BAE which stands for Blacks Are Equal.

John: That is so great. So, you are already passing the torch to her and getting to enjoy the process as well.

Martin: No question, in that, no question. What is most interesting is when she does interviews and I look at myself when I was 10 years old, and of course, we did not have the internet. Obviously, we did not have a lot of things right and I was like, I do not know anything. Our daughter seems to know everything and I do not mean it in a way where she is. She is a very genuine little girl and comes off very genuine, but she knows so much. I am sure you may understand this as when we were children, we would listen to everything our parents said but we might come to our own conclusions, but they are also sponges and you do not think they are listening and they really are. And so I find it very interesting that at twelve years old when she is talking to a journalist she has an opinion that is far more than what I, at twelve, could not have answered. I would have just been sitting there looking at the journalist, him or her asking me a question and I can see myself…

John: You and I grew up in a different time. We are pretty much in the same age range and we did not have access to the information.

Martin: That is right.

John: That your daughter and my children have as well now. So they really do get to not only have just the United States perspective but also a world view that we did not have access to at that time.

Martin: That is right. That is so right.

John: But you know, we are at the end of 2020, and living through this tragic pandemic. It is also a year of huge social unrest, health challenges and anxieties, and political vicissitudes that have gone on throughout the entire year. At the same time, Mr. King we lost three icons, Elijah Cummings, John Lewis, Ruth Bader Ginsburg people, that left indelible footprints as activists, as leaders. Who do you feel is going to fill their shoes and their roles as we try to make a path forward now and heal the country and create more unity?

Martin: There are a number of young people emerging as leaders. Some are coming out of the women’s movement. Some are coming out of the Black Lives movement. Some are coming out of the Me Too, and out of the Parkland students. So you got young people in every category, some are young, outstanding business leaders. We do not always know their names at this particular moment and when you think about the world stage, you got young Greta who is dealing with climate change at seventeen years old and had a phenomenal impact. And you got Malawi who is at twenty-three won a Nobel Prize and doing amazing work. So it is young people who are leading us. And what is interesting, I saw in my judgment, I believe that after the killings took place at Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, I saw young people emerging as leaders in a very short way, and in 2018 they were able to get other young people engaged and helped change Congress from Republican hands to Democratic hands by going to 75 States. And then, of course, the United States Congress has passed several bills around responsible gun legislation and yet it dies because the United Senate under the leadership of Mitch McConnell and not to personalize it, but that is just the truth, will not bring legislation to the floor. There is also a bill around the John Lewis Voter Registration Restoration Act which would address voter suppression in the country. And then there’s the George Floyd Criminal Justice Act that would address how policing activities are taking place. But all of those bills are refused by the leadership in the Senate which is why I’m saying that it is so important in our state that we are effective and successful in getting Reverend Warnock and Jon Ossoff elected so that president-elect Biden will be able to forge an agenda that is going to really be able to help Americans at all levels. And so we are working feverishly here. But your question, there are many young people is what I want to go back to.

John: Do you feel hopeful about the leaders stepping up now and filling those shoes and really helping effectually change as they did over the course of their lives?

Martin: You know, I feel more hopeful now than I felt in a long time. Certainly.

John: Great.

Martin: The last four years have been very challenging for me personally because I never embraced negativity, I always try to embrace positivity, but I have been very concerned because of the kind of leadership and I prayed for the president and hoped for a different level or style of communication, but I did not expect it. And so I was praying and hoping and praying and doing all that I can to get level leadership and fortunately, eighty-one million Americans also joined in so that we could make the change. Because I just think the time when you look at what is happening in the world, you look at all of our allies who were alienated intentionally or not intentionally, it happened. So, the president-elect is automatically a bridge-builder and I think now is the time for bridge-building. It is going to be a tough task because seventy-four million Americans voted for the President. And so that means we are a divided nation, but I believe that as these young people continue to become engaged, hopefully, we will have success in at least getting people to listen. You do not have to always agree on everything, but you certainly need to listen and be civil. And at this point, the way that we operate is not necessarily civil. We are not treating people with dignity and respect and as they are human beings. People feel like they have to force their agendas. And as I said, my father taught us, I think how we could disagree without being disagreeable. And some of that would be in order at this particular moment in our nation.

John: And your father was also the champion of non-violent change as you are and as you said you are working right now to get these senators elected in Georgia, but I know you have worked nationally for years throughout your lifetime. But also you worked internationally promoting non-violent change. Can you share a little bit of your experience working internationally in the non-violent change and all the great impacts you made around the world throughout your lifetime?

Martin: So we have done non-violent conflict resolution training in a number of areas, including some years back in Israel. And I was very blessed to be able to go into Israel and to be able to meet with prime minister Netanyahu as well as President Abbas on the Palestinian side. Usually, if you choose a side, the other side is not going to meet with you. But because of what the King Legacy represents, at least people were willing to engage. In fact, we were part of an effort at the Arab-American University to start a conflict resolution school in the Palestinian region a few years back. The first time that at least people can be academically exposed and get a degree to understand how non-violence works. And so I think that is very positive. We have also done conflict resolution in South Africa. We have done it in Kenya. We have done it in Serbia, a number of places just around the world. Now, obviously, these conflicts are not going anywhere, and I have not gone anywhere but the goal is to move the ball some, and that is what we always embark upon. How do we bring people together who have historically not been in communication or for whatever reason? And then how do we find areas where we can agree and then get people to move to make progress?

John: You know, the election will be over in Georgia on January 15th. What is your goal after that? What are you going to be working on in 2021 and beyond? What is your vision?

Martin: So 2021, essentially one of the programs that we are working on now that we expect to be able to get traction on is we are doing a program around the State of The Dream of dad’s. Dad’s dream of freedom, justice, and equality. So we will be bringing together thought leaders and leaders from a lot of different perspectives to talk about an assessment and we are working on a partner through mainstream media and we are very close to being able to share more of that, but that is one of the first events that we plan to do. We also are looking at another event around April 4th, which is the anniversary of dad’s tragic assassination. But instead of focusing on the negative of what happened, we want to focus on how do we actively engage again, bringing people together under the auspices of King Talks? Because that dialogue ultimately will create some level of action. And the other thing we want to do in ’21 and beyond is to continue to work on a full curriculum so that in our school systems from K to 12, there are young people being exposed to conflict resolution and non-violence. We used to have some of that in the schools, but then when budgets got cut, those kinds of programs went out of the window. The reality is we should have always retained them. We have a lot of mental health issues in our nation and that is a growing challenge and particularly because of the pandemic, a lot of young people even people who I am close to are involved in situations where children are talking about committing suicide. And so we got to really focus on mental health. And so we had to figure out how that works with non-violence, but somewhere down the line that may be an area that we are going to be focused on.

John: So you have a full plate in front of you in 2021 and beyond.

Martin: Beyond. Yes, absolutely. A very full plate.

John: Now at the beginning of this episode, I showed you this very important book that helped set the tone for my own life, and I still possess this book and it means the world to me. I know you have written a wonderful children’s book as well called, “My Daddy. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.” which I have asked your assistant for two cases to purchase and I would love you to sign them because I want to let our listeners know this book is coming and I want to support the mission that you have created and has made so much impact. Talk a little bit about the book please for our listeners and share with them what they can expect to get out of it and why you wrote it.

Martin: Yeah. So the book was written, number one and dedicated to our daughter Yolanda. It is actually a picture book as well, so illustrations. But I started off talking about a lot of people who have written books about my father but I, as his son, am one of his children so I am writing it from a different perspective, not as a normal scholar would write a book and I talked about life lessons. There are about half a dozen lessons that I learned from my father and mother that are shared in the book, and it is for kids probably age five may be up to 12 or so, I would love to see it in more homes or more children learning from it because I will share one experience. When I was a kid everyone in the neighborhood had toy guns, and so someone gave us toy guns, and back then you could incinerate your own trash in your backyard. We did not have a consciousness about the environment and so you take your trash out and put it in a metal can and burn it. And so my father and mother did not mandate that we do anything. So we did play with the guns temporarily but at the end of the day, we took those guns and put them in the incinerator and burned them because we understood at maybe eight and five, eight and seven, eight and maybe six years old, my brother and I, that it was wrong for us to have guns as dad was promoting non-violence as one of the pre-eminent non-violent warriors in our nation, that was probably not the best thing for us to do. So, we did that. That is one example of a story that I shared in the book but there are others, direct experience with racism at one of the schools that I went to. Not just encountered, but how I was able to overcome and address it. So there are a number of stories like that in the book that I think all young people can appreciate.

John: I am so excited to add that to my collection and also share it with our viewers and our listeners and again, for our listeners and viewers out there that want to buy that book, My Daddy. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr, it is available in hardcover and paperback on amazon.com. You know, Mr. King. I was so excited when I watch you in 2008 speak at the DNC convention at the Democratic National Convention when you were asked to speak on behalf of Presidential nominee, then Barack Obama, Presidential nominee, and it was also the 45th anniversary of the I Have a Dream speech and words that I took away from that speech that I enjoyed so much were from your speech, “we all have to roll up our sleeves and do the work to ensure that the dream he shared, being your father, can be fulfilled.” We are now 12 years removed from 2008, are those words more true today than ever before? And how do you feel about the work that we all have to do to come together? Non-violently, to create a healed country, a less tribal country, a country that can, even like you said, have differences but not be disagreeable. Disagree but not be disagreeable with each other in a rude way or in a hurtful way.

Martin: So I feel that those words are even more true today based on the climate. And I also think that many of us did not adhere to the words, and I say that because President Obama even asks us he said, “look, I can do what I am going to do as the commander-in-chief but I need you to stay engaged,” and unfortunately, most people did not stay engaged and so those who stayed engaged had a different vision for America and they worked for eight years. And as a result, then the nation was able to elect a person who is a divider and a conqueror. And again, I do not want to make it personal because this really is not about hating a person, I do not hate Donald Trump, but I vehemently disagree with many of the policies and many of the positions that he sits in. He is the one who claims that people just hate him. No, people dislike what you represent. Not hate you, it is not about you. It really is about the American people. So my point is today we got to work even more diligently to bring this nation together to figure out how we are going to deal with some serious problems. One of those major problems that we as a society have not done enough focus upon, is the working poor. We got over a hundred and thirty million people in this country. We do not often realize it because it is pushed under the rug, but in a nation that has so much opportunity, unlimited abundance and yet we still have a hundred-plus million people living at the poverty level and we do not seem to be concerned about it. So, I am thankful for the leadership of the Reverend. Dr. William Barber, who is engaged in the new Poor People’s campaign, so that he can help expand the opportunity. I mean the fact that we have to think about is, you know, my dad was really revolutionary in a lot of ways because he was talking about a living wage in 1967. And in fact, part of what he was talking about, a radical redistribution of wealth is what got him killed. He was not killed because he was talking about people riding on the front of a bus or people being able to sit anywhere they wanted to sit. He was killed because he was saying, “look we got to really create the opportunity for all people or more balloons to rise,” and he was engaged in the Poor People’s campaign. the last campaign. He was going to bring together poor blacks, poor whites, and poor Native Americans, and Americans from all walks of life to say to the policymakers that we are going to stay here and we are demanding the right to decent jobs with decent pay. As you know, we are still trying to get the minimum wage raised in many areas. So we still got a lot of work to do, again going back to my primary point, that though the words that I articulated are even more true today with the divisions that exist. Because I believe that when people feel there is hope for them to achieve their vision, their dream, then violence is suppressed. All kinds of things can happen. We are a very amazing nation, but it is perplexing to me in my small city of Atlanta which I love, but it is perplexing that our system of education is challenged in the city of Atlanta. And we are a city with at least twelve to fifteen Fortune 500 corporations. It would be in their interest exclusively to say we are going to create the best school system that we can in this community because, at some point, we want young people to have a foundation because we want to hire them for our companies, but the fact that the schools are failing is very sad. Not just Atlanta, a hundred cities in that way that we have the capacity. It would be a different thing if we were a third-world developing country and just did not have it. We have the ability. But yet we have not identified the will. So when ability and will come together, it seems to me that it yields results. And so I do not know if I probably deviated a little.

John: No, you did not. But, I want to go back to your first point: the vision that your father had in 1968. To shift civil rights to really an economic rights discussion, as you said which got him in the crosshairs more than the Civil Rights discussion. What you are sharing I believe now is that it is more applicable now and he was so far ahead of his time fifty-one years, fifty-two years ahead of his time, but it is actually more important now that we still try to engage and try to get those. I think your father had five planks of his economic rights, a bill that he really wanted to get activated, and we have to go back to those five planks and try to put them in motion now more than ever before. Imagine if at thirty-eight years old your father was on to, I mean, I think of it all the time. Mr. King, we lost your dad at thirty-nine. I am fifty-eight now and If I live to three hundred I would never be able to accomplish what he did, but to come up with that kind of vision at thirty-eight years old and to start pushing that as the future and it is now fifty-two years out of time. We have not really got there yet, is it time to really get that done now in 2021 and beyond?

Martin: No question. First of all, when you talk about five planks when you think about it in the United States of America, everyone should be able to have the best education. Everyone.

John: Absolutely.

Martin: Everyone should be able to have health care. Everyone should be able to have a decent home. Now, let me define a decent home. Some people may have a 10,000 square foot home, some may have it larger, some may have it smaller. A decent home can be 200 square feet, right? We see that in New York all the time. But we have people living on the streets in the United States of America, millions. That is really unacceptable. Everyone should also have justice. I think I have enumerated four of the planks that I believe in the United States. Again, the best education, healthcare, a decent job, and justice.

John: Ordinary people play an important role in the government, to play a significant role in their government.

Martin: Well, no question about that. The government itself can do so much better. I mean, for example, I would think that one of the things that the president-elect is going to try to do in the first ninety days is to get legislation for the creation of an interest in… well, the first thing is going to deal with the pandemic. That is the first thing, I am sure, but I think he also is going to try to get a bill through that addresses infrastructure improvements because that would automatically almost create close to full employment. And you know, all of our infrastructures are eroding and in bad shape and it is amazing we have not had more accidents, whether it is our schools, whether it is our roads, whether it is our bridges. Just redoing that is a ten-year project, but it would employ a lot of people and so that would be one thing that could help the economy and I am only saying that again because I think the president-elect has a huge mantle, but it is really the community working together with him and the vice president-elect. It is not any one of us. It is not one organization. It is all of us working collectively for the good because we do have an amazing country and I never understood the slogan. Well, I understood it. I did not particularly like it and I’ll tell you what, I mean “Great Again” because I am not sure what period we are talking about when we say “Great Again”, making America great should always be. And I objected. My father said, “let us make America the nation that it ought to be.” When it is that nation, then again jobs, healthcare, justice, human rights all of those things in order, but we are not anywhere near in that vicinity yet. And it does not mean in a negative way, that we can never get there. I just believe that the American psyche, the American Experience creates the opportunity for options so that more boats can be lifted. And again, dad shows us that it only takes a few good women and men to bring about change and he and his team were certainly able to execute change but it is up to us to carry that mantle forward. To continue to create and build upon this amazing nation. I mean one of our challenges as you certainly know and then this is not to disparage but, how do we even get technology situated in a way that it is not the negative impact of technology? There is a negative impact of programming people in a way that may not be the best and this is what technology is doing. And so we have to at least evaluate, is that really what we wanted to do? Or do we really want technology to give us the tools to be able to really help? And that is a whole other conversation.

John: But you are right. Technology can serve as the great democratizer in the education process of everybody and give everyone an equal opportunity for equity in terms of education.

Martin: No question, and that is critical because, during this pandemic, I think the numbers are around three million kids have not returned back to school. They have disappeared and so the government again, I mean part of the issue is the leadership at the top. I do not know what the department of education is doing under this Administration, but for three million children to disappear and by now we should be able to make sure that there is internet access everywhere, that there are devices, but if you think about this if you have a four or five hundred dollar device and you do not know where you are going to live and you are trying to feed your family and you have to maybe sell that device so that you can eat that week maybe some of that has happened, but the sad thing is in this country with all of our ingenuity, It should not have to be that way.

John: So true. And I know we have time limitations because I have to get you back to the important and inspiring work that you do on a daily basis, I just want you to know you are always welcome back here to talk more about the important initiatives that you are working on a regular basis, especially the message of non-violent change. For our listeners and our viewers out there to find Martin Luther King the Third, and his colleagues and his family members that are doing this totally important work, this impactful work on behalf of us as Americans and around the world, please go M L King three, the number three, dot com, M L King three dot com to buy Martin Luther King the Third’s important book, “My Daddy. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.” It is on Amazon in paperback and hardcover. You can buy it, it makes a great gift. I just have to say this to you, Mr. King, God bless you, your entire family for a lifetime of a dedicated public servantry, not only here in America, but around the world. The world is a better place because of the King family.

Martin: Wow, thank you. I often think about the world that we should all be thinking about creating for our children and grandchildren and there is an old saying, “The good politician plans for the next election. The statesperson plans for the next generation.” And we used to be more statesmanlike. And my hope is that it is brought back to the table by this new administration. Because we really must think about generations yet unborn. What kind of America do we want to leave? And I think there is a way to do it in balance. Today, again, not to disparage and criticize just corporate interest, but corporations have lobbyists who foster their agendas, and other organizations have lobbyists. The only lobbies that people have are the people who they elect, and it seems like the interest of other things get done, and not the interests of the people. It really is time for the people’s agenda items to be addressed. And dad showed us that a few good women and men could do that. We need to look at different policies, for example, around policing and how policemen have, in some cases tragically, African-American men and now women, are being killed by policemen on far too large bases. We used to apprehend suspects without killing them, but something happened some years ago, and the transition was, well, it is easier just to shoot to kill as opposed to apprehending a suspect. I do not know what happened to our humanity, but somewhere we got to look in the depths of our hearts and identify humanity. Because we are human beings first. Not all of our conduct is always appropriately human, but we are human beings and we have to appeal to the best, to bring the best out of everyone. My dad and mom often would look at people and you know, let us say hypothetically and this is hypothetical. Really hypothetically. If you are seventy percent bad, dad would not focus on that or mom, they would focus on the thirty percent good, and find ways to extract that from you. And that is what we have to figure out. How do we extract the good? Because there is goodness in human beings and I want to give this example, many years ago I was going somewhere in South Georgia and I had a flat tire. And a guy drove up in my stereotypical mind in this huge truck with a big Confederate flag on it. So in my mind, ‘oh my gosh, this is going to be bad.’ I was not concerned because the person who was driving me happened to be an undercover policeman so he had a weapon. I was not concerned about that. But the fact that this guy pulls up in this truck, and he saw that we were dressed in soups, and he said “look, let me help you.” He would not let us change the tire. Now, I do not know what the flag meant to him, I know what it meant to me. And that is what made me frightened because the Confederate flag was the flag that was used to justify slavery. And yet this young man would not let us change the tire nor would he let us pay him for it because we got to pay him, “Here are twenty dollars, man. We really appreciate it.” “Oh no, no, no.” So my point is you can not just make a judgment and universally say people are certain ways because he had an emblem that you know was problematic to me. And I think that kind of thing exists all over our nation. We got to meet people where they are and then I think that with a dialog when you explain what something means, ‘okay, it means this to you, it means this to me’, how do we find a middle ground so that we can promote what you want. But also not present something negative to me and I just think we can do that. As human beings, we are God’s highest creation. We have the capacity. It always goes back to we have the ability we just have to identify the will.

John: You are so right and I love what you said earlier. You gave a great subtle message. You do not hate the person. You can dislike their policies and disagree with their policies, but hating the person does not get us anywhere as Christians, as people of faith. And like I said earlier, just God bless you Mr. King, and your entire family, your wife, your daughter, your brothers, sisters, and continue the great work. We need so much more of you, but we are just grateful to have you and what your family has already made, the changes in this world, and the impact in this world. The world is a better place because of your entire family. So thank you again and stay healthy and God bless you.

Martin: I got a couple of things if you do not mind.

John: No.

Martin: That I want to say because I always want to leave people with a couple of thoughts. One of them is a quote from my dad’s and the other one is a quotation on a statue at Antioch College of the educator Horace Mann. Okay, so my father used to say that the ultimate measure of a human being is not where one stands in times of comfort and convenience, but where you stand in times of challenge and controversy. He went on to say that on some questions, cowardice asks the question “is a position safe?”, expediency asks the question “is a position politic?”, vanity asks “is a position popular?”, but that something deep inside that we call conscience asks “is a position right?” He went on to say that sometimes we must take positions that are neither safe nor popular nor political, but we must take those positions because our consciences tell us they are right. And so I would say that if we allowed our conscience to be our guide, more times than not we are going to make the right decision. And the final thing is my mother, when I was probably twelve years old, took me to undergraduate college, which is Antioch College in Yellow Springs, Ohio. On that college is a statue of the educator Horace Mann and the words inscribed on that statue that made an indelible impact on my life and the words are, “Be ashamed to die until you won a victory for humanity.”

John: Wow.

Martin: So when I first read that I was like, ‘oh my gosh, that is profound.’ How to make an impact? How do you be ashamed to die until you won a victory for humanity? How do you run a victory for humanity? So I started breaking it down and I said, you know, you can win a victory on your street, or you can win a victory in your neighborhood, or some will win victories in our school, some may win victories in our places of worship, some people may win victories in our cities and some may win victories in our state. And yet others may win victories in our nation, and then some also may win victories for our world. But all those words mean, be ashamed to die until you have done a little something to make the world in which we all must live a little better than it was when you arrived.

John: That is a beautiful way to end today’s episode. And one day I would love to have you back again to further the discussion and all the important work that you are doing. You have inspired me today. I know you are going to inspire all our listeners who listen to this and watch this and again, continue to health, safety and God bless you and your entire family.

Martin: And the same to you and your family and all the good work that you are doing, that you are bringing to the public through this podcast, and all the other business things that you are doing. Thank you for what you are doing is well. Bless you.

John: Thank you, Mr. King.

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’m John Shegerian, and I’m so honored to have with us today, Corey Dehmey. He is the Executive Director of SERI, the Sustainable Electronics Recycling International. Welcome to Impact, Corey.

Corey Dehmey: Thank you, John. Thanks for having me.

John: Hey, this is your first go-round here on Impact. So for our listeners that don’t know about you or about SERI, can you first share a little bit of the Corey Dehmey story leading up to you taking over as the Executive Director of SERI? How do you even get here?

Corey: Sure, John. Well, you know being in the same industry, I think you probably had a bit of the same experience I had. Neither of us probably set out when we were in college to actually be in the electronics recycling business.

John: You are right.

Corey: How do we get here, right?

John: Yeah.

Corey: I have been in the IT industry all my life. I went to school. I have a Bachelor’s Degree in Computer Information Systems. I have worked in IT as a System Administrator through the Y2K Experience converting all the COBOL to four-year digits for the date. How did I get here? Well, I ended up on a contract managing the deployment of 350,000 computers in the early 2000s.

John: Wow.

Corey: All the infrastructure, the data centers, all the networking mobile in the back-end, everything. And so in the early 2000s, we had this great 10-year Mega Source Outsourcing deal. And then we did all this refresh and we never really thought about what are we going to do with all the stuff we are pulling out. So I got tapped to go figure out the reverse logistics of all these warehouses full of IT equipment. You know, what about the data on them? What do we do with them? That was my first foray into this industry is actually wiping data, set up the processes, and then reselling the equipment, recycling some of it. From there, it kind of snowballed into working for recyclers, consolidating, working on the R2 standard. And so here I am, years later now, actually getting to continue that impact on a day-to-day basis. Every day I wake up and focus on having a positive impact on the environment and on people around the world.

John: The nice thing is when you go to bed at night you really did make the world a better place. You and your organization really did make the world a better place. I think that is important to mention. You do great work and it is important work, Corey. For our listeners out there to find Corey and his colleagues and all the great work they are doing at SERI, you could go to www.sustainableelectronics.org. So, talk a bit about the mission of Sustainable Electronics and SERI and what you are doing there before we get into some more specific. Just the mission of it. The macro mission.

Corey: Sure. To simplify it, our purpose is protecting the planet and enriching people’s lives through championing sustainable actions throughout the entire electronics life cycle. We work to create a world where electronic products are reused and recycled in a way that promotes resource preservation, as well as the well-being of the natural environment and the health and safety of workers in the communities around them.

John: E-waste, when you and I were starting to wake up to this, like you said from your learnings from the installation of all those electronics, that this is really the dark side or the back side of the Technological Revolution. E-waste was the fastest growing solid waste stream 17 or 18 years ago. With the internet of things, and cars becoming computers on wheels, and white goods having computers in them now, it is probably the fastest growing solid waste from the world times two now. It is a bigger issue than ever before. Is that not correct?

Corey: It certainly continues to evolve into all things, from our doorbells to our garage door openers, and in everything we can imagine. What a wonderful thing it is, right?

John: Yeah.

Corey: I mean, technology is really creating such enrichment in our lives. The things that it can do, the speed at which we can do it, and the information. I mean, how many times you have a problem, you go to the internet, find a video to tell you how to fix your washer.

John: Corey, I feel like we are sitting together. You are in Pennsylvania and I am on Fresno, California, and I feel like we are 3 feet apart. I mean, it really made our personal and our professional lives so much more interesting and fun. I agree with you. I love it. I love it.

Corey: Imagine where we be today in the middle of a pandemic if we didn’t have that technology. If this would come to a halt and yet we can still do so many things remotely and get products delivered right to our house.

John: I’m with you. It has become a bigger issue. When you and I started waking up to it and getting involved either being drafted or just our learnings and then just leaning in some more and for our listeners out there, truth in advertising. I am the chairman of the ERI. ERI is a proud partner and certified body of SERI, and we have been since SERI was created. We believe greatly in the work that Corey is doing, his colleagues are doing, and everything that is going on at the Sustainable Electronics Recycling International, or SERI. You can find them at sustainableelectronics.org. But it has evolved now to be also a data issue. This issue Morgan Stanley recently got fined for data that was inside of their hardware. They got fined 60 or so million dollars. This is a serious, serious issue of data being contained in our old electronics. We are not only protecting the environment, but protecting the organizations that use electronics or the people that use electronics, which is everybody. Talk a bit about data breaches and E-waste dumping, and how they have converged and what you are doing to work on those issues, Corey.

Corey: Yeah. Well, it is a great point. Data is probably the primary motivator of anybody to consider that when they are getting rid of their electronics. Not knowing what to do with the data of course leads to hoarding and stockpiling of electronics at our closets. Homeowners were afraid of getting rid of it, right?

John: Right.

Corey: But we are missing that great opportunity if we hang on to it. That opportunity for somebody else to use those electronics. Someone who can’t afford to do can now get a used phone that we discarded because we upgraded. The way I see it is there is a great opportunity here. We could have our technology. We can upgrade. We can have the latest new. We can create a good people benefit to get our technology into somebody else’s hands. But like you said, it is all about the data. It is about erasing and making sure that it is gone so we can do that. We have seen companies who are obviously very much concerned about the data physically destroyed their devices instead of reusing them. That is unfortunate as well because then we have to go manufacture new ones and we don’t give the opportunity for others to use those devices. So, this data thing that you talked about is really a leading driver to make sure we do it right so that we can have all those benefits.

John: Then how do you adjust your leadership to rise to that occasion in terms of leading how we are certified as companies out there, as recycling companies, but also evolve with the times? How does that work? How do you balance all the interest, Corey?

Corey: So two pieces or more. First is education, right? Educating people on how to do this well. And so we have to set the standard so that we can educate based on that standard to do it well. We just released the new R2 Version 3 Standard. It came out in July. Completely redesigned and a huge focus in the new standard on data security from end-to-end, and how to not only wipe the data, verify that it is gone, but also all the security of the device itself in process from pick up to it actually wiped and into legitimate reuse of that device. Data is a huge focus throughout the new standard. That is where we start. Now, from that standard, we educate. And from education, then we take these facilities and we hold them accountable to it. We audit them. We certify. We make sure that it is being done well.

John: So no longer is it just an issue of protecting the planet anymore. You are also protecting the people that go to your website, choose an R2 Recycler. You are now helping guide them to protect their organization or their family by recycling their electronics with an R2 Recycler that now was also not only doing everything responsibly when it comes to the environment, but when it also comes to data destruction.

Corey: Yeah, exactly. It is all connected, right?

John: Yeah.

Corey: So in order to get the reuse piece, in order to get the environmental protection, we have to deal with the data first, right?

John: Right. How is that been received by the recyclers? How long will that evolution take for them to adopt your new standard?

Corey: This is brand-new. July 1, it was released. We are on a track for three years to upgrade everyone to the new version of the standard. It takes time. It is an investment. This isn’t something light. It does take resources. It takes time to implement, and there is some changes to make. Some people are already there, right? They are already ahead of the curve. They are already doing a lot of these things, so they are not going to have a big leap to make. But others, you don’t have some catching up to do, and that is good. That moves us all forward.

John: A lot of times people lead with fear and negativity in the market to sell their brand or market their brand when it comes to recycling anything. Nonetheless, electronics are also included in that. Talk a little bit about positivity. Yes, E-waste is the fastest-growing solid waste stream in the world, and yes, now it is also data containing. But can you share some positivity on hope, on good things that are happening in the electronics recycling world both nationally and internationally. I know you travel a lot. You and I were together last in India a couple years back. You are an international speaker besides speaking nationally. Your voice matters. Can you share some of the positive changes besides your new standard that are happening so people can really feel good about where we are headed?

Corey: Yeah. Technology connects people. It educates. It provides market opportunities. Being able to share technology with people who can’t otherwise afford it. The amazing part of this industry is the reuse part of this industry before that equipment is really end of life. So when you take a step back and you see where we are today versus where we were even just a few short years ago, we are beginning to think differently about our electronics and the data that they hold. That is leading some better decision making especially as it relates to recycling. So we have created systems like the R2 System to educate about responsible and recycling practices, and to hold facilities accountable to this practices. So customers now, I think you have seen this John firsthand, customers are better educated. And so now the first question they ask is, “Are you certified?” Whether it is R2, e-Steward, CENELEC, ATEX, made a decent resolve to these options to fit.

John: Right.

Corey: That is the progress we have made over the last 10 years. We are starting to think about how reuse can really help and enrich lives by working on issues like digital inclusion, bridging the digital divide. We see computers for education, especially in this pandemic, John. I am sure your business has experienced this too. There is a mad rush for electronics to use at home so our children can learn and continue to learn from the home instead of in school. So the whole industry has been instrumental in bridging that digital divide and getting the electronics, computers, tablets, into the home, into low-income homes as well to make sure that every child can learn from home and can continue their education. We see that also around the world, in vast remote parts of the world, and combine that John with mobile technology, right? We don’t have to run a cable to every home or every area. We don’t have to have all these LAN cables. We can now put up mobile towers, right? We can get people connected to the entire world through a mobile tower and through the internet. It is pretty awesome how fast we have made progress in the last 10 years.

John: That is really a great point. The role that we play, our industry plays, in helping to create equal access to education for America’s youth, and like you said, the world’s youth really because electronics can be that great democratizer. That is a great, great point, Corey. I am glad you point that out. That is really important to share the role that we can play as responsible recyclers and as an industry as a whole. Corey, you are known leader. You are one of the most respected people in the world on this topic of electronics recycling and responsible recycling. Besides the new standard and the next three years of your recyclers adopting this and baking it into their facilities and their practices, what are the other things you are thinking about in terms of leading SERI into the future? What else are you thinking about as we get over this tragic crisis of COVID-19? And as I share with our company all the time, I don’t believe we are going to go back to a new normal. I think we are going to go back to a new better. I know SERI is creating a new better with your standard. You did it. You released it during the pandemic, which we are all thankful for. But where else do you want to drive SERI in the months and years ahead?

Corey: Yeah. Thanks, John. We are going beyond R2. That is the simplest way to say it, beyond R2. We, as an industry, have focused for the last 30 years with this thing called E-waste, right?

John: Right.

Corey: And really, when you think about it, it is a reaction to a problem that we created a long time ago. And you know why we need to continue to manage E-waste in the present, right? We won’t solve it until we actually get out in front of it. So this requires thinking about all those decisions that are made in the life cycle of our electronics and how each affects the sustainability of that device. You are going all the way back to design. For example, replacing a battery, something as simple as that. The impact that that has on the repair of the product and the ability to use it longer, as well as recycling it. We can’t throw a product with a battery into a shredder. We have to still manually dismantle that. And then think about our buying behaviors, right? Becoming more sophisticated in how we buy and being educated about our choices, about the impacts of the low, low price, the immediate return on that versus the long-term cost of a product. Can we repair it? Can we use it longer? Do we need the latest and greatest upgrades and functionality? What do we do with those devices when we upgrade? Do we put them in a drawer? Do we give them to our children, our parents? A cascading effect that we can continue to use them. We put them back into the market to a trade and give other people the opportunity to use these devices. Do we fix it or recycle it? These are all choices in the life cycle that if we can get ahead of this E-waste problem, we can have a very positive outcome. SERI is really focused on getting to zero E-waste. Those products are used to their maximum lifetime, and the materials that are in those products can be fully recovered and put back into the manufacturing stream. We talked about this big concept called circular economy, right?

John: Yeah.

Corey: It is much bigger than just E-waste. It is much bigger than our electronics. We are just focused on our part, our slice of that circular economy. So some exciting news, we have a new person starting that we hired a Director of Development in SERI programs. This person is going to be in phenomenal, first of all, but is really going to put the resources from SERI’s organization towards doing more than R2, and leading into all kinds of other areas of digital inclusion, of education, of championing that sustainable actions throughout the lifecycle. So we are really excited about that, so stay tuned.

John: That is really great, great news. I’m going to leave it for you for any final words besides stay tuned. Do you have any final thoughts before we have to say goodbye for today, Corey?

Corey: This is a big issue and a big opportunity. We have a long way to go and we are excited about continuing that journey to sustainability. So look forward to talking more in the future, John, and figuring out how we get there.

John: We are going to have you back many times more. For our listeners out there, if you are going to hire a recycler to recycle your electronics, wherever you sit in the United States or around the world, please go to Corey and his colleagues’ great website, sustainableelectronics.org. That is sustainableelectronics.org. All the R2 Recyclers around the world are listed there. Check out, pick one of those R2 Recyclers and make sure they do what they say they are going to do with your materials. Corey Dehmey, we are really, really honored to have you on today. This is your first go-around on Impact. I have heard you publicly speak before. You are clear, brilliant, and articulate. I am so grateful for the impact that you are making to this planet. You are making the world a greener and better place every day. Thank you again for all the work that you do.

Corey: Thanks, John. Be well and be safe.

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

John: Welcome to another edition of the Impact Podcast. I am so excited and honored to have with us today two great guests from General Motors. The wonderful and iconic brand General Motors is in the house today. We have got with us Geraldine Barnuevo. She is the Senior Manager of Environmental Strategies and Sustainability and her colleague, Breitner Marczewski is with us. He is the Senior Sustainability Engineer. Welcome to you both to the Impact Podcast.

Geraldine Barnuevo: Thank you, John. We are…

Breitner Marczewski: Thank you for having us.

Geraldine: Yes, we are super excited about being here with you today.

John: Hey, listen, we cannot be together. But technology at least makes us feel together. You are in Detroit today and in Michigan. I am in Fresno, California and the pandemic is still going on. But it is just lovely to be able to connect with two great people that are making the world a better place at your wonderful brand General Motors.

Before we get talking about all the great things you and your colleagues are doing at General Motors in sustainability, in the circular economy, and to make the world a greener and better place, can you both give a little bit of your background for our listeners who have not met you yet. How you even got here? Talk a little bit about your journey leading up to these wonderful and important positions you both have.

Geraldine: I am going to start. I have been with GM for close to 20 years now. I started my career in GM, Ecuador, South America. So as an environmental engineer, my background is in environmental engineering. From there, I moved into several organizations in General Motors in the environmental area and working in 11 countries on projects of different nature. During the last couple of years, I have been building the strategy around sustainability that will guide our work for the next 10, 20, 30 years. So very excited to be here today with you.

John: Well, thank you. Breitner, how about a little bit of your background?

Breitner: Sure. Thank you for having me today. I am new to the company. I have a little bit over five years with the company. My background is actually in energy engineering. I always had this passion for sustainability. So I venture myself to go to engineering college in Brazil. In Brazil, I started my journey with General Motors in the facilities group. Then I moved to the United States, and I started my journey with the energy group in GM, North America. I stayed with the group for about three years. Because I always had this desire to learn more about sustainability, and I want to go to the environmental side, now I have the pleasure to work with Geraldine in sustainability and environmental as well.

John: Wonderful. This is just a great honor for me because GM has been on our show five times before 2015 when we went on hiatus. To have you guys back on and to see all the great and important things you are doing, it is so important to be able to platform that and share that with our listeners around the world.

For our listeners out there that want to also see and read more about all of Geraldine’s and Breitner’s and their colleagues’ great work at GM, please go to www.gmsustainability.com.

It is a great website. I am on it right now. It has a massive amount of information and I believe you will be blown away as I am by all the important and great things GM is doing. The first question I have today is for Geraldine. Geraldine, can you talk a little bit about the GM zero-emission strategies that you have and what that means to GM, and how you are going about attacking zero-emissions at General Motors.

Geraldine: Sure, John, my pleasure. At GM, our work is driven by our vision for a zero-emission future. We came up with that a few years ago, and now we are putting plans around that. This mission has guided our efforts to reduce our impact, including a transition to electric vehicles. Powering our operation with renewable energy, adhering to clean manufacturing, and engaging in circular economy practices. Just a couple of weeks ago, Mary Barra, our CEO, made big announcements for GM. We proudly announced that we will be allocating more than twenty-seven billion dollars of capital and engineering resources to our EV and AV programs. That is just the beginning.

John: Wow. That is fascinating. Twenty-seven billion dollars. Wow, that is a huge chunk of money. Breitner, for you, can you share a little bit about your zero waste approach at GM and landfill-free program?

Breitner: Yes, and those two definitions are used interchangeably but there is a very good difference between them. I will start to give you a little bit of background on the landfill-free program. So it was established around 2010, and it aimed to reduce the amount of materials we discarded to a landfill by any means. This is important. Any means.

This program improved several manufacturing processes where our teams looked at waste as a byproduct or a raw material for different applications. This mindset had a great effect over the years as our recycling activities generated more than a billion dollars in recovered value. That is mainly from recycling scrap metal from our operations.

As we are now approaching the end of those sustainability goals, the company is now switching to a zero-waste approach where we not only want to keep our waste away from landfills but also from incineration. Those incinerators may have energy recovery, and we are going away from that. This new global goal will divert 90% of our waste away from landfills and incinerators by 2025. Once we achieve this goal, we will keep increasing that percentage to higher levels until we reach 100% of the diversion rate.

John: So the evolution you said is moving away from landfill-free to now zero-waste. That is the future for GM.

Breitner: Correct, but you need to understand the component that we are also moving away from waste incinerators with or without energy conversion.

John: That is so interesting. I tend to agree with what you are saying. I think waste incineration is an industrialized past, that it is great for more companies like yours to move beyond. I think with your leadership on this, others will be signaled to look similarly at the hazardous materials that come out of incineration plants and move away from that. I think that is awesome.

Breitner: Correct. The main reason for this change is to further drive innovation in the recycling industry. We want to create new partnerships with universities, OEMs, and our supplier-base as well. So essentially, what we are doing, we are baiting the take-make-dispose line of consumption and making it more circular.

John: So that is where the circular economy comes into GM.

Breitner: That is correct.

John: Got it. Geraldine, talk a little bit about renewable energy. Is GM involved with the renewable energy movement in terms of how you access your energy and how you run your plants? Share a little bit about your vision on renewable energy issues.

Geraldine: Well, we have been working in renewable energy for the last 10 years. But during the last few years, we had a lot of advancement in this area to the point that we are committing that by 2040, we will source 100% of our electricity needs globally in all the markets from renewable sources, from green electricity, if you will.

We will do that by 2030 in the US, which is a very bold commitment to procure that energy from sources like wind and solar. We will be more than 50% there by 2023. That is how we are signaling the need to move away from fossil fuels.

It is fantastic that we have this big commitment to…

It is easy not to move from ice[?] to EV cars. But as important as that is the source of electricity that you use for those cars. So we want to send a signal to the market. We want to send a signal to the consumers. We have seen a really great response from investors and other stakeholders interested in this area.

John: That is so interesting. So it is not only important in terms of how you run GM and it is good for business in terms of your sustainability and renewable energy, specifically initiatives. But it is also important for your constituents in terms of the new generation of young consumers that are voting with their Pocketbook and also for Wall Street to see that you are a leader from this perspective.

Geraldine: That is correct. We want to be a leader with the new commitment that we are making. Some of those were already announced this year, and a few of the ones that we are still working on will be announced next year, including some very exciting news around carbon neutrality. We plan to be a leader in the US but also a mentor to our suppliers, and also a sustainable community corporate partner for everybody, for GM, and overall GM.

John: Right. Breitner, go back to the zero-waste approach that you are moving to. Is that an easy decision to make internally and make that happen? Are there roadblocks in terms of your desired diversion rates that you have to consider and figure out how you are going to overcome?

Breitner: Yes, it all comes down to doing the right things. We had several discussions and we understood that the challenges are great, especially when you want to divert 90% of everything you generate as waste from landfills. So just imagine yourself at home, look at your trash can. How can you divert 90% of the contents from the landfill? So, when you look at the zero-waste approach, most of the low hanging [inaudible] have already been collected during the landfill-free program.

So I will say the main roadblocks could be divided into two parts, the internal and external. In the internal part, we need to segregate better our waste streams, especially [inaudible] hazardous waste. So this way you help the waste collector to recycle that material better.

The second one will be the conflict you have to spend in capital to implement projects with low return on investment, but that can drive waste reduction. Finally, you need to invest in innovation to divert high to recycle waste streams, like our foundry things from our casting operations. Regarding external roadblocks, the main ones are the commodity prices such as oil that has a huge impact on the cost of virgin materials to make plastics. Also, there is a lack of outlets for certain waste streams in the United States. If you at the recyclability rates of the country, the US recycles 35% of their total waste. We at GM, recycle 84% globally. So this only shows that there are a lot of challenges, but we truly believe that by working together, we will be able to tackle and create a circular economy that will reduce our natural resources, benefiting the communities where we live and work.

John: Wonderful. For our listeners who have just joined us, we have got Geraldine Barnuevo with us today and Breitner Marczewski from the great and iconic brand General Motors. To learn more about what they are both doing with their colleagues at General Motors in sustainability and circular economy, please go to www.gmsustainability.com. Geraldine, talk a little bit about the recent investments and launch of electric vehicles that GM is making, both in different sectors in recent investments and also the separate launch of electric vehicles, and how that is actually going right now.

Geraldine: Well, for GM, vehicle emissions account for 77% of our carbon footprint and that is why we are so committed to this all-electric future. By mid-decade, we intend to sell a million EVs per year in our two largest markets, which are North America and our joint ventures in China. So that is our first big step. Along with that, we are planning to launch thirty new global EVs by 2025. So as you can see, that is where we are investing the twenty-seven billion of capital in engineering, including our battery manufacturing, which includes the investments in our battery manufacturing plant in Lordstown, Ohio. The goal is that 40% of the company, US employees, will be battery electric vehicles by the end of 2025.

John: Got it. That is wonderful. Breitner, what other sustainability initiatives are you excited about besides zero-waste that you are touching or getting involved with now? Because I know GM works many years out. As you said, you have goals for 2025, 2030, 2040. I mean, you guys are both global citizens, and you work many years in the future at this amazing company, General Motors. What are some of the other sustainability initiatives that get you excited that are going on right now?

Breitner: Yes, I am passionate about partnerships. I think we need to work together to solve the massive challenges that lie ahead in terms of sustainability. To that, GM is involved in several fronts to mitigate our footprint. The company is a signatory of the EPA, America Recycles Pledge. We are working with the group on three different pillars. Education and outreach, we want to educate communities on what can be recycled and how it will be recycled. We want to strengthen the secondary market materials, so we are targeting high quality, contaminant-free recycled materials that can be easily incorporated into products and back into the economy. The third pillar is enhancing measurement. This one is very key because we will help to develop scientific measurable goals supported by consistent terminology and data collection. This is very important. Consistency in the recycling industry is the key to achieve greater goals.

John: Got it. Geraldine, you have been doing this now for 20 years or so at GM, and you have a long history of success. Since you are a global citizen and have been to different countries. You are not just an American who grew up here and does not have a worldview. Talk a little bit about where sustainability, circular economy, and ESG is going in that. When I got into this industry of recycling, it was before Al Gore won for Inconvenient Truth.

Now, I saw a huge rise of interest in it in America. But I saw Europe and Asia, especially geographically challenged countries that are smaller, obviously France and UK and Italy and of course our friends in Japan and South Korea. All we are doing this generationally, two generations ago at least, and was part of their cultures and DNA.

Where do you think we are going now with the reemergence of great activists like Jane Fonda and then the young activists like Greta Thunberg? Is circular economy behavior and sustainability and ESG here to stay in America? Is this a trend that is going to continue to grow in our lifetimes and beyond? Or is it going to wax and wane like we have seen it before? What are your thoughts, Geraldine?

Geraldine: Well, the millennials and we have done studies on this, to understand the sentiment of our customers and in particular, millennials and Generation Z now, right? They are very interested in companies that do the right thing that they are willing to invest in and buy products that create and that connect the purpose of the company to a sense of social value. It is something that we saw maybe starting 10, 20 years ago in Europe, we are starting to see that here. We can see now in our employees the desire to be part to ride these waves. So it is very exciting to be here and now.

In terms of what we are doing, in addition to our goals in the area of climate change that we already discussed and in the area of waste reduction, we are also working with our supply base. So we are working with 300-plus of our suppliers to achieve at least 50% sustainable material content in our vehicles by 2030. So think about that, we are hoping that half of the vehicle will come from some sort of sustainable process of biomaterials, metal with recycled content by 2030. It is a very ambitious target, but we aim with these to transform our business and support the production of not only electrical cars but also circular ones.

John: Interesting. Breitner, for you, you are a part of the younger generation, let us just say, than I am. I am 58 now. What are your thoughts on working for GM? I find it ironic that Detroit, one of the most important cities in Michigan that was greatly part of the Industrial Revolution, and now at GM, you really are both part of a company and leading the way on the circular economy and sustainability revolution now. That is interesting, ironic, but also exciting, I am sure for both of you. Breitner, what are your thoughts on the circular economy, ESG, and where we are going from a different generational perspective than mine, let us just say?

Breitner: Yes. My thoughts around that is when I started with General Motors way back in Brazil in 2014, I have no idea the company had a sustainability team. It was so important for the company to operate sustainably that it was really impressive. When I came to the United States here and looked at the headquarters, the whole organization, it is like you are in the mothership now and you see everything happening for a reason. The reason is we want to do the right thing. We want to be here for the next 100 years. We do not think in the short term insight. So from my perspective, that perspective, I thought it was wonderful the company had that view. However, if you think more holistically, you will start to understand that there are opportunities to save costs, improve your bottom line. You become a more profitable company when you operate more sustainably. There are also lots of investors looking to invest their funds in companies that operate sustainably. So it is totally understandable why more and more companies are embarking into this sustainability journey.

John: Well, the constant theme that through today’s show and everything I have learned throughout the years, interviewing great guests from GM and other large organizations like yours is when you both lead the circular economy and sustainability revolution at GM, it truly moves the needle because like you said, you not only affect your vendors and your constituents but the messaging that you give to everybody else is it is time to get on board. That is what is so exciting. When you talk about how many vendors are part of making a car and that they need to also get on board if they want to stay a vendor is fascinating. I think it is fascinating. Geraldine, I am going to turn it over to you and of course, Breitner, you could chime in as much. But you both are amazing people. I am grateful for your time today. I want you both to have last thoughts on not only GM, but where we are going as a whole and any other last thoughts to wrap up the show because I want you both to have the last word here.

Geraldine: Well, I am excited about the future. Stay tuned to the news that are going to be coming out in the next month or so. As I said, we are committed to an all-electric future. We want to be the leader, the most environmentally-friendly vehicle company in the world and not just electric but it is also around circularity, having great partnerships with our suppliers, with our investors, with our communities, and with our employees.

Breitner: Yes, and I am very excited to see the new products coming on. You have probably heard about the new Hummer EV. It has a range of 350 miles with the full charge. So it is really impressive. I am also very optimistic with the investments in autonomous vehicles that will reduce further crashes on the road. So I think it is the revolution that we are experiencing in the transportation field. So I am very excited to see where this will going to lead us.

John: I just want you both to know you both have an open invitation because so much important news is constantly coming out of GM in sustainability and circular economy. I want you both to know you have an open invitation, both collectively and singularly to come back on the show and talk about any new initiatives or announcements that you have. Geraldine, you have done a great job of teasing some of them already. Please feel free to come back on and continue to message this. Our listeners love it. We get great feedback on it. I just want to wish you both a very happy and healthy holiday season. I am just so honored to have you both on today. You are both making important impacts and making the world a better place. Continue to take care. Stay safe, stay healthy, and thank you for being guests on the Impact Podcast today.

Geraldine: Thank you, John. Same for you and your family.

Breitner: Thank you. Have a wonderful day.

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 S.: Welcome to another edition of the Impact Podcast. I am John Shegerian and I am so honored and excited to have my good friend today, John Rosser. He is the president and founder of Sustainatopia. Welcome to the Impact Podcast, John.

John Rosser: John, thanks you so much for having me.

John S.: It is an honor to have you. You are doing such important work; and for our listeners who have not had a chance to meet you yet or learn about you or learn about Sustainatopia, can you share a little bit about your backstory leading up to the founding of Sustainatopia and how the journey is gone since you started it?

John R.: Absolutely John. I have had a pretty eclectic business career. I got my International MBA back in the day/. Speak some languages and did some things overseas and I fell into– I started my first company in the 1990s. I sold it to the Washington Post and that allowed me to have some time and ability to kind of look to do the things that I wish to do.

When I spent some time in financial markets and the late 90s early 2000s, which was actually a great time to get educated because of the bubble that was going on with Y2K as you may remember.

John S.: Yep.

John R.: Maybe some of the millennials will not. And but you know what, there was always kind of something missing from my life and as I got married and my daughter was born, I think a lot of men would say this as well that you start to view the world differently and you start to think more about giving back and legacy.

And it is just a different perspective. Once you have a family about you know, why you are here. And that led to me to question business in general. Are we here just to make money? Or is there something greater that we can achieve by business? And it so happened that in 2008 when we had the crash, that we all the investment crash that we all remember related to the mortgage crisis. It was a great opportunity for, in my personal life for things to come together 12 years ago to really ask the question.

You know, why am I here? And I found out there were folks. I did not know you at that time, John. I have known you for many years and you have been a pioneer in the space for many years even going back then.

John S.: Right.

John R.: But at that time in 2008, that was the time for me to ask the right questions. And it turned out after several months of figuring out, kind of mapping the space, trying to figure out where I best fit in. And as a result of spending almost nine months, learning about the space, knowing I wanted to do something different. I lived in Miami at that time and I thought Miami had great potential to become a city that could come online with these concepts of Impact investing sustainable business.

So I hosted the first event called “Sustainatopia” back in 2010. And the idea was to provide a platform for all the companies both small and large and investors that really wanted to create a better world through business and investing. And that was our first year and now we are in our 12th year coming up. On our 12th year of the exercise, we will be hosting our 23rd Global Conference in February. We have hosted everything from heads of state, to top CEOs, top entrepreneurs, the biggest investment firm in the world.

We had celebrities like Patricia Arquette, participate Donna Karan. So over 4,000 speakers. And it all came from really just an idea, that passion, and for me wanting to pursue what I thought was the right thing in my life. And we started small and we just seem to be getting bigger and bigger. So this year will be hosting 8 events.

John S.: Wow!

John R.: Virtually of course. And it is a really exciting time because we have seen so much progress in the space in the last 12 years to which I think you will agree.

John S.: Oh, yeah. I mean you have become one of the leaders in the entire world in this space. And for our listeners out there that want to see John’s great work and also participate and become a part of the Sustainatopia Revolution, go to www.sustainatopia.com. You can see so much about where they have been and where you are going. These events coming up next year. 2021 events.

Before we get into talking about them and they are fascinating. The topics you have picked. Impact investing, ESG investing, next-gen terms of universities, up to 35 and under, accelerating the purpose economy, step back. We are living right now John during this COVID-19 tragic period.

Very strange times and everyone has had to make adjustments in terms of business leaders like you and entrepreneurs like you. How has it affected what you are doing and is the virtual been as successful as you are in-person meetings, and how are you going to continue to adjust and evolve with the virtual becoming much more normalized?

John R.: Sure. That is a great question. I have to be totally transparent when COVID hit, we were not prepared at least initially to look at doing virtual events. I was not as experienced. I am an older fella on 56 years old and I do a lot of things online, but I have never hosted a virtual conference. I attended a couple, but I did not quite have the feel for it. But we felt like this is a sea change. This is not going away. We are a company that is a company that is focused on engagement. And the way they engage over the next several months is going to be virtually. That is going to be the only game in town and maybe longer.

John S.: Right.

John R.: As it turns out, it is been a long time and it is going to be a long time yet. So we put down the marker and we told our clients. Look, we are going to host this event and will be totally transparent with you. This is the first time we did it. We think we can do a good job, but have faith in us and we think we will figure it out. Well, what was quite amazing and I did not expect this going into it and part again being an older fella.

I just did not think we could do the same level of engagement online as we would find in the physical world. And what we found is that in the physical world, there is actually several barriers that, or potential barriers that can happen. And it goes beyond just the cost in the time which is quite large actually to attend a lot of conferences. If you’re on the east coast to go to the west coast or even if you are in a place like New York City and to go. There is time and cost involved and you can do things online in most cases at a lower price. And you can provide a lot, if not all of the value.

In fact, we have got clients that like the online model more. They think it is more intimate. They like the fact they do not even have to get in a car to drive to an airport. That is going to bring him to a hotel room in another city before they even get to the event. That they can join the event and leave the event within seconds. And there are also some technical factors. For example, not to get too into the weeds on this but you did ask the question John.

John S.: Right.

John R.: But when you are at an online event, or at least our online event, we can chat. The text chat bar while you are listening to a speaker. You could never do that in a physical conference world. It would be rude.

John S.: Right.

John R.: We all have the capability of listening to a speaker and maybe sending a message to someone else in the room. So yeah, I did get in a little bit in the weeds.

John S.: No!

John R.: It is important for the audience members you have the experience that to know that you actually can be part of tremendous value of these events. If the event has a good technology team and a good format.

John S.: John, we have a new president administration coming in the United States. He already said that going to be resigning the Paris Accord. It seems as though institutional ESG investing is really on fire. It seems that the new generation of Greta Thunberg’s and young millennials and Z generation. People are also on fire on their new investment apps like Robin Hood and things to invest in brands that make the world a better place. Talk a little bit about your thoughts on that and how your great platform Sustainatopia plays a role in that future now coming up upon us.

John R.: Well, there is no question about it. The world of business has changed and it is changed in a number of ways. But you know, just fundamentally for those of you who can remember your accounting or involved in balance sheets, you know, Goodwill for most companies. The Goodwill is a huge number on the balance sheet of many companies. Fifty, sixty, seventy percent. And what is Goodwill? You know, Goodwill winds up being what folks think about you, what investors think about you. The trust they have in your management team.

The trust they have in your brand. And we are living in a world where customers, clients, more, and more, not just young folks, but folks of all ages say. We want a brand that represents my values. That, and my values being that protects the environment, that cares about people, that makes money. We all agree businesses should make money and if they make more money, that is great. But they have to do it while also, caring about the citizenry and caring about their employees and doing the right thing. And these concepts are not so amorphous or hard-to-reach as they were in the past.

There is a lot of metrics, a lot of data where you can look at companies and know how many women are in management for that company. What is the gap between what the CEO makes and the lowest employee? All these metrics that can tell you if the company really does care about not only their community but their shareholders, their stakeholders, as well. And companies increasingly are going to be judged on this. So it is just better for companies to take the bull by its horns and say, you know what? We are going to make this at the core of our company doing the right thing.

And we are going to combine that with producing a product or service that has a value. And if we do that and we are sincere about our efforts and we go to the longest yard, our customers are going to reward us. Regardless if maybe it costs our product a little more or not. Our customers are going to reward us. Our investors are going to reward us.

Interestingly enough, the data shows that the investment data shows that companies fully grasp this and fully employed this across all of their business models of businesses actually produce the highest return. And this is data that we thought would come to fruition that we would see but we needed a few years to prove that, to have the companies actually go whole hog in these concepts and then we look at their returns. And that is what the data is showing. Those companies actually wind up doing better as an investment than companies that do not embrace this. So it is a very exciting time.

John S.: For our listeners who just joined us, we are, have John Rosser on. He is the president and founder of Sustainatopia. To find John and all the great work he is doing at Sustainatopia, you could go to www.sustainatopia.com. You know, there is investment opportunities now that are coming up more in this green ESG circular economy, sustainability space more than ever before. What do you see as some of the greatest opportunities right now?

John R.: Well, that is a great point. There is a lot. I would say, number one on the food side, there is always kind of interesting concepts derivation. This has been going on for a while. For close to 20 years that you have. Companies that want to produce a healthy product and companies that treat their employees fairly and their stakeholders fairly. And these companies seem to come out of nowhere. They have great run rates for a few years and they actually wind up getting bought in many many cases. I am, we are based in Boulder Colorado when I am not traveling around the world and support Sustainatopia.

And Boulder has produced a number of companies that in a very short time have gone from conception to being sold to larger companies. And this is and evaluations are quite high because the large food companies are trying to catch up, pun intended trying to catch up with with this trap. And they are just better off buying these smaller companies in some cases to kind of infuse the DNA. The kind of seminal purchase that we all know about was Ben & Jerry’s back in the day by Unilever; which is actually very interesting is that the former CEO Paul Polman actually changed a lot of the processes Unilever to model the successful things that were happening in Ben and Jerry’s.

And Ben and Jerry’s was historically and I believe still is one of the most profitable companies in the Unilever and all the companies that they run around the world. So it is a bit of a, I will say the tail wagging the dog, but this has been going on for a while. That a company of the enormous size of Unilever looks at one of its smallest units and say “Wow! This is how we need to run our business.”

John S.: Right, right, right. You know, it is a weird thing John, you and I are the same generation. We are aligned culturally and from a DNA perspective. We have been friends for years why we truly understand each other but there are so many people yet out there, even though we want to drink cleaner water and breathe cleaner air and leave a world, that is a better place than you and I founded, some people still do not believe even in climate change or the whole sustainability revolution. How can we help others get over this and move the discussion forward so everyone wants to be aligned and be part of the solution and not part of the problem anymore?

John R.: You know that is a really good question and I think this does happen over time. But it does come back to education and communication. So beating the drum louder, having meeting people where they are at more opportunities. Look, there is some amazing success stories. If you go to the farmers in Iowa and you talk about renewable energy, they understand exactly what you are talking about now. They did not years ago, but many of them are surviving on producing renewable energy at their farms. This is becoming integrated across the board in the United States. There is still this residue. This I will call it do-good residue. This is the first time I have used this term John so I take it for that.

John S.: I like it.

John R.: Yeah. I hope I am not infringing on anyone’s copyrights on this. But there is this do-good residue that we have to figure out a way to get rid of. Words can matter. And for whatever reason, we have people who cognitively understand these concepts. But they think, “Ahhh, This is just kind of do-good stuff, and let us get back to kind of the regular way.” Well, the regular ways is going away the paradigm shifts are too powerful in the space. And at the end of the day customers want this.

This is what customers want. I have a 20-year-old daughter and this is just natural for her. She can not, she has a hard time understanding how the world has the problems that it does. So these younger generations, they get it intuitively. They are demanding this from the companies that they buy products and services from. So I think it behooves us, John, at our older age without revealing our ages to kind of keep in step with these younger folks. They see, I like to say and I fervently believe this. The younger folks see the future more clearly than you and I. We have got a great few clouds in our eyes from–

John S.: Right.

John R.: –the business battles over the years. And they know where this world is going. So it would really make sense for our generation, investors, and politicians included, to listen to these younger folks. Because their vision of the future is probably more accurate than ours.

John S.: That is so interesting. Could you know, I am on your website now. I love it. This got so much information. Can you talk a little bit about and give our listeners and viewers a preview on 2021, your virtual conferences and why you chose the topics for each of these conferences so people can understand what is going on and where you are going Sustainatopia in 2021 and beyond?

John R.: Sure. Now thank you for that. First of all, we are conference where we like to say we are an open door conference. I know a lot of conferences say they are. We really are and for a couple of different reasons, we are more boutique events. We like that. We, people, feel that there is intimacy at our events that they can just kind of come and be themselves. And even if they are at a knowledge level which is lower. They are accepted. And folks, and we do have a lot of rock stars there, but they do not necessarily act like rock stars. They are willing to have that kind of longer conversation, explain concepts and help people join the circle so to speak. And that is, going back to your earlier question, this is necessary. We still have to educate in the space and be open to folks joining and not be so cliches even though it is a pretty big cliche by now.

John S.: Right. Right.

John R.: And, so what we do is we are pretty deep and broad conference. So feeding into that, we are pretty deep and broad. We do not host many keynotes. Most of our sessions are deep dive with a lot of Q and A. We do a ton of networking. We have, in our two-day events over eight and a half hours, a dedicated networking. We also have side rooms that you can go in and network as well while the content sessions are going on. So we really heavily focused on people coming in, getting engaged, talking, learning, building the trust. And that is where we really, I think, the magic happens at these events. If you can and this is not to belittle any other concept.

There is some wonderful events out there doing incredible work. But we feel like if you only have four-five speakers over four hours, it really is kind of top-down driven. And it is, it can be good for educating but I think in a lot of cases, folks who are seeking education they can do better if they are allowed to ask more questions. I think our format allows that. We do a very very top folks but what we try to do is have them kind of on an egalitarian horizontal basis. Speak the folks, where they’re at. And that is kind of special to our model. In terms of the titling our first event, February 17th and 18th. A two-day event, virtual of course, Sustainatopia.

That is kind of a cult classic brand. Kind of use a product that is maybe not so sustainable. But we all [inaudible]. That is our cult classic brand. That is kind of our basic model, which is very kind of a balance model between businesses investors, foundations, nonprofits, government. Later in the year. We are doing some different things which is some events being a little more investor focus, others being more business-focused. And you mentioned as well, we are having our first next-gen university events. Super excited about that in May.

John S.: Wow, got it. Got it. And then you also have in June, accelerating the purpose economy. Explain what you mean by that?

John R.: Absolutely. We have seen, we have seen an acceleration especially in the last five years. For what I will call the purpose economy. So this is going to be a deeper dive and actually focusing on case examples, which this is always very popular at our conferences. We have companies who come and they say “Look, we know we want to be more purpose-driven but help us figure out how to get there”. And what they love to see is they love to hear stories and, John, I know you have a lot of stories given how many years you have worked in this business.

John S.: Right.

John R.: And these are valuable stories. These are you know, folks learning from your pain then your–

John S.: My mistakes.

John R.: [inaudible] that did not work out. Yeah, some of them work out, some of them do not.

John S.: Right.

John R.: But the important thing is that we learn and share and that is what happens at events like is accelerating the purpose economy. Companies can walk away small and large and say “Wow! I am learning from the kind of blood, sweat and tears of another company”. And our companies are more than willing to share because they know what kind of goes around comes around. There is kind of us read the core where we all operate to help each other in that way.

John S.:You know, John you and I were talking a little bit off the year before we started taping this podcast. I would love for you to share your vision with our listeners around the world on 2022 and beyond. How does virtual intermix with in-person? Will you go back to some sort of in-person events or will you go do a healthy mix of virtual and in-person in 2022? What is your thought process now? And I know this is always subject to change as the world is changing faster than ever before and they still a lot of uncertainty out there. But what do you think 2022 and beyond post pandemics going to look like for Sustainatopia?

John R.: You know, I made John, if you recall, one of our conversations I made note of this analogy of back in the 90s when–

John S.: Yeah.

John R.: When we used to all read a print newspaper.

John S.: Yes.

John R.: I had understood this concept which they were saying at the time of that, we are going to get all our news online and you are not going to have print newspapers really that much anymore. And I had a hard time grasping that simply because I loved print, I love even the USA Today with its big sports and life section, and business section with color. I said, “How are you going to replace that experience?” Well guess what? They replace that experience. And you have a hard time finding a newspaper rack in anywhere on a street corner anymore. And this is just what happens when these paradigm shifts happen. So I do think in some ways, this is a paradigm shift.

I think virtual events are here to stay. I think you are going to see increasingly folks making very hard choices between physical and virtual events. We will continue with physical events. Having said that, there are certain events that if you take away 30% of the audience which could easily happen or more because thereis a virtual alternative. It weakens the event and for some events and some event companies, that is going to weaken them beyond their ability to really service their client. So I think it is going to be an interesting mix. I mean, I think we will still have physical events. But for a lot of individuals and companies are, at least some it is going to make more sense just to stick with virtual.

John S.: That is so interesting. So they will, so virtual has a place, in-person has a place and there is going to be some sort of healthy mix in the future.

John R.: Yeah, and I mean, we also have to look this on the generational basis. I mean, we always, I do not know John, with your children if you have had this experience. When my daughter was 13, she was in a room with her friends, maybe 10 friends and they were not speaking to each other. They were all on their phones texting for an hour. It was dead silence. And you know, you would have told me that five years before I would say you are crazy. Who does that? Well, they do that. So, you know that is going to play a role in how this turns out as well.

John S.: John, exactly. Your timing could not be more impeccable. Last night, I was visiting both of my children and my daughter now is a mom and she is 34 and a lawyer. My son is 28 and a lawyer and they were sitting in the living room together. And they were working on a project together and they were emailing each other and I said why do not you guys just pull out your cell phones too and just start texting. They were not talking. I am sitting there watching them go back and forth, email each other like “This whole world is changed right in front of my eyes.” My two children, daughter and they were just emailing each other working literally collaborating on a project I said, “Well, take out your cell phones just start texting and I will say and then I will leave later on and I will just text you guys. Good night.” I mean they were just, and of course, they were hazing me after I said that.

John R.: Right.

John S.: But that is really the reality of what is going on.

John R.: Incredible.

John S.: And guys like us have to get used to that. I mean even sometimes I call my son during the day just to hear his voice. He goes “Dad, do not call me. Do not be a weirdo. Just text me.” I was like “Ah!, I just want to hear your voice.” He does not get it sometimes but one day he will when he is a father. But I am with you on that. It has been a generational change for sure. Hey.

John R.: Yes.

John S.: You know John, this has been fascinating and I want you to come back next year as Sustainatopia continues to evolve but I want to give you the last word as the years closing out now. Any final thoughts, any final wisdom, any final vision by you before we have to say goodbye and bid a due to 2020 together?

John R.: You know, it has been a very hard year for virtually everybody.

John S.: Yeah.

John R.: And you know, I want to say a little prayer for everyone and give them hope that things are going to get better. I know, maybe in their personal lives and their business. It is been a very very challenging year, but I want to let you know things do get better and I think we are going to see that in this next year and have courage to take a chance and have courage to think something new and think differently about what opportunities are. This is a business program for the most part.

And business is about taking advantage of good luck, good fortune when you have it and taking advantage of opportunities when you have it. So I hope some really talented people out there, either in their personal lives or in their business will not allow this really terrible situation for the world two distinct, to extinguish kind of that flame and that passion to take an educated chance and educated risk or to work very hard at something they are passionate about because it will come good. The world will come back. The businesses will come back and I hope I can give some hope and some encouragement for that.

John S.: That is a beautiful message and it is applicable really at the end of 2020 and even into the new year. And that is, I am very grateful. I am grateful John that you are a friend of mine. I am grateful that you have this wonderful platform that continues to be a beacon of hope for the next generation of green and sustainable entrepreneurs that want to make the world a better and greener place. You for sure have made the world a better and greener place and also have made a tremendous impact. I am so thankful for you personally, and I also want to say out there for our listeners out there that want to be involved, that want to be part of the sustainability revolution and evolution. Please go to www.sustainatopia.com. John Rosser, thank you for being with us today. God bless you. Continued good health, and I can not wait to see you in person in 2021.

John R.: Absolutely, John. Thank you for the opportunity.

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

John: Welcome to another edition of the Impact podcast. I am John Shegerian. I am so honored to have with me today my friend, Karén Khachikyan. He is in Yerevan, Armenia. We are talking directly from Fresno, California to Yerevan. Welcome to the Impact podcast, Karén.

Karén Khachikyan: Thank you very much. I am very excited to be here. Thanks for inviting me.

John: I am very excited to have you because from the first night I met you in last October 2019, you totally inspired me and you totally made me so interested in what you are doing. I am so excited for you to share your wonderful invention, Robin the Robin Robot, with our listeners today. But before we get talking about all the great things you are working on today, I would love you first to share with our listeners around the world your background, your journey leading up to founding Expper Technologies.

Karén: Sure. My name is Karén. I was born here on Yerevan. Since childhood, I love technology. I am also very fond of art and music. I play guitar and piano. Since childhood, I was making something like projects, hardware or some science projects. I started studying in Polytechnical University in Yerevan. There I met my friend and the CTO of Expper Technologies, Hayk. Since our university years, we are making robots and hardware projects together. After the second year of studying in University, we both went to Army for serving because in Armenia it is mandatory. For two years, we went to serve in the Army. During the Army time we were thinking and dreaming what we are going to do when we come back. After two years, we again started studying together, continuing our education in that University. We joined the Synopsys Company programs. Synopsys is the app company, semiconductor company, which makes it being the best in the market. IP, chip, integrated circuit, and they have their educational program in our University. We both went there. After years, I did work in Synopsys as an engineer. That time we also started making some projects together. My passion is I am really excited about social robots from University while making some companion robot. That time I made a robot, and I called it Pan Robot. You were having a pan and robot. From mobile app, you would draw some pictures and it is starting to draw on the paper. I thought that it could be a good educational robot that kids and students can learn programming, robotics, and engineering by using that robot. I got a team, and we started working on that, but we failed because we used maybe some wrong approach to start a company. But that idea of making educational robot, we continued working on that. Actually the key of that educational robot was to have not kind of device or some tool, but to have some emotional component as well.

John: Okay. I want to hear about that, but first I want to ask you this. You are very young man. How old are you right now, Karén?

Karén: I am 26.

John: You are still very young. Couple of things for our listeners out there both in Armenia and in Diaspora, let us give them a bit of a background. Historically, Armenia wasn’t known as a Tech Center.

Karén: Right.

John: It is so fascinating to me and I was so honored to meet you thanks to our great friend, Natali, who introduced me to so many great young Tech people, and you are of course one of them. One of the great shining stars in Armenia right now. How did that evolve to two things? How did a young man like you want to become a champion of Tech? In the middle of the Tech industry, did you grow up reading about Steve Jobs and Bill Gates and other young people and want to be them? Number one, number two, how did Armenia go from basically an industrial revolution type country now to one that has a very, very, very Tech vibrant community? Share with our listeners a bit of your own personal journey in Tech growing up and also Armenia’s evolution in Tech.

Karén: Sure. I went in a regular school in Yerevan so we didn’t have tech classes. It looks like just a regular school.

John: Right.

Karén: When I was in school and even earlier, I was dreaming about the dog. I think it was the key for making Robin, actually. The interesting thing that I didn’t have one because my parents were not allowing me to have a dog. When my parents would work and most of the time I was alone at home playing and making something. I think that was the reason that I brought me a companionship. I think this was the reason of making Robin when I look back. About the Tech ecosystem in Armenia and in Yerevan, I think Armenians have that quality to build great products because even during the Soviet Union Armenia was like kind of Silicon Valley of that region. All the engineering and even the first computers of Soviet Union were built in Armenia. I think that environment because growing in Armenia, you don’t have access to many things. It is a small country, with limited resources, and it actually teaches you that if you want something, you need to get it. I think this is an important thing from childhood. Personally, I didn’t have easy ways to making something or getting something. I think it is a mindset that you never give up and if you want something, you need to work on it and make it.

John: Is the future of Armenia more hot end? Do you believe that it is going to become in the years ahead and in your lifetime, you are very young, more and more tech-oriented and there is going to be more and more great inventors and technologists like you and your partner over at Expper Technologies that are going to create a new and better products for the whole world to enjoy? Is this sort of the future of Armenia you do believe?

Karén: Yes, I believe that technology is the future of Armenia and Armenia doing tech stuffs. We have great companies. We have great minds here. Armenian’s product are booming the global markets, right? For example, we have base noise cancellation software made in Armenia. Although a lot of companies that create products and I think that companies like that are showing that it is possible and younger generation have that already like how they can do it. For example, how product made in Armenia becoming like that in the world? I think this is very important because for Armenia depends on every single Armenian because actually we, right now, is making the future, right? That is why it is very important that all of us think how we can contribute for the future of Armenia and make it better.

John: Got it. For our listeners who just joined us, we are so honored to have with us today direct from Yerevan, Armenia, the co-founder and the owner of Expper Technologies, Karén Khachikyan. To find his website and to see his great invention, Robin the Robot, go to www.expper.tech. Now, cut and talk a bit about specifically the evolution of Robin. How you and your partners came together and then created it, and why it was important to create Robin the Robot?

Karén: Sure. My friend and I started working on educational robot, and its name was Charlie. The idea was to create an emotional connection between the students and Charlie. That time I was thinking that by having that connection they will be more motivated to make the robot better. In the porters, they will learn new things. For example, they want to make Charlie to see at the cameras. So it is programming to actually make Charlie see. This idea worked. We actually sold Charlie Robot in Armenia in educational centers. We saw that children behaving to Charlie, I felt like actually pure. They are running and calling by name. I love you Charlie, you are so nice. We understood that we need to apply this idea to the bigger thing, and that was Robin.

John: Got it. When was your first prototype of Robin created? How many evolutions have you gone through before you actually started testing Robin in hospital settings and other important settings?

Karén: It was really a great tough time for us because we were working in Synopsys full-time and also combining with University. At night we were working on making a robot. We didn’t have resources. We didn’t have money. We were putting ninety percent of our salaries to buy tools, to buy materials for making Robin. We build a skeleton of Robin. It didn’t have any kind of design or just one skeleton from some materials. It had some mechanic. We had our friend. She is a great painter. We asked her to design the look of Robin. It is very interesting that we are speaking with her and telling how actually Robin is, how we feel Robin. She was a great artist because she could feel the Robin that we were imagining in our mind. She draw the first sketch of Robin. I remember we had a presentation in two months and we decided to present Robin in two months, but already a robot with design, which was quite crazy time where we are not molding plastic and trying to make the body. We didn’t know how to do it, but somehow we figure out how we can do it like handmade, like body for robots. We made the final product that has the final design. It was not so nice now, but still it was something. We decided that we need to sell it because it was just like a hardware in the lab. But if we sell it, it means that it brings some value. That time we were thinking to start fundraising because we wanted to leave our job and fully focus on making Robin. It was a strategic decision to sell to the customer service industry because sale cycles are pretty short, like banks and some companies. We sold it very fast. We sold around three robots to two different kinds of companies like banks. On that fraction, we raised initial funding for making Robin and started building actual robot to deliver the product for the customers. After that, we raised the issue right. I came to US and started looking to what our idea was, like children. Actually, we had another idea to use Robin in elderly facilities like nursing houses. I was testing. I went to the different nursing homes, to the hospital. At that time we saw how children react to Robin. They are coming and hugging Robin, telling that the Robin you are my fan. But that time Robin was covered, just the body. I think we understood that starting from childcare industry; it is really something from children’s world with big eyes, with friendly design. We decided to work with pediatric hospitals and medical settings.

John: Tell me why. Why did you decide that and what did you use to decide children might get the most out of Robin in this very important data testing stage of Robin?

Karén: It was actually a personal reason. I told you earlier that I was alone and that my parents were at work. I was thinking about this companionship and actually analyzing that. I see that it actually influenced me and what I am doing now. The reason that children are very vulnerable to the effects of hospitalization in general, right? They are being exposed to a variety of negative factors such as painful procedures, loneliness, and isolation. Having a friend like Robin that they can rely on is very important because they are far from their homes. They are in a scary environment. They don’t have friends. Even if they are with great doctors, they are still adults, right They don’t have that peer-to-peer connection and friends there. Robin is actually a reliable body who is always there to help children to reduce stress and anxiety during their stay.

John: Got it. For our listeners again, if you want to see Robin and all Karén and his partners’ great work, please go to www.expper.tech. Talk a bit about the big success story you had at UCLA Medical. What happened with Robin at UCLA here in West Los Angeles?

Karén: We started pilots here in Armenia when we finalize the product for the healthcare. We did a pilot in Wigmore Clinic North Mirage Medical Center here. It is a cardiac hospital. We got some inspiring feedbacks from children, from medical staff. During the pilots, Robin increase the joyfulness level of kids by 33%, even reduce the time of medical procedures up to 40%.

John: Wow.

Karén: Their patient satisfaction that month that they use Robin increased by 14.4%. It was just an initial version, like pilot, and we are lucky enough to meet with Dr. Sean [inaudible], who is a doctor at UCLA Mattel Children’s Hospital. When I went to the US and met him and tell him about Robin, about our product, our company, and he was excited about Robin. We started thinking how we can start a pilot with UCLA Mattel Children’s Hospital. Separately, we started selling to the pediatric dental clinics because going to the dentist is very stressful, right? Like I hate to go to the dentist. Especially for children, it is a big stress. This is another vertical that we are answering right now and actually signed a contract with ABC Kids Dental Group in LA. We deployed robot and signed for two more, and we are deploying in all their dental clinics offices.

John: Wow.

Karén: We did worked with also UCLA team, the research team created to start a pilot of Robin from doctors, from the child specialists, from the researchers. It was a very tough period because all the COVID situation was just starting. When I was in US, it wasn’t that fast. I felt then being looked down at that time and I couldn’t even come back to LA. Somehow after a few days, I was able to come to LA and we already finalized the UCLA pilot. Our goal was to send Robin soon as possible because it was actually great time to use Robin because of COVID. The visitations were also limited. The medical staff actually avoid to interact with patients because of the risk of spreading the virus. So it was a great time to start using Robin, but we didn’t have ready Robin sending to the UCLA. I decided to come back to Yerevan to support our team because it was a tough month. We haven’t slept that month. For 24 hours we are building Robin, and actually China was closed because of COVID and we weren’t able to buy parts from China. We started making by ourselves. It was a really crazy time, but we made it. We send it to UCLA and the first reactions you can see, the kids are having fun about Robin and the ABC is happy on how children react to Robin. We have some feedbacks from dental clinic from the UCLA that kids coming to Robin and telling that, “Robin, you are the most beautiful friend I ever had. I wish other people are robots like you.” So we see that connection and we see how actually Robin have children because they see in Robin a peer. This change completely the experience for children. Robin is not just for play, for solving that isolation problem. Robin also is a tool because Robin explains medical procedures and complicated medical procedures in a fun and simple way. Children understanding it and starting to stress less because the main reasons of the stress is because children don’t know what to expect. They are in the hospital and they don’t know what are going to happen. Robin also helps them to easily integrate, like to easy understand that environment and feel more comfortable there.

John: Wow, so it is proven to work. Share with our listeners, Karén, now that Robin’s working and children are finding more positivity, more optimism, and recovering faster, what is the future for Robin in all the different settings that you mentioned? Dental, medical, and others. For you and your partners, how do you want to take it and make Robin the Robot a common name around the world?

Karén: Robin’s future is not limited only for childcare because there are huge problems like elderly loneliness, right? Because of the Baby Boom, like in 20 to 40 years elderly population will double and there is no people to care of that elderly. The other industry is education, preschool education, children who have special needs. There are huge opportunities and huge impact that Robin will make. We will do everything to make it happen because we see how Robin is actually helping children. What is Robin’s impact? Actually this is a huge responsibility for us because we it is our responsibility to make it farther, to make that impact more. The future is unlimited and we will work over it and do everything to make it happen.

John: Wow, you know what? Karén, I knew from the moment I met you the positive impact that you were making in Armenia as an inspiration to other young people who want to become Tech Superstars. I and our listeners now know the positive impact that Robin is making with young people and will also be making in other sectors like you say with Baby Boomers and elderly on this issue of isolation that we are all now living through and we all know is very difficult because of this COVID-19. I am so honored that you came on today. For our listeners who want to learn more about Karén and his great work and his partners, and also about Robin the Robot, please go to www.expper.tech. Robin is just an amazing robot. I really urge you all to look at the videos and to look at the beautiful design. I also want to say that Robin is made out of recycled plastic. I am really proud of you, Karén, for doing that. You are making a huge impact not only in Armenia, but around the world. You are making the world a better place. Thank you again, Karén, for coming on the Impact podcast.

Karén: Thank you so much. It was my pleasure. Thanks for inviting.

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 excited to have with us today, Dr. Kimberly Clay, better known as Dr. Kim. Welcome to the Impact Podcast, Dr. Kim.

Dr. Kimberly Clay: Thank you. Thanks for having me, John. I am so excited to be here.

John: You are the founder and CEO of Play Like a Girl, and I am so excited to cover this topic this year in 2020, I have a daughter who is 34 now and is woman’s rights attorney, but I also, I am a newly minted grandfather of a little girl.

Kimberly: Congratulation.

John: So having you in this world is takes on such a level of importance. I wish you existed in your organization existed when my daughter was a little girl, but that is okay because these millions of little girls out there right now that could benefit from your great organization and you are going to tell us why, but before we get going into that. I want you to share a little bit about your back-story Dr. Kim. How had you even get here? How do you even come up with this idea or what did you do before? Give us your back-story back from the beginning wherever you want to start.

Kimberly: Yes. So many of us do, I have a storied past which is really shaped me and shape the work that I do at Play Like a Girl, I am honored every single day. I get up to live my dream and that is really what play like a girl is for me. I grew up on red clay dirt roads in road Mississippi. The 70s, 80s, and 90s when girls did not really have many sports and especially girls of color, black girls in my small town did not have the benefit of– you know, even having play as an option. In fact, I have done a number of public presentations and talks across the country about built environments during my career, and just recently shared a photo of my niece who is playing on a local community recreational softball team and they are literally playing in dirt and in grass for the most part. They basically where their street clothes whereas the white girls in town have the benefit of an actual diamonds and official jerseys and all of the balls and equipment necessary to feel confident when they play the game. So that is the condition in which I grew up. I grew up in a loving household of educators and hard workers. My dad was a factory worker who had served in Vietnam War and actually learn him about him needing the Mauryans and books as a college student reading about my own father.

With Tom Brokaw calling my house as a child and never understanding why because my dad was really important to history after returning from Vietnam. I always had a consciousness about the world around me and awareness that one I was different but different because there were gifts within need that there was a calling so to speak on my life to do something great to make an impact on the lives of other people. That is how I grew up and that is what I grew up searching the opportunity to bring to bear those gifts and that calling. So I left home really with one pursue and that was the leave Mississippi and never go back. Never go back to live permanently because there were constraints and continue to be constraints that often really dwell in mindset more than anything. I did not want to become confined by that and so my way out was education. I went to college at Xavier University of Louisiana in New Orleans. It is the only African-American Roman Catholic institution in the west. It is also the premier African-American or HBCU historically black college and university, replacing African-Americans into medical school.

I married a guy who at the time was a student pursuing that course of study. He went on to become a physician and honestly I say it was our marriage that really changed the trajectory for my life. For every girl we touch because I really went deep in terms of my study and in the STEM field, I was a cancer survivorship researcher. I started my career on the cancer prevention side. I had worked as a medical hospital social worker because I was trained in social work but really found my passion working with communities around public health. My career started at CDC. My first job at the Infamous Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

John: Which is now on the headlines every day.

Kimberly: Yes.

John: Wow.

Kimberly: So yes, so that is where my real journey started. The roots are important because they define who I am. They gave me the foundation to really pursue my dream in life, but also to remain grounded in the work because you know this, many people listening know it. Being an entrepreneur, being a philanthropist in many ways, every day comes with like a world massive challenges. To wake up to the news that someone literally a college student, not a major celebrity, or major elite athlete or an Olympian, but an everyday person was kind enough to lend their milestone moment to share it with me and play like a girl, and the girls we serve. Talk about the lightning of a load that I wake up to every single day. So it is been a beautiful past two to three weeks because of Sarah Fuller, and I know we are going to talk about…

John: We are going to talk about that.

Kimberly: That is made for us.

John: Let us go back to where you growing up. With you and athlete yourself, when you were a little girl.

Kimberly: I was not. I was the academic in my family. We are five of us in my household kids and my older brothers play football and basketball. My sister play basketball and ran track which was the only sports available for girls of color, white girls tended to play softball and I think now they have added, again, 30-plus years later. They have only added soccer and so yes, it is kind of mind-boggling. So I was more into the music and the arts and reading all night all of that good stuff, yes.

John: Yes. I did not realize though. I was so excited to talk with you today because of the issue of gender equity being so important to me and to the world at large right now, and I think hopefully the world is more open to that but I did not realize when you were a little girl that it was much more beyond gender equity was social and racial equity as well in terms of different colors, having different equipment available to them.

Kimberly: Yes. There is a concept that taught in the classroom, which is so important, especially for helping professionals, physicians, clinicians, folks, who are on the front line right now, right?

John: Right.

Kimberly: Racial disparities and so my career at CDC started as a part of what is called Reach 2010 Racial and Ethnic Disparities Research Projects that were funded all across the country. One of the things that we know is that zip code determines the quality and the quantity of healthcare in this country. I taught in my classroom a concept that is well-known in my field called Racial Residential Segregation that we are separated. Yes, we have the freedom and the ability right now to be integrated schools to be able to eat and die where we want to, but ultimately, are we truly equal and I would say Covid is proving that we are not. We are not equal in this country, and race continues to be just as gender, to your point to be a divide and it typically happens based upon our zip code.

John: Going back to your mom and dad. It is always fascinating people’s genesis story, where they came from, and how they were informed. When your dad came back from Vietnam, tell me what he did that set him apart from other veterans.

Kimberly: My dad was actually the radio controller in the [inaudible]. He gave the testimony that led to many of the grand marshals and decisions that were made to punish people who had done injustices towards the Vietnamese and the Viet Cong in Vietnam during the war. So again, bravery, he never talked about it. Honestly, I did not know any of it until I was a sophomore in college reading a history of a war history book for summer program. Was able to later verify all of the information but it was so important to my legacy and knowledge of who I am, because now I understand why I make some of the brave decisions that I have to make. Even against the odds and I am proud to say I am his daughter, Charles [inaudible] was his name. He died prematurely, secondary to heart attack stroke and diabetes at age 67, just 5 years ago. Yes.

John: He lived, he walked the walk and that informed you in terms of bravery, courage and how to lead.

Kimberly: Yes.

John: Wow.

Kimberly: Absolutely. So now you are at the CDC, walk us through a little bit. I do not want to skip over this. You mentioned earlier, you were a cancer survivor?

John: No. So I got cancer survivorship research.

Kimberly: Got it.

John: After though, have not been caregiver to a brother who was a patient at Saint Jude that lost his battle to cancer, as a child.

Kimberly: Got it.

John: Now you are at CDC, you are highly educated. Where does in the journey? Where is the epiphany that you have got to do more that you have not done enough and that and where did you come up with this? How did the stars align to do next step?

Kimberly: That guy I married. Finish medical school at Emory. We are in the City of Atlanta together decides to go to pediatric cardiology fellowship, but by way of residency in Internal Medicine and Pediatrics. They gave me a moment to stock reflect and consider what I wanted to do with the rest of my life, to stay at CDC with the bedtime I did, but I recognize in order for me to be a leader even within this government agency as a woman. I have not needed a PhD or an MD because women were not at that time allowed to rise the ranks of directors and vice presidents within structure without a degree at that level. So I decided to go back and pursue the PhD. So this was right after my masters and so I worked and then went back for my PhD wall mark completed residency. It was actually during that time that Play Like a Girl was birth.

It was not intentional. I always have to give the disclaimer because it was literally a classroom project turns– passion project turned on profit.

John: Wow.

Kimberly: We were at that time really focused on sport and physical activity for the purpose of disease prevention. So using programming as an intervention to help black and brown girls in Alabama at that time cancer, breast and cervical cancer were on the rise among young women. Specifically, again, related to zip code in the area of Anniston Alabama where the federal military dump site, where families and individuals had developed cancer and other types of debilitating diseases. So we wanted to create ways that individuals could begin to change their lifestyles in those other areas that were pre dispose them to chronic illnesses. So that is really where Play Like a Girl starting over time as many organizations and businesses do we evolve to be responsive to the needs of our audience. Recognizing that one, we wanted to really focus our effort around how we could leverage sport to truly propel girls forward. How could we, one, keep them healthy, two, keep them from dropping out which was so critically important because girls drop out of sport at twice the rate of boys before the age 14, which is that transitional year into high school. By dropping out, girls then forfeit, everything else that is just naturally a part of sport, the teamwork skills, the sportsmanship, confidence, and leadership skills, which really position women for career success, on and off the field whatever that sport is. So we awaken to that in 2015 Ernst & Young and ESPNW did a global study looking at women in the C-suite, question that was post was, how many of these women actually played sport and what role has sport played in their career. They found that ninety-four percent of women in the C-suite played sports, fifty-six percent of them through college.

John: Wow.

Kimberly: That changed everything for play like a pro.

John: Wow. Wow. For our listeners out there who just joined us, we have Dr. Kimberly Clark. She is the founder and CEO of Play Like a Girl, and to find Play Like a Girl and to become part of her great mission, either as a mentor or to donate, go to iplaylikeagirl.org. It is a beautiful site. I have it up in front of me. This is something you should be involved with. Now, what year did you launch actually the website? When you starting this, just step back for a second. You launch the business and the organization like just say as an entrepreneur, what year?

Kimberly: In 2004. So we have just celebrated 16 years in October.

John: Incredible, incredible, incredible. So now everything changes the stats are out, it is proven now that leaders have a sports background in them, which is fascinating. Women leaders.

Kimberly: Yes.

John: What happens next?

Kimberly: What happens next as I go to the board and I say, ah, aha moment. We have got a really make this shit and one how we position, the work that we do and how we tap into this collective of women. Be coaches, mentors, role models, cheerleaders, professionals, whatever, we have got to really focus on the needs of girls in this moment and how we deliver to address those needs and one of the things recognized in a Gatorade study as well as one with the women’s sports foundation was that the reasons girls drop out, you know, there are many and the multitude of them. However, very significant were the fear of failure, the fear that there is no future for them in sport, and the lack of representation of women who look like them.

Our focus was addressing those issues, helping to build girls confidence, helping them to see more by exposure, more women of varied backgrounds and across all sectors, all industries, all jobs, but in particular, to challenge girls to also think themselves capable of being the next generation of innovators, creators, developers, coders, scientist, because, again, repeatedly we ask girl, “What do you want to be when you grow up?” Of course, we get an athlete every now and then, but we get the nurse, really the doctor, never the surgeon. We get the teacher and not that these are not respectable careers because I have done a lot of them that were just named. I grew up with an educator in my home, but we know that girls can do it all.

That is really what we wanted to do is take the limits off for girls and truly focus on making this the last generation of first and that is what our work really represents is closing that gap between what a girl thinks, sees, perceives, and what she is really able to accomplish.

John: I love it. It is just it makes me so happy that you are doing this important work. It makes me so sad that I have not even heard about it until just recently to the Sarah Fuller opportunity and that is when I read about you and said, I have to meet Dr. Kimberly Clay and then I read about Sarah and I read about your organization. I just was blown away because I do not see enough of this out there, they just not enough. Talked a little bit about the magic of the Sarah Fuller opportunity, but then let us go back to the blocking and tackling of the future ahead.

Kimberly: Yes. So that moment, it was not planned the Sarah Fuller moment. In fact, I was notified by a text message from a board member. I was boarding a flight headed home for– headed home from Dallas my other home from the holidays, from Thanksgiving and did not really have time because I was in transit to truly look into it, check. When I got off the plane at being a Nashville’s airport it was completely bananas. I do not know. It is been a sweet, sweet moment because to the point you made previously. Our name has been heard. Our name has been confused with other campaigns that have been out here. Our name has been used by others because we have been trademarks a very long time. Our name has been heard. It is recognize, it is known, people know we are doing this work, but often in full transparency because we do not reach 25,000 girls a year or we do not have a goal to reach a million by 2025. We are looked over by the big corporations, by the big athletes, the big celebrities, who had the ability to completely change the lives of a million girls. By 2025 if they started with the first 1250 in Nashville.

John: Right.

Kimberly: My heart is constantly weary because I know the work that I do is valued and valuable and is truly making meaningful impact and changing a complete generation. I am scratching, sometimes to survive and to keep it alive for 16 years and for the last 10 to do so without salary or benefits or staff. I have literally just hired had the confidence and faith to bring on a person. Literally, six months later Covid hits and we have to furlough her and it was my commitment to Hannah because she took a risk for me and for Play Like a Girl to not let her get lost in the fray of everything that is happening, we did pay check protection loan, we have done all the things, and she is been patient to allow time to pass so that things somewhat mellow out. So she still here, a year and almost a quarter later and that speaks to the kind of people who keep coming our way. The Sarah Fuller, someone I had never engaged with someone we had never seen or heard of other than they had just won the SEC championships for women’s soccer and we knew the name and the context of soccer. She literally on her own chose to take Play Like a Girl on her journey during a milestone moment that changed history. History and not history for sport, not history for women’s sport, but it changed history.

It happened to also have changed history in the context of those things, but she chose us and that is the sweetest part of it. Yes, we have seen an increase in giving, we have seen an increase in purchases of merchandise in our online shop. In fact, we have to shut it down for the holiday because we want to enjoy our families to and not be shipping in the last few hours before Christmas. Just the thought that another woman used her platform, her ability, and her influence to share it with not me, but the girls like the girls. So today, in a few hours, she is our guest mentor, we do virtual mentoring with about 50 girls across the country. They have 98, about a hundred mentors 98 or so who are paired to 3 to 5 girls, and we, each week on Thursdays, have guest mentors come in and present skills or speed mentoring sessions and so, we thought it was just the perfect ending to 2020 to invite the star of Play Like a Girl, Sarah Fuller, so I cannot wait.

John: You are ending a very tough year for all of us on the highest note possible and that just sounds, that is sweet. That is beyond sweet. How many young ladies are part of your program on a regular basis, both young girls and then also mentors and how can we encourage more to join?

Kimberly: Yes. So prior to Covid, we actually serve to combine 1250 girls and women annually. 2019, I think we were right at 1160. We are in that range of 1250. This year we have not done our final count because the virtual reality in which we live, has really blessed us with some opportunity that we would not have pursued had it not been for the pandemic. So that is allowed us to reach girls and expand our borders beyond national which we already did program across the country in partnership with brands, athletes, teams, and leagues, but this allowed us to go even the further directly to the girl.

John: Right.

Kimberly: Also, we had a partnership this summer with LinkedIn that allowed us to recruit 1600 women, 1600 women professionals across the country from Silicon Valley, Big Apple, and back to Music City, who are the women that we are training and getting ready to mentor girls. I encourage folks if you are interested in mentorship, which is a great way to give back and make a difference. We have tons of opportunities will be rolling out some new formats of programming in the new year, but visit our website and iplaylikeagirl.org//mentor and there is a quick little form with basic information name and email address I think in your company and role. We will be in touch. That is a great way to give back.

John: Let us step back here. Probably LinkedIn why do not work. I mean, let us give them a shout out and also say, I hope they do it again next year and I hope other organizations get involved to do this.

Kimberly: So this particular program was one of many LinkedIn for good initiatives that they actually devised in order to respond to the Covid pandemic for nonprofits and small businesses. So it was a dedicated donation of the equivalent of what he would have been about twelve thousand dollars in ads and in mail sponsored post that allowed us to target and pop into the end mail box of thousands, thousands of women.

John: Couple questions doctor. Did they approach you or did you just use your bravery and your chutzpa and you approach them?

Kimberly: This was a formal program within LinkedIn, so it was brought these shared, I think I may have learned about it on one of the money serves that I get emails from, yes.

John: Right. Talk about little bit about your mentor profiles for the young woman out there that want to get involved, one understand, do they fit your profile to be a mentor. Who should be a mentor out there for you?

Kimberly: When every woman who is truly making a difference in on the rise in her career. Early career, mid-career, and certainly, we want as many senior executive women as we can get right. End of career also. We see women in STEM. Our programming is specifically built to help propel girls into male-dominated careers in science technology, engineering, and Mathematics where, again, girls have the opportunity to at least earn higher pay and truly break intergenerational cycles of poverty and inequality with their families and communities. We do not limit our mentors to the stand profession. So what we message is that every woman is welcome. We do want more women in STEM for the purpose of our programming and our mission specifically, but any career field, any sector, any industry is welcome. We are also trying to expand the geography as well which is why LinkedIn was so important for us because we want our girls, wherever they are in the country, for those who have never left their neighborhoods to be able to see the possibility of getting out because that was for me, the way to my future and the way to now being able to make the difference in the lives of the girls I serve, is that I saw a way out it was actually a distant cousin who had been to Xavier as a student. She was a speech pathology major and I never met her, and I think to this day, I have never met her, I read about her in our local newspaper and I put a pin there and I said that is where I am going to college, did not know a thing. It is been the greatest, greatest decision of my life.

John: What a gift. Like you said, minds and hearts can change but those spirit– that spirit of inspiration or hope so giving more of your young ladies mentors that can push them, pull them, inspire them, is really what we are trying to do. If when you go to bed at night you just think possibility. If it was done right and money was and capital was not your biggest challenge, how many mentors, how many young ladies would you want to have on your platform?

Kimberly: Yes. If we did not have the challenges and you know all of that, which I do not think we are going to have them for very much longer. I have the faith to believe it.

John: Yes, I agree.

Kimberly: He would be on every college campus, within the six or more. The SEC, the NCAA, all of those, where college women are mentoring down to high school and middle school girls through play like a girl chapters. That is my vision. My vision is to meet the need through a near peer mentoring approach where girls get to be mentored not only from senior executive women and women in mid-career, but also women who are not far ahead of them because I think it is so important to be able to see that it the struggle is real and that it is possible and you can do it at every step of the way. In middle school, sometimes it is hard to envision yourself at 25, 35, 45, but you can certainly bet your bucks that a girl can envision herself at 25, or 15 and what it is going to take to get to 15 and then at 15 what it is going to take to get to 25. So that is, I think the way that we also scale to get our program out to all of the girls who are constantly asking for play like a girl in their communities.

Now, we have talked about mentoring. Mentoring was a pivot in the pandemic. We have not always done mentoring. Mentoring was our answer to a problem. It was a great answer, but we actually core programs. We do summer camps, which is how girls enter our program in 5th and 6th grade and then we run afterschool programs where girls get to take a deep dive into STEM careers through exposure, to corporate field trips, we do STEM Saturday Makerspace workshops where they get to build, create, and design. We do hackathons and STEM challenges where the girls identify a real world problem and they create a tech driven solution to it through mobile application or website or product, and then we also we would not be played like a girl if we did not play. So we actually partner with sports teams and athletes to actually provide sports clinics to our girls and those are typically highly specialized and we are very fortunate in Nashville to have several national leagues, minor leagues, and teams. It allows us to offer soccer, softball, baseball, football, and we are missing basketball, but Memphis is nearby, so we are hoping to do something with the grizzlies very soon and then golf is the game of everywhere and of course we would not be in Nashville based company if we did not play ice hockey. Because Predator run this city and they are one of our biggest partners and friends and so our girls go on the ice through our sports clinic and…

John: That is beautiful.

Kimberly: We are planning one right now with the Predators, yes.

John: The last time I was actually in Nashville, Predators were in a playoff game, and it put the city was unglued. If glue is a, I mean, the right way to put it, it was a glue. I mean it is so, everyone fit, I had no association with the Predators I felt the electricity. It was great.

Kimberly: It is. I think what makes the preds the preds. Is the level of community service and give back. They are present, all year long. It is not just in season. I think that is one that– you know, we are in the south, we expect a lot of our sports teams and players, no matter where we are.

John: Right.

Kimberly: There is something unique about the Predators and I think it is from the top down. There is a woman, part owner.

John: Oh, well.

Kimberly: Organization. We need with their hearts and I could just about bit that there is a woman influencing whether it is at the foundation with Kristin Fisher who is one of our great friends and partners over there, or if it is with ownership, but I think that is so critical to also recognize that not only do women bring the hard skills, but we bring the heart skills as well. With your critically important to businesses being productive, effective, innovative, and also being global monsters, and that is the case with the Predators.

John: That is wonderful. I do not want to end without sharing this. Covid has made fundraising much more difficult, especially for great nonprofits like yours. Can you give a shout out to in terms of capital raising for this year, for next year given that, this is a difficult time for everyone. Your husband himself is on the front line as a doctor. How can we help financially continue to support your great organization and mission?

Kimberly: Yes, thank you. Giving it something we encourage year-round and this year we are taking a different approach. We are really encouraging people to consider a monthly gift of recurring monthly gift because monthly gives help us to predict operating expense. Now if we have the budget through those monthly recurring gifts that we can depend upon, we can serve a whole lot better without having to stress out about the bills. So that is what we are really encouraging. So we built a community around it called the Squad. So if you visit our page our website at iplaylikeagirl.org//join, you can join our Squad and do so with a monthly gift of any amount but we encourage at least fifty dollars or more every month to help us continue this important work. Then what we commit to do is for those who are local we gather, of course, and celebrate the work that we are doing and the impact were making in the lives of the girls, bringing the girls directly to the donor, so that they get to see and hear their stories personally. Then we also have started a new monthly impact report delivered via email called High Five where we celebrate those stories, we tell them we celebrate our donors. Just as a way to say thank you, but also to show them where the impact of their gift is being made and how it is making a difference in the life of each girl that we touched.

John: I love it. For our listeners out there, again, please go to iplaylikeagirl.org, you could become a mentor, you could donate, like Dr. Kim said on a monthly basis or if you want to do an end-of-year donation, it is all good. Before we say goodbye for today, Dr. Kim, so what is happening with Sarah Fuller? She is coming on and how is that going to work? How is that going to work?

Kimberly: Oh, God. It is going to be so much fun. She and I are going to have a really informal conversation around mentorship. We are going to talk a little bit about football, of course, more about the issue of low representation of women in STEM, because she herself is actually pursuing a STEM degree. This is our senior year, finishing up in medical society and that body of work, pursuing a STEM career herself. So we will talk about that and then the most important piece is that, she will take questions and offer advice to girls who are on the line. We have a hundred girls and who are registered for that today which we share for now in a hundred and we just want them to be able to receive from her. They have been asking for the last two weeks and to be able to deliver on that, it is like the best gift leaving the end of programming before the holidays.

John: Wow. I just want to say thank you for your time today. Dr. Kim. You are the best gift, I think that we have had on Impact this year. This is a special story of STEM, of gender equity, of sports, this is something that we want to cover more. I want you to know, I want you to– you are always welcome back here. For our listeners to find Dr. Kim, her colleagues, and her important work they are doing, please go to www.iplaylikeagirl.org. Learn more about them, become a mentor, also donate, give. Give of your time and give any capital you can. Dr. Kim, you are making an important impact in this world. God bless you. God bless your family. Thank you for spending some time with us today on the Impact Podcast.

Kimberly: Thank you.

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 special New Year’s new you edition of the Impact Podcast, and we have got today Jamie Bronstein’s cheesy relationship expert. Welcome to the impact podcast, Jamie.

Jamie Bronstein: Thank you so much for having me today. I am so excited!

John: I am excited because who does not want to bid adieu to 2020 and get on to a new better you in 2021?

Jamie: I think all of us have never wanted a new year to come in more than now.

John: That is so true. Before we get going, because, we have so much to cover today and so much for you to share with our audience. I want you to share, though, your background is leading up to becoming the relationship expert the Jamie Bronstein backstory.

Jamie: Sure! So I always say that this whole thing started the minute I popped out and was named because my name in French means “I love”. J’-a- i-m-e and…

John: You are saying this whole thing was destiny?

Jamie: It was predestined, it is naming sake. My parents knew they are “We are going to have the relationship expert.”

John: Perfect! I love it.

Jamie: So I mean, all I can remember is, I have always loved to love it. Sound a little cheesy, but it is my truth. I have always loved, loved, and from the moment I took my first psychology class in high school, game over. I mean, I could not get enough about learning how and why people do what they do, why they say what they say. I just could not get enough of it. And then, cut to the college Psychology major, I got my master’s in social work, and then years later I got my certificate in Spiritual Psychology. So all of these things come together with the fact that I was born to do this. It is hard to explain but I just truly love helping people and that is it. My empathy is off the roof. It is my empathy and my love of helping people specifically either finding lab working on the relationship and then going through a breakup or divorce. It lights me up, and it makes me feel alive.

John: Jamie, how many years have you been doing this professionally?

Jamie: I have been doing this for over 20 years now.

John: Wow!

Jamie: It is crazy because I feel like how is that possible?

John: Well, it does not look possible. What I want you to cover today is so many different aspects of relationships because all I read about when I listen to different news items is how challenging these times and been to relationships, and how people are doing almost a review of their own lives or where they are right now. So, you know, I just want to start from the beginning. Give us the baseline what are the important aspects of a successful and happy relationship when you are counseling people in your profession?

Jamie: So I have a cute little thing that I like to tell people. It is basically ACTV. Okay, if you have air conditioning and TV you will have no problem. ACTV stands for something. It is authenticity, fashion, trust, and vulnerability. I used vulnerability but I changed it to value so we are going to go through that.

John: Okay.

Jamie: Okay. Authenticity, you need to be completely authentic in your relationship. You need to show up as yourself completely. You are not judging yourself, you are not judging the other person, you are just completely authentic showing up as you. This goes for dating and relationships. Compassion, means once again, you are not judging the other person. You are able to rise above, look at the other person, see that they might have limitations that they are just showing up as who they are. Trust, of course, trust, is you want to be able to trust the other person but actually trust is more about your intuition and trusting yourself because when you trust yourself, you can trust the other person or not trust the other person. So in order to have trust and a relationship you have to be in touch with your own intuition. “V”, like I said used to be a vulnerability, but I felt it was a little too much along the lines of authenticity so I changed it to Value. This means that you value who you are with, you look at them as a special gem that you feel lucky to be with this person, and you let them know how much you value them. So ACTV, get some air conditioning and TV.

John: I love it! Talking about it, I want to go back to the authenticity part of it. What is the opposite of that? What would people show up if they were not authentic? What are they being? How do you bring them into that position so they can be their true self?

Jamie: People most often and so they do this work are showing up with their insecurities, their unresolved issues, and things that could have happened in seventh grade or from a parent or past relationship when you were in your thirties or twenties. It just gets in the way of having an authentic relationship and you being able to show up as you are authentic stuff. So the work that I do with my clients is I help them get past those barriers that are preventing them from showing up authentically, like unresolved issues, triggers negative narratives that people tell themselves like “I am not worthy of love, I do not deserve love, I am stupid.

John: Right.

Jamie: Whatever it is, I help them to be able to access who they truly are. The person that they were born adds before life got in the way.

John: I got you, you know. I have read prior to this interview. I have read a lot about you, watch a lot of your interviews. For our listeners out there, our viewers who want to find Jamie, and learn more about all the great important work she does, you could go. I am on the website right now. It is therelationshipexpert.com. You can find Jamie at therelationshipexpert.com. We are going to talk about some other areas that you could also access Jamie as well. But you talk about self-love as the key to life and I am not sure what that means. Can you share with our viewers what that really means?

Jamie: Absolutely. Everything starts with our love for ourselves. I Believe In the Law of Attraction, which is that everything is basically a projection and a manifestation, and a reflection of what is going on inside of us. So it is important to be able to love yourself unconditionally, which means, with no judgment, you are forgiving yourself from the past and everything. The concept of loving yourself and this self-love is important when you are manifesting love and when you are in a relationship because everything is a reflection.

John: I got it, it makes sense.

Jamie: So the more you have loved yourself and you know that you are deserving of love, the more that someone is going to love you unconditionally and treat you as if I am turning the light once more. I am sorry.

John: That is okay. Do you have more to give them as well, if you are able to self-love or you have more to give your partner as well?

Jamie: Exactly! Yes, when you love yourself… This is not a cocky thing, this is not like showing up in the world being narcissistic and vain. It is not. It is a very subtle peacefulness inside that you just know who you are, and you know what you have to offer, and you know that you are deserving of love just like everybody is. You just show up with more joy and you see you want to give more love.

John: Got it! Got it! Got it! One of your favorite sayings that I have heard you say in some of your previous work that is on your website is, “Life happens for us, not to us”. What do you mean by that?

Jamie: Okay, this is one of my favorite things to talk about. People are walking around every day in victim mode. This happened to me. Of course, this happened to me again. It is me you know, feeling very defeated in life in the relationships and in life in general. So when I say that life happens for us, not to us, that means that everything good and bad no matter what it is, happens for us, for our growth and upliftment. They are opportunities for us to learn what we need to learn. I have a little fondly thing to go along this also, to teach. So when you are, let us say you are in the mode of life that is happening for me. You are living in the present moment. In order to manifest, you have to be present. In order for life to happen, you have been present. When you are in victim mode, and life is happening to me, you are living in the past that never works. So I work with my clients and I try to inspire people to go from victim mode to thriving mode, lack mode to abundance mode, and depression mode to joy mode. It is victim lack in depression, low vibrations to thriving joy, and thriving abundance and joy. Another thing that I want to mention that is so important is that the Universe gives you what you focus on, and it gives you more of what so it is like you always hear gratitude. If I feel gratitude even if I do not have any money, I have just two pennies, I feel grateful for those two pennies. The universe will give you more. If you are in victim mode, the universe is going to validate that and give you more reasons to feel like a victim.

John: Wow!

Jamie: You are in the thriving mode, abundance, and joy mode, the universe is going to give you more reasons to feel all of those things.

John: That really makes sense. I have always thought of it myself as a two-pronged choke approach. Never as a choice that you can wake up in the morning either being a victim to our circumstances. Everyone has a reason, they could find a reason to be a victim or you can just decide you are going to be a Victor on that day, so it is Victim-Victor. But I love the way you are taking it. You know, we are leaving, we are still now taping this episode at the end of December, but this is our new year, new you episode of the impact podcast, Jamie. So we are focusing on looking forward not looking back. But Covid-19 has created a fascinating and long-standing now 10 months of literature about what it has been doing to people as couples, and relationships, and people taking inventory of what is going on in their lives and where they really want to go when science wins. We all get vaccinated and we go on to a new better, hopefully, a new better. What have you learned with your practice as the expert, as the relationship expert with your client based on what you have learned also in your profession from the population that you serve? What is really going on and how are you coaching people to go find a new better 2021 and beyond?

Jamie: So what is coming to me is, a lot of things that people have been working on our acceptance, and then also how do you deal with the unknown and the uncertainty? Acceptance, accepting what is so important in life whether it is this or anything else because when you are in resistance to anything, it can never get better. You can never get healed, you can never move past it. So it is about accepting it and not resisting what is going on all your feelings. Everything is going outside and everything is going on the inside accepting it and not resisting it and then the whole unknown, people of controlling and if you have ever met a human before…

John: Yes.

Jamie: Humans love to control and control is an illusion.

John: Right.

Jamie: We can control what we put in our mouth, we can control what we say, but the truth is that we can not control other people, we can not control Covid, we can not control things. Once again, it is about surrendering. Okay. I am just going to surrender this perceived control that I have and then I am free. So this is how I am helping my clients. It is dealing with the unknowns just surrendering to it, and accepting and not resisting.

John: Has the fact that we have had to shelter in place with either a boyfriend or a girlfriend or a husband and a wife or partner, significant other? How is that change? Because this is more close-quarters than we have ever been before with one another, number one. Number two, we are also missing whatever has been on our historic social outlets and that creates all sorts of other confusion in our brains and our emotional set. How is that now reflecting back on how we feel about ourselves and how we interact with our significant others?

Jamie: I just like to offer people that you had to give yourself a little slack, to give each other a little slack.

John: Okay.

Jamie: Many couples, individuals have come to me and they say, you know, I feel so guilty because I want some time. I just need to get away a little bit. It is okay, it does not mean you do not love your wit. Humans and humans are not, we are not meant to spend twenty-four-seven together in a small place.

John: Right. Right.

Jamie: No, just be gentle with yourself, be honest with yourself, and it does not mean that there is a problem in the relationship. We can get to that later if you want to, but legit, you know, some people really are having major…

John: Right.

Jamie: It is okay. I have also been, just been offering people that, to have a sense of humor, everybody is on top of each other. It is about acclimating. It has been 10 months, people are kind of getting used to it but they are still resisting it. So it is like getting through it, but yet not being in survival mode because that is a little victim me. How can I thrive, which sounds funny to say thriving during this time? But how can I thrive in this and once again, it is about acceptance, it is about, this is a great time to learn communication skills, to communicate more how you are feeling with the other person. You cannot have all us up. You cannot hide. They are always there.

John: Compared to pre-Covid to now, how much is the man for your kind of services in the profession? Increase, they flatter, decreased. Is it I would assume you are going through some sort of boom period of your profession. Is that true or more people coming to you and saying “I need help here. I do not know how to really get through this.”

Jamie: Very much, yes. I mean my business has been booming, which…

John: That is great.

Jamie: …grateful for, but here is the thing. These are things that people needed to deal with, that they have not dealt with yet. So it is like, thank you to Covid for having this time to slow down because these issues were already there. So it is just bringing them to the forefront. People are being more honest with themselves and realizing that they do not want to go on with the rest of their lives feeling this lack of peace inside for whatever reason it is.

John: For those who just joined us, we got Jamie Bronstein with us today. She is the relationship expert. She is talking about a new you in 2021, how to improve your relationships, how to make a better yourself, so you can be better in a partnership or relationship. Jamie, are people really excited about getting vaccinated and being able to go see their friends and family again? Is this going to be a new appreciation for all the things that we used to take for granted or is that going to fade away after the initial excitement wears off? The initial one or two times of getting back together and seeing everybody who might have bored you to tears before or might have just been a yawner. But now we are just excited to get back with them and see them in person because we are all desperately missing that social interaction, family interaction, friendship interaction.

Jamie: I think about that a lot because I think about like sometimes for instance when I have a cold or something and I am down for a few days and I am like, “I just appreciate being healthy so much.” Time goes by so I have to remind myself to appreciate my help. So I think about this a lot for myself and others. Our people are going to, it is going to be like a memory of the past, and whatever that happened, and then people do not really appreciate the freedom of hanging out with a friend or going on a date at a restaurant. So I hope that people do not take it for granted and that it stays with them and they will always cherish this freedom because to me that is what it is. We are lacking this freedom to live. I really hope in your conversations like this, remind people to never take all of these little freedoms for granted ever again.

John: One of the things besides having a very successful practice you also have now started your own radio show, live radio show every week in L.A. Can you share with our listeners what is going on on your weekly live radio show and how they could find that and access that as well.

Jamie: Yes sure. So I started Love Talk Live. It is an LA Talk Radio about two and a half years ago, and anybody can tune in it is Live every Monday at 5 p.m., Pacific time. It is on Facebook Live, and it is also on the LA Talk Radio website. It is on Apple Podcast, and it is also on my website therelationshipexpert.com. I started it because, first of all, I always said I could talk to a wall like I could just, I loved talking especially about my favorite topics which are love and relationships. So I started it because I just wanted this venue this outlet to be able to talk about every aspect of love every week with a different guest and my guests are everything from relationship coaches experts to doctors, scientists, people in the spiritual world, anybody, and everybody, a sleep expert. I mean it is a wide variety and you can write the great thing about how you can find the episode you would like to see is either on my website or the L.A. Talk website. At least either our radio website or Apple Podcast. All the shows are listed with different topics so you can see what resonates with you the most.

John: What is resonating the most when you look at the most downloaded episodes or most listened to episodes of what you have been doing in terms of your radio show pot which becomes also a podcast because it gets recorded? What are people tuning in to the most? What are they desperately seeking that you have to give in terms of your expertise?

Jamie: I believe that it is what I have seen is that people really are grabbing onto these spiritual concepts because it helps people know that there is another way that they do not have to be suffering anymore and that they can view the world through different perceptions through different eyes and that is what I do in my practice, and that is what 99.99% of my guests and I talked about.

John: But explain that a little bit more. You have said your spiritual psychotherapist or what does that mean? I, myself, confused by that, but it is fascinating to me. Can you share what that really means for our listeners?

Jamie: Yes, and actually everything that I have been saying, little bits here and there it is all sprinkled in our spiritual concepts, but you do not know that they are necessarily spiritual concepts.

John: Right.

Jamie: You focus on the universe will give you more of things like that. But in general, spirituality to me means that you are able to rise above and look at your life and to see things in a different light. To see that it is like I said before, “Life happens for us, not to us.” That is a spiritual concept. You do not have to feel like a victim and suffer that you know that by just changing your vibration becoming more positive you can bring in more positivity. It really helps people like not to be in this victim mode but a huge, huge, huge part of it as I said before is “Learning how to show up in life as your authentic self.” That seems like life through the eyes of your soul because your soul is who you were born as. So that is when I say these things, it is people seeing that they get very empowered to realize that .they can show up in life so differently and then their life will be different.

John: Oh got it. Got it. Got it. You know Jamie 2021 is upon us, is going to be months before we are all vaccinated and things of that such. Do you have a top two to three tips that you can give our viewers and listeners? Help them make it through the home stretch here. People are fatigued, people really want to get back to their new better or at least normal, but people really seem fatigued right now when you look up the recent stats on Christmas holidays. Last year, two and a half million people traveled on the Christmas holidays went through TSA, this year a million and a half. So people did not even meet the stay-at-home orders. People just wanted to be with some of their family, friends, and others. How do we get through this home stretch, which seems like going to be another three to six months before we get some sort of either herd immunity or vaccination going? What are some of your greatest suggestions so people can get home safely now and get to the other side safely?

Jamie: The first thing that I want to offer is, “Trust.” When I say that I mean Trust, that this is happening for a reason which I know like when I say that my heart goes out to the people that have lost their lives and people who have lost people that they love so I do not mean… it is hard. We might be like, “What do you mean that this person died for a reason?” When I say trust, it is a tool that people can use. It is trusting that… For me, I am working on this book that I want to get published and feeling like, “Oh my God”, it is going to be even longer until I can do an in-person, meet and greet, you know?

John: Right.

Jamie: So that is a silly little example. Whatever it is in your life that you are feeling like this is holding me up. You know, I encourage you to trust that there is a reason, it is all planned out. The timing is going to be right when it is going to be right. Also, you have come this far, you can now see that you are able to adapt and that is a quality that maybe people did not have before you were able to be flexible, you are able to adapt. Things will get better, they are going to get better, they always get better. If you have not taken this time yet to do this work to look inside to slow down to see, to look at your life, and see things that you want to change, how you want to grow. I encourage you to look at the rest of this time this slowing downtime, this quiet time not running around as much to take that time to look at yourself, look at your relationships, and to feel grateful for this time rather than I wish it was over, which we all have our human moments.

John: Right.

Jamie: Human moments and then I catch myself.

John: Jamie, when you are counseling people, first of all, given the pandemic, we are still going to live through right now and we have months ahead of us. Are you accessible to your clients and potential clients via Zoom? Is that how you do your meetings?

Jamie: Yes. Thank God for video conferencing and see we are doing this.

John: Right, right, right.

Jamie: Yes, I see my clients on Zoom. I have clients in London and Australia,

John: So it is not just L.A. It is around the world, your practices worldwide.

Jamie: Yes, and it can be fun sometimes figuring out what time is the session. I am making sure about the time zone, but we make it work.

John: Is it mostly men that come to see you? Women or couples? What is the mix of people that come to see you for your help and advice?

Jamie: It is everything. I have individual men and women, and then I also have couples that show up as well. So my couples, they do individual like one of them sees me and then the couple sees me as well. I am very flexible that there are a lot of psychotherapists out there, relationship experts that do not do that necessarily but I also see like daughter. I mean, I have a couple that I see and then I see their daughter, then sometimes the daughter and the stepmom.

John: Wow!

Jamie: We are also unique and so I like to cater to the needs of my clients to help them in the best way possible.

John: That is so interesting. Jamie, you said at the top of the show you have been practicing for around 20 years. So you have seen the analog relationship now go online to this whole bumble-tinder explosion. Has that been for the greater? Good or bad? Where are we going post-pandemic? Is it going to be more in person and people going to do things more analog again? Meet at bars or restaurants or for coffee or is the Tinder Bumble Revolution going to just take off even further?

Jamie: So the great news about that there has been more online stuff before you meet in person is that people are actually slowing down and forming deeper connections before they meet was not happening before. People are rushing into things they get so excited and then it crashes on burns, you know, they think “I found the one” but I say it takes at least six months of a lot of time together to really know somebody.

John: Right.

Jamie: I think it is amazing that people are getting used to this maybe this will continue to take a little bit more time before you actually meet in person to vet out, people and then also to form a strong connection, but I think only time will tell in terms of our people going to continue doing more of this online stuff. I always say to my clients that are single should just get online get on the apps. You never want to look back and feel like you did not do everything to manifest this right person. At the end of the day, it does not matter how you met this person. You met them and that is all that matters.

John: That is all that matters. I know you and I have talked offline before and I know one of the goals that you have in the upcoming year and beyond as you are writing a book and it is about manifesting love. Can you share a little bit about what you want to get into the book and what you want the readers to take away from that book when it does come out?

Jamie: My purpose for this book is to help people that are on their manifesting long journey to end up with the person that is right for them. Not a random person, not someone they settle for, and this takes that work inside to do the work to really get to know yourself, to love yourself, so that you actually are able to attract that right person or you. This book has some of my dating stories, stories of my husband, and also stories from clients. I do not use their names and I specifically going into different dating personas so that you can identify. Oh, this is me. Like, I am the chameleon, I am the one that changes myself and every relationship or, I am the one that attracts the unavailable. I will just say, unavailable men. My book is for women attracting a man so I want to give too much away. My book is for women attracting a man. So if you have always been attracted to an unavailable man, then you can work on this by reading that particular chapter.

John: Got it. What is your goal when your book comes out?

Jamie: I just trust…

John: Right.

Jamie: Trust the universe because I am human and believe me, in these past few months, sometimes I need to catch myself with okay, but this was supposed to happen already. So I do not know when it is going to be published.

John: Right.

Jamie: But I know it will be published and I am guessing within the next year too.

John: Perfect! That is wonderful. Any last thoughts about dating and relationships for our viewers and listeners? Because dates are going to start happening again in in-person relationships or are going to hopefully bloom in the New Year where all of us are hopefully going to have a better year than we did the last year. 2021 and beyond has going to be better for all of us. Any last tips you would like to share before we say goodbye to 2020? And hello 2021?

Jamie: Yes. So I am just going to share my favorite topic which we talked about a tiny bit is your intuition.

John: Okay.

Jamie: Because this is something that some people do not think they have

John: And?

Jamie: Some people just have not…It is a math muscle, you need to strengthen it just like any other muscle so I encourage singles out there and couples to take the time to look inside and trust themselves with anything and everything. I am happy to work with you on that because I know that people do struggle. They do not know if it is fear, intuition if it is… they do not know. When you know how to connect with your intuition, it is life-changing. So it is your strength, power, freedom, magic that you have been looking for in your life. So that is my gift to you, work on that intuition and everything will get better.

John: You were saying that if you work on your intuition, that will be your secret superpower.

Jamie: Absolutely! The secret superpower.

John: For all of our viewers and listeners, to find Jamie, and to hire Jamie if you want some help either to make yourself better, work on your intuition, work on self-love, or get your relationship better. Please go to www.therelationshipexpert.com. Where else can they find you Jamie on social media?

Jamie: Yes. My Instagram is therelationshipxpert but it is just an “x” not “ex.” The relationship with the letter x-p-e-r-t. My Twitter is @theluvexpert, l-u-v expert, and my talk show is Love Talk Live, LA Talk Radio on the LA Talk Radio website, or like I said before Apple podcasts or my website.

John: Jamie Bronstein. You are definitely making an impact. You are helping us all become better. Thank you for sharing your tips with us today. Thank you for being with us today. I cannot wait to have you come back on the Impact podcast to promote your book when it comes out.

Jamie: Thank you so much for having me. You are all amazing. I am so grateful to have had this opportunity and I hope you have a wonderful New Year and everything ahead.

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 Christmas edition of the Impact Podcast. I’m John Shegerian, and today we have with us a very special young man. His name is Colton Burpo a book was written on his life, it’s called Heaven is For Real. Colton, I just want to say it’s an honor and I’m really grateful for you to be on the Impact with us on this special Christmas edition.

Colton Burpo: Well, thank you for having me.

John: You know, you and I were talking about it a little bit off the air. For you, this is, I guess, 18 years in the making, for me, this is 10 years. I was blessed 10 years ago to be introduced to your family by a common family friend, Lynn Vincent, who wrote the original book, Heaven is For Real and you were such a gracious young man. When I ordered a bunch of your books, a couple of cases from your mom and dad and I asked for you to sign the books. I have one of the original copies right here, given out many dozens of copies, and people have been just moved by your story. But you were so nice to sign these books. Not only did you just sign your name, but under the words, Heaven is For Real and inside the cover, you actually wrote, “And you’re going to like it!” With an exclamation point and that just, man, that just moves everyone. When people see what you did at 10 years old by signing these books and signing it that way, that just is a huge exclamation point on faith and the reality of heaven and we’re all hopefully all going and things of that such and I just want to say thank you again. I love this copy. It sits on my desk. People ask me about it all the time and I get to retell that story and I get to show them that page that you signed. So, thank you for that. Thank you for that.

Colton: You’re welcome.

John: You know, Colton, it’s been quite a journey and I don’t want to tell your story. I want you to share with our listeners from three years old what really happened and what transpired since then in terms of the book, the movie, and everything else you’re doing with your wonderful ministry.

Colton: Yeah. So Heaven is For Real, kind of, how it started or the real-life experience that happened was when I was three years old about ready to turn four, I had appendicitis or my appendix ruptured and it was ruptured for about five days before doctors caught it. So when the doctors did finally catch that I had a ruptured appendix, I went into emergency surgery right away. And during that first surgery, I got to go to heaven and heaven is for real, kind of, stems off of that experience where then I came back from heaven and just started talking about it with my dad, my mom, my family friends, and they just started kind of saying like, “How does Colton know this?” Or my dad always told me now that I’m older, he said, “Yeah, when you were younger, people would always just come up and say, ‘Did you hear what your son just told us?'” He said, “No, what did he say this time?”

So it’s been a very big part of my life just being able to talk about having with people, give people hope, and that’s kind of been a big thing about my life and above all else, what I love to do is to give people hope but also to point them to Jesus because that’s how I got to heaven. I mean, it was really cool but how I got to have it is during that surgery, I was lifting out of my body. I could see the doctors working on me and I could see my mom and dad in separate rooms, but I was then sitting on Jesus’ lap and at the time I was freaking out I had no idea what was going on. And then Jesus had some angels sing to me to calm me down and it was just really cool because, at the time, they sang some of my favorite songs. Some of my favorite songs at the time were like Joshua fought Jericho, Jesus Loves Me. I did ask them to sing, We Will Rock You by Queen but they did say no.

John: Oh my gosh. That’s so cute at three years old.

Colton: That actually happened. Well, the thing is my dad, like my family’s a wrestling family. So my dad was a wrestling coach. I did wrestling basically my whole life. My little brother, Colby, he does wrestling. So wrestling tournaments, I remember all my Saturdays being there and that was one of the songs that played at a wrestling tournament.

John: Right.

Colton: Yeah. When it comes to like music people like to kind of poke fun at me because they’re like, “Colton, you don’t really have like an actual genre you listen to. You just listen to a bunch of things here and there,” and I’m like, “Yeah. Well, if it’s an 80s song, I can probably recognize it because my parents loved the 80s.” Newer stuff, good luck. My brother makes fun of me for being an old man since I don’t understand a lot of the current trends and I’m just like, “Why?” But, yeah, it’s cool.

John: So you on Jesus’ lap, the angels were singing to you. Is that a memory, 18 years removed, you’re now 21. Is that still vivid? As vivid as it was when you were retelling the story after?

Colton: Mm-hmm.

John: Wow. That’s fantastic. How was heaven? Can you explain what heaven felt like? Is there a feeling that you could explain verbally? Is there a verbal way of actually explaining the whole feeling around you while you were there?

Colton: So how I would describe heaven is I would say the feeling is heaven feels like home because we get to finally be with God. Like in heaven– another way that I like to describe it for people is to have three pictures in your head. The first one is – have a perspective of a kid because how I remember heaven was very simple as a kid. As I’ve been growing up learning more, I’d start to make things complicated because adults love to make things complicated. I’ve come to find out. So I try to view heaven through the perspective of a kid because it keeps it simple. The second is – think of heaven as a city that never stops growing. So, heaven is constantly growing for all the people that are coming in all the time. And with heaven, there is room for everyone but not everyone does make it to heaven. And then the third one and this is kind of the one that I used to kind of describe having to people so that they can get an idea is think of heaven as a perfect version of earth. Like heaven isn’t like those old Tom and Jerry cartoons where you just kind of sit on a cloud, play a harp, and sing the whole time.

In heaven, there are actually things to do. There are people, there are animals, there are angels, there’s also grass, there are trees, there’s water, there are buildings. There are more colors in heaven than there are down here on earth. There’s also food in heaven. Yeah, in heaven, I remember eating a lot of pizza and mac and cheese. And that might still be some of my favorite food today.

John: Listen. It was good for heaven, why not here on earth as well? You gave me hope now.

Colton: You got me there. Yeah. That’s some of the things I like to just talk with people about like because in heaven, it’s perfect. In heaven, there is no sin which for us, we don’t know what that’s like because here on earth, in all honesty, there’s not really anything that’s perfect.

John: That’s true. That’s true.

Colton: So it’s cool because like even in heaven, like when I was in heaven, I was a little kid. But it was weird because, for me, I met my sister who has miscarried before I was born so she was my older sister. She was in between my oldest sister Cassie who’s now 24 and me. And when I met her in heaven, she was actually the first person I met. So when I was brought up to heaven, after Jesus had the angels sing to me to calm me down, he had one of the angels fly me to heaven and when the angels sat me down, it was like on this road that led through these gates into heaven. There was a little girl that came running out of heaven and just gave me this giant old bear hug.

John: Did you know who she was when she did that?

Colton: At first, no. I was your typical three-year-old, four-year-old boy who still believed in cooties. I kind of just went, “Who are you? Why are you hugging me? What’s going on?” And after she let go she told me who she was that she was my sister and she was just so happy someone from her family was finally in heaven. And with my sister in heaven, she looks a lot like my older sister Cassie, but when I saw her she was a little bit smaller, but she was bigger than me and she had brown hair like my mom instead of blond hair. So, yeah, for kids like if kids are miscarried, if they’re aborted, or if they died at a young age, they go straight to heaven and they grow up in heaven. It’s really cool. And another cool thing is in heaven, for the adults, we get new bodies. So another person I met in heaven was my great-grandpa. My dad’s grandpa, Pop, and I actually met him when I was in the throne room of heaven, and Pop just kind of walked up to me and he said, “Are you Todd’s son?” I went, “Yeah, well, I’m his grandpa.”

It was cool because in heaven if I wasn’t with Jesus, I was with Pop and he was taking care of me. So it’s really cool because family is still a really big thing in heaven. But with Pop, when I saw him, he was in his prime like his late 20s. Because he wasn’t old in heaven, nobody’s old, nobody needs glasses or anything to help them walk around. Everybody’s young and healthy and the really cool thing is that in heaven, everybody has wings. What I remember is everybody was wearing white robes, they had different colors sashes. I don’t really know what they stood for. I just remember I had a red one, Pop had a blue one, Jesus had a purple one. Another thing is in heaven, we also have lights above our heads. They’re not really like halos, they’re more like flags. And then, yeah, everybody in heaven except for Jesus and the Holy Spirit, have wings, so you’re able to walk or fly everywhere. And, yeah, it’s really cool.

John: No kidding. Wow, that is powerful stuff. For our listeners who just joined us, this is the Christmas edition, a very special edition of the Impact Podcast. We’ve got Colton Burpo who was the subject matter star of Heaven Is For Real, the best-selling book and movie. And you could find Colton, his family, their books, and all the ministry that they’re doing to give hope and healing to people around the world at www.heavenlive.org, heavenlive.org.

You know, Colton, from three years old to now, a lot has happened and a book was written by best-selling author Lynn Vincent, Christian writer, Lynn Vincent who’s a common friend of mine and your families obviously, and that’s how we met originally. Talk a little bit about the book coming out and all that hubbub around the book and the movie and how you dealt with all of the attention that Hollywood and book writing and fame and fortune can thrust upon a wonderful family like yours.

Colton: Well, I’m not sure if you’ve ever gotten the chance to talk with my parents in detail.

John: No.

Colton: But part of the reason why from when I had my experience, was it 2003? Yeah. So the book didn’t come out until 2010. So there was a good seven-year span before we even wrote a book, and the only reason we wrote a book is because God said, “Do it.” So we were like, “Okay.” My family, we never wanted to be famous. We were from Imperial, Nebraska. It’s a tiny town of 2,000 people. In the corner of Nebraska where Colorado and Kansas meet Farm Town. And just kind of living there, I grew up there my whole life, and we never really expected all this to happen. But, yeah, when God said, “Do it,” we did it.

John: Colton, you guys just didn’t do it. I mean this book has sold– the last I saw, over two million copies. You might have even a better number now, but I mean the millions of lives that you’ve helped, I just know from just my little self, handing out your book to people. People have written to me the most heartwarming and thankful and faithful emails. I can’t even imagine how you guys were inundated with millions of copies and then a movie being made on the book. I mean, how do you deal with it?

Colton: In all honesty– so when we originally wrote the book we definitely did not expect it to become what it was. My dad was kind of planning for having just big boxes of books in our garage because we weren’t able to sell it. Like that’s where we were with it. We just kind of went we have no idea what’s happening, God. We don’t know what’s gonna go. And it was funny because we actually didn’t go through the hoops or try and seek out like, “Oh, we want to make this into a book.” How it goes is my dad when God finally said, “I want you to write a book.” My dad said, “No.” But then God just kind of reminded him, he’s like, “You know that piece you felt when you heard about your daughter in heaven.” “Oh, yeah, God, I wouldn’t trade that for anything.” Why would you keep that to yourself?

So then my dad describes it as a Gideon moment or a Gideon prayer where he said, “Okay, God, if this is you, the publishing world has to come to find me in Imperial, Nebraska. I don’t know how to write a book. I don’t know what to do. I don’t know how to do it. You got to bring it to me and I will do it.” So my dad was like, “Okay, done deal.” So when my dad got a phone call, it was from our book agent. His name was Joel Kneedler, and he was on the phone with my dad and basically called him and said, “Mr. Burpo, I heard about your son’s story and I would like to help you make a book out of it.” My dad is kind of sitting there and he kind of describes it as he felt like it was Joel on his phone in one ear talking with them about making a book out of our experience and then he felt like God in the other ear saying, “Now, you made me a promise. Are you going to keep it?”

Thankfully, we did get some help from our mutual friend, Lynn, because we had no idea what we were doing. It kind of came down to what’s going on, I have no clue. Okay. That’s kind of been the story of our lives with Heaven is Real Ministries. We have just been stepping in faith like, “Okay, God, are you sure?” And he’s been able to lead us every step of the way thus far and especially when Heaven is Real became what it was where it became super well known. It was selling millions of copies. I’m one of the first people that told my dad, “Dad, you’re not that great of an author. That has to be God.” And it’s actually really funny because back in 2017, my dad wrote another book, you know, God is for Real. With that book, we wrote it because when we’ve been doing ministry, we’ve been getting a lot of hard questions from people. Like, “If God is a good God, why do bad things still happen to good people?” And, “I don’t like church people? Is that okay?” Like just these questions that people have and God challenged my dad to write that book and said, “All right. I want you to explain me to people.” “Okay, any more ideas? Cool.” And that one was cool because I did read that one and oh, trust me, that gets me to read Heaven is For Real. You got to meet me. And yes, I was a kid. But when I was 10, 11, the only books that I was wanting to read were comic books.

John: I don’t blame you. You’re a kid, yeah.

Colton: When my dad told me, “Colton, you need to read the book.” I said, “Why? I lived it.” That didn’t go over too well. So I ended up reading the book because my dad was like, “No, people are going to be asking questions based on what is in the book? So like you need to know what people are gonna ask you?” I’m like, “Okay.” So when my dad wrote this other book, he had me read it. He was like, “Colton, what do you think?” I’m like, “Well, in the past seven years, you became a better writer.”

John: Only a son can say that to his father. Colton, that’s funny. That is good.

Colton: That’s the other thing that I find interesting or some people just don’t realize but my family were normal people. You think we’re normal kind of. And it’s just really cool because yeah, even with Heaven is For Real, when it was in its heyday. I would say from probably like 2011 to 2014, when it was really big in the news. I was interviewing on The Today’s Show, Kathie Lee and Hoda, Fox & Friends like doing all that, I’m doing events like once a month. I remember, I think my freshman year of high school, which was 2014 like 2013-2014. I missed about 60 days of school just because I was gone for Heaven is For Real. And that was also the year our movie came out so very busy. I got to experience what a press junket was. It was terrible.

John: It wasn’t that much fun?

Colton: No. It was awful. Just to sit there and it’s like five-minute increments. You have a four-minute interview and then a one-minute break to swap out the interviewer. So they were actually like the people running the show, they were starting to get irritated with my family because we were like, “We got to go use the bathroom. We got to go stretch our legs for a little bit.” They were like, “No, no, we got to do this.” And it’s like, “We’re not really cut out for this.” It is kind of funny, some people might laugh about this or not. But back in 2014, there was originally going to be a movie that was going to be releasing like the same weekend of Heaven is For Real, and at this moment, I had already seen the screen test of the movie, so I was like, “Okay. I’ve already seen the movie like three to four times before it’s in theaters, and me and then the actor that played me, Connor – Connor Corum, he’s the little kid that played me. We kind of came to a general consensus because the movie was Captain America the Winter Soldier, and he and I both agreed that if that movie did come out on the same day of Heaven is For Real, we are skipping the red carpet of Heaven is For Real and going to see the other movie.

John: That’s awesome.

Colton: Because hey, I’ve already seen this movie.

John: Did you go to a Hollywood-esque opening in LA or New York when Heaven is For Real came out?

Colton: No. When Heaven is For Real came out, it was sort of red carpet hexes, I think. Again, I don’t really know anything about that whole world. It was like, “Oh, okay, make sure I’m dressed up super nice. Got it.” And it’s kind of funny but my friends always give me a hard time whenever I like almost nonchalantly or just say, “Oh, yeah, I’ve done this,” or, “Oh, yeah, I’ve met that person.” “Wait, you do White House Press junket or like the presidential press thing but you got to go do that?” Yeah, that’s cool. It’s kind of crazy because I’m able to just say random things like that and people are just like who is this kid?

John: How was New York when you did Hoda and Kathie Lee and Fox & Friends, did you enjoy New York when you were young and went there with your parents?

Colton: I did. We went to New York quite a few times. I was also able to catch like for me, I’m a super huge music guy. So one thing my mom and I did, one of the times we were there it was her and I went to go see The Lion King Musical, which for me like when I was born or around that time, that’s when the original Lion King came out. So I remember watching that thing on VHS over time, it is one of my favorite movies growing up so when it was like, all right.

John: That’s wonderful.

Colton: So, that was a lot of fun and even being able to just be in New York City was kind of cool. Like I’ve been able to travel all around the United States. I’ve been able to travel out of the country as well.

John: Really? Where did you go out of the country? Where’d you go out?

Colton: So I’ve been able to go to Canada, Mexico, Spain, Singapore, Brazil, and then I was also able to go to Kenya.

John: Kenya. Wow. How was it like Singapore is far and Kenya is far– listen, I’m talking to a young man who’s been to heaven, so it’s everything is relative in life Singapore and Kenya, I guess, are not that far but how did you enjoy those trips?

Colton: Well, being there. Awesome. Traveling there, terrible.

John: Yeah, I agree.

Colton: The flight that we hopped on from the United States to Singapore, we had– what was it? It was like a 13-hour, it was either an 11-hour or 13 hours flight from Minneapolis to Japan and then it was either 11 or 13 from Japan to Singapore. So we really spent almost a full day just on a plane. It was like, you know, when you go to sleep on a plane, which is already super difficult, you wake up and you still see water, it takes–

John: You’re right. A little bit disappointed.

Colton: But it was really cool because and like if I get the opportunity to travel outside of the country more, I would, because I really love just being able to see what God is doing. Like, for me, I don’t think there’s anything special about me or my family like yeah, we got to experience this really cool thing but at the end of the day, we’re just normal people.

John: That’s so nice.

Colton: A lot of people give me a hard time because now when people figure out who I am because I work in construction now. And people are like, “Wait, you’re the kid from Heaven is For Real, like the book and the movie, why are you working?” “Because I still need to make money and make a living.” “What’s going on with that?” “What do you mean?” It’s kind of interesting that some people, they assume certain things where it’s like, “Oh, you guys, must be super-rich.” It’s like, “No.” I mean at the end of the day, for us, we just live our lives and we try and help people as much as we can along the way.

John: You are a special guy, it’s a special family. For our listeners who just joined us, it’s Colton Burpo. He was the young little boy once when he’s told the story Heaven is For Real. The little boy’s astounding story was his trip to heaven and back. He’s now 21, he’s with us today. This is our Christmas special. You can find Colton, his wonderful family, and their great ministry at www.heavenlive.org. I’m going to correct myself because I have one of your original copies where it says over two million copies in print when I looked it up Colton during the show on your website it actually, I stand corrected over 12 million copies have been sold of Heaven is For Real. The ministry that your family is done and how wonderfully humble, you are at 21, where 21-year-olds who are far less successful and made such a far less impact than you’ve made, and your mom, and your dad and your siblings. It’s just incredible how level-headed you are and it’s just a joy to have you here tonight with us. Let me ask you a question – what do you want to do from here on out? I mean, you have this ministry and for our listeners also, the book is, it’s not only Heaven is For Real anymore on the ministry. But Heaven is For Real, Heaven Changes Everything, Heaven is For Real For Kids, Colton has done, Heaven is For Real For Little Ones, Colton has done.

Your family and you, Colton, and like you said Dad wrote God Is For Real, you’ve become a prolific family with a fantastic ministry. Tonight, I know I’m in Fresno speaking with you, you’re in Colorado. You’re 21 and the world is still in front of you. What’s your goal as far as you could see, I mean, and sometimes, at 21 and it’s hard at 21, you’ve got so much in front of you. What do you really want to do as of today? I know this can change tomorrow. I’ve had 21 year olds before that are now older, but what are you thinking of today?

John: Well, it’s been interesting especially I would say this last year for me because I would say the plan that I had for my life has changed drastically.

John: Talk about that. How did it change like what do you want to do? You know, there’s an old saying – man plans and God laughs. And I think that affects all of us. I think if we just open ourselves to that. Talk a little bit about that, what you wanted to do and where you’ve gone now and where it’s taking you?

Colton: So for me, it’s been interesting because since I’ve been able to kind of experience I guess the same side of everything, the one thing I always tell people is being famous is overrated. It sucks. I don’t sugarcoat that. Being famous isn’t fun. And I don’t see myself as famous, people call me famous and I’m like, “Nah,” but when it comes to what I used to want to do or kind of what I was kind of setting my life to do is when I graduated high school around– I graduated high school in 2017, and I ended up going to a 2-year Bible school down in Tulsa, Oklahoma. It’s a little school called Victory College. It’s based out of Omega church down there in Tulsa, Oklahoma, Victory. I went to that college because God said, “Go here.” So I’m like, “Okay, looks like I’m going here.” So, I did two years there where I did their Worship Arts Ministry. So I was spending two years there studying to be like a worship pastor and it was really cool because even at that school, I would kind of describe it as like a trade school for ministry because we had people who are actively doing ministry teaching us, “All right, like if you are in other countries, this is how you can share the gospel to people of different religions and it’ll make sense to them,” or people just giving us tips and tricks of like, “Hey, this is what we have done that has worked for us, here you go.”

It was really cool because they even taught us different things of like how not only to run a church, but at the same time how to properly read the Bible, how to study the scripture. So it was a very good two years for me but I finished that two-year school in 2019 of May. And my family at the time, they were living here in Colorado, as well, so I moved up here for the summer trying to figure out what I was doing next. If I was going to continue my education. I was looking at a few schools in the area, but it almost felt like there was just something in me saying, “No. No, it’s not for you. No, no.” And like I was looking at possibly getting on staff at a few churches, trying to stay in Oklahoma, doing like an apprenticeship at a church, just going to school. My original “plan” was to go to college, get a business accounting degree, or something. I was trying to figure it out, but it was almost as if God just kept saying, “No, that’s not for you.”

I finally got to a point where it almost felt like God stranded me up here in Colorado, which there are worse places to be stranded. But it was kind of cool because, during that time, I had no idea what I was really doing with my life. Like I had a general perception of, “All right, I want to continue doing ministry, God, what did that look like?” it’s been interesting because since I’ve been up here, I just kind of went, “Okay, God, if you’re keeping me up here, I need a job. If you’re keeping me here, I need to be doing something. I don’t want to just be living at home, doing nothing. Come on. We got to move. We got to do something.” I can really only describe it as like God moving. I was able to get a job as an apprentice electrician up here in the Vail Valley of Colorado or Eagle County or whatever actually called and I’ve been up here for about a year just learning how to be an electrician, residential and commercial. And it’s been really cool because it was something that I never expected I would enjoy but I’m able to find like a bunch of some real-life applications.

I’ve been able to, in all honesty, see a bunch of illustrations of what it’s like when God comes and fixes up like different things in me where it’s like, “Oh, so this thing isn’t wired properly. So that’s why it’s not working. All right. I just have to rewire it. So that is wired correctly. Okay.” So there’s like little things like that that I see where it’s like, “Well, that’s cool.” I’m also learning a really useful trade, so I’m grateful for that. And the thing for me is I mean, I’ve been able to still do ministry here and there. My family isn’t super busy with Heaven is Real as we used to be. We kind of took a hit to our ministry back in 2015.

John: Why is that? What happened?

Colton: Well, back in 2015, I think I was 16 years old. I was a sophomore in high school. What happened was there was another family or another Heaven story that recanted, saying I made it all up. And one of the bigger news agencies here in the United States, they put a picture of my dad and I on the front page saying boy from heaven recants story.

John: Oh my gosh, I didn’t even know that.

Colton: In the actual article, it says, now it really wasn’t the Burpol family, it was this other family.

John: The write facts, but the wrong photo.

Colton: The image was done. So that did kind of hurt our ministry for a bit because it’s interesting but our family, we just tried to kind of live our lives and we were like, “Hey, this is our testimony. This is what happened to us. This is what we know.” And our family has experienced a decent amount of hostility just because we dare to say that miracles still happen and that Jesus is Lord. So it’s been interesting just seeing that side of it because, I mean, since the time I was about eleven to now, some people view me as a liar, I made it all up.

John: That’s horrific.

Colton: I kind of had to grow up with that or be kind of more guarded whenever I talk with people or make friends because if anybody can, they will try to twist my words or try to do things with it. I just have to be aware of it. It kind of sucks, but it’s how I’ve known life.

John: It does suck. There’s nothing wrong about saying it sucks. But as an outsider, being me, I’ve been to Billy Graham Crusades, I really used to enjoy when he was alive going to his crusades and I felt like just what you said, I think he lived a life of hope, faith, truth. But I think he also, like you said, you have experience with your family, he had his detractors that tried to trip him up and disparage their fear of miracles, fear of the truth, fear of faith. And I think that kind of behavior really stems from other’s insecurities and fear with what the truth is and what faith in God really represents. So it’s a very sad state of affairs that you had to be subjected to that as such a young person, but because your ministry was so important and was received so well, only then the detractors come out. And when I talk to other ministers and pastors that are friends of mine they say, “The devil really doesn’t care about those who don’t live in faith. It’s only when you’re making a big difference that they really come out and try to do their work.” So it’s obvious. It’s obvious that your work was working and that the detractors represented the other side trying to get in your way. But look at how, I would assume, how you evolved. You can’t be this wonderful human being at 21, in this level-headed and humble without those experiences making you better. Making you better. Right?

Colton: I will say, I did go through like I felt like almost a year or two of my life where I honestly wanted to just give up ministry entirely. Just everything that was happening all the just mean and nasty things that were happening to my family like whenever we go and do ministry events, we have to have like security because we’ve had threats on our life and just kind of all the pressures that come with being recognized and known by a lot of people. Now there is a good two to three, well, not really three but more like two years that I consider just saying, “You know what? Is this even worth it?”

John: I don’t blame you.

Colton: And I will say one thing that I am really grateful for is the fact that God is very patient because for me, now, like most people if they met me they wouldn’t think, “Oh, he’s a bad kid. Colton is a good kid.” I mean, I grew up a pastor’s kid, so a lot of people just assume things about me, and then I had the Heaven kid thing on top of it. So some people when they ever say, “Oh, you must be an angel.” I’m like, “No. I’m still human like you.” But I had to get to almost a breaking point where what used to work no longer did work. Like, I literally, just basically get down on my knees and just go, “God, where are you? God, what’s going on? I need you.” I had to get to a point where I needed to grow in my relationship with God because for a while it almost felt like I was just coasting off of the fact, I’m like, “I’ve been to heaven. I’m good.”

John: Which I can’t blame you. I think I would’ve felt the same way, “Hey, I’ve been there. I’m going back one day. This is what’s in-between.” That’s interesting, though. That’s fascinating what you just said. I really appreciate what you just said. None of us are immune to being brought back to our knees and to being humble. Humbled.

Colton: Yeah. For me, the one thing, like, I’ve had some people ask me like, what’s the one thing you miss most from heaven? And as I’ve kind of grown-up, my answer is kind of changed and matured as it does when you get older, you start to either understand a few more things or your different seasons of life, different moments of life. And for a while, I was like, “Well, I really miss my sister.” For a bit, I was like, “I really miss playing with lions in heaven.”

John: Wow, that’s really cool.

Colton: There are animals in heaven. So we get to play with them. But the one thing that I’ve kind of come back to and it’s been my answer for a while now is in all honesty, just being in God’s presence all the time. In heaven, you get to experience what it’s like to be in the presence of God, the father, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit all at once and there are no distractions. Because here, since we do live in a fallen world or in an imperfect world, we have to almost like fight to get God’s presence, there are so many things that can just distract us and pulls away from spending time with God. Whereas in heaven those don’t exist. That’s the thing that for me, I do miss the most just being that close and in constant fellowship with God and that’s kind of been one of the things driving me recently just I’ve been coming to realize that I really need God. I joke with my friends all the time, I’m like, “Yeah. Without God, I suck. With God, I think I’m gonna be okay.”

John: That’s wonderful.

Colton: And for me, the one thing that I try to do, and a lot of people, they kind of look at me, like, “Wait. What? What’s going on? Are you super solid in your faith?” And I’m like, “No, honestly, I’ve had to work on it. Just because I got to experience the super amazing thing like you can encounter God. You can have a miracle happen, but at the end of the day, you may never know him.” And that’s what God wants us to do. He wants us to know him. And in the last few years were, in all honesty, it just felt like I’ve taken my walk with God more seriously, or at least, I recognize it more as, “Okay, God, I need you today. Can you help me out?” Since I’ve been able to live with that mindset, it’s been really cool to see what God’s been doing with that. The idea is God’s given me what he’s wanting me to do because for me like in all honesty, when people see the world getting super crazy around us and all the division in our country, with the election, with politics, everything happened in all around the world. A lot of people are freaking out they’re like, “What’s going on? Why is it so crazy? For me, I don’t know. I’m viewing it a little differently because I’m like, “You know what? The world is getting crazier. That means Jesus is coming back soon. All right, let’s go.”

It’s changed my perspective and I was like, “Okay. What am I doing today to be a light for Jesus?” What can I do to help someone? What am I able to do with the resources I currently have? And it’s cool because whenever I’m brainstorming or trying to figure out like, “Okay, God, what are you going to have me do?” In all honesty, most of the time it’s like I don’t know what I’m doing, but I have these few things in front of you right now that I just need to steward or take care of. I have these few super huge dreams in the future and I have no idea how I’m getting there. But I know God’s taking me there. For me, there are a few things that I want to do like I’m a little bummed that I never got to meet or talk with Billy Graham because he’s a man that I’ve heard so much about, I’ve been able to read about just like hear stories about him, and like one goal that I have in my life and I don’t know if it’s a good goal to have or not but it’s kind of one of these God dreams that there’s no way I can accomplish it myself so it’s gonna have to be God doing it, but I don’t know what it’s going to look, I don’t know how it’s going to happen, but I want to be involved with the largest revival in human history like bigger than anything that has ever been done before and at the end of the revival, Jesus comes back. Like that is what drives me right now and I’m like, “Okay, how am I going to get there? Who’s gonna go with me? How am I going to be doing this?”

Because right now, yeah, I’m 21. I’m single. I’m trying to figure out what I’m doing with my life, but that’s kind of the goal where I’m going with like, “Lord, I want to help lead a revival. I want you to be known. How do I do that?” And it’s been cool because right now it’s felt as if God’s kind of taken me out of the spotlight or taking me kind of out of the view of most people to kind of help work on me privately. So that the time when God says, “All right, it’s time to go.” I’m able to have the character to uphold what God has called me to because if God was going to give me what he was wanting me to do now, I would get crushed by it. Like the analogy that I would use is similar to just working out at a gym. Like if all you are able to do is let’s say, for me, I weigh about 140. If I’m only able to only bench, let’s say, a hundred twenty pounds because I do not hit the gym regularly. My job is very physical but I do not work out regularly. It’s kind of a habit that I started off the beginning of Corona and then when work started picking back up, I drop it.

If all I can handle is a hundred twenty pounds, I won’t go and put 50 pound plates on both sides just so that I can do 220 pounds like, no, that would crush me. That would probably kill me. Right now, God has been kind of helping me just grow gradually into what he’s putting in front of me. To me, I see the process and I’m like, “All right, so it’s gonna suck for a bit. I’m going to be sore. I’m probably gonna be super tired and kind of like a meh-mood but right now, God, you’re doing something cool. Okay, let’s go.” And the thing for me is right now, what I’m learning is, in all honesty, how to be a man who stands for something because when you met me as a little kid, I was able to go, “Hey, this is what I saw. This is heaven. You can believe me if you want to but this is what I saw.” And having to kind of grow up and figure out, “Okay, who am I? Because I could fall into the trap of almost the pedestal lifestyle of everybody was looking up to me, seeing me or seeing an image of me or the thing I found that has been more almost just fulfilling, more life-giving is being able to rely on who God says I am.” And it has been something that I had to learn like it’s not easy. I’ve had to take time to be able to spend time reading my Bible, spend time praying, spend time with God, like acknowledging, “God, you’re here, what do you want to say to me? Holy Spirit, you’re here, you live in me, you’re with me at all times. What are you trying to do right now?” And just living with that mindset because that’s been in all honesty, the thing that’s helped keep me sane.

Because I’ve already come to the conclusion of I have no idea what is going to happen. And like I don’t know if I’m gonna still be living in like five years. I don’t know if I’m still going to be working as an electrician in the next three years. Like, I honestly have no clue what life holds for me but I know who holds my life in his hands and because my God works things for good, I can trust his plan.

John: I love that.

Colton: And I just have to remind myself of that.

John: You know, Colton, you’re so brutally honest, and the challenges that you faced are good to hear because I don’t think anyone gets through this journey without difficulties and challenges and losses and pain. Even Jesus didn’t get through this thing unscathed, why should we as mere mortals get through this unscathed. Since this is our Christmas edition, a very very special edition and you’re here and it’s just a blessing to have you with us today, a couple of things. One, do you have a message that you want to share, a message of hope, faith, that you can share with us as we enjoy this holiday after a very very difficult year with the tragic Covid-19 blanketing the earth, a very tough year socially and politically in this country and also, is because of your unique experience with Heaven is For Real and going to heaven and coming back, though you don’t know what tomorrow holds which is such an honest comment, because so many of us want to feel like we’re in control, and as you said we are not in control, do you feel safer and more comfort that even though you don’t know what tomorrow holds that you do know because of your relationship in your walk that when time is up here, whenever that is, you do know where you’re going to be going? Does that give you comfort every day?

Colton: It does. For me, it’s crazy if I look at the statistics of my job because it’s one of the most dangerous jobs to have.

John: Wow. I didn’t realize that.

Colton: Yeah. Easily at my job if let’s say I’m working on some electrical circuit and someone decides to turn it on, I could fry and die very easily. That’s my job. There’s also a lot of sketchy things that happen in construction that are probably best not mention in public.

John: I got it. You don’t have to mention but I get what you are saying and the danger is real. I get it.

Colton: Oh, yeah. Not only that but just kind of living with that mindset of, you know, I have no idea what’s going on, but I’m okay with that because, at the end of the day, I know the ending. Jesus wins. And because I put my hope and trust in him, not in anything else, I put my hope and trust in Jesus and God and the Holy Spirit. Because I put my trust in them, I’m able to live my life in a way where I still have my moments where I’m scared out of my mind, I have moments where I do kind of struggle with being very hard on myself or getting lost in my own thoughts in my head, but I always have to bring myself back to, “All right, it’s gonna be okay. God’s still in control. He’s gonna work it out.” And that’s been a thing that’s just helped me, in all honesty, stay sane, and for me, there are I would say two things that I’d want to kind of, close-out. Two things that I talked about with people a lot and they’re two conversations I remember having with Jesus. They stick with me just because they’re really important.

The first conversation I do remember having with Jesus is Jesus told me, “Colton, this is how you get to heaven.” And Jesus said, “If you love me and follow me, my dad’s okay with that.”

John: That’s awesome.

Colton: That’s one thing that I would say, it’s super simple, but it is very hard because the tension that I would say most people face and especially Christians, is the tension of truth and love. For us to live our lives where we just you’re speaking the truth all the time, “This is how it is. This is the law. This is what is supposed to happen. This is how it goes,” like that will not turn anyone or that will not change anyone’s opinion or anybody’s mind by just telling them how they are very wrong and going about it that way doesn’t work. But at the same time, if you take the only love approach where, “Oh, it’s okay. Whatever you’re doing is fine. It’s all okay, at the end of the day everyone makes it to heaven and it’s all sunshine and rainbows,” but that’s not true love’s. Because we have to balance the tension right in the middle or we have to balance between the two and the only way that I’ve learned and like I said, this is something I’ve been learning, I’m still learning, is how to find that middle ground of – to speak truth in love. It’s both, not one or the other. To be able to know what is right. To stand for something.

However, to still have that viewpoint or that aspect of love because I know for myself, I’m not a perfect man. The thing that separated us from God and us deserving to go to hell, I’ll be one of the first people to say, “I deserve it.” Just personal mistakes I’ve made in my life, the things that I’ve screwed up with. It’s like, “Oh, I do not deserve to have a relationship with God. I should not have that opportunity.” But because God loved us so much, he sent Jesus as a sacrifice so that he could die and come back to life so that we can have a relationship with his dad and we can only do that through believing in him. We can only do that by following him and by having a relationship with him.

The second conversation, I remember having with Jesus, I remember I was looking around heaven and I noticed that everybody was young, they were healthy and like everybody was happy. And I noticed that with Jesus, he still had his markers or the wounds that he had from when he hung on the cross in his hands and his feet. And I remember asking Jesus, I’m like, “Jesus, how come you’re the only one in heaven with markers?” Now, I remember Jesus got down on a knee. He looked me right in the eyes and said, “Colton, it’s to remind me how much I love you.” And one thing that God uses to kind of speak with me at times is I kind of call him like mini-movies, more Church-y term is like visions, but I remember there was a period of my life where I was having like a really rough time – mentally, emotionally, just in the dumps all the time. And it almost felt as if life sucked. Nothing would ever work out. I’m the worst person to ever exist. Like it got pretty bad. But what happened is I remember in this kind of like mini-movie in my head.

In this story, there was a man who did something really bad but instead of trying to fix it or trying to get help right away, he ends up just picking up a shovel and start digging a hole. So he starts digging, digging, digging. And this man ends up digging a hole so deep that you can’t even see the top of the hole anymore. And whenever people would come up and just ask like, “How are you doing?” The man felt like he had to put on a mask just saying, “Oh, I’m doing great. How are you doing?” When on the inside, he felt just broken, messed up, an outcast, nobody would ever understand, and just felt alone. But in the story, something finally clicks for the man. He realizes he’s not alone. Jesus, he’s there but Jesus isn’t at the top of the hole reaching down screaming, “Give it to me. I can save you.” Jesus is in the hole with the man, he’s reaching out his arm, saying, “Give it to me,” almost whispering. And the man stops away Jesus and say, “Nah, Jesus, I got this,” and starts digging deeper. Finally, the man just throws down the shovel and just collapses. He’s exhausted, mentally, physically, emotionally. Everything is, he’s out. And Jesus reaches back out his hand and says, “Give it to me.” So the man finally goes, “Okay.” So reaches out and grabs Jesus’ hand. And I remember in the story, Jesus flips over his hand and through the hole in his hand, through the markers, he sees the hand of the man. He sees me. And one of the things that I don’t know what people’s experiences are with church, Christians, I don’t know.

But the one thing I do know is God made us like it says that he knit us together in our mother’s wombs. God designed us, he made us special. And God loves us so much that he wants to have a relationship with us. And the thing is I don’t believe anyone is ever too far gone because the God that I serve, the God who created heaven and earth, he’s a lot bigger than everything. Like God the Father, he’s massive and he was the creator of everything. Literally, anything is possible and just to kind of give hope to either your listeners, anyone who ever gets to listen to this, God does love you and wants a relationship with you. All we have to do is humble ourselves. We have to say, “God, I’m sorry. I’ve been trying to do it my way and it hasn’t been working out. God, I need you.” And just being able to come to that point where we recognize our need for God because God wants to be in our lives. He wants to be involved, but he can only do it if we let him.

John: I love it. On that, we’re going to leave it. We got to leave ourselves open for God. Colton, you wrap this thing up better than any person on the planet. For our listeners out there, this has been a very, very, very special Christmas edition with ColtonBurpo. He is the subject matter, he is the person who was the focus of the best-selling book 12 million or more copies, Heaven Is For Real, a little boy’s astounding story of his trip to heaven and back. Today, we have the man, the young man who’s now grown up, Colton Burpo. And to find his great ministry that he is part of with his mom, his dad, his siblings, please go to www.heavenlive.org, heavenlive.org. Not only Heaven is For Real there, but also all of the great books that the Burpos have written including Colton’s follow-on books – Heaven is For Real For Kids and Heaven is For Real For Little Ones. And, of course, Heaven Changes Everything and his dad’s book, God is For Real.

Colton Burpo as a human being, I’m just so grateful for you personally and for your ministry. As a Christian, God bless you and your family, your message is so important. I’m so lucky and blessed to have been able to host you today and get to share your experience and your word with our listeners. Continued success. I look forward to the day that I get to meet you finally in person and shake your hand, give you a hug, and thank you for all that you’ve done and faith and hope for people around the world. God bless you. Again, Colton Burpo and thank you for joining us on the Impact Podcast.

Colton: Thank you for having me.

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. Today I am so honored and excited to have my good friend Scott Donachie. He is on with us today. He is the CEO and founder of Companies for Zero Waste. Welcome to Impact, Scott.

Scott Donachie: Thank you, John. It is an honor to be on your show today, thank you so much.

John: Well, thank you for being here. For our listeners that do not know your history and leading up to the founding of Companies for Zero Waste, can you please share a little bit of your back story, Scott, please?

Scott: Sure. So I worked in banking for years, I worked in mortgages and I also ran hedge fund meetings in New York City. Two years ago I had been going out to breakfast with one of my really good friends who has a composting company here in New Jersey called Java’s Compost. I was really fascinated when I talked to him about a lot of the rules and regulations in New Jersey and how hard it was for him to scale his business up, him and his wife have a composting business right over here in Maplewood, New Jersey. Then after doing a lot of research, I found out that there were over four hundred dormant landfills in New Jersey. I started watching a lot of YouTube videos and doing research and I have always had a big passion for the environment. So I decided to walk away from my banking job and launch Companies for Zero Waste.

John: Wow!

Scott: We launched and had a really big meeting last year in Newark, New Jersey with over three hundred and fifty attendees that came in. Really tackling the waste crisis that is going on globally and just really excited about the business and where it is headed today. So, thank you.

John: I am on your great website right now. For our listeners out there that want to find Scott, and his colleagues, and the great work that they are doing, you could go to www.companiesforzerowaste.com. Scott, talk a little bit about some of the amazing brands and people that have both spoken at your very important events and also attended your events?

Scott: Sure. Thank you. The people that have come into our events have come from different sectors and what has really happened with our organization which is a lot of fun, is that we have really migrated now into a global advisory firm. We have reached out to thousands of these companies. They are coming from different sectors. They are coming from the Automotive sector, coming from the Healthcare industry, they are coming from Retail, they are coming from manufacturing companies that have challenges in their supply chains, with their vendors, with their partners. They are realizing that it is not business as usual. Their supply chains have been disrupted and they need to start changing behavior in their supply chain and looking at new technologies that can help them drive efficiencies. The whole lens has changed during the COVID crisis for this whole industry and I think we are here at the perfect time.

John: What are some of the biggest challenges in moving towards zero waste goals for cities, municipalities, and for NGOs, and just some of the most iconic brands out there today?

Scott: I think one of the biggest challenges is legislation. You have different legislation in different states. Also, all the way down to the MERF’s and the municipalities and the way that they handle different types of waste streams, it can be very challenging with the supply chains. Now, we have all of this disruption with the economy and political unrest but I think a lot of it just has to do with how the supply chain breaks down from the beginning when a product is manufactured all the way to the end of life and how do we start changing and making it more efficient for companies to track these critical raw materials and use them again or re-purpose them, and this is really a huge movement and a daunting task, but there is a lot of momentum going into it and there is also a lot of capital now, too, from Wall Street going in so it is a really exciting time.

John: When you had your initial vision as the founder and the CEO of Companies for Zero Waste, how has that vision evolved because of this tragic COVID-19 pandemic?

Scott: Well, I think what has happened is people are obviously more open to doing a lot of meetings online. The world has really shrunk a lot in the last ten months. When I say that a lot more organizations globally are contacting Companies for Zero Waste, we are seeing a lot more engagement between different sectors which is exciting. When I say that people are more open to sharing stories than they were a year and a half or two years ago, we have a really big– and I do not know if I can mention it here, the name of the company, but they upcycled over a million tons of medical waste last year and used it for infrastructure materials for bridges and tunnels. So this is like an incredible partnership between these two big OEM’s and they are going to be sharing that at our next meeting coming up. These are the exciting things that we are working on.

John: Your great conferences host huge brands, thought leaders, solution providers, what are your prospects for next year? How do you see that growing and is the interest level growing as you hold even from event and see more and more interest in this ESG circular economy the Companies for Zero Waste space?

Scott: Yes, so that is a good question. I would say, last year we were really broad, much more broad. Now, we are going a mile deep, and when I say that people want to get together and they are having discussions about making it convenient for everyone to move toward zero-waste goals, we could use these buzzwords like circularity and tackling climate change. But at the end of the day, you know John as well as I know, we have to make it very pragmatic for everybody in the supply chain. If we do not make it easy for people to embrace they are not going to do that. That is the million-dollar question. I would even throw it back in your court, you have been in this business for so long. How do we do this? How do we make it pragmatic for the whole supply chain?

John: Yes. You are so right Scott and one of the pillars of zero waste and responsible recycling is convenience, making it convenient for the consumer or business stakeholder so that it can be done without massive inconvenience to the supply chain or the lifestyle of the people or the organizations using these materials. So I am with you, it is not easy but I am much more hopeful than hopeless and it is great organizations like yours that bring all of us together to be able to brainstorm how we can move the ball forward faster. That is what is so exciting about what you do.

Scott: Absolutely!

John: Again for my listeners who just joined us, we have got Scott Donachie with us today. He is the CEO and founder of Companies for Zero Waste. To find Scott, his colleagues, his next conference, go to www.companiesforzerowaste.com.

John: Scott, talk a little bit about your global advisory services hub and how that actually works?

Scott: Right. So thank you. We are really excited. We launched this recently. We have a network of global advisors that help OEM’s and brands with specific issues that they have in their supply chain. Obviously, right now, some major issues are greenhouse gas emissions, also tracking any type of solid waste. Looking at really holistically how companies are manufacturing goods. A lot of organizations just do not really know where to start. We have been reaching out to organizations and because it can get very complex when you are looking at tier 13-14 vendors and a complex supply chain, a lot of times they need advisory services to really optimize the resources in their supply chain and really take a step back and map out. They do not have to look at things as though they have to change everything overnight. It is just making incremental steps toward zero waste is what is going to get companies to be more efficient and having transparency and trust between other organizations, even competitors, it is the only way that we are going to have a more resourceful economy. A lot of companies are getting on board with this because they are looking at it through the five years out instead of every quarter. Does that make sense?

John: That makes total sense. How do some of your work do in terms of connecting the importance of your conferences as a facilitator or connectivity platform for Asset Managers, Infrastructure Managers, Recyclers and Recycling Technologies, and ESG Professionals, be at that there are financial institutions that want to invest in the space and are looking for the best and the brightest? How does your platform work to connect all these great folks and stakeholders and again move the movement forward faster?

Scott: Well, that is a great question. What we like to do or the way I like to look at this is to really orchestrate things in a way so that people can communicate with other people that are not in their industry or maybe not in their wheelhouse. If you have an investment banker that is going to talk about investing in renewable energy infrastructure and hydrogen or something very specific, what is he going to have in common with someone else that has a start-up that is in composting? You see, these are people that want to make the planet a better place but they are not in their exact wheelhouse. The daunting task is getting people together that have the same type of mission and they are working on a problem and they want to solve that problem. They do not want to just talk about climate change but they want to put in the hard work. I think that is the really big difference with the people that come to these meetings, they are putting in a lot of hard work before they come and they are not just having a show and tell, but they are saying, “How do we sit down and actually try to solve problems and expose ourselves and say, ‘Okay, you know what, this did not work last year. We actually did not hit our goals. How do we get better as an organization?'” Having those honest conversations and having fun with it, too. Having open debates where people are having fun and pushing each other is a good way to learn. To even hear another person’s exact opposite opinion of what you think, you are going to learn a lot that way. So I think that is a great time.

John: Agreed. Scott, how many conferences did you have this year, and what is your intent next year? How many of these wonderful conferences which I have attended almost all of them, so I am learning a lot and I get to be a student again, and also a teacher at these conferences, how many did you have this year? What are your prospects for next year? What is your vision for next year?

Scott: Our company, and what we are doing, and our big focus is on the Convo Advisory Services. We are getting away from the conference model and what we are doing is we are focusing on smaller round table discussions where we are bringing in twenty or thirty thought leaders that are in a space that can talk about a specific problem that they can solve. We are hosting those every month and those are wonderful round tables and workshops. On top of that, we are setting up one-on-one meetings with specific experts. We have Advisory Services, right now we are up to thirty-five advisors that we work with. They advise a lot of these organizations on how they can monetize waste and how they can help and really be compliant. There are different opportunities and it is just an exciting time.

John: I know you have one more great event coming up before this year is over, 2020 is over. Can you share with our listeners when that event is and where they could sign up to be a member and a participant in this event, and really get to see the importance of the great work that you are doing, Scott?

John: Well, thank you, yes. The next meeting coming up is on December 17th. It is called Circular Planning and that is going to be for Supply Chain Directors, Sustainability Directors looking at tracking critical raw materials, and a lot of the new emerging technologies that exist, then also looking at inefficiency in their supply chain. Then there is another meeting, too, coming up in January, which is really exciting at the Supply Chain Summit. We have over a hundred supply chain directors coming in from different markets talking about a lot of the issues that they have in the supply chain. Trying to move towards a more circular supply chain and really trying to understand where they can make it more like a closed-loop model. So we are really excited about this.

John: How can our listeners sign up for this event? Is it just going to www.companiesforzerowaste.com?

Scott: Yes, and then when you go on there, you will see virtual meetings. Then you just click on there, and any questions they can contact me as well. So, thank you.

John: Awesome. It is going to be another great event. I am going to actually be participating as well. I love to participate in your events. Like I said, I both get to teach and learn which is always the funnest way to be enjoying the journey professionally and personally in life. For our listeners out there, again to find Scott, his colleagues, and their great work, and to sign up for his next meeting, please go to www.companiesforzerowaste.com. Scott Donachie, you are not only a good friend, you are also making the world a better place every day. I am so grateful for you and you have a safe and wonderful holiday season. I cannot wait to work with you more in 2021 and way beyond.

Scott: Thank you so much, John.