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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 a 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 I am so honored to have with us today Lisa Bloom. She is the owner and she is a civil rights attorney. She is the owner and founder of The Bloom Firm. Welcome to the Impact Podcast, Lisa.

Lisa Bloom: Thank you so much, John.

John: Lisa, before we get going about what you do at The Bloom Firm, can you share a little bit of your backstory?

Lisa: Well? Sure. I am 59 years old. So there is a lot of stories [inaudible].

John: [laughter]

Lisa: I grew up in Los Angeles. Then as an adult, I have been back and forth, New York and LA. I went to Yale Law School, which then and now was the number one law school. I was a national debate champion.

John: God.

Lisa: I practice law in New York for many years. Then I started my own law firm The Bloom Firm in Los Angeles about 10 years ago. We only get paid when we win. We have won so many cases that we have continued to grow and grow. We become one of the largest victims rights law firms in the country. I always reinvest everything back in my firm, so we can represent and help as many victims as possible. That is what we do, we represent victims of discrimination, harassment, and abuse every day. I have a terrific team. I do not do it all myself, they get a lot of the credit for the victories that we get. I have a lot of very brave clients who I am honored to represent.

John: You give voice to typically those who have historically been voiceless in our society.

Lisa: Yes, exactly.

John: Lisa, in the last year or so we have lost four civil rights icons, Elijah Cummings, John Lewis, Arbee Gee, and Helen Reddy. Just a couple of days ago, we saw one of the most uncivil political discourses we have ever seen in American history. You are a civil rights attorney, you give voice to the voiceless. Where do we go from here? Who is going to fill this void?

Lisa: Well, you are absolutely right. Who is going to fill the void? We all are. It is on all of us now. I hold firmly in my mind that beautiful picture of a little girl who put on her Supergirl costume and stood in line to pay respects to Arbee Gee. We all have to put on our Supergirl costume, and our Superman costume.

John: Right.

Lisa: We have to rise. So I represent as many victims as I can, every day. In terms of the election, Trump is a clear and present danger to our civil rights, to our planet, to our democracy, to our country. Instead of complaining about it, I spend time doing phone calls for Joe Biden. I have done hours and hours of those calls, I am going to continue to do them right up through election day. Anybody can do that. You just go to joebiden.com. When you do these calls, they train you, your number does not show. There is a script to follow. It is very easy. I encourage everybody to do that. This country depends on us. I do believe that most people believe in civil rights, believe that women should have equal rights, that people of color should have equal rights, the disabled, LGBT, everybody should have equal rights. But we have to fight for it every day because we are backsliding and it is incumbent on all of us now.

John: Lisa, you have spent a lifetime in the law. You grew up with your mom being the iconic and legendary Gloria Allred.

Lisa: Yep.

John: With Arbee Gee now passing away, what does that really mean for the future of the Supreme Court? And where we are going directionally from a legal perspective in the United States? What do you see happening here?

Lisa: Well, there is no question that the Supreme Court is going to lurch very significantly to the right. That is going to primarily affect voting rights, climate change, which I call climate crisis, and abortion rights. But the Supreme Court even though they are appointed for life, they still care about public opinion. I read just a Sandra Day O’Connor’s memoir, and she cared, cared very much about sort of being in the center and not getting ahead of public opinion. Even though they are not supposed to do that they do. It is very important for all of us to continue organizing, consciousness-raising pushing the law forward. By the way, the Supreme Court only interprets the law. It is the congress that makes the law. If we can get a progressive Congress and get better laws in place to protect people, the Supreme Court and the role of all of the courts will be less significant.

John: For those listeners who have just joined us, we have got Lisa Bloom. She is the civil rights attorney who owns The Bloom Firm to finally say, you could go to www.thebloomfirm.com. Lisa, talk a little bit about this, the Me Too generation now and people finally wanting to speak up or having the guts to speak up. Is it still hard for people who have been wronged or sexually harassed, to actually seek you out and to try to come forward and get this past behind them?

Lisa: Yes, it is. That is a very insightful question John because I really do not think things have changed all that much for victims. The Me Too movement is certainly a very positive movement and a positive change. But I have been representing, let us say, sexual harassment and sexual assault victims for thirty-three years. I still have to prove my case. In every case, I still have a client who is traumatized, who is fearful. In every case, I have a lot of power and resources on the other side. In every case, they go after her, they go after me, there is a lot of ridiculous false news stories that are put out there about me. I do not have time, or frankly, the interest in going after them and getting them all taken damage. To me, it is just part of-

John: Right

Lisa: …what I do. But for my clients, it can be devastating. Social media bots that come after them and defame them. It is very difficult, but my clients every day are an inspiration to me because they have made the decision to reach out to me, we partner with them on the cases. They may stumble and have a hard time, and we are there for them. But in every case, witnesses are so important. I would urge anyone who cares about sexual harassment or sexual assault to consider if you have ever been a witness to any of that, to contact the victim and let them know you are willing to be a witness, you are willing to speak out, you are willing to write a letter or sign a witness statement, because in every case, that is so important, and we are just begging people. Even now, most people say “I do not want to get involved”. They pretend they did not see anything. That just makes it a huge hurdle for the victim to prove their case.

John: With we are living through very strange times. Also, very tragic times with this COVID-19 period that we are all trying to make our way through. How was that affected your practice, Lisa?

Lisa: On March 1st, I came to understand how serious COVID was going to be based on what was going on in other countries and our country’s failed leadership, failing to test, failing to give us the truth. I could see what was ahead and we immediately took our entire firm virtual meeting, working from home, we got everybody up and running well before the stay at home orders. We were ahead of the curve. I thank God every day that I have the kind of work that I can do remotely. Before I did this interview with you, I just jumped off the Zoom call with a couple of dozen employees at my firm. We have been working very effectively remotely and we are going to continue to do that. Of course, many people have the kinds of jobs where they can not work remotely and my heart goes out to them. We also took on the first nationwide case of Corona Virus discrimination. Somebody who was fired because they were perceived to have the Corona Virus even though in fact he did not have Corona Virus.

John: Oh my gosh.

Lisa: He thought he did. He said he had been exposed. He told his boss because he wanted to stay home and get tested and they just immediately fired him. We thought that was wrong. We also represent a number of victims who do not want to go back to an unsafe workplace, who want to continue working remotely, or want their employer to put reasonable safeguards in places like distancing and masks and plexiglass barriers. Many employers are refusing to do that. I thought it was important in this new era to continue to stand up for workers’ rights, especially workers’ rights to workplace safety. Nobody should have to choose between their health and their job. That is just wrong.

John: Lisa, I know you are very busy and you have a lot of people tugging on you and a lot of obligations. I am going to give you the last word and for our listeners out there that want to find Lisa and her colleagues and the great work that she does, giving a voice to those who have historically been marginalized here in the United States, you can go to www.thebloomfirm.com.

Lisa: Well, thank you, John. Yes, we are happy to talk to anybody and do a free confidential consultation, let them know what their rights are. I would also encourage everybody if you think you might have a legal case, but you are not sure you should reach out sooner rather than later. There are tough time limits in place in many cases, sometimes as short as thirty days or sixty days or six months. Sometimes I have to tell people “Oh gosh, I wish you had contacted me last week. But now, unfortunately, your time-barred”. Do not let that happen to you. In general, stand up for your rights. If you are a victim of discrimination, harassment, or abuse, document, everything, save it in a personal email. Think about who your witnesses might be so that when you reach out to a lawyer, you have that information. We are here for you. We are proud to represent the victims that we fight for every day.

John: Lisa, you are a legal icon. You have an important voice and the reason why we had you on Impact today is because of the impact that you make on a regular basis, fighting for justice, and giving a voice to those who have historically been marginalized. Thank you for making the United States a more fair and just place. Thank you so much, again, for being on the Impact today.

Lisa: Well, you are very kind. Thank you so much, John. Have a good day and stay safe.

John: You too.

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 and I am so honored to have with us today, Aaron Clark. He is the CEO and founder of Equity Solutions and Justice Reskill. Welcome to Impact Aaron.

Aaron Clark: Thank you, John. It is a pleasure to be able to share with you today.

John: Hey, listen Aaron, before– I know you and I know what you are doing and the great work and we are going to share that today with our listeners, but before we get into that, can you share a little bit about your backstory, your journey leading up to what you were doing, and how you got to where you are today?

Aaron: Awesome, sure thing. Well, my journey towards equity and towards the work I am doing now had a lot of bumps, a lot of changes but for the past ten plus years I have worked as a freelance software developer which means that folks wanted to hire me to build things for them. I build things for them for hire. The problem is I was a good software developer, not really a great software developer, and I found that, partially, that was because I had a love and an interest for working more with people on a one-on-one basis than I did working with just hardcore tech consistently. So after bouncing around for a while I started to realize that I could not find a lot of people working in tech that look like me, that talk like me, and so I begin to look for where there are more black and brown people inside of tech and I ran into a number of organizations that I got to volunteer with, some civic organizations until I got to a place where I was like there is a gap in the market in terms of DEI type education for individuals. So, about three years ago, I decided to start building what is a new platform to help give people instructions on leveraging their own DEI journey from some– from an app perspective.

John: I am on your website now, Equity Solutions, and for our listeners out there it is equitysolutions.io. Can you talk a little bit about the mission statement of Equity Solutions, “Equity not Equality.” What does that mean to you and what is your ultimate mission at Equity Solutions?

Aaron: Yes, the words that we use matter, and when I say we, I am referring to people that are working in Equity. These are Equity Consultants, Chief Diversity Officers at different companies, and so we are really particular about the words that we use and, unfortunately in this work, a lot of words are used as scapegoats. To me, equity is making sure that every person has what they need to succeed. It is the fair treatment, the opportunity, the advancement of all people. It is what we considered– what I consider my north star. I am not satisfied with just diversity, which is normally a check the box or numbers. I am not satisfied with inclusion, which is normally just making sure people feel a sense of belonging but I am striving for that actual equity which means that if my friend over here needs more resources just to survive and thrive in this world, we should give that person extra and more than other people that may not need that. So that is kind of what we mean by equity versus equality. Then Equity Solutions as a company is a consulting firm that we work at the intersection of Tech Equity and Criminal Justice Reform. Those are the areas that I feel very strong and passionate about and what we are doing is trying to create that society that we see as fair and just for all people. We do things like have education initiatives, programs and apps like DEI Today, which is helping people understand equity, justice reskill, which is a reskilling platform for justice of all people, and we also work directly with clients to help them understand the core truth of their DEI journey, their DEI goals and how to integrate those into the culture of their workforce.

John: You just mentioned Justice Reskill, again, for our listeners out there to check out the great work you are doing there, you could go to justicereskill.com. I am on your site now. What is the core problem? What is– why did you create Justice Reskill and what is your ultimate goal there?

Aaron: Well, Justice Reskill has two core things that it is doing, and for the listeners, Justice Reskill is a community of justice-involved learners, folks that have had some sort of an involvement with the Criminal Justice System, whether they have been arrested, gone to jail or prison, or maybe gone to court diverted. Once that happens in a person’s life, everything is different from that point forward. You are now part of a statistic that is normally stigmatized, unfortunately, in our country. So we are taking those folks in this community. We are doing two things. One, we realize that once you have been involved in the justice system it is going to be very difficult for you to actually build wealth for yourself through career, through work, pay your fees, fines, whatever you have got to pay, save, buy a house, send your kids to college, i.e., live the American dream. So, one, we are focused on ongoing career advancement and long-term financial stability for justice-involved people. The second piece is community. In tech, what tends to happen a lot of times is that we silo with people that think like we do-

John: Right.

Arron: -and that come from similar backgrounds and that is why we have a lot of really great resources to learn how to code or learn technical skills online for free, it is because we know how to find community and find people that are connected to us. One of my favorite resources is freecodecamp.org, founded by an amazing gentleman named Quincy Larson, and what he built was he built a platform so people can learn how to code all for free but the core of it is he is bringing people together that help each other. Justice Reskill is doing that for justice-involved people. It is simply a for us by us type of program so that we can help each other succeed and find long-term financial stability.

John: Hmm, okay, that if people that are listening now who are of course affected by what is going on in the nation at this given moment that we are having this conversation, more social upheaval than we have seen in a long time and they want to get involved and they want to do something and help your efforts, how do they get involved? How can they help?

Aaron: Well, that is a great question, and as our clients that we have with Equity Solutions, a lot of folks ask that and one way is to support black and brown businesses and black and brown organizations to amplify those voices. So we, of course, have methods for that on our website justicereskill.com. You can send us an email or message to get involved and there is a couple of ways that you can do that. One is the easy and obvious one, you can give them your money. We had a fiscal sponsor, the open collector foundation so you will follow your own c3 status to them. You can get right there online to the donation link at the bottom of the website and that money will go towards either operations or to funding for students to do additional learning through our platform, so that was easy, but the other call-out is for people that are interested in helping to build this platform out, helping to build out this community of justice-involve learners. The easy solution there or the easy application for the people that are maybe in tech or have some sort of skill around tech that they want to help teach other people, we are building a way that people can help give of their time, either mentoring, teaching, supporting, doing guest lectures. So if you want to get involved with this community, I would suggest sending us a message and then the other piece is, you know, this is a community effort. These is an effort that has to be connected to other people, and so if you or someone you know is working with a re-entry organization or a justice organization, feel free to reach out to us and see if you can make a connection. We would greatly appreciate that.

John: That is great. I recently watched your presentation called Black at Netflix and Somos, can you share with our listeners a little bit more about what you were trying to accomplish with that presentation?

Aaron: Definitely. So the tech industry is known for creating associations of like-minded people. Most larger tech companies have employee resource groups, and so this is a group of people that might be of one particular ethnicity so that they come together and can kind of have some camaraderie and so I had the privilege of talking to their Black at Netflix group and Somos Netflix which is the Black employee resource group, and the Latinx employee resource group and they were simply asking the same questions you were. They were saying, “Hey, as a company, we feel very passionate about the world that we live in and we are not satisfied with just selling subscriptions for our services and building content. We, as humans, want to get involved with the cause around us.” And so they peppered me with questions about how are you going to do this? What are your thoughts are on this, and in and that.” They asked, “How can we get involved?” Then I was able to give them information I just shared and several of their team members, individually, not as a company but individually said, “Yes, we believe in this mission either because we know someone who has been justice-involved, or we see it at our community, or we might have ourselves, and therefore we want to support this so that other people can have a chance to sit at the seat that they are sitting at, which thankfully we have a sit in the seat of tech jobs. We are very privileged and thankful to be in this position. We wanted to share that with other people.”

John: That is awesome. For our listeners who have just joined us, we have got Aaron Clark on with us today. He is a CEO and founder of Equity Solutions and Justice Reskill. You can find Justice Reskill at justicereskill.com. You can find Equity Solutions at equitysolutions.io. A few weeks back, we lost in America, Aaron, one of the greatest leaders, icons, legends. John Lewis passed and one of his quotes that always stuck with me is, “When you see something that is not right, not fair, not just, you have to speak up. You have to say something. You have to do something.” How much of those words apply to your life? Someone who is very young and successful and could just go along being a wonderful coder in high demand, living your life, doing your thing, but you have stepped out, you have created and are part of two very, very important movements, Equity Solutions, Justice Reskill, and the ripple that you have created is going to reverberate onward and forward. What are those words mean to you and how is that going to further guide you in the future in what you are doing?

Aaron: Those words mean a lot to me. I was raised in Montgomery, Alabama, right outside of Montgomery, Alabama, about forty minutes away from the Edmund Pettus Bridge. I recall as a kid playing next to that bridge. I recall running in and out of some of the churches that Dr. King spoke at, up and down in Alabama, and Atlanta, and Mississippi. Now, my upbringing, I was not taught to focus on the civil rights, unfortunately. It did not click for a long time in my life until much, much later. I got into a lot of trouble because I realized I was trying to be something that I was not. I was trying to be a person who assimilates to culture versus a person who lives in their calling and lives in who they are and what they are meant to do for this world. So when I hear the words of the great John Lewis saying, “When you see something, say something,” what that tells me is I say, “Thank you, Mr. Lewis.”

Aaron: Now, you said that for your entire life, your entire career, we the younger generation to take that to the next step and now we are saying, “If you see something, do something.” We no longer want to just see police brutality and see discrimination and racism and speak about it. We are now demanding that these things be changed which is why with Justice Reskill I have seen this problem for many, many years. I am reminded of Richard Brooks’ video, the man that lost his life, was killed in Atlanta and he spoke about the problems of the probation parole system and that he was literally just trying to make money to provide for his wife and three kids and he was having a hard time just reaching them. So Justice Reskill at its core says, “We see the problem. We see the opportunity and instead of just talking about it we are actually going to just build it and we are going to look around for all of the people that want to step up and support this type of work and get our people that are justice-involved back on track, back in working, back as contributing members of society so that we can all live in an equitable world.”

John: I love it. I love it. Aaron, you are the reason I do this show. You are the reason I put this kind of podcast together and get it out because not only are you doing great and important work and I want our listeners who find it in their heart and in their soul to support your efforts, but for the next generation coming behind you, I want them too, as well, follow in your footsteps and in John Lewis’s footsteps, to not only say something but to do something and you are doing something really important with Justice Reskill, with Equity Solutions. You are the reason that I do this show. You are making a great impact, and I am just very, very grateful for your time today and for all the great things you are doing now, and you are going to be doing in the future and I thank you again for your time today, Aaron, and I hope you have continued success in your endeavors ahead.

Aaron: Thank you, John. I really appreciate the platform and to all your listeners out there, I appreciate you taking the time to listen and hope you all have a great 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, and is the largest fully integrated IT and electronics asset disposition provider and cybersecurity-focused hardware destruction company in the United States, 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 John Shegerian, and I am so honored and excited today to have with me my good friend, Robin Wiener. She is the president of ISRI. We are going to learn all about ISRI today. But before we welcome Robin in, Robin, I just want to say thank you for being here during this crazy time in this world. Thank you for taking the time to join us today.

Robin Wiener: It is my pleasure and it is just great to talk to an old friend. Thank you, John.

John: I feel the same. I just wish we could be together under other circumstances. We will be in the future. Science will win and I know you and I are big science people. I know science will win and there will one day be a vaccine and we will get on to a new better and we will be together again. Before we get talking about all the great work that you are doing with your colleagues at ISRI, and for our listeners out there that would like to go to ISRI’s website, please feel free to go to www.isri.org. I am on their website now. It is literally one of the most fact-filled websites you will ever see with tons of information. If you are interested in any of the topics we are going to be talking about today that Robin is going to share with you and beyond. Robin, can you share your backstory? Because you have a great backstory leading up to joining ISRI and eventually becoming from Executive Director to the President and leader that you have been doing such an amazing job at for all the years that I have known you. Please share your backstory and bio with our listeners who have not met you yet.

Robin: Sure, and thank you for that lead-up, John. I really appreciate it. I have been with ISRI, actually, since 1989. I was twelve when I started.

John: A child prodigy. Why not?

Robin: Yes, right. I graduated from college with a Chemical Engineering degree, did some environmental consulting with one of the big call the Beltway bandits for a couple of years, and then decided to go to law school. Went to law school at night and just as I am starting law school at night and realized that I needed to be in a job that was closer to the law school whereas going to Georgetown. I started looking around and ISRI was hiring, looking for an environmental compliance person so I have no idea what the recycling industry was, what ISRI was, or [inaudible], but I decided to try it out. Figured I would be there for a couple of years and then after law school, ended up with a law firm, but I just fell in love with the industry. The people are great. The issues are never-ending. It really gets in your blood, to use a cliché, and I have been with ISRI ever since. Then I became President of ISRI back in ’97 and had witnessed so many transformations in this industry. It is never boring and I just love working with the industry and for the great people that are part of it.

John: Now, I have only known you as the president and you have done a brilliant job because organizations do not just morph. It is because of great leadership and leadership matters to evolve with the times. I want to get into that in a little bit, but before we do, lay the basis out for the mission of ISRI. For our listeners out there that are not familiar with ISRI, I want you to share what the mission and organization are all about.

Robin: Sure. Thank you for asking. ISRI is the voice of the recycling industry, promoting safe, economically sustainable, and environmentally responsible recycling through a combination of networking, advocacy, and education. That mission statement is written the way it is for a number of reasons. First of all, we represent those in the private recycling industry or the for-profit, I should say, the recycling industry. The companies that are involved in processing, brokering, and consuming the range of traditional scrap commodities, metals, papers, plastics, glass, textiles, [inaudible], and electronics. What is extremely important to us is to promote responsible recycling. A lot of what we do is around the issue of safety, workplace safety, and environmental compliance and really running operations in a way that is sustainable, that is connected to the local community, and is in conformance with all applicable environmental safety and other laws and regulations that might apply to these operations. We are afraid economically sustainable, adopt the very critical and those to what we do which is that there is a lot of talks out there by brands and others about making products recyclable. One of our main missions is to understand what does it mean for something to be recyclable. [inaudible] have to be technologically feasible to recycle but also economically sustainable. In order to label something as recyclable, or to promote its recyclability, we really need to make sure it makes it to a home system, the whole infrastructure. That is a big focus of what we are doing lately as well. Then certainly another big part of it is to just make sure we are there for all of the stakeholders in recycling to provide those networking opportunities to learn from each other, to grow businesses, and to promote recycling generally.

John: You have over thirteen hundred or so member companies and 4,000 locations. That is a lot of constituents. Besides, I see just the people of the United States as your constituent because I believe, in my heart, Robin, as I have gone to know you and your great organization over the last 15 years and many other wonderful people as well, you are probably one of the top three or four most important people when it comes to the state sustainability revolution and recycling in the United States. But given that, why when you and I and other colleagues that we have traveled to Japan or South Korea or to Europe, Germany or other great countries, why are they so ahead of us in terms of their cultural DNA and activity around sustainability, circular economy, and recycling and why have we sort of lagged behind?

Robin: It is a really interesting question. First of all, thank you very much for the lead. That is that. It is really itchy question. I think that there are a number of factors. Started because of the market-based approach that we all are in the states that are really core to our economy. Whereas if you look at the EU, for example, they are not beyond or above, I should say, approaching some of these challenges with the willingness to subsidize and to add government funds to address some of the issues and challenges. That is not part of our efforts here in the United States. I think that is part of the issue. The role of government is very [inaudible]. I do not want to get into politics or play any names but [inaudible] at the beginning with regard to our beliefs in Science and you and I are very similar and believe very strongly, I think, in the role of Science. But that is not perhaps the universal ethic here. Ethics may be the wrong word. But the universal belief, unfortunately, [inaudible]. That may go back with our progress.

John: That is so interesting.

Robin: I would love to hear your thoughts about that, actually.

John: Yeah. Well, I think you are right. I think it is part cultural, I think it is part political, I think it is part business-oriented. It is shocking to me, Robin. You correct me if I am wrong, in 2020, we only have somewhat like what 11 bottle bills in America? Why is not every state covered by a bottle bill or some sort of regulated, mandated RF system or manufacturer responsibility system when it comes to just bottles and cans? I mean just something as simple as that?

Robin: Well, it is interesting you mentioned that because when it comes to the bottle bill, there is not even consensus with industry and the recycling industry about [inaudible].

John: Okay.

Robin: I am not going to say whether or not that is the answer or not but it looks like that there is one of the challenges [inaudible] is a frustration for me as well is that we do not have a national approach for some of these issues. That goes to just our State-based system and there are very good reasons why some of these situations and some of our challenges need to be State-based in terms of solution. But others do need more of a national approach. I mean, this is one of the reasons why we are having such challenges when it comes to our residential recycling infrastructure which is a whole obvious truth you spend hours, probably, on. But you think about all the different standards that are out there and with regard to every municipality in terms of what they will take in and what they would not. They had that lead to such confusion on the part of residence including myself> There are times all stares at something in my kitchen going, “Should this go in the bin or not?” which is just hysterical if you think about it. There is a lot of confusion out there.

John: You asked me what my thoughts are. I like in it and we are going to get into this a little bit more with regards to all the efforts you are making and the great leadership you have shown during this pandemic, but tying it back to the COVID-19 tragedy that we are all living through, sustainability and recycling, I see analogous, parallels between them both. That when you look at the success of South Korea, Japan, Vietnam in getting through this crisis, the government comes out and says, “You are going to wear masks,” people going to wear masks. The government says, “We are going to do contact tracing and massive testing,” that is what happens and then these are social pressure. When you are tested and have COVID in South Korea, your neighbors are alerted via text and they know you have to stay in your house for whatever period the government says so. Of course, we have not done that here in America. We have what we pride ourselves on is the individualism, innovation, and success. Individualism is tied up into that innovation and success that comes out of Silicon Valley or other great parts of innovation that this country is shown. Then we are at cross-cultural channels with regards to knowing which way we are going to go and not everyone wants to do the same thing and we do not have a government, never did really, that says, “It is going to be one way or the highway like they have in those other countries,” and therefore there is a problem with compliance. I think a lot of that can be seen in sustainability and recycling as we have seen with COVID-19, is that a fair approach or is that a fair analogy I have drawn?

Robin: I think it is. One of the other, actually, similarities has to do with the increased misinformation that is out there whether it is on the fact for example of [crosstalk] which is ridiculous. But there are those all the headlines we have been over the years about the collapse of recycling and recycling is dead or recycling is in crisis when that is not true.

John: Yes, this is so interesting. I think you are right.

Robin: [inaudible] a lot of bad. I have had people in my neighborhood say to me., “Oh, no, I am not going to recycle it,” it does not really get recycled. Yes, it does. Just amazing and that is inhibiting a lot of what we are doing in recycling and trying o get people to understand that recycling does work and it is important. All the reasons why it is important, certainly there are all the environmental reasons, and with [inaudible] because there is also the economic and just manufactured recycled material. As a matter of fact, one of the interesting projects we worked on earlier this year with EPA was on a video that we got out working with the administrator, actually, on the importance of getting OCC — the corrugated cardboard — into the recycling bin. That that material was needed during the food crisis in order to produce the toilet paper and all the other material, all the other food packaging, etcetera, that is needed in today’s society, but people were scared to put it in the bin or just did not realize it was getting recycled, but it would not be. That would be increased and we need to get it through so many different channels right now.

John: For our listeners who have just joined us. We have got Robin Weiner. She is a friend of mine, a good friend of mine, for the last 15 years. She is the President of ISRI, you could find ISRi and all of Robin and her colleagues’ great work at www.isri.org. Robin, let us talk about this very difficult period that we are going through. I am a sports guy. Most people follow some sports in one way or another and leadership matters. Leadership matters when you see winning teams over and over again and also losing teams and franchises over and over again. Look at Bill Belichick. Look at Phil Jackson. You can look at any sport and see how leadership matters. The same thing goes for organizations. It is already hard enough under normal circumstances with thirteen hundred or so member companies across America in every zip code, over 4,000 locations to manage what you manage. In many ways, if it was a for-profit organization, a huge corporation, and a huge [inaudible] that you manage with all those types of constituencies from different backgrounds and different areas. During this crisis, talk a little bit about the evolution of your leadership and how you had to pivot and what is working and what is not in terms of your leadership of ISRI getting it through this crisis to the other side safely.

Robin: Sure, we went through what I think most organizations that day on March 13th, when all of a sudden the world changed. We all moved into our home or attic, whatever you do to do our work. I have to say also I am incredibly grateful for our staff. They have been founded with such energy and determination because it changed everything. It changed not only how we work but how we communicate, how the issues we were dealing with and actually just a month earlier, we have had our board of directors meeting where we passed our legislative agenda for the year and no more on that agenda to mention talking to the Department of Homeland Security about recycling being essential or going after stimulus clubs or any of those issues. But our group understood the importance of being there for the industry and pivoting. It did change a lot of things and we have to be flexible. I think we all did in any industry we are signed in. Our first priority was making sure that the industry was recognized as essential in order to stay open during this critical time. We immediately reached out to contact what we had at the White House, within the administration, on Capitol Hill, and in the state to get that designation. It was really wonderful to see the Department of Homeland Security respond so quickly and include us as essential to the manufacturing supply chain. We had that through the Department of Homeland Security. We then work the state, we were able to get that and communicate all of this to our members so they can stay open. Certainly, our members in the recycling operation that have had public-facing retail operations. A lot of those closed due to health and safety concerns. We also have, for that case, all the safety issues. How do you operate a recycling operation safely during this time? Everything from how to do you distance employees within the operation. There was a lot of uncertainty as to how long COVID actually stayed on surfaces. Therefore the touching of the scrap and the moving of the scrap. Our safety team –I am really proud of them — they quickly done the research, shared the information, shared best practices. We got the information out there. One of the first lessons I learned very early on which is still an aha moment for me was about the importance of communications which sounds really naive. But up until March 13th, the message I kept on hearing from members and other stakeholders was, “Stop all these emails. We are getting too much information from you.” We did a hundred and eighty degrees turn after March 13th, and it took us a couple of weeks to realize it, and then we realized we start hearing members were so grateful to have these Zoom webinars. A Zoom [inaudible] they get to see other people. “I do not see people. I miss my friends. I want to hear from you more.” I need as many communications as possible. You cannot over-communicate. That was a pivot with us and we are still doing it. We are still pivoting. The other thing that was fascinating, a positive, if you are saying, was that we started seeing spaces on the Zoom calls that we have never seen before. We were able to reach deeper into the member companies and all of a sudden [inaudible] showed up for one of our committee meetings or to access some of our training. They did not have to get on a plane, spend money on a hotel or whatever, [inaudible] style it. Then we realized we had to start mining that data, mining those contact. That was a lot of what we started doing as well. I was, to be very honest, worried about our revenue stream whether we could sustain what we are doing. What has been shocking is we got more and more requests for membership. I am not saying membership is booming, but it is doing very well. We are getting lots of inquiries that people are seeing we become more visible through social media and all the various communications forums that we are utilizing. We spend a lot of time getting relevant information out, honing in on. People wanted to be members and everyone is liking and she wanted to know that it kept up to date on all the changes in the state. What is open, what is not, what do they have to do with regard to best practices within their operations? How do they access stimulus funds? All the changing rules with regard to that became very important. Then it is interesting. We experienced another shift, the homestay around June. When the company started getting settled into operating this way. In operating under this environment some have a very quick start shifting back to the other issue, the day-to-day issues that became very important to get all the work [inaudible] transportation board on dealing with customer service issues with the rails. We have some real successes in that area that I was thrilled about what was some work that Billy Johnson was doing in our [inaudible] division, in our paper division in those areas. We were able to pivot those issues again. We were working on the recyclability protocol and we just got authorization in February. A lot of recyclability protocol and so we are able to jump back into that and we are working on a recyclability protocol for paper-based packaging as brands are moving more away from plastics into paper-based packaging and looking for what are the standards. How do you determine is that package is going to make its way through the [inaudible] and into the mill? We are in the process of working with stakeholders throughout the chain developing that protocol right now and should launch by the end of the year. We are still in COVID but we are also pivoting back to pre-COVID issues and soon as of hopefully post-COVID. [inaudible] and it is being able to be flexible and always keeping your ear on the ground to see what our members want.

John: You and I are typically positive people. Let us say we are getting past COVID, at some point science is going to win and we are going to go back to a new better. Do you see that as everybody back in the office? This not only goes for you but also for your members. What are you hearing? Is the world going to go back to a hundred percent back in the office or is it going to be 50% at home, 50% at the office? How does that look to you? Not only look to you as the leader of ISRI with all your members but also as the leader of ISRI with the team that you have in your DC office, how do you feel about that? Because when you read Reed Hastings’ view on it is very different than Tim Cook’s view on it, which is very different than another. Leaders have different viewpoints on that. Love to hear your viewpoint on that issue.

Robin: Sure. The truth is I do not think any of us can say definitively what it is going to look like but it is definitely not going to be what it was before or it is not going to be a hundred the office and I say that actually and it is a good thing. It is a good thing for a number of reasons. I will admit that I was old-fashioned before my church and I was kind of skeptical of people who have to work from home. I admit that I have some hires that had to be made and I do not really get hired working at that was not PC-based and I thought, “No, they need to be interacting with everyone in the office,” and I turned away from that person. Now they have done what I [inaudible] are able to accomplish working from home. It is possible. It can be done and I know that ISRI is going to be more flexible with our own workers. Certainly, the contact is needed, and being in person at least on an occasional basis is very important for that developing the trust between people who work together at sharing information, but you can divide it, you can do it in a hybrid manner. I see more of a hybrid approach and the only thing that is going to be different is our offices and this is probably one of the hardest things for me to look at because three years ago, we moved into a new office space that I could not be prouder of. In the past, we were in office space that looks like anyone else’s office space, but when we went into our new office space two years ago, I wanted the office space to say recycling. I wanted you to be able to walk in there and whether it was an employee of ISRI, I wanted them to know who they were working for or if it was someone, a stakeholder, or someone who knew nothing about recycling. They quickly understand what recycling is all about because recycling is something that is so easily misunderstood. We actually have a little museum area and education center. Everything in the office is made out of recycled material and we talked about it. I do not think you have ever been to our new space. I would love you to see it and now it is empty. It is not inexpensive. We have to think about, “Okay, what does this mean for us then how do we reduce our costs, and perhaps with this hybrid approach, what do we do with this space?” Those are all things I am trying to figure out and I think everyone else to have space in the city is trying to figure out right now in an urban area. Just tell you a quick story, I went into the office about two weeks ago and at one point I took a walk around the corner to the local CVS and I asked the CVS manager how shoppings were and the store manager looked at me, he said, “At March 14th or 15th, the business was down 90%. It is now only down 83%.” The downtowns are just those towns. I do not really know what is going to be two or three years from now.

John: Yeah. It has definitely affected people. Talk a little bit about the shift in the industry. Your message is great because I see you every day on LinkedIn which I love. I love your messages on LinkedIn and I have seen it more than ever in the last 15 years, in the last 90 days. It is wonderful. I think the messaging that ISRI is putting out, that you are putting out specifically is just great and I could see why your membership interest level is rising because the value was always there, but now the perceived value is being shown to others who now get more interested, but they never took the time to learn about you earlier. I could definitely see what you are saying. It is just fascinating. But talk about the shift from just on the office issue that your that we are talking about or the CVS issue. Because now so many of us are working from our home and our children are home also studying and going to school at home. Has the waste stream changed from commercial entities and downtown core urban areas and been dispersed now more to the exterior parts of the cities where there are homeowners and stuff? How does that affect the waste and recycling industry and your work in your messaging?

Robin: Well, it is a great question. First of all, [inaudible] as you know, what our primary message is [inaudible] so we are not back by the way stream here, we are talking about the recycling stream.

John: Correct.

Robin: With regard to that stream there have definitely been huge shifts in the supply chain. As a result of the shift from commercial operations to residential development with toilet paper and paper towels, etcetera. There has definitely been a huge shift in the supply. There has also been a shift in demand. I mean when you look at and it varies by commodity, I saw a really interesting chart last week. I think it was “We had our commodity spotlight” series. There was a speaker who shows a chart showing commodity prices and how they have evolved over the last seven months and he could pinpoint and I think he divided the seven months or so eight months into that six different sectors where different things were happening in terms of supply and demand. For example, you look at the period around March-April when you have the [inaudible] for shut down and a lot of manufacturing shut down. The demand collapsed. But then demand started coming up and conditions are improving but that all come that supply chain is slow to restart. We are trying to get the jump on that supply chain again. Certainly because of the shift of everyone within the home and needing distance learning and sections [inaudible], etcetera. The supply of used electronics, something you are very familiar with, there was a [inaudible] up at the electronic [inaudible]. You have a supply disruption there that is causing issues for the electronics recycling segments to get their huge [inaudible] disruptions throughout the change and shift their current. Although again, it is improving. We are getting closer to more balance, probably we are not quite there yet.

John: Got it. Robin, this period of course, there are no books that you and I could read from HBR or Stanford or anywhere on how to navigate a pandemic. It still does not exist. You as the leader of ISRI, myself as a leader of a business, and all your members are sort of doing it, we are learning it on the fly. Talk a little bit about your vision for the future. We are going to get past this. I know that you know that. What is your vision for ISRI post-pandemic post-COVID? Where are you going to take the organization next? Because again leadership matters and you have done a brilliant job since ’97 and that is why ISRI is stronger than ever, bigger than ever, has a huge voice in the importance of all the organizations that you represent and what you do is bigger than ever in America. Because we cannot continue. to burn California down. We cannot continue to have floods and typhoons and all these other climate change issues on a more regular basis than ever before. What is the future and how do we continue to evolve sustainability and good recycling practices faster than ever before?

Robin: It is an interesting question. I am a big believer in collaboration before, during, and after coach COVID. I think one of the challenges and I should have mentioned earlier at why sustainability– the messages are not– we are not making as much progress here. One of the things that shocked me three years ago or so when the whole issue of the residential recycling system was coming up and all the problems in the residential system, in part, triggered by what happened with China with a number of people who were claiming to be experts in the field and who were stakeholders and recycling, who were sending out messages and the messages were so all over the place. They were mixed. There was no common message. How could we fault consumers for not knowing what goes in the bin? Or even a policymaker for not understanding how to help fix the system if they are getting 20 different messages from 20 different [inaudible]. One of the things that I try to do early on was to collaborate about organizations. Any credible organization that was working in the space, try to reach out to them and work together to develop solutions. I hope that after this, that continues and gets stronger, and I [inaudible] a very big part of it. I mean you mentioned at the very beginning before we get started [inaudible] interview with that. How one moment can keep America beautiful? I sit on their board and it is a great example of, again, collaboration. I also work with the national recycling coalition. We are now involved with the recycling partnership. We do a lot of work with US EPA. There are so many [inaudible]. There are so many organizations out there, especially in the residential space, which is a small portion of the overall recycling infrastructure, but it is the one that everyone is aware of that everyone talks about. But it is an example, what I see in the future is that hopefully, they will be more of melding the messages. that when hopefully all get towards and everyone will be on the same page. But at least we will all collaborate even more so that we can help finally address some of these long-term issues or recycling and for sustainability. Certainly, ISRI wants to be and will continue to be a big part of that both in terms of finding solutions and all also educating and raising awareness about recycling. Not just on residential but commercial and industrial which are a significant and the larger part, really, of the streams. We are going to continue with our recyclability protocol. We are going to continue with something you and I talked about 10 years ago. Or maybe five years ago about the work we are doing on these outreaches and helping you raise awareness about recycling with in K through 12 with our curriculum as we do in partnership with JASON learning and other organizations [inaudible].

John: Great organization, [inaudible]. You do great work there with [inaudible] areas. That is all thanks to you. Amazing.

Robin: I am sure you feel this too [inaudible] your granddaughter, it is so important to make sure that we are giving a healthy planet to the next generation through all of these activities. Then also work force development. That is an area we are moving in to and I see it becoming a larger part of what we are going to be doing post-COVID. Because the workforce is getting smaller and finding eligible workers is getting harder. We are doing some partnerships with community colleges to try to develop a more recycling curriculum beyond K to 12, but for the community colleges, etcetera, again, encourage more people to come into the industry as well.

John: That is awesome. Well, Robin, you are always invited back here. For our listeners out who want to find or join ISRI please go to www.isri.org or go to LinkedIn or other social media, Linkedln ISRI, or even LinkedIn Robin weiner her messaging on a regular basis is wonderful. We are so lucky and grateful in the United States to have you, Robin, to lead the recycling charge. I am just grateful to have you as a friend and I am thankful for your time today ain Impact. You are truly making the world a better place.

Robin: Thank you, so are you, John. I am so grateful for your friendship and all the work you are doing. Thank you for bringing me back to talk to you. I appreciate that.

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. This is a very special edition. I am so honored to have with us today, Maria Quiban Whitesell. Thank you for being at the Impact Podcast today, Maria.

Maria Quiban Whitesell: Oh, thank you. It is so great to be here with you. Thank you.

John: Well, you know, Maria. First of all before we get into everything we are going to go into day, I just want to share with our listeners a little bit of your background. You are a broadcast meteorologist in the greater LA area, very well known. You are an author. You are a mom and you are also a sort of very new freshly minted Lola.

Maria: Well, yes, and for those listeners who are not familiar with that word Lola, which I do consider to be quite a sexy word by the way.

John: It is.

Maria: It is the Filipino word for grandmother.

John: Wow.

Maria: So yeah, I love that moniker and I love my grandkids, by the way, which we can talk about.

John: Wow.

Maria: Very proud of them, and yes, I have a very young beautiful family that my older son has. Yes.

John: Might be, I have a Guinness cup holder this podcast. You might be the youngest, youngest looking Lola in history. So whatever you are doing, you are doing it right. That is all I know. That is all I know.

Maria: Thank you.

John: Yes, you are Filipina and I happen to be Armenian, and I think immigrants are naturally very connected to one another through DNA, culturally speaking. You know, we all have these similar traits. We eat when we are happy, we eat when we are sad, we eat when we get emotional. This food is so much important part of everything. Our spiritual life is important.

I would love for you to share how you came to America at 10. I know you grew up in Cebu or you were born in the Cebu area in the Philippines, but how you came at 10 and you may have made such a fantastic career for yourself.

Maria: Well, thank you. First of all, I have a friend that I work with, her name is Araksya and she is Armenian-American as well. I have just, really through her, have gotten to know the Armenian culture and we are so alike and similar in so many ways. The Filipino culture and Armenian culture, I love it.

John: Right.

Maria: I went over to her family’s house and talk about the food situation. Not only do we, as cultures, love to eat, but we love to feed other people, you know. It is an insult if you do not eat –

John: So true.

Maria: -the food that is served and suggested. It is like, “No. No, I am really not that hungry.” I would not eat this and it is a giant plate of food. So yeah, we are very alike in that sense.

John: So true.

Maria: My immigrant story, and I am so happy to say that my mother, who was also very young and it is kind of ironic in a sense I suppose, because her story is eerily similar to mine in the sense that she became a widow at such a young age. My birth father, when we were living in the Philippines, died in an accident. I was seven years old at the time and my mother had my brother and I. My brother is about a year and a half younger than me. So, she was devastated because she was 28 years old. She was very young.

John: Wow.

Maria: Yeah. Luckily for my mother, she had a huge family. Her sisters- she had a bunch of sisters. I think there were ten of them all together, her and her siblings. At that time, she had several sisters living abroad- everywhere actually. One was living in Tokyo, one was in California, one was in Hawaii and one- I cannot remember exactly where they all were at the time. But I remember she had a sister that lived in Hawaii and we would see them often when they would visit us when we were kids in the Philippines, but she wanted to have a different life for us at that time and just wanted to start new.

So, my aunt helped us a lot. I remember that. We moved to Honolulu and that is pretty much where I spent my elementary, intermediate high school, and college years. So, I kind of grew up a little bit in Cebu and then, a lot in Hawaii.

John: Wow, and then when did you come over to California?

Maria: California? Well, speaking about family and how close we are. Right?

John: Yeah, yes. Yes!

Maria: It is our DNA, in our culture. My mother in Hawaii- by the way, met a wonderful man who became my stepfather when we were about, I think I was about 13 I want to say. He is, I believe in my heart, my birth father reincarnated. I am so happy to call my dad, Papa. John is his name is well.

John: Wow! Okay, I like that.

Maria; Yeah. I had like to say that my birth dad was looking out for my mom and was looking out for us and brought this amazing father for me, my brother, and husband for my mom. They’ve been married ever since. So my dad, as I lovingly call him, worked for United Airlines at the time and so he flew a lot. His job took him to California and here in the Los Angeles area. So, he worked in the management office and so he was able to actually fly back and forth to Hawaii to visit me and my older son at the time, which we will get into a little bit later.

My mom and I, we are so close and she really missed me. So I said- oh, she said to me, “Why do you just do the weather here in LA?” At that time, I was already working as a meteorologist for the NBC station in Hawaii. I said, “Okay. Sure, Mom. I can just get a job in LA just like that.”, because you know I feel like it, right?

John: Right.

Maria: Yeah, so she goes- well, you know what? They were living in Orange County at the time in Seal Beach. Well, actually there is a small little station here in Orange County that is a good 24-hour news channel. “Why don’t you see if you can get a job there?”, and I said, “Okay. Well, I am perfectly happy here in Hawaii. But okay, I will prove it, just leave me.”

So, I gave a call to the news director at the time and he said, “You know what? We are actually interviewing for meteorologist. So, why don’t you come in and interview?” and I said, “Okay. I am going up to visit my parents.” And so, I went in for an interview and he offered me the job. So, I just I could not turn it down. Now, afforded me the ability to live once again very close to my parents, whom I am very close with.

So, it was actually a really good job opportunity too. I would have been making more than I was making in Hawaii and very quickly moved to Los Angeles to work for the a Fox station. Hereafter, I spent about two years at the Orange County News Channel.

John: Good for you. So, that was around- what year was that approximately?

Maria: So, I moved to California in 1998.

John: Got it.

Maria: And worked at the Orange County News Channel and then, an agent saw me at the Orange County News Channel. Her name is Karen Wang Laval who was amazing for me at the beginning of my career and she said, “You know, I would like to represent you.” It was not long after I moved to California and she got me an interview at the time, it was a channel 13 stations, who is the sister station to Fox 11 here in LA.

So, I got the job and I have been working there ever since. I have been in the Fox station since 2000.

John: Wow!

Maria: I have been there for over 20 years.

John: Incredible!

Maria: I know.

John: Good for you! That is amazing. That is a lot of longevity in any industry. In any industry, that is a lot of longevity and success.

Maria: It is and I am so grateful for it. Because as you know in our industry it is so competitive, particularly in front of the camera in the news and media. So, I am just, I am really truly grateful for the opportunity to continue to represent diversity on the air and our community, as well, and to just have a really great time.

John: It is really great.

Maria: I love my job! I get to connect with so many people. So, I am just so happy.

John: That is just wonderful. And then, where in the journey did you get to meet your husband, along the way, your husband, Sean?

Maria: Well, my husband, Sean I met in 2003 and by that time, I was already divorced. I was a single mom. I had my older my older son, Desmond. At a very young age, I have to say that he came when I was in high school and you know, sometimes things happen.

John: Yeah!

Maria: I definitely am one of those people where even though I took the precautions, even though I was educated about birth control and all that stuff when I was 17. You know, taking the pill is not a hundred percent.

John: Right.

Maria: And so you combine that with a seventeen-year-old teenage maturity level.

John: Right.

Maria: Things happen. And so, I found myself pregnant in high school, the year before my senior.

John: Wow!

Maria: Yes, my last year in high school.

John: Oh, my god!

Maria: I know. My mom was- needless to say, at first, very disappointed in me, because I had these huge plans.

John: Right.

Maria: You know, every Filipino knows that you are either going to be a doctor, a lawyer, a nurse. Yes, you know, your whole career planned out.

John: Right.

Maria: I was not going to be following that because actually I wanted to go to law school.

John: Wow!

Maria: I wanted to do all kinds of things, actually. But, you know, things happen and I believe that some things happen for a reason.

John: Yep.

Maria: And so, I was there and I was presented with new challenges. I could not have gotten through raising my son, Desmond without my parents. I am eternally grateful for their help. So, I was able to go to college. I was able to pursue my dreams.

I got married to Desmond’s dad, but we were both in high school. And so, anyway, we tried to do the right thing.

John: Right.

Maria: But we realized soon after that we were too young to have gotten married. We were divorced before we were 21.

John: Got it.

Maria: So, fast forward to to Los Angeles in 2003, I was a divorced single mom.

John: Unbelievable. And also had a career. You are a career mom. You are a career mom too.

Maria: I was a career mom.

John: Right.

Maria: Yes. Yes. So I really, I did not give up on my dreams. When I went to college, I remembered the dream that I had since I was a child, which was actually to work in front of the camera. I remember vividly in the Philippines watching Sesame Street, and I would run home from school and turn on this box, this television and was just obsessed with the feeling that I got when I watch TV, but specifically Sesame Street. So, there was a character on there- if you remember, her name is Maria.

John: Yes. Yes.

Maria: I thought, “Wow, look at her. She is brown like. She has got dark hair like me, and she gets to play with all those puppets.”, and you know, those amazing characters and bring joy to people watching. I wanted that job and I remembered that feeling and that desire when I was in college. So, I fell upon the broadcast journalism department. So, it was between acting- any while when we do something in front of the camera.

John: Right.

Maria: And so I was doing some acting lessons and classes and things, but I knew I could not major on that. So I majored in broadcast journalism, and then the rest is history. I just- I loved what I am doing now with the weather. At first, I thought it was going to go into the news and and cover the big stories of the day. But, I remember being sent to like a story with a homicide or something, the dead body on the side of the road and sugarcane fields, I just did not, like it made me so sad. It made me really, really just depressed and unhappy. I just thought, I cannot do this for the rest of my career. It is just not in me.

John: Right.

Maria: When my producer suggested the weather, I just fell to it. Like, it was just a great fit.

John: Got it.

Maria: So, yeah. So, I am sorry I deviated, but here I am.

John: No, it is good. No, the journey is important. The journey is important. So now, it is 2003-ish and you were introduced or you met Sean, along the way.

Maria: I did, I did. So, I was entrenched in my career, I was happy, I was working at the number one, really, show at the time, specially in Los Angeles. So, I was really happy with my career and my singleness. Although, I wanted to have a partner for the rest of my life, I did not have that need to feel like I need to get married and have kids and all that kind of stuff.

So, when I met him I was in a really good place in my head, in my heart.

John: Right.

Maria: And so, it was kind of a setup, I suppose. A colleague of mine and her boyfriend at the time was throwing a dinner party and that she suggested that, “You should come to this dinner, Maria.” Yeah, and I said, “Oh, I am not going to go because it is just the couple.” You know, I do not want to be a third wheel.

John: Right.

Maria: I do not had a boyfriend. I do not have a date. So. we somehow convinced their other colleague who was another anchor and he was so game for anything. He goes, “Okay, I am not anything on Saturday. Let us go! Let us go!. And there we go. We go to this dinner and it almost happen that I was not going to meet Sean. Because at the end of the night, we are about to leave and apparently, yeah, my friend’s boyfriend at the time said, “My brothers are coming over.”, after the dinner that they were throwing.

John: Right.

Maria: And so I went, “Oh, okay, that is why I was supposed to come.” So, all of a sudden I hear this loud- very loud voice who has come into the house. The loudest one of them all was Sean and he just made a beeline to me. I think he kind of knew that I was going to be there too, I am suspecting. We just we hit it off really and just, we are together ever since.

John: Instant chemistry, and that was it. That is great.

Maria: Instant chemistry, yeah. I am not going to tell you it was love at first sight, because you know, it is like-

John: But, chemistry though! Chemistry is good enough.

Maria: Yeah. Most definitely there was chemistry. Yes. Yes. Yes.

John: Perfect. So, life went out. How long until you guys got married?

Maria: Well, we dated for a little while. There was even the obligatory break up for a few months, like almost a year.

John: Right.

Maria: And then, we got back together better and stronger than ever. We worked out our issues and we got married in 2009.

John: Got it. Got it. So, then fast forward, you are married and you had a baby together- a son named Gus.

Maria: Yes. Yes. Sean had never been married before and never had children. And so, when he met the love of his life, he would say, “You know everything just kind of fell in place.” When we were trying to have our own child, we were having some difficulty because we were older by that time.

John: Right.

Maria: Again, luck would have it. We tried so many different things, including IVF and you know all of the help of doctors, but nothing worked. So, we kind of resigned ourselves to you know, just us. One day at a Lakers game, I think I had a little too much to drink and wanted to continue to party at home. Boom! That night, Gus was conceived. I will never forget it.

John: Wow, and what year was Gus born?

Maria: He was born December in 2010, the following year.

John: Got it. Got it. So, he is born December. So, Gus is now ten years old, right now as we speak.

Maria: Ah, no! He is almost ten.

John: Almost ten.

Maria: He is nine. He will be ten this December, yes.

John: Wonderful. So then, so now your marriage is going on, everything is great. You have a little baby in the house. Life could not be better. Share a little bit about now, what were going to talk about today and how your journey with, that is going to be describing.

By the way, if you just joined us right now. We are with Maria Quiban Whitesell. She has a book out called, “You Can’t Do It Alone”. We are about to get into that part of the journey. You can find it at youcantdoitalonebook.com or at Maria’s website, mariaquiban.com. M-A-R-I-A, Maria. Quiban, Q-U-I-B-A-N.com

Before we get into the book, talk a little bit about then, what happens next between 2010 and 2015?

Maria: So by that time, we were really truly living our happily ever after. We were working. We were working parents. We, you know, live for the weekends with Gus and we were busy. We had realized that we had not gone on vacation, ever, just the two of us, Me and Sean.

John: Right.

Maria: So, by this time, yeah, Gus was three years old. So much like many parents, you know.

John: Right.

Maria: So at this time, Gus was three and Shawn had turned 50 years old, and he has this young kid. For his birthday, his brothers gifted him- I would say us actually, because it is a gift to me too, I suppose. But they gifted us with an all-expense-paid trip to Paris.

Yeah, so we’ve never, we’ve never been- both of us had never been to Paris.

John: The city of lights and love.

Maria: Yes! So we were so excited, so excited. We we are going to have this incredible vacation and we just had not gotten away together in a very long time.

We both have been working so much, like literally he was a writer by profession and so he was writing on a new show and I was working on the morning show and juggling, you know with Gus and everything.

So, we went on this trip and my parents came here to be with Gus and so we felt very comfortable and so excited to be on this trip. It was on this trip that I realized something was terribly wrong with my husband. It was not just little things that I could right off anymore. In hindsight, now looking back to the previous year before our trip to Paris. I can now look back and see, “Oh! There were moments of odd behavior that I can attribute to what he was diagnosed with after our trip”

So, it was on this trip that I realized Sean was not waking up as early as he normally would. He wanted to sleep in. That is not his nature. He, typically, would have been up well before I was up, and he would have gone to the gym. He would have written at least, you know, three to five pages of work, at least read a book or something or even planned our itinerary, and he did none of those things on this trip.

And so, I found that very odd. And then every day we were on the trip, it seems his symptoms got worse. The idea of him not being able to call for a taxi for us-

John: Oh, boy!

Maria: -is so foreign because he is a person who lived in New York City for years and years. He would have had no problem hailing a cab anywhere.

John: Right.

Maria: And yet he was he was finding it difficult to understand the concept of hailing a cab. I can tell you humorous things that happen. And by the time we got to, basically, the end of our trip, I was in tears. I remember that and he knew something was wrong too. He did. But we never imagined that it would be what it was when we got back.

John: So, you saw that he was just clearly struggling and things- something was amiss. You did not know what it was yet, but something was terribly wrong.

Maria: Yes. Yes, something was wrong. I hoped for the best, always. I never thought the worst.

John: Right.

Maria: Yeah.

John: Listen, I have not met you, but just, everything about you, just your voice, your joy that comes across just across on the podcast. I am sitting here in Fresno, California. You are sitting in Los Angeles and your positivity, obviously is not something new. This is something you have always had. So you were thinking, “Okay. Maybe there is something wrong with him, but we could find out what it is and fix it and move on.”

Maria: Right. Right, right. That is what we thought.

John: So, talk a little bit about getting home from: Paris and going to the doctor’s and how things unfolded from there.

Maria: Well, I made him promise to see a doctor when we got back. He did, it took exactly two weeks from the time we landed. He saw the regular doctor who then refer you to another doctor and another doctor and eventually, he was referred to a neurologist who wanted to do a routine, sort of check on him. They thought maybe he was suffering from depression and may be varying levels of it his thyroid, you know things like that.

Because the blood work checked out fine. I remember the first doctor did a battery of blood work and tasks and he is like, “Everything looks fine.”, “On paper, I see nothing wrong with you.” And so, we just kept going to the next to the next specialist and exactly two weeks later, he got a call- a voicemail. Oh, I am sorry! He was referred to neurology and he was asked to take an MRI of his brain, because they thought they did not see he is suffering from depression.

And so after he got the MRI, few hours later, I guess, he got a voicemail message saying- from his doctor to immediately go to the Brain Tumor Center, the Brain Tumor Surgery Center in Santa Monica. We had to go there, like as soon as possible and it was an urgent call. I just remember him telling me on the phone and I was not far. So, I immediately went to meet him there and we were faced with these scans of his brain and we clearly saw these masses in his brain. He had several tumors in his head and the doctors were not very optimistic about his prognosis at that time.

John: What was his diagnosis exactly?

Maria: So, at that time, they believed it to be glioblastoma, which is a terminal incurable brain cancer and his was particularly, I think bad because they were so deep in his brain and they were so large. There was no chance of removing any of them and we really left with very few choices.

John: Okay, so glioblastoma. Being a layman and a non-medical person, what I know of it, but I want you to share really more about it, my memory, is that folks like John McCain, Gene Siskel, Beau Biden, Lou Rawls, people that I knew or heard of growing up that are in the public eye, they also died of that horrible disease. Share with our listeners, please Maria, what it really is, what do they know about it, and then, we could go more into your journey with Sean battling it. But, talk a little bit about what you were faced with and what you were told about this horrific disease.

Maria: Well, much like yourself, when I heard those words, glioblastoma, brain cancer, I immediately thought of you know, Senator Ted Kennedy at the time. [inaudible], who I was familiar with.

John: Right.

Maria: And I thought, “Well, I think this is something that affects much older people. I have very limited knowledge about it.” And so they proceeded to describe that it was a primary brain tumor, meaning it was just a tumor and a cancer that originated in the brain, would stay in the brain. It was not something like, you know, pancreatic cancer or any other kind of cancer that can metastasize or move to the brain. But, it was in the brain and they told us right away that there is no cure for this.

In fact, there has been nothing more, really, in terms of do standard of care, that was it, does not have many real advancement truly at that time for brain cancer. They were very honest when we asked what the prognosis was for him. And I just remember them asking first that if we had any children. Going back, even talking about it right now, I can go back to that little room that little [inaudible] room, in that hospital and I am starting to shiver, actually telling you this story.

Once they asked if we had a child or children, I just knew that the rest of what they were going to say was not going to be good.

John: Right,

Maria: And we said, “Yeah, we do. We have a three-year-old son.”, and I just remember their faces and how they immediately look down to the ground and I just thought, “Oh, God. No, please God.” And they just kind of shook their head and tried to be optimistic. He said, “With the standard of care, with the clinical trials that are out there right now, we could be lucky and maybe you could get eight years with Sean or five to eight years.”, and I was very lucky and I feel so lucky. What if we were unlucky, what would happen.

John: Right.

Maria: And they said, “Well, if you do nothing.”, meaning if you do not do the standard of care, which is really made up of a resection, which is removing the tumor, which already was not available to us. We knew. Then, he did the chemotherapy and radiation. But he said, “If you did not do any of that, from the looks of it, Sean would be gone within three months.”

I just remember holding onto Sean as if I was going to fall down, because I could not comprehend. It was almost like, I could see their mouth moving but I could not hear the rest of what they were saying after they said that. We left with the worst and best case scenario. We were hopeful and we never gave up hope, never gave up hope. Because there are some people who do live a long time with this disease and frankly, there are still anomalies on that risk. But we thought maybe that could be yes, maybe we could be lucky again. You know, we were lucky finding each other. We were lucky having Gus, and so maybe we could be lucky with this too.

We got exactly eighteen months with Sean from that day, got eighteen wonderful months. Yeah.

John: It is amazing how the brain works, Maria. You know hearing you talk about and being told that news and how the memory basically freezes everything and you could identify the room and how you felt in that room and probably everything in it right now. We probably cannot remember what we had for breakfast yesterday, but you could go back to that room at any time and you know everything that was in it, where the light switches, where the table was, how the papers were on. Everything from what the doctor was wearing to what you and Shawn were wearing; how life just gives us those certain moments where time stands still. Forever.

Maria: Yeah, it could bury. Yeah, it is buried in memory forever. Yeah.

John: Forever, forever. You know, this book here, which I am going to read a little something. Mehmet Oz, who is of course well-known doctor on television every day almost and and well-trusted, what he says here among all the other Rave reviews you got is, “Maria shares her path to balancing grief with the happy memories of her beloved husband. Her emotional journey will amaze you.”

I am amazed that you are even able to share the story today with me as vividly as you are and as clearly as you are. So, take our listeners a little bit into the next period, how did you and Shawn roll up your sleeve and face the challenges that were starting to come your way now, unexpected challenges that you are clearly, like nobody is prepared, for you guys were not prepared for, but you had to deal with.

Maria: No, we were not prepared for it. But I can tell you, with the title of my book-

John: Yeah.

Maria: -really says it all. You cannot do this alone. You cannot do life alone.

John: Right.

Maria: And for us, we definitely could not have done this alone, and we have our huge wonderful circle of loving family, our friend, my work family, and even my viewer- my family that watch me in the morning. You know, and without village, without the people around us, which includes our medical team and our therapists, it would have been a much more terrifying journey, and it was a terrifying journey. I just could not imagine how much more I could have been without all of them? Yeah.

John: And so, given your immigrant background and closeness to your entire family- extended family and immediate family, Sean sounds like he has also a very tight-knit and still has a very tight-knit family, friends viewers, like you said the village, got you through this.

Maria: Yeah.

John: Help you guys get through this.

Maria: They did. Sean’s family is amazing and they are fourth fifth generation- I do not know how many generations from their immigrant family-

John: Right, right.

Maria: -back from Ireland, generations ago. But you know, they grew up in Iowa and I like to say there is a lot in common with the Iowans and the Hawaiians, the people from Hawaii. There is a lot of vowels in this state, you know? Hawaii, Iowa.

John: Right.

Maria: But yeah, because the value of family and sticking together and doing everything what it takes to make it work, that was all in there and it turned really just- [crosstalk, inaudible]

John: How about Gus?

Maria: They are my family.

John: How about Gus? He was very young. How did you share the news with Gus and help him get through this very difficult period as well.

Maria: Yeah, he was the tough one, right? He was three at the time and kids are very astute, they are smart, and we do not give them enough credit.

John: Right.

Maria: They know. [inauidble] something is wrong. They know when something is not the same. So, we were always honest with Gus. I really have our therapist, our family counselor and our therapist to thank for helping Sean and I, not just as a couple, understand what we were faced with and what we were going to go through, but also help us find the language to tell a three-year-old and a five-year-old that his father had a disease. We used words like that. We did not say Daddy was sick.

Immediately when we got the news and I had enough sense to be honest with Gus, because I think of what happened to me as a child. It is interesting how life does prepare you for what comes later in life and be a kid at seven years old and finding out that my birth father died in a tragic accident was very traumatic for me and my brother. It was frightening. It was a terrifying time. I knew that I did not want Gus to feel that same kind of fear that I had at the time when I was a kid.

So, I can honestly say that I just tried to help him understand that he was safe and that we were all here for him to protect him and that we loved him and that nothing was going to change and we were just going to keep doing what you were doing. We are going to give Daddy the best medicine and doctors to help, [inaudible] disease get better.

John: How is he doing now?

Maria: You know, he is doing pretty good.

John: Good.

Maria: He is nine. I want to say that it was not without challenges. I do not want to say that it was perfect because it was tough at the time, like Gus particularly did notice that change like all of a sudden Daddy was not playing with him. He was not playing hard and rough and tumbling with him like he did before. And so, there were definitely stages where he was frustrated. And so, we just took the time to talk to him and therapy and it really does help. Like. having a therapist helped us understand it and help him understand through in games that were played through cards. They have a way of talking with children and us to help them understand and when he did, he eventually did understand and he became a helper.

He helped with so many things when it came to Daddy. Like, you know, helping with his IV even.

John: Right.

Maria: [inaudible, crosstalk] How to change the remote control for Dad? But, he did grow up a little bit faster as a result.

John: But then he felt a part of it and he was not an outsider just watching this movie happen to him. He was actually part of it.

Maria: Exactly. That is exactly right.

John: That is great.

Maria: For our listeners who just joined us. We have Maria Quiban Whitesell with us today. She is not only a broadcast meteorologist in Los Angeles area, but also an author who just wrote a book, You Can’t Do It Alone. We are talking about that book and you can find that wonderful book at amazon.com. Great Book Stores, youcantdoitalonebook.com or on Maria’s great website, which I am on right now. www.mariaquiban Q-U-I-B-A-N .com

Talk a little bit about, you know, ‘You Can’t Do It Alone’ is a fascinating metaphor for not only what everyone in the world is right now going through with this COVID-19 tragic strange weird time, but also for those everyone who is thrown some sort of curveball or another in life. Not as tragic as yours in many instances, let us just be clear. But, no one gets through this journey without hitting potholes and having rocks come their way. Those who are able to raise their hand and ask for help or lean on, as you said, a village, friends, family, colleagues seem to make it through better.

What can people expect from this very timely and important book that you have written, ‘You Can’t Do It Alone’, to help them make it through this pandemic, to help them make it through their crisis or tragedies or tough times, and also just to get through this journey of- and sometimes especially now with quarantine, what can feel like overwhelming loneliness?

Maria: Yeah. It is incredible, the parallel of what I went through, caregiving and also just the isolation that we felt sometimes, especially when Sean could not even leave the room at some point. We were quarantined as well because of his disease. I remember we had to wear masks at times because he had a very compromising system, and so it is strange how I still had the masks left over from that time. And then the pandemic happened and I just thought, “Wow. This is wild, that I am taking out these masks and wearing it today.” So, it just kind of hit me and brought me back to a little bit years ago.

But the loneliness that many people are feeling right now, I, first of all, feel so, so sad for those who have lost a loved one during this time of COVID. Not just the ones that have lost their loved ones to the coronavirus, how sad. But not being able to be with them in the hospital, not to be with your family, and not to have a funeral and a way to memorialize their loved ones is just sad. It is all happening now and so, I can definitely relate to the loneliness, the sense of having no power. You know, we are all sort of powerless in this situation.

And so, the book really does talk a little bit about that, about this powerlessness that we had during his disease. And what I learned is that you do have some power and we have the power to gain during the pandemic, to make some choices that can make a difference in our lives and we can reach out today. We have, thank God, technology, right.

John: Right. Right.

Maria: And we can find our village even if we do not have a circle of family and friends. Even if we do not have that, we can find the village and we can use technology, Skype and Zoom and research online and find that support group. I had a support group and during the caregiving time that I had with Sean, I found them through the UCLA Brain Cancer Caregiver Support Group and I got to say that, to this day, we still get together.

John: That is so nice

Maria: Yes. If you are listening and you feel alone and do not have a family, please, please know that there are groups, there are organizations that specialize in helping you find your village. There is Our House Grief Center, they are available. You can call your doctor and you can just do a Google Search and you will find them. Please reach out. If the first person is not the right fit, find the next one. You kind of have to go through several different ones until you find the right fit. And trust me, they are there. So, please do not go through this alone.

John: That is awesome.

Maria: We could not have. Yeah, so please reach out and find your village.

John: I am on your website, which I love and it is full of great information. For our listeners out there, you support many causes, the UCLA Brain Research Center, the American Brain Tumor Association, the Uncle Corey Foundation, Global Genes National brain tumor Society. So you are not only still getting through this, but you are also a huge ambassador and advocate now for education and more research.

Maria: Yeah.

John: So, that is just fantastic. Where are you now, Maria? It is x amount of years. Everyone processes. We are all different people and we process things, loss, and grief in so many different ways. How are you coping today? Because, I mean, still what you have accomplished, you know, if someone was 75 and they accomplished being a professional broadcaster, that is challenging. You are an author and now you are an author, a book that has gotten Rave reviews and is doing so well in terms of sales. Then also, you are a mom. You are a Lola. And, what is fascinating is you are a mom of different age ranges. So, you have got to adjust your mug your skills for different generations.

Maria: My mom says I should go into the Guinness Book of World Records for having the least sibling rivalry, because my kids are twenty-three years apart.

John: Unbelievable.

Maria: And it was natural. They are natural birth, the first [inaudible]. I think we did look it up. I think someone [inaudible] me. I think someone has an age range of twenty-five years or something. So, we go with that.

John: But, you are close. You are very close. Let us just say that.

Maria: They are close. I am close.

John: And how are you coping today? Like I said, you are so clear. You look for the joy, obviously. I could just tell in our conversation, you look for the happy in something. You look for the joy. How are you doing though, personally? How are you doing now?

Maria: Yeah. Thank you for asking me that. I have my days and I have my moments. I am doing good. I am actually doing pretty good today, and I really attribute that to the fact that I am talking about our book. I am talking about our story. And in doing so, I think that I am helping other people. If I can help others through their dark journey, it healed my heart. It really truly helps me to know that I have the sense of purpose.

When Sean was diagnosed with this disease, we asked all the questions of “Why? Why God did this happen to us?”, you know. We are Catholic. We go to church. We would try to do good things. I can only imagine that it is because, maybe this was part of our purpose. It was to write about it, write a story about brain cancer and maybe in some way, help inspire someone to find a cure, help others gain awareness about this disease, which gets very little funding by the way because it is not as big or as popular as the lung cancer. It needs federal funding so we can get a cure. This disease affects young and old, black or white, like it does not matter. It can affect you at any time in your life.

And so, I am hoping that with what I am doing and what I am advocating, that I can do our part to try to find a cure. I read a book by David Kessler, it is called ‘Finding Meaning’, and so it really resonated with me. Perhaps, this is part of my new moon and and what I am supposed to do in life.

So, how am I doing? I am good. We still go to church, of course. We have a very strong community that we have with our church and my son’s school. So, again part of my village and they make sure that we have something to do and we are always busy. I am even thinking about putting my foot in the dating world.

John: That is nice. Good for you.

Maria: Yeah, so it has been almost five years at this point.

John: Right.

Maria; And so, I still talk to Sean everyday. I do not ever not talk to him. I mean, why would I change my habit?

John: Right.

Maria: And so, I talked to him all the time and I know that he would want us to be happy. So, I really focused on that and I just tried to make him proud that we are living our best lives as best as we can.

John: Maria, I just want to say thank you for sharing your journey today and and your story. I know it is not easy, but your story will inspire everyone who hears it and help them get through whatever they are trying to go through. Your book, which is in my hand right here and I have gone through it. I have spent three hours with it the last two nights. ‘You Can’t Do It Alone’, I have to tell people, is so worth it. If you could buy it on Amazon.com or at at youcantdoitalonebook.com, or you could go to Maria’s site, mariaquiba.com. ‘You Can’t Do It Alone: A Widow’s Journey Through Loss, Grief, and Life After’

You are making amazing impact. You are truly inspiring, Maria. Thank you for joining us today on the Impact Podcast and making the world a better place.

Maria: John, thank you so much. I look forward to seeing you in person, one day.

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 and I am so excited to have my good friend Chris Ripley with us today. He is the Chief Executive Officer and co-founder of Smarter Sorting. Welcome to the Impact Podcast Chris.

Chris Ripley: Thanks John, I am really excited to be a part of this and have this conversation with you today.

John: Oh, well, this is a true honor for me because when junkies get together, when serial entrepreneurs junkie get together, we get to nerd out. So to me, this is a nerd out conversation where I get to have someone younger and smarter than me on the Impact Podcast talking about all things that you are doing to make the world a better place and I know your brand is. But before we get talking about Smarter Sorting, I want you to share with our listeners a little bit of the “Chris Ripley Journey” leading up to Smarter Sorting and all the success you have already had in your wake of great serial entrepreneurship businesses that you have created before Smarter Sorting.

Chris: Well, thank you for all of that. I remember the first time we talked, it was about two hours of nerding out. That was really cool. I remember that conversation.

John: Me too.

Chris: Smarter Sorting is the culmination of so many different weird journeys and I think that is a thing that all serial entrepreneurs have in common, where they are today and where they were twenty years ago. Most of them can not really trace back clearly with a straight line. They certainly did not know that they were going to be doing this thing. And that is for me too. So, you know, I started off my first venture-backed or college — sorry. My first venture-backed company was in college and that was a big data play, back when words like big data were not a thing and we were selling textbooks and it was pretty great. We raised a quite a bit of money and it was a lot of fun.

Chris: This guy, you may have heard of Jeff. He is also selling textbooks and you know, he became the richest man in the world. So he did a little bit better than we did but we learned a ton. We learned about really what happens when you take something. I think we can all remember back when we thought about the world as sort of an ordered place and that if it was a good idea, it had to work. And really then ran that into the big bureaucracy and we had to deal with government because there were all these regulations about shipping books. Believe it or not. Most favored nation status things came in and then stuff like, you know, just the data problems that are still plaguing companies today. Gosh, we see it today with the Taylor Still where they are having sort of 1990s issues with data. And so that was the first step.

Chris: Then I got into the chemical formulation business. Actually, I am lucky enough to have a couple patents granted to me. I manufactured some adhesives and some paints and what a weird part of the journey that was because, in terms of going from big math, big data, really complex high technology to making paint and adhesive the same way they were doing in 1950s and that was really a quality story about understanding how to source materials and that piece. I did not ever think that if you fast forward after maybe four or five other ventures, some of them venture-backed, that we would get Smarter Sorting and that Smarter Sorting would essentially be the marriage between big data and chemistry, the pieces and parts of what makes a thing. So I could not imagine a better training syllabus for the problem that we are solving right now and it is exhilarating every day.

John: So for our listeners out there, to learn more about Smarter Sorting go to the website which is just simply gorgeous. I am on it right now. You go to www.smartersorting.com. Chris, when did you start Smarter Sorting now that we know the backstory? When did you start it?

Chris: So actually how it got started is really weird. I had a business, an adhesive business. You see me in Austin, Texas and I just moved. I just moved the business here and this is in 2010 and I ran into a woman covered in paint in Walmart. It kind of looks funny a little bit. I said, “Hey, did you get any on the wall?” And she looked at me with these laser eyes like, “What do you do for a living?”. “I manufacture paint. What do you do for a living?” And she said, “I manufacture paint.” Now we are both looking at each other and we are both a hundred percent certain that the other is lying. So I say to her, you know, “Who do you manufacture paint for?” and she goes, “The city of Austin.” Now, I am a hundred percent sure she lied. What the heck is a city doing manufacturing paint? and she could tell that I am having none of it. She said, “You want to see?” and I said, “Yeah, I want to see.” So we went literally across the street or more of a highway, but you get the idea, really close by.

John: Right.

Chris: I see them unloading the backs of cars and I do not know who these cars belong to but there is a line of them and they keep taking out all of these chemicals which end up being a lot of paint and then they put them in these big cardboard containers. And then she takes me to another piece where there is another part of the facility. Where they are dumping that paint in the drums and trying to reconstitute into usable product and I was like, this is the coolest thing ever. And so I did a pro bono project for a few months at the city of Austin trying to help them turn that into a viable operation, which I am really excited to say we have and you can visit it here at Austin. They have got a great recycled paint facility and a great recycle paint product which I am really proud to be part of that.

Chris: One day I am trying to clean this big paint disperser. I think about it like a KitchenAid mixer that is about 10 feet tall and I am you know, they are on one of my days off trying to help them do it and they got all these bins with chemicals and I have not really figured out what all has about. Yeah, the big focused on the paint and I walked over and I went to go pick up a gallon of brand-new acetone because I had seen it there earlier in the day and I stepped across a painted yellow line on the concrete. I really mean this, this is not figurative, and as I stepped across it, three people immediately reacted. One person actually started crying, another person started yelling and another person started walking in tight circles. And what I had done is I crossed the line. Now I am in the Hazardous Waste Zone. That is not what it is regularly called, but that is literally what is happening.

Chris: Now I am picking up this brand-new gallon of acetone and they are yelling, “That is hazardous waste! You can not touch that!” I am like, “What do you mean? It is brand-new!” and that person comes down, begs me to put it down and they are sweating. There is fear in their eyes to put the thing down. I said, “What is going on? I just need this so I am going to go clean the paint in this.” They said, “No, no, no. Go in the office, get the credit card, you can expense it, but you can not use this.” I said, “Why?” They said, “Well, we sold it.” I said, “Who did? What did you? Oh, I do not want to steal from someone. Excuse me, who did you sell it to?” And then they named a national waste hauler, one of the largest public trade waste haulers in the country and I said, “What do they do with it? I thought about it a little bit and I am like, “Oh, they incinerate it. They pay you to incinerate it. How much do they pay you?” and then the guy looks a little sheepish. “No, no, that is just the words we use. We actually pay them six dollars a gallon.” So I said, “Oh never mind.” So I go and reach in there and pick it up again. And then the screaming starts again. And so long story short. I do not know. It was all you all. Sorry, really long story.

Chris: I found out that that yellow line, once things past that yellow line in all fifty states, is waste and has to be lit on fire amongst other horrendous things. You have this brand new stuff or this thing that has incredible value to the environment, incredible value to someone who otherwise could not afford to buy it new. I mean all kinds of beneficiaries of this product but it is not a product. It has got to be shipped to Ohio and be incinerated and you are like, “Oh this is awful.” So that is where the Smartest Sorting journey started and what I basically learned is something you are very familiar with, John, in your own business. Man, the regulations are so, so, so complicated and so you have two problems. One, this regulation problem, and the other is this product’s problem. And so how do you define both of them or we define both the roman math? And math is a pretty cool thing because once you can resolve sum to a number you could do it. But anyway, I got ahead of myself. That is when Smarter Storing started. We did not actually kick-off as an official company until 2015.

Chris: So it took me a while to wade through all of the different bureaucracies. I mean, California is its own giant bureaucracy, and then it is totally different in Massachusetts. It is just totally different than Iowa. I really had to start understanding that before we could credibly represent ourselves as the experts that can do this computation only for all products across the nation.

John: You know, let me just read this for our listeners out there. This is really one of the best mission statements I have ever seen in the waste or recycling or sustainability spaces. Smarter Sorting is a purpose-driven company committed to increasing sustainable options for unsold or damaged products. Our cutting-edge machine learning technology enables cost-effective compliant decisions for all unsold products and our process advances our partners zero-waste goals. Can you unpack that for us, Chris? Because there are so much there in terms of futuristic machine learning technology, but also zero-waste goals. You and I both know, and for our listeners out there, the world is moving to a circular economy and you are pushing us all there and helping us get there. Explain what that all means so our listeners can really understand that great mission statement.

Chris: Well, I think we start at the highest level and the highest level is that waste costs money. And so I understand that might not properly capture the mother earth piece of it, but it kind of in a very real way also does. This idea that if I take a thing and I have a thing and the thing does not do what the thing was intended to do and now I got to take that thing and I got to throw it away and fill on you know, what sometimes happens, it gets in a river or that I do not want to incinerate it. Like none of those things are good outcomes for the business. That is a real simple and absolutely correct view of it. At least for all of the major retailers and smaller retailers that we work with across the country in Canada.

Chris: And so the first thing is like they are wasting a lot of money. Okay, great. Well, the money thing probably was not enough and what ended up happening as you know, in the last twenty years we have grown a conscience about the real reason why it is not about money. It is about doing the right thing but is it not nice that you could also do the right thing and potentially or actually in our case always, save tens of millions of dollars. Alright, great. So now we do the right thing, we could save a bunch of money, but how are you actually going to do that? What is in your way? Well, what is in the way is a lot of well-intentioned people starting in the 70s have put tons of laws in place to stop the not-so-nice folks that are part of society from doing bad things with those products. So, you know, what are we talking about? We are talking about somebody charging to dispose of hazardous waste and then putting it in an unsafe landfill that ends up in the water supply. We are talking about people that instead of disposing of something properly or using it the way it should they use it irresponsibly and it pollutes something, some public land that it should not have. Those things are real problems. They happen a lot in the 80s. So a lot of well-intentioned people wrote these really excruciatingly complex laws.

Chris: Right now John, If you are a consumer product, a few of you dress up as a Clorox bottle for Halloween, you are under about sixty-two hundred different regulations that you would want to go through. If you are a retailer, you would want to have about fifty-two hundred in place. So as an example, Vermont has their own waste state toxic law. It is completely different with completely different calculations and understanding them, been watching the state, which is completely and totally different than California. And what is cool about California is they actually have over ninety waste districts that are all their own set of laws. And so now if you are a retailer and you say, “Okay, you know what, I want to do the right thing. I do not want to just do it because I want to make money off of it. Hey, you know what? I do not even care about making money. We have got some of those retailers that are customers of both Smarter Sorting and ERI that you know are going to do the right thing at almost any cost.” But now they can not figure out how to actually do it. They do not even know how to actually get it done because it is so complicated.

Chris: So the machine learning piece comes in. How do you make the absolute right decision if there are fifty-two hundred different decisions that need to be made and then after you make those fifty-two hundred different decisions, you still have to make the right decision? If you just picked the right one, then you have to track that so you can prove to a regulator that you did the right thing. That is a big burden. And so imagine we work with a small franchise to giant franchise, everybody knows it is a hardware store franchise then think of the one blank hardware. You probably can think of the one I am talking about.

Chris: And they are an average franchisee. They are not a big multinational corporation, they are a mom-and-pop who bought a franchise and run it in their hometown. They can not be burdened with hundreds or thousands of hours per product to make that decision. They just want to know what they are doing is right and want to be able to prove it to anybody who asks. So we use the machine learning piece to break down all the regulations into math. We use the machine learning piece to break down all the products into math. So we actually represent a bottle of bleach as a very, very complicated equation, and then we put those two equations against each other or we basically solved for one another and we ask, “This equation, let us say the California 311 rule, is it a pharmaceutical waste? Well, that rule has features to it. Do those features match up with the equation of this product? And if they do, maybe it is a California 311. If they do not, probably not.

Chris: So those are the types of pieces we do and then we have to prove all that to a regulator. So they will bless what we are doing. That is the road we walked down to get to where we are today, which I am really excited about. We were doing some big things with giant household names

John: Chris, I just want to go back to the complexity issue. So what you are saying is not only do we have national regulations, simply put, monitoring and guiding us on appropriate transport and disposal of these items, but then we have state regulation of the same set items and in some states, county regulations as a layover. So it is literally country versus state versus county laying all over each other the various regulations in each of those, which some of them can come across hairs and some could align and you do not know where you even fall out on those alignments and crossovers. So you are managing that triple layer of complex regulations that we see in America.

Chris: Yep, and then we are proving our decision and soaked up. The way it worked before Smarter Sorting is that you hired this extremely smart, massively credentialed person, let us call him Bob. Bob is fifty-six years old. Bob, has been in the waste world forever. He worked for the state for a little while. He has worked for this company, that company. Now, he is a consultant that makes five hundred dollars an hour. And you ask Bob, “Bob, what do you think? Is this California 307 or not?” I am making that example up. “Is this California 307 or not? And he says, “Well, yeah, I think we would say it is 307. I think the reason is that the specs on the blah blah blah …” And he just you know, he talks for about five minutes and you nod your head because he said a bunch of things that you did not understand.

Chris: You know, I am a de facto chemist and I can barely follow what they are talking about. And then you go, “Okay, so it must be a California 307, write that down.” Well, then what happens is Bob’s nemesis, Linda, comes in and Linda is a little bit younger than Bob. He knows she worked for a better agency and she displays into Bob and said that Bob is the dumbest person in the world [crosstalk] this meeting last fifty times. Bob and her, then argue and now the compliance director of that company looks at both of them like [crosstalk] and then has to decide whether he is going to make this product a 307 or not. And guess what? Neither one of those approaches can possibly ever, just by human nature, be unwound as traceable. We do not know how Bob got his answer or Linda got her answer. The human brain does not work that way.

Chris: So now Bob comes in and he yells at us because you know, we are dumb and we do not understand, we did not work at the places he worked. We hand him an equation and we had it broken down into arithmetic. We hand him the source of all the data that we used. We hand him a methodology report that shows exactly how we went about this particular code and then we showed him an overlying methodology portion that shows how we do all of our codes. Now we have handed about three inches of proof we used. You should weigh it. It is not like, you know, here is 14 pounds of paper and we said, “Okay, this is how we came up with it.” And what ends up happening is that Bob does not know what to do now because Bob is used to arguing with Linda and now he can not argue with these pieces of paper and it has just been great.

Chris: I mean hats off to some state retail regulators who have seen this as the opportunity to have that single source of truth because really, John, we are thinking about changing our mission statement. Let me see what you think. I would be interested to know your personal view. If you want to connect with me, connect with me personally on LinkedIn, or follow Smarter Sorting on LinkedIn. We would love to hear from you. But we think that safety is all right. We think that everybody has the right to be safe and we say everybody I do not just mean every man, woman, and child. I think every company has the right to be safe. I think that we have the obligation to be safe for the Earth that when I say safe, I also mean, from an environmental perspective, I do not just need help if you can not drink it, you know, but I also mean, “Is this the right thing?” and I think having that data out there as completely transparent for all to see is a way that you solve the problem. And so we think safety should be a right and we are working with some great companies, you know again, and so the biggest retailers in the world that agree with us and we think that this is going to be the new normal.

John: I hope so. You know Chris, I know you long enough now and I know your successes and I know how complex and difficult this product is, you know this problem really is and you are known as a problem solver. And now you know, the time has come, your company, some companies are born early. Some are born late. Your company is right on time in terms of where we are going as a society and I think we all deserve to have the chance to be safe and not be put in harm’s way.

John: That being said, Talk a little bit about solve and for our listeners out there who just joined us, we have got Chris Ripley with us. He is the Chief Executive Officer and the co-founder of Smarter Sorting. You can find them at www.smartersorting.com. Chris, what is the solve now? How does Smart –? Yeah, please walk us through.

Chris: Let’s walk us through. I’m so excited. He asked that question. So currently if there are a number of registers of Bob’s. There is a number of Bob’s that retailers require you to register with and so if you are a manufacturer, so let us just say I really like Clorox. So it is just today, I am dressed up as a chorus bottle and I have got to go register because I want to sell it on over a supermarket in California, or maybe I want to sell it Walmart, you know any big retailer. I am not picking on them that everything running all big Republic Wireless. And so now I am Mr. Quoc, that I have got to go pay the first toll at Bob and Bob’s like three hundred dollars per year that for me to register a product but it takes me 10 to 15 hours to register potentially. If I am a little brand maybe if I am Clorox. You do it really fast because I have got experts, you know, I have got people that are experts in talking to Bob but if I am a little brand like Tim’s beard oil, I am making that brand up, but here I can imagine, you got five SKUs and they just moved from making it in their garage. So now the contract manufacturing facility.

Chris: It is a lot of manufacturer like that America. What a great manufacturer started that way. For them, it might cost them fifty a hundred thousand dollars to go through the Bob process because they have got to hire experts to understand that process. So that is the current state and then we talked about Bob and Linda’s argument at the retailer that is the current state and then the last current state I want to throw out there is what the actual person that is working in the retail environment needs to do. So this is actually a real story. So this is public knowledge that is covered in the LA Times Home Depot. A great company does a lot of good things had an employee who put some empty spray paint cans in a trash can now I think if we went to a mall in America and asked a hundred people what you do with empty spray paint, can they might say, you know, you throw it away. I do not think that that person was trying to be an affair has to do anything bad. Well, but it turns out that there are some hazards going away and empty spray paint cans namely what happens is that not really all the way empty and there can be some problems.

Chris: They are both from an environmental perspective and a safety perspective from the fact that if that gets too hot they can actually explode or if they get processed it a certain type of facility and you do not know they do not know what is there, you can cause a fire that facility. So it is all real dangers. Home Depot paid like a twenty-six or twenty-seven million dollars fine for that. And again, these are great people at Home Depot, and that guy who made that mistake possibly a great person too. So he made the mistake because he thought he was doing the right thing. I imagine. I am not the guy, I was not there but you know, I imagine though he is doing the right thing. And so what is the solution now? Well, let us say your Tim’s beard oil, you come to smarter sorting, you are working with a vendor who uses smart a retailer. Excuse me, who uses smarter sorting the end when we were one of the biggest in my mind and if you are thinking about four minutes to register his product because we are not going to ask him specs on the rotor girders are you know something he does not understand.

Chris: We are going to ask him very simple questions about his product. What is really cool about these simple questions is he did not know the answer, the task that he would have to get done at a local laboratory are a thousand bucks. So very simple questions, then we are going to ask him to upload a few pieces of documentation. He is going to hit submit and within milliseconds he is going to have those fifty-two hundred regulations classifications back to him and not only that, we can show them exactly how we derived each one the other question. So now Tim’s [inaudible] three and a half units in, instead of it costing tens of thousands. Plus those three hundred dollars a year. We are going to trim a hundred dollars a year and that is just the beginning benefit for him because now that retailer has all the information they need immediately, now Tim can get his product on the shelves faster because that is what Tim wants to do. We do not sell the product, that is what the retailer wants to do. Say, decide to sell Tim’s product, they would like to make that easier but the best part in my mind is what we can do actually for the operator of the retail level.

Chris: So at the retail level, that operator, that guy in the back who made that mistake, they simply scan the product they already had to do that to get it out the inventory and the Smarter Sorting system tells them exactly what to do with it. And what is really cool is we were able to divert so much of those products to donation and recycling, so it is not just that we are compliant in handling it. That would be a good story. You know, but be careful not to blow up the sorting facility at the municipality. If you have it please do not put this facility of mine under there. That is a good story and you do that …

John: And you are also keeping us safe, which is also part of the great story.

Chris: Also a good story, but the part that I am most proud of is the amount that we move to donation. So we were working with Canada’s largest retailer and they had an award-winning donation program. We increase donations by seventy-three percent. So where did that go? That went through the Habitat for Humanity that they ended up re-selling those products in the Restore. If you have not been to a Restore, please go. There is one little in your local town. It is a great organization. And now that retailer, instead of paying, this is a true number John, fifty-two dollars, so light a gallon of bleach on fire they donated it to the Habitat for Humanity Restore, sold it for 2 bucks, who use those funds to build a house for someone who otherwise could not afford it. Who loses there? Who is the guy that is like, “You know, this stinks. I am really mad that a family who needed some bleach got a discount on some bleach. That family who needs the home got a home built for them.”?

Chris: You know, you are an investor in one of these big, you know retailers. You won if you are the person working behind the store. You won because you did the right thing. Oh, and by the way, we report back to them on the good that [inaudible]. They get a little lift in their job. It is a great job.

John: Wait. So Chris, when I first got involved with ERI and was co-founder and started on our sustainability journey, it was all the rage to talk about triple bottom line businesses. You have in essence turned that model upside down and inside out. What you just gave as an example has six, seven, eight bottom lines in terms of the re — first of all, Smarter Sorting wins as an innovator and disruptor and literally creative company that has created a new and better solution. So Smarter Sorting wins. The retailer wins. The nonprofit wins. Okay. Now, everybody along that ecosystem also wins. The people who live in the community of the nonprofit wins. The environment as a whole wins. Everybody in that ecosystem stays safer because now you have kept that hazardous product out from exploding either at the retail level or at the nonprofit level or just somewhere in some landfill or waste bin somewhere. So everybody wins and they are seven, eight, nine bottom lines from what you have done here.

John: So triple bottom line really is almost a legacy terminology that is outdated and companies like yours that are going to be innovative and creative and truly disrupt. The old paradigms are going to create bottom lines that are way beyond three and probably closer to ten.

Chris: Yeah, and I think that you asked that question about circularity. So I think that we do not know for a factor of ten better than the triple bottom line. But whatever, word evolution above the triple bottom line and one thing I want to make sure that is clear to everyone. You can see this on our video it is on LinkedIn. Every single part of this is tracked. So when you get a lot of companies telling you about how great they are, you know? They that they are going to do this, they are going to do that, all the people that they help and I hope that they are all telling the truth, but you have to take their word for it. With us, the part that is awesome is that software that device that runs in the back of the retailer or at a processing facility like at ERI has done something like that is tracking all of this.

Chris: So, you know, I like the Reagan quote, you know “Trust but verify.” So how do I know? Well, you know because it is all there. It is recorded down to the millisecond. You got pictures. It actually takes a picture of the item, and then the receiving folks who end up getting this machine on their end and it is just like FedEx when you send something, you got a tracking number. You do not just send it, get the tracking number, and hope it gets there. You get the confirmation that it got there on the other end. Those types of pieces are really important. But going back to the circularity piece. So I think you know, this is an evolution that is one hundred times better.

Chris: The next evolution of circularity in the next piece that we are working on and when I say we, I know John you are working on it. It is your passion. My passion in the next piece is how do we get the parts of those products? So it can not bleed or it would be the actual gallon or pewter. How do we get the whole of that computer that is now a brick? How do we get that thing back into the chain? So it is going to become a computer again. And that is true circularity and here is my hypothesis and I am a scientist. So the hypothesis does not always have to be right but I am pretty good this one is right is that in order to be able to do that, we have to know what a thing is. And once we know what a thing is, we can do something with the thing. But if you know when you started ERI, you know, you were lucky to say that this was a laptop and this was a desktop. That was the only definition. That is not going to be good enough to get us to the point of being able to recycle every bit in part.

Chris: And so as we continue to break down what a thing is, not what a marketer says it is, but what really is we are going to be able to get closer and closer to that goal of circularity. And I know that actually, you guys are a lot closer to it than we are because you have so many uses for the parts of computer’s electronics. Where they can literally be plugged back into a new computer whereas, you know, a gallon of bleach little bit farther along but we think we are on our way.

John: No truer words can be said Chris and for younger listeners out there, young entrepreneurs that are working on new solutions as Chris pointed out. One of the major pillars of sustainability and the circular economy is transparency and that is not going away and what you have offered here your solution is truly the transparent solution in terms of tracking these materials.

Chris: Well, I appreciate the kind words on I think that we are relying on a life mission here. I am really proud to be on it with you. And let us continue to soldier on.

John: Chris, before I let you go today, we have got always a whole slew of young entrepreneurs around the world that listen to the podcast and send me emails all the time. And since you have started so many ventures and raised money, which is sort of the necessary evil of being the creatives that we fall into. Can you share some of your tips of wisdom to them so they can go out and make their dreams a reality?

Chris: Yeah, I have got a bookshelf that is full of the books of the day for entrepreneurship and some are really great. Like The Lean Startup’s amazing. There is some really great sales book Amy Schwartz, Barb of Techstars just probably wrote the greatest sales book ever written for tech or any sort of technology startup, but also just a start-up in general and sell faster than his nemesis’ book and that is great. And those are super foundational reads. And if I am going to invest a little because I do not have very much right now. But if I were to bet a little bit, you know, I am not sharked yet. But when I do, I really make sure that they have read those but the person that I am most in tune with and I do not know him personally, but Reid Hoffman.

Chris: Reid Hoffman says things that I have never heard anything truer than the things he said and the two that I think are the most important and this one is the one that I think most younger entrepreneurs fail with; You have to do things that do not scale in order to do things that massively scale. Again, that is Reid Hoffman’s words, not mine. And that is so true. You know, you end up with folks that sort of onto, we call it bimodal in the data industry. They are on two sorts of pillars apart from each other, polarly opposed. One is, they are only going to do things that do not scale for their whole life. That is okay. There is nothing wrong with that. It is just probably not going to be an earth-shattering business. Then on the other side, they are so religiously devout to this idea that they are only going to focus on this idea that massively scales without ever distracting themselves from it.

Chris: And the fact of the matter is that in order to get something launched in the world, you first have to take a step into the way the world is doing it currently. Very rarely and if ever has there been an opportunity to immediately change the way everybody is doing everything without having some understanding of how they are doing it now or participation in that process. So I love that quote and then the next quote from Reid Hoffman is have a lot of plan B’s and what he means there, he does not mean like here is my plan A: world domination, because my plan B is I will make the state taxes. He needs to have fifty plan B’s and make that your constant daily opportunity to explore what you are doing and this podcast is just amazing for that purpose. It is not on as often as I would like but it is a really good resource.

Chris: So those are the pieces, you know, those two books and Reid Hoffman are our sorts of the folks that I have decided to distill down into my world as being the most useful to me but I think that if we said, “Okay do not read any books. You are not going to listen to a podcast.” What is one piece of advice? It is you have to actually do something? Well, it sounds really weird but I help teach a class at university grad students for entrepreneurship this year and they were all interested in planning and writing and planning and thinking and writing pad. I do a lot of planning, thinking, writing, I know you do too. But you actually have to go out there and do stuff and you have to really embrace the idea that when you are going to do something, you are going to do it completely wrong, fall flat on your face and some people are gonna laugh at you. You start to be totally okay with that and it is not even just totally okay with that. You have got to embrace that and that is the piece that I wish I had a better way to teach that because people are like, “Well, you do not like to read another book I can think about it a little bit more then I would not have to do that.” It is like no man. That is the reason you want to do it. You want to do it so you go out there and get that bruise and learn from it.

Chris: That is the point. I think that is part of little bit I am seeing that more and more of the people that are not willing to make that choice. They want to have complete certainty of it going to work first and it is like, that is not my reality. Nothing that I have done is more something that I was completely certain to succeed.

John: I love it because you are so right. I see so many young entrepreneurs that hand ring and are on their fourth or fifth draft of a business plan and it is like, hey, put the business plan down, and just like you just said Chris, no greater advice than what you just said do, do, do. Just do it. Do not read it again, do not hand ring it again and change a T or change a DOT on and I. Make it happen, and like you said failure is not really a failure. If something does not work it is just a lesson in the journey if you are going to really go make it to the finish line one day and so I am with you. You are so right. And that is why you are Chris Ripley and you are so successful. For our listeners out there that want to find Chris or his great company Smarter Sorting, as he said earlier go to the LinkedIn page for Smarter Sorting and join the LinkedIn Smarter Sorting page or to his website www.smartersorting.com

John: Chris, you are the reason. You exemplify the reason why I have the Impact Podcast. It is about people like you coming up with innovative and creative solutions to real-life problems that we all face and you are truly making the world a better place. Thank you Chris Ripley, for being with us today.

Chris: Thanks John.

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

John: Welcome to another edition of the Impact Podcast. I am John Shegerian, and I am so honored to have my friend today, Gregoire James. He is the commercial director and founder of the International Aviation Waste Management Association. Welcome Gregoire.

Gregoire James: Thanks John. Thanks for having me. It is a real honor to be here.

John: Well, it is an honor to have you for many reasons. We have never covered the topic of aviation and circular economy before, you are an expert on that, but before we get talking about your very important organization, the IAWMA, I want you to share in your own words, your background and biography leading up to the founding.

Gregoire: Sure, I am happy to. Yes, I guess it goes back to maybe around 2008 or 2009 where I took an interest in the recycling industry. I was working as a commercial real estate broker in Toronto, Ontario. I found that there were gaps in waste and recycling in the commercial sector just in the real estate industry, and it really started when I had gone out for coffee as they say, that the starts always serendipitous. It really started me coming back from getting some coffee and just realizing that I was not wanting to throw the coffee cup that I had, so at the end of the week I had five cups, and of course I took them home in a plastic bag. About two or three weeks, I had about dozens of cups in my room and I realized at that point, it was not garbage. I was just curious just really about were the cups recyclable or where they not, it turns out that they are, and that there are certain fibers that can be with cups. It could be certain fibers that can be taken out, but it is all obviously not a perfect circular economy example like the aluminum can.

John: Right.

Gregoire: In 2009, I actually left my corporate real estate job and I started a company called GeneraCycle. Genera is the Latin word for sorting. GeneraCycle was a sorting cycle because I really found that there was not really a lot of source separation taking place, and I thought maybe that was a clue of where to start. Ultimately, I found trying to help real estate companies and brands and groups to try and build their recycling profile, and it just seemed that the industry was moving at a million miles an hour or. I started with a bicycle. I have actually just picking up compost waste in the city of Toronto and we did worm composting which is a mystery in it of itself. We will have to book another podcast for that.

John: Of course.

Gregoire: Yes, but it was not until 2015 or 16 that I started poking around the airline industry, and I have a couple of a mentors who had been executives in the airline industry. We started calling Airlines and airports to try and find out what they were doing and it turns out they were doing a lot. There is a lot of really great folks in the industry. They are doing a lot of really good things well-intentioned, good partnerships good collection. The challenge is that there are laws and regulations that would prevent recycling sometimes from international flights for example. There is also really … as much as a symbiotic relationship exists between airlines and airports, they share a lot of resources. A lot of the times as we know, waste and recycling just kind of takes a backseat. In 2017, we were selected for a global research project by the US Federal Aviation Administration, it was funded by them. They wanted us to look at policy regulations and practices on a global scale to see if there were any examples both in the policy as well as the regulatory framework to perhaps bring that knowledge into future policy development in the US.

It was really an interesting journey for two years. I would love to talk more about it perhaps will cover some of the things in our show, but really what I found from the research was that there was no one single group that was really aggregating the solutions and supporting the industry in a way that I thought was needed. That was kind of the development of the international Aviation Waste Management Association.

John: When you were growing up, where your mom and dad greenies or was their recycling going on in your house or in your community? Where was the … sometimes when I have all the wonderful guests that have appeared on the show over the last thirteen years, it is fascinating to learn the backstory from where they are from. Was some of your DNA or inspiration gathered from family friends colleagues, community. How did that really germinate?

Gregoire: That is a good question actually. My childhood was one of great interest like most probably, but I can only speak for myself in that. I was always curious, and often I would drag my feet on projects or I would drag my feet on actually getting things done, but I liked washing my dad’s car. I took it apart and cleaned all the pieces and at the end of the five-hour process, it was this brand-new car [inaudible] My dad was always fascinated about that. My dad was also an entrepreneur, and he was also a fixer. He like to fix things and do things in a way that adapted his own style, so I probably took a page out of that. The curiosity was really … I like to figure things out before I got into them. Inherently when I tried to figure things out on my own, I follow different paths that that perhaps would not lead you if you were instructed to do them that way.

John: Got it. So talk a little bit about the advent, where were you and where was the sort of epiphany that, I have got to do this. I got to stop planning it and I have got to do. That is really the moment that I am always interested with entrepreneurs and creators and makers. Where did you stop going from, “Hmm, this sounds interesting. I got some friends in the aviation industry and I really do want to make the world a better place, but I have got to stop thinking about it. I have got to actually start doing it.”

Gregoire: That is a really good question. It is funny because in 2010, when I started Genera Cycle, the goal was to try and just do everything. Our vision was a landfill free globe, and I think as a destination, that was a great place to go. A good friend of mine asked me, he said, “Greg you have this recycling idea, what do you want to do?” I said, “Well, I guess I just want to make someone landfill free.” He said well, “What about a landfill free city?” I said, “Well that is a big idea. I do not I do not think I could do that.” but of course, I started thinking about all the moving pieces, maybe if we get the municipality in the government’s to help and all these different stakeholders, the supply chains, the catering companies, the restaurants, maybe it would work, then once we actually ideated on that, and he said, “Well, what about a land feel free country?” I said, “Well listen, a landfill free city is one thing, but a landfill free country, that is just off the charts.”

You see where this story is going. I mean ultimately, we arrived at the landfill free globe, and it is crazy of a story is it was? I often always say if we all aligned ourselves today, at the end of the week, we could probably all get there if we just stopped what we were doing and focus on that, but of course we cannot do that, but it was after about two years of trying to sell this kind of landfill free globe, cool aid which resonated with some, but also alienated others, right? It was good. It excited people, but it also was somewhat alienating as well. I had to really look deep inside and dig deep really. That answer your question, I had to dig deep to say, either I am going to do something or I am going to not do something and make a fool out of myself. I secured a meeting with Derek Gray, he was the manager of sustainability at at the Pearson Airport in Toronto, and he loved what we are doing and he said, “Greg, I love your ideas, but unfortunately, none of them are going to work. We have we have long-term contracts here, our buildings are fully lease, there is nowhere for you to sort. We have programs here, but it is all complicated.”

So I went home kind of crushed and I just said, “You know what, I am just going to buy a bicycle, and I am just going to start collecting food waste in the city.” Which I did. I started collecting food waste on a bike. I cycled 10,000 miles over two years. I diverted about twenty thousand kilograms of combos on a bicycle. Greatest day [?] of my life John, it was the best place to be. It was great, it was really cool, but that was really where it all started. When I actually served and completed this FAA project, I almost had to reinvent myself, and it was not until I thought about that bike program where I was controlling the sales, the marketing, the program development, the outreach, the processing, we had a facility where we are processing and making soil. We were partnered with Bullfrog Power, which was a clean green energy source, we even had Vega, which is a plant-based protein supplement that was providing a sponsorship to make sure that we were plant-based.

John: I know Vega. Well, it is a great brand.

Gregoire: Totally.

John: Yes.

Gregoire: It was having a real awareness of all those pieces of the ecosystem in terms of delivering a successful program that I just adapted it to the IAWMA and we find that … again the stakeholders are not really working together as much as they could be or should be.

John: Awesome. I am on your website now, it is a great, great website. For our listeners out there that want to see Gregoire and his organizations wonderful work at the International Aviation Waste Management Association, please go to www.iawma.org. When did you launch this website and actually put it out there that you are doing, you are doing you are going to make the world a better place.

Gregoire: That is a good question. I was stuck in the woods as they say, for an entrepreneur. Sometimes you try and create something and then apply it to the industry or to the market in which you are focused on. I tried that for many years with GeneraCycle not getting a lot of attraction [?] I realized that I was the problem. I realized I needed to get out of the way because ultimately, I was not going to be the only person who was going to help this industry, it was the industry that was going to help itself, but I was in a meeting with a good contact of mine, one of the airline’s here in Canada. He is a director of government affairs, and he said to me, “I love what you are doing. Great that you did this research and you found all this data.” He is like, “What can we do for you?” I said, “I do not know. I said I just maybe help you with some of your recycling or your programs.” I was stalling and stuttering. I was not sure what to do John. He said, “Well, let us know.” And I said, “Well, I have this International Aviation Waste Management Association.” And he said, “What? International what? And I said, “Oh, International Aviation Waste Management Association.” He said, “Well, are we a member of that? How do we become a member?” And I thought … this was about a year and a half ago. It hit me and I said, “Well I created it like two days ago, the famous entrepreneurial story where you just thinking of things and thinking how to apply them and it was not until then that it kind of dawned on me that it just ended [?] of itself, it just really provided a common sense approach to some of the issues and challenges that each of the stakeholders have on their own. I guess just before August of 2019.

John: Awesome. That is what I love. You are just really, really the perfect entrepreneur that dream something up so void [?] in the marketplace wanted to make a difference and then you started doing. You know Greg, why so many young people that I know that are well-intentioned never get to the do, and least you started doing which I just love and that is why the second you contacted me and started showing me all this great work that you are up to, it was very, very attractive and it makes people lean in, and I believe it is going to be a massive success because of the void that you are filling. Can you share with our listeners who are the stakeholders that you are representing, that you are bringing together, that you are bringing together to collaborate, to effectuate change?

Gregoire: Yes. It is an interesting question because often, I think about that in my private thoughts at night before I go to sleep. As an entrepreneur, the visual of success of an entrepreneur is always predicated by all the 10,000 hours that proceeded. If we took food waste as an example, I mean food waste represents a tremendous loss of productivity, a lot of food waste that could be consumed and thrown away to cause a greenhouse gas, also methane which is twenty-one times more detrimental to the environment than carbon on its own. As landfills the food waste … in landfills actually have [?] but if we look at food waste as an example, there is really no national program. There are food banks and there are composters and there are laws in place, but all these activities and support mechanisms are very fragmented, so in my perfect world, I guess it would be great for an industry to press a button and have access to great composting, great food donation partners. One of the silos of food waste is that even the restaurants and the supply chains at airports themselves do not have access to sometimes great food waste programs. That is one of the gaps. There are other material gaps, plastics is a very interesting one.

It is interesting because consumers think that plastic is maybe not as good as it needs to be or should be. A lot of people are saying we should ban plastics. A lot of people are saying plastics are in the environment. While these ideas are rooted in perspective of where they come from, the reality is that plastic as a tool in our industry is very valuable. I mean, plastic even prevents food waste if you wrap your chicken or something in plastic, it is not going to go bad. It is going to have a longer shelf life, but the challenge with any of these waste streams is that there is not an echo system to support them. If we looked at our water for example, when we turn on the tap, there is a system in place that collects that water and cleans it, but there are not these systems in place for various waste streams. Plastics is so interesting because it actually saves so much fuel if we were going to use … for example reusable or metal forks and knives or metal cups, which would be more elegant perhaps, they would consume more fuel in the air, so a lot of error airlines rely on plastics.

Plastic collection program is another one that we are really looking at to both shape the narrative, to both show companies how to use it responsibly, and how to collect. We are exploring those avenues.

John: You are interested in both the airline’s, the airport’s themselves, the flight kitchens, and bringing them all together including the supply chains, the collection chains and really closing the circular economy in the aviation industry.

Gregoire: Yes. Actually, that was what we really found out from the research that we did. I was in Indonesia actually at the airport in Bali, this was going back about two and a half years ago. They incinerate a lot of their waste there. This is an archipelago of eighteen thousand islands in Indonesia, so you can imagine the waste infrastructure that is needed just to support that, but I went into this building and I knocked on this door, and I said, “I am Gregoire James, I am here to research your recycling programs.” And they said, “Where did you come from?” And I said ” [inaudible] just landed a couple days ago. I just thought I would knock on your door because I tried calling and emailing, and I never got anywhere.”

John: That is nice.

Gregoire: Yes. What is interesting is that the reason I share that story, is because when a plane lands in Bali and is catered to go back to wherever it is going, the airport is not really involved in that process. The plane offload their materials, the airport looks at it and says, “Well, I guess we should just incinerate this stuff. We do not know where it has come from, who it belongs to, what is in it. It is not categorized or identified or it is not sorted. Well, I guess we should just incinerate it.” We have this kind of rudimentary activity that is happening in different countries. I mean, if you go for example to San Francisco Airport, they have maybe more robust programs there, but again, there are flights coming from hundreds of destinations and no one knows what is really coming off these planes. The airport’s really need to kind of start working a little bit more on the sustainability side with airlines rather than each on their own working in their own silos.

John: Now you started, your getting traction, you have got some great leaders on your advisory board. What is the future? What are some of your key initiatives and goals in the months ahead? Science is going to win, COVID-19 is going to get under control fourth quarter of this year, first quarter of next year. What is your eyes on in terms of the future of the international Aviation Waste Management Association?

Gregoire: We aim to advance evidence-based circular economy knowledge and adoption in global aviation. And so, if we just took the evidence-based portion, we want to actually get the knowledge into the supply chain to ensure that at the time of collection the material can be identified. I guess in a perfect world, standards come to mind. If we had some standards in the industry. Listen, the airline industry is no stranger to standard. Every runway that you land on is the exact same in terms of the lighting, in terms of a marking. It is a standard. As a close and controlled echo system that the aviation industry represents, standardizing some of these consumables supply chains, these collection chains … if we created a platform where everyone can identify the same things, I mean in a perfect world, it sounds great, but there are hurdles to that, and so we hope to address those hurdles with some of our partners.

As an industry aggregator, we also look to add value to our member base. We have engineering groups, we have food waste partners, we have packaging waste partners. To try and give us a sense of what they think we should be doing. While I founded this association, I founded it on necessity. I did not find it to create a job or to use it as a lever to get me into more markets. It was just more out of necessity. Those are the two things. The partner development and the standardization which I think are directions that we would like to go.

John: You are really aggregating experts to help solve the issues that you have uncovered over the previous years.

Gregoire: Indeed.

John: What is it look like in the years ahead, and what is your outlook on us achieving zero waste, not only in the aviation industry which of course you are covering. As a society as a whole, is that an achievable goal when we all say zero waste. Gregoire, is that something that we should be really aiming for? Is that too lofty of a goal?

Gregoire: It is interesting because the economy leverages the environment to make sure that the economy can survive. I think that we should maybe leverage the economy to help the environment. What I mean by that is, is there really a reason that we have 14,000 different types of forks and knives? Can we can pick a polymer? Can we color them all one color? I speak of these of these examples not to try and dictate or say what we are doing is not right. I guess what I am really trying to say in essence is that, can we work together to create a system that can all help us rather than confuses us. Henry Ford came up with the assembly line, and did that help manufacturing? I think so. I am not an expert in this field, but I look at that, and the reason why the economy is thriving, is because each of us have great ideas, each of us have value that we can provide, so if we flip the narrative, if we use the economy as a tool for the environment, could we apply that great intellectual property to streamline things.

I like to think yes, so to answer your question, let’s try really hard to recycle items, and it is hard to collect items. They say that do not put your straw in the recycling bin because it ties up the morph [?] Why we do not just create a straw, color them all the same color and have … I am getting into idealism here, which probably is not going to help us get very far, but you see kind of where the ideation is rooted?

John: Right. What is, “How garbage saved my life”?

Gregoire: Yes. I alluded to you earlier about this bicycle program that I started. At one point, I think I had about a hundred and twenty pounds of coffee grinds in a backpack that I was able to transport in one go. It was a Friday night, I think October like five years ago. Just before the sun went down, I actually got hit by a car and it was a really tragic thing. I actually remember thinking that I was on a roller coaster ride because I had never moved that fast in my life before like one point to another. Just think about that. Of course someone call 911 and my bike was wrecked, and I was thrown. I jumped into the ambulance, they picked me up. All I remember the firefighter with two hands you have this backpack and he is like “What is in here? Like, “What is this?” The paramedics said had I not been wearing the backpack of a hundred twenty-five pounds of coffee grinds. She was like, she is like, she had never seen a bicycle in that shape and the person survived. It was a non-survival event, but it was interesting because I had this mountain backpack, you know those big ones?

John: Yes, of course.

Gregoire: It was those big ones with the ones with the waist harness that actually like a belt.

John: Oh my God.

Gregoire: It actually kept my spine erect and it absorb the entire impact even when I fell because it was so heavy. I felt on the back, so it actually saved my life here. Here I was saving it and it saved mine.

John: I love that. That is the beginning scene when Netflix does a documentary on you and how you created the circular economy behavior in the aviation industry. It all starts with the accident, with the backpack and the coffee grinds in there, and you living, and you go on to become this aviation circular economy hero. I love that story. Netflix should do that now.

Gregoire: That is awesome.

John: That is just great. Listen, before we have to sign off for today Gregoire, I would love you to share any final thoughts you have, because there are lots of young people that is coming up even younger than your generation that want to do what you are doing. They are inspired by the International Aviation Waste Management Association and your work, and they want to become the next Gregoire James and go make a difference. Any advice to the young entrepreneurs that might be sitting in Shanghai or Mumbai or Dubai or even in just Boise, Idaho that really want to make the world a better place?

Gregoire: Yes. It is a struggle for sure to try and get anything off the ground. Entrepreneurial folks have a certain idea and they try and find out how to fit that idea into the real world. The challenges is that, often their thoughts are rooted in in a world that does not exist. The challenge I think that entrepreneurs have or folks have when they are looking at entrepreneurship is that they are living in this world which is absolutely amazing. I mean just the idea of having a cell phone where hundreds of years ago, all the materials that were in that phone. We are buried somewhere. It was a mystery, right? The best way that you can relate to is … I look at entrepreneurship as making a sandwich, so if you want to make a sandwich very easy. You get all the components. The meat, the veggies, the bread. It is a wonderful thing, right? Starting something that has not been created before, before you even can get the bread, you have to actually go farming, you have to actually find out how bread is made, you got to perfect the process, and then by the time you make the bread, you got to figure out where you can get the veggies and the meat and the supply chain and how to look at making sure that the meat is in a supply chain that is refrigerated, so you almost have to create in order to create the sandwich using it as an example.

You have to kind of peel the layers back and do each of those on their own, and become an expert at those before you can even get to the bread or even get to the sandwich. I guess the best advice that I could give anybody is just look at the pieces that you have and then try and find out the pieces that you need. Really, it is just one step in front of the other. People always ask how have I gotten this far? The real answer is I just took the next most obvious step.

John: I love it. That is really perfect advice, and you are doing, I love it because you are not only your creator a maker and a founder, but you actually took it from your kitchen table and you actually started doing it. You know what? You are the reason truly, that I do this show. It is for great people like you to platform you, your organization your journey, that I started this show thirteen years ago and I continue to do it. I am committed to it because it is up to us to collaborate and to share these stories, your story which are really important because they inspire the next generation behind you, and you are much younger than me. For our listeners out there, to find Gregoire and his very, very important organization, aviation’s most trusted circular economy knowledge source. The international Aviation Waste Management Association, please go to www.iawma.org. Iawma.org. Gregoire, this has been a great day, I look forward to you coming back on and giving us further updates to the progress that you are making in aviation. You for sure are making an impact and the world a better place, and for that I am very grateful.

Gregoire: Thanks for having me John, and thanks so much for having the show. I really appreciate the work that you are doing and having a platform in which we can discuss these as something that you created many, many years ago. I am a huge fan of your show and truly an honor to be here. 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 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 John Shegerian and I am so honored and excited to have with us today Helen Lowman. She is the president and CEO of Keep America Beautiful. Welcome to the Impact podcast Helen.

Helen Lowman: Thank you, John. I am so happy to be here.

John: Well, it is wonderful to have you here in the middle of September and you are in Connecticut and I am in Fresno, California, but we sound like we are almost in the same room together, almost.

Helen: We, basically– basically, we are.

John: We are. So, you have been with Keep America Beautiful as its president and CEO since May of ’17. So, before we get talking about all the great things that you are doing at Keep America Beautiful, can you please share with our listeners a little of the hello moment, backstory, your bio, what did you do before leading up to this very important position?

Helen: Yes. So, well before– right before, I was actually in Washington, DC and had been working for the federal government both at FEMA and at Peace Corps. So, at FEMA, I was Director of Individual and Community Preparedness. So, working across the country to try and encourage individuals and communities to take steps to prepare for disasters which, as we know, is becoming more and more important as the number of disasters increase. You are– in California, you are experiencing one of those right now.

John: Right.

Helen: Unfortunately, with the fires.

John: Yes.

Helen: But, at the same time we are seeing hurricanes and tropical storms hit Texas and Louisiana and there are things that individuals and communities can do to prepare for those disasters. So, that was what I was doing immediately before. I spent many, many years working for the Peace Corps both as staff, also, did my volunteers but, interestingly enough, early in my career, I worked in the state of Texas. I am actually from Texas. I grew up there and worked for the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, with communities in Texas to increase recycling and to prevent waste from going into landfills and that was really when I first became familiar with Keep America Beautiful because I would go to these communities and the municipal leaders would say, “Oh, go speak to Donna with Keep Lubbock Beautiful. Go speak to Terry with Keep Houston Beautiful,” or you know, I mean there were these local leaders that were running their Keep America Beautiful affiliate and they were the ones who are really making things happen in their communities. I ended up during that time serving on the Keep El Paso Beautiful board and the Keep Austin Beautiful board, and so, yes. So, when I was at FEMA and I was looking to leave, I got a call from a recruiter who said, “I am not sure you would be interested in this but have you ever heard of Keep America Beautiful?” And I was like, “Wow, my life has come full circle,” and I said, “I love Keep America Beautiful. I love the affiliates and would be thrilled to be considered for that job.” And so, it has just been really fortunate that I was offered the position and I have been here now for three years and I have the greatest job in the world.

John: So, Helen, it is heartening to hear of someone of your background and quality wanted to go with one of the most iconic, and brands, and recycling, and environment in America. We all grew up with Keep America Beautiful.

Helen: Yes, absolutely. Everybody, it is interesting, I mean if you are thirty-five and above, forty and above, you know the organization because of all the famous public service ads-

John: Yes.

Helen: -that we had on television at that time and when there were only three television stations, most likely you saw them, but you know it is one of those things now, it is a little bit harder and it–

John: It is true.

Helen: Younger generations do not necessarily know of us. So, we are trying to do more to really get out on digital and social media to become– kind of renew the relevance of Keep America Beautiful for a younger audience.

John: That is so interesting, and for our listeners out there, I am on your website right now. It is a gorgeous website. Keep America Beautiful is at kab.org.

Helen: Yes.

John: kab.org and it is gorgeous and it is full of great information and action steps and I want to get into that. So, first of all, how do you evolve a brand, a legacy, and an iconic brand like Keep America Beautiful from our generation to the next generation, a more social media digital generation?

Helen: Well, that is exactly what you do. I mean, there are so many different platforms and so many different ways to spread the word and what is great about this generation is that they really care. They are really leading this movement now and Keep America Beautiful is a movement, that is the thing about it, is there are– last year, we had five million people either volunteer for us or participate in our programs, which is incredible. We have six hundred and fifty affiliate communities across the United States that are the grassroots leaders of what we do, and I like to say it is really, at that the top level, it is really our job to support them and to make their jobs easier because what they do in their own communities and at the grassroots level is really the most important thing and it is those five million people that are making it happen every day.

John: That is tremendous. Is this issue now more important than ever before with regards to what is going on with the pandemic, the COVID-19 pandemic?

Helen: It is a really great question, John, because what we have seen– so, we work in three pillar areas, we work to end litter, we work to improve recycling, and we worked to beautify public spaces, so to plant trees and create public spaces that are clean, green, and beautiful. What we have seen is the pandemic has caused litter to increase in a different way. So, we are seeing masks, we are seeing gloves, we are seeing wipes spread in the litter stream across the country. It is really, really unfortunate. If I could give just one message right now, that is, that those things belong in the trash, they do not belong in parking lots. I think we are seeing people leave the grocery store and they are taking off their masks if it is a single-use mask, they are taking off gloves and wipes and they are dropping those in the parking lot, assuming that somebody who works at that store will come out and pick them up.

Helen: But, then, you are just putting that person in danger and you are putting them in a difficult situation and a dangerous situation, and so, we ask people to take responsibility for their own PPE and put it in a bag, a plastic bag, or put it– there are trash cans in front of stores, put it in that trash can, do not drop it on the ground because what happens is, and this happens with any litter, is that if it is on the ground and it rains then the rain will then wash that litter, those masks and gloves, into a storm drain and it ends up in our rivers and lakes and frankly it then ends up in our oceans and it will harm marine debris, turtles, and different marine debris think it is food, they eat it. Birds will see it and eat it and it kills them, and so, it is really important that we do everything we can to put those items, the PPE, into a trashcan.

John: Helen, it is incredible to me that in 2020 we have– am I right or wrong or am I close, about eleven bottle bills in America?

Helen: So, yes, I think what you are– so, waste is a really interesting subject in the United States.

John: Yes.

Helen: It is– so, for example, recycling is very local. So, every town has their own recycling system or recycling process. So you could live, for example, in the town where I live in Connecticut and have a process that accepts glass and plastic and aluminum, and then you could move three blocks away across town lines and have a completely different system that maybe accepts different types of film, plastic film or accepts different items, but does not accept glass. So, wherever you live, the important thing is that you find out what is accepted in your particular local system. It is– to have national standards would be very helpful, but we are not there yet. At this point, it is all local and so it is really the person who, the homeowner, or the renter or whoever is living there needs to find out what is accepted by their local recycling system and it is only then that we can prevent contamination of the recycling stream.

John: For our listeners out there who have just joined us, we have got Helen Lowman with us today. She is the president and CEO of Keep America Beautiful. You could find Keep America Beautiful and all their important initiatives at www.kab.org. Helen, there is not a day or at least a week that goes by where I do not read another article or see another video about the plastic problem, the plastic problem in our landfills and our oceans, and still the massive proliferation of consumer plastic that is going into our waste system and clogging up our ecosystem. What is the real plastic problem and how can our listeners take action?

Helen: Thank you for asking that question. It is a very, very good question and really what it comes down to is recycling. You know, we want to create a circular economy with regards to plastic, and frankly, with all materials. Whatever we can do to get those products back into the recycling stream is absolutely key and, unfortunately, Americans do not recycle as much or as often as we should. There is huge demand– those products are actually valuable, that the plastic that has been used and can be put back into the recycling stream is extremely valuable, and so when that happens, when a person takes, let us say a plastic bottle, and they recycle it then there is actually demand from the major brands out there to get that plastic back and to put it back into another bottle so that they can continue to keep it in a circular economy, in a circular system, and not have it end up in the landfill or end up as waste. It is a valuable commodity and it needs to be put back into the stream.

John: How come though, Helen, when we travel to Europe or even to Japan and other small countries in Asia, recycling and sustainability in circular economy behavior seem to be part of their culture and DNA and it has not been that way in the US. Is that an education issue we have here? Is it a cultural issue? Is it a governmental or business issue, or all of those issues combined?

Helen: I think you have hit on it. I think it is all of those issues combined. I think there is something about the culture. I think that those are countries that have national standards. I think that the carrot-and-stick shall we say is greater and stronger in those cultures. I think that there is a social norm around recycling and individual responsibility that we have not gotten to yet, but that we will, we will get there. There is the need to increase access to recycling, not everybody in America actually has access to recycling. We take for granted, where I am, that someone comes and gets my recycling from my curb but not everybody has curbside recycling and not everybody has access to it in the United States. And so, we need to do more to increase that and we need to make it clear that this is a responsibility that we all share. Everybody shares it, individuals, government, and producers all share in the responsibility to make sure that we are all doing the right thing.

John: How does– as you said, it is fragmented as you pointed out what you are doing in your town in Connecticut, one town over might be different, could be different right down the road in New York City and up the road in Rhode Island and Massachusetts. How do you as the leader of KAB, Keep America Beautiful, become the common thread that ties together all these thousands of different community-based programs and put out messaging that is understandable and actionable to America?

Helen: Yes, it is a great question, because we do a ton of public education and we do a ton of public education on recycling and on not littering and different things. We still, today, publish or produce a great number of PSAs on this issue and what we do is we try to put out messaging that is nationwide. So, for example, obviously not littering, that is a nationwide message.

John: Right.

Helen: Do not throw your trash on the ground. We try to give recycling messages, pro recycling messages on things that are recyclable across the country. So, for example, plastic drinking bottles, those are recyclable everywhere and no matter what, your plastic drink bottle should go in the recycling bin and with the cap on. So, some people are confused, “Do I leave the cap on? Do I take the cap off?” So, our messages are universal. Yes, put the bottle in the recycling bin and leave the cap on. The things that you should not put in the recycling bin that is universal are things like plastic bags. So, those just contaminate the stream, so you want to be sure that you take that, put things in your recycling bin that are outside of a plastic bag, that they are free and just put in the bin, that there is no contamination with plastic bags. So we know that is universal and there is a saying that a lot of recyclers use, which is, “When in doubt, leave it out.”

John: Right, right, got it.

Helen: Meaning, that if you are not sure if that is recyclable or not, just put it in the trash or check, better yet, take the time to check with your local your local waste hauler, your local recycler and check with them to see if it can actually be put in into the recycling bin.

John: Therefore, you do not contaminate the recycling stream and diminish its value.

Helen: Exactly, exactly.

John: Got it.

Helen: And a lot of people will take a look at the little chasing arrows and say, “Oh, it is recyclable,” but that actually is not necessarily the case. Not everything with the little triangle, that is the chasing arrows, necessarily can go into every recycling bin because again, there are certain local standards of things that can be recycled in that community or things that cannot.

John: Got it, got it. We have a whole group of listeners in the United States and around the world who did not grow up with the PSAs that you and I did with on the– back then on the three channels as you pointed out.

Helen: Yes.

John: Which, it sounds incredible to be three channels.

Helen: I know, how many– like we have like hundreds now.

John: And they still complain there are not enough channels, right?

Helen: There are too many it confuses me.

John: There are too many, right. There are too many.

Helen: Too many choices.

John: Can you share with our listeners, your act– your organization is one of action and pro-action, can you share some great examples of some important programs that are coming up in October, November that you want our listeners to engage with?

Helen: Yes, there are so many things that your listeners could participate in. This year, we actually pushed– we have a program called the Great American Cleanup and we pushed the Great American Cleanup by a few months because of COVID. So, generally, it is in the spring but this year it is going to go through October 18th. So, right now, there are litter cleanups happening. There is a tree-planting happening. There are many things that your listeners can participate in and if they are interested they can go to our website at kab.org and click on the volunteer button right at the top, on the right, there is a volunteer button and that will lead them to finding events and programs that are happening right near them. So, it will allow them to connect with their local affiliate organization.

Helen: And then, we have a couple of other things happening, we generally have a gala every year in New York City, and this year, it is actually going to be virtual. It is going to be online and so it is accessible to everyone. You do not have to live in or around New York City to come and so that is going to be on October 28th and there is information about that also on our website at kab.org, and then on November 15th, it is America Recycles Day. America Recycles Day is a single day of awareness about recycling and we have a lot going on our website as well on that day. We ask people to take a pledge to recycle more if they are already recycling or to start recycling if they have not, and there will be information about how to– if you do not have curbside access where there are drop-offs, but just how to begin recycling or how to do more and how to do it correctly without contaminating the recycling stream. So, that is on November 15th. There are tons to find out on our website at kab.org and so we just invite people to find what is right for them, to figure out how they want to participate, and to go to our website and volunteer.

John: Helen, post-pandemic, at some point we are going to get to the other side.

God-willing, science is going to win here-

Helen: It will, we will get to the other side, for sure, we will.

John: -we will, and as I tell people, we are not going to go to a new normal, we are going to go to a new better. How does that–

Helen: That is right.

John: Really, and it pays to be positive now. And so, how, with regards to Keep America Beautiful, what is in the future? Talk a little bit about your vision for the future post-pandemic when we could all work together with Keep America Beautiful to make America a cleaner and better place to live in.

Helen: Yes, so, I am really very hopeful. I mean, I think again that this generation coming up is– they are so informed and they care so much about the environment, about climate, about reducing their waste in ways that we have never seen before and so I just have great hope for the future and for what is coming next, and honestly, in many ways, I look to them to teach me because they have really good ideas and they are really passionate about the environment and about the world and the shape that we are all– and how we are taking care of it, the shape we are leaving it in.

John: Helen, for those out there that are involved with nonprofits or large organizations that are for-profit, public or private, how can they become a partner of Keep America Beautiful?

Helen: So, reach out to us at any time. That is also can– there is a way to connect with us on the website and we have since our founding, we have really worked in a model of tri-sector partnership. So, everything we do is really built on that idea of shared responsibility. So, we work with local and state level and federal governments, and the federal government. We work with our affiliates around the country and we work with businesses and corporations to find solutions to what is right for our communities in order to ensure that everyone lives in a beautiful community and everyone lives in a clean, green space and has access to public spaces that are clean and green.

John: Well, Helen, you are the reason why I do the Impact podcast. You and your great colleagues at Keep America Beautiful are making important impacts, to make the world a better place. For that, I am very grateful. I am really appreciative of your time today. You are always welcome back here, and for listeners out there, and again, to find Keep America Beautiful, please go to www.kab.org. Helen Lowman, you are a great guest and also an important person, and thank you for making the world a much better and greener place to live in.

Helen: Well, thank you, John. This has been a wonderful time. I appreciate it and best of luck to you. I will come back, anytime.

John: You are always welcome.

Helen: Okay, thank you so much.

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 I.T and electronics asset disposition provider and cyber security focused hardware destruction company in the United States, and maybe even the world. For more information on how ERI can help your business properly dispose of outdated electronic Hardware devices, please visit eridirect.com.

John: Welcome to another edition of The Impact Podcast. I am so honored and excited to have my friend Matt Furman. He is the Chief Communications and Public Affairs Officer at Best Buy. Welcome to Impact Matt.

Matt: Well, thank you so much for having me.

John: You know Matt, so much is going on now and we have so much to discuss that you are doing with your great brand Best Buy, and Best Buy’s real involvement and legacy involvement on social and environmental issues, but before we get to that, I would just love you to share the Matt Furman journey leading up to becoming the Chief Communications and Public Affairs Officer at Best Buy.

Matt: I do not have much of a journey. It was more like a trip, but I will still give you a detailed review. I am what you call a happy lawyer, and that I do not practice law, but I have been to the law school. I would spent some time working in the government in and out federal government. My last stint was the Director of Communications with FEMA under President Clinton. I would like to say FEMA back when it really had a great reputation. From there, I went into the private sector. I worked at CNN, I ran Communications there. I would spend some time at Google and Corporate Communications, and then at Mars Chocolate, the world’s largest chocolate company where I ran Corporate Affairs. All that brought me to Best Buy. I came here just as Best Buy was at a probably the lowest point in its corporate history. Its turnaround had just started with a new CEO and he, the Management Team, and myself included, helped turn around its iconic retailer. Took the stock from a little about twelve dollars to an hour over a hundred, and that is due to incredible hard work over the past eight years.

John: You know Matt, I have to just say this, I have said this before directly in person to numerous of your colleagues, including Hubert, but when everybody else wrote you guys off, and said it was good, you guys were going to go the way of RadioShack, and other brands Circuit City that have fallen by the wayside over the years. You guys just figured it all out. You are a great team. It is just been one of the most remarkable iconic turnarounds in business history in the United States. One day the book will be written on it and you are a large part of that, and I am just a huge fan of what you have done with the entire Leadership Team at Best Buy. It is just a testimony to all of you. Leadership matters and all of you figured it out. I will tell you what, you befuddled a lot of people who counted you out way before it was your time, so my hats off to you, huge respect, huge inspiration to all of us entrepreneurs out there in the business world. It is not easy.

John: Speaking of not easy, we are going through a very difficult point right now in world’s history with Covid-19 and the tragic effects that it has put on all of us, including the social and environmental changes that are going on besides the health issues tied to Covid-19, but Best Buy has one of the greatest reputations as part of its DNA and culture to be a leader of social and environmental impact issues, and that is why I was so excited to have you back on today in Impact. Can you share a little bit of the Journey of Best Buy and your leadership on social and environmental issues?

Matt: Of course, the journey of Best Buy’s started before I arrived. It is often the case that when companies are doing well, they spend some time looking around or whatever else they can help their communities, or the planet, or their employees, and that was clearly the case at Best Buy. What is also often the case is that when companies hit turbulent waters or hit the rocks, they begin to lose focus on those things and focus understandably on saving their company. What is most notable to me about how this business was turned around was that it was done with a focus on both. Our CEO that time, the man is responsible for the turnaround, was then invited to interview their SOE, and he made a very deliberate decision on the first day to turn the company around while maintaining its purpose and growing its purpose.

Matt: I will never forget the moment when he had been become CEO only six weeks earlier because of a series of event. He was really compelled to do an Investor Day in New York, which he had to get up on stage in front of analysts and shareholders, and lay out his vision for company. They need only take it over six weeks before, as if that was not daunting enough. What he did was he created Five Pillars for the turnaround of this company. I will never forget that moment, we had four colors in front of us and they were what you would expect, your shareholder value, and employee engagement, and all the other things, then he said, “Guys, we are missing the step. We are missing our communities, we are missing our planet, we are missing doing the right thing for the world.” To have a CEO who had a reputation for turning companies around, and now had I lay out his vision to turn that company around. To have that CEO say “I am going to do it.”, while still looking shareholders in the eye and say, “I am going to continue to invest in the environment and we continue to invest in our communities.” That was a remarkable moment for me because no one would have blamed myself included. No one would have blamed him. If he had to, “Guys, let us fix the company, let us save your company, and then come back to this other stuff.” We made it part of the turnaround.

John: Wow. Well, you know, when we talk about social and environmental issues that is a wide funnel. Can you share a little bit the thinking behind how your leadership team goes to choosing what issues to actually focus on?

Matt: Of course, we do it in the way that many companies do. You focus on your core capabilities and your core mission. In our case, we sell arguably more consumer electronics than any other company in the world. So we realized early on that if we were to sell these products, we had a responsibility to the environment, to the planet, or grandchildren, to figure out how to recycle it, then so we became the largest recycler of consumer electronic waste in the country and perhaps in the world with more than two billion pounds of e-waste already recycled. That is one example. Likewise, we recognize that the digital divide was growing in the country and not shrinking it because of what we sold and because of our in-house expertise in the form of Geek Squad agent. We had particular capability of training under invested use around the country in the technology skills that would make them employable or would make them better suited to higher education. So we started a network of Teen Tech Centers which will grow to more than a hundred over the next several years. Then finally, as we thought about the environment, we recognize that the intersection between technology and carbon reduction was increasing every day, every year. So we understood we had a responsibility to use technology to reduce our carbon footprint and we are on track to reduce it by seventy-five percent over the next couple of years, seventy-five percent reduction. Much of it on the basis of better use of technology.

John: Wow, that is incredible. For listeners out there who just joined, we got Matt Furman on with us today. He is the Chief Communications and Public Affairs Officer from Best Buy, and to learn more about what Best Buy does socially, environmentally, in their communities they serve in all around the United States. You could go to bestbuy.com and click on the Corporate button and there it is. So I am on that, I am on your page right now. It is so full of great information about everywhere you are touching and reaching and it is just fascinating. Can you share with our listeners a little bit about your Teen Tech Centers? Because that is one of the great almost start up stories that was born at Best Buy, and that is touching so many communities around the United States now and growing really quickly.

Matt: Sure. The Teen Tech Center is our remarkable team for the company. This started before I got here. There were a few and over the past several years, we have made the effort to expand and begin to more than a hundred for the next couple of years. The premise is very simple. There is an increasing need for technology-enabled employee, people who understand technology and use it, and yet there are fewer viewers. So the market requires more in our society turning now. In the place in which that gap is the greatest, not surprisingly are in communities that are most under invested. So what we have done is we put these centers in communities. We associate them with libraries or community centers’ YMCAs or Boys and Girls Clubs. They are installed in their existing infrastructures. We build out a space. This place is open virtually three hundred and sixty five days a year, and it is available to kids starting in their freshmen year of high school. They enter and they typically stay for four years. The average student comes to the Teen Tech Center three or four times every week after school, and they spent hours there each time. They are exposed to a range of technology that will allow them to pursue a career or go to pursue higher education. So you could learn how to make music because of course, music making these days is all digital, just like movie making, just like digital photography. Obviously, you can learn how to do 3D printing, you can learn how to do coding. All these things are skills that you would might not otherwise have any exposure to, and now can after four years leave our Teen Tech Centers as something like an expert.

John: Wow, that is just incredible.

Matt: To be clear on that, we do this in concert with many partners, including the community centers that we partner with on the ground, but more significantly most, if not nearly all of our vendors, our vendors are the largest technology companies in the world, most of not nearly all our partners, and increasingly a wide range of desperate partners from Hollywood stars to professional athlete are joining in and co-sponsoring these Teen Tech Centers.

John: It just goes to though, the great culture that you have developed at Best Buy that everything is about a collaboration, and your leadership team is just truly collaborative in every sense of the word, and you welcome people, entities, and organizations into the fold to be part of the solution. That is just one of the many great things about your leadership team and I know that personally. Matt, we are just still living in the wake of some of the more recent tragic events that actually started in the great city where you reside in, and Best Buy’s headquarters is in Minneapolis. How has that helped speed up some of the social impacts that Best Buy has decided to continue to make?

Matt: So we have a new CEO now for the past about a year ago. Hubert retired first to become Executive Chair, then right we see the company entirely. Our new CEO is a woman, Corrie Barry, she is in her mid-forties and one of the very first female CEOs of Fortune 100. She was born and raised in Minnesota. So the events of George Floyd’s murder hit her and other Minnesotans in a way it only can if it is your hometown. Obviously, the event itself was impactful, but having it in your hometown having occurring in your hometown would be more so. It was for us like many companies a galvanizing moment.

Matt: Corrie to her everlasting credit wrote an email to our customers as she does some time to time in which she talked explicitly about racial equity and justice. She said two things, she said, “We have not done enough and we will do better,” and on those simple words have formed a number of initiatives that the company undertaking the most notable which is a CEO Task Force, which we have a multi-levels of people from very seniors or very junior company and obviously very diverse demographically. Gathering out twice a week for an hour and a half each time for the next of a month to tackle some of the biggest issues over which we have some influence. How do we spend our money? Where do we invest? What supplier to the engagement? How do we lobby? What laws we try and get pass? All of those things have in the past in the purview of individuals or small teams in the company, and now it is being tackled by CEO Task Force in a holistic way, designed to really move the needle as much as any one company can. So that is a great example of how we are thinking about this from the philosophical and practical perspective.

Matt: Of course, given our work in communities, like the north side of Minneapolis where we have fourteen tech centers. The work we are doing with that network of centers are perfectly aligned because of more philosophical view that we can do better.

John: I love that. We can do better. I am so glad you brought up those words. I did read that letter when she wrote that, Matt. People say that after we get through this tragic Covid-19 period, we are going to a new normal, and I say no, new normal sounds so defeatist, sounds so that we are already hanging and posting the white flag that we have lost the battle, and I am thinking along the lines that you just said and the Corrie’s words, we are going to a new better. If we do this right, we should be going to a new better. That is how I get through every day. That is how we are focusing our company and that is how we are messaging to our partners, but I love that we can do better, and we all should do better. Best Buy is just an incredible brand and that just makes sense.

John: One of the reasons that I love having you and your colleagues on the show was because of your Vision Statement and I am just going to read this out loud. Best Buy’s Vision Statement is to positively impact the world. Enrich people’s lives through technology and contribute to the common good.

John: I had never been to Minneapolis before I started working with you guys in 2006. Not only had I never been to Minneapolis, obviously, I have never been to your headquarters, but what I have learned over fourteen years, is it you truly not only talk the talk, you guys walk the walk, and the impacts that you make are just so far reaching in every community that you serve, and you really do go to making the U.S and the United States on every level a better country to live in. Matt, one of the things, one of the many trends that we see coming out of this Covid-19 crisis is people working from home, and that seems like a trend that is going to be here. It is going to be permanent. Many companies have said that people could stay at home forever if they want, they never have to come back to the office, and others are offering some sort of hybrid approach. How has that affected how your sales of new electronics goes and how you serve your clients in a new and better way potentially?

Matt: In the days immediately following the crisis hitting, so there was a period in early March where we all recognize we were in for something. None of us had ever seen businesses begin to shutdown, people began to work from home. We made the decision at that moment that we could keep our stores open. We were permitted to because we were considered essential by governors and mayors around the country. We made the decision in every case to close our stores to customer traffic and only serve people by curbside. So we would obviously bestbuy.com, we would sell you things, but if you wanted to pick up a product that day, we would deliver to your car curbside. So we essentially went for retail with roughly a thousand stores too, and e-commerce player and higher explicitly. We publicly reported only several weeks after that that we were retaining but eighty percent of our business. I mean shut a thousand stores. That was tested with two things, one how well we execute under a new business model, but the second one was the extreme demand for the things we sell. The reason for that was simple, we have people working from home, and learning from home, and frankly trying to entertain themselves at home, and cook from home, and store food from home, and all the things that the pandemic have brought for all of us. Those kinds of trends continue to one degree or another because people are still entertaining themselves from home, cooking at home, and working from home.

Matt: So without being able to forecast the future, none of us know when that trend days slow down when the demand may end or increase. We do know as an employer that working from home exclusively or in part is clearly something part of our plan. We do not know when the pandemic will be over, but we have already told our employees that when it is, they will have far more options to work flexibly than they ever did before.

John: That is so interesting. Well, that is really to your testimony. You guys are resilient brand, you are flexible, and you make adjustments as times change, and that is why you are not only surviving, but you are thriving, and that is just one of the great reasons we had you on today.

John: For our listeners out there, to learn more about Best Buy and all the great things they are doing in their communities, in their stores, you can go to bestbuy.com, click on the word corporate, it is all there for you. I am on it right now and it is as more stories than Matt and I have time to go through today, but Matt, I am always grateful for your time. I am grateful for all the leadership that you and your colleagues have been doing in Best Buy for all these years, you definitely positively impact the world and make it a better place. Thank you for being a guest today on the Impact Podcast.

Matt: It is our honor, thank you for having me.

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, and I am so honored and excited to have my good friend, Mollie Engelhart with us today. She is the Executive Chef and the founder of the Sage Plant-based Bistro and Brewery. Welcome to the Impact, Mollie.

Mollie Engelhart: Hello! Thank you for having me on the Impact

John: Hey, Mollie, I do this show really as a mission and because of great, great visionaries like you. You are not only powerhouse in the vegan entrepreneurship world, but also as a woman entrepreneur leader. You have done so much and I want to get into all that today on all your success and ongoing journey, but first, share a little bit about of the back story of how you got going? What were some of your initial inspirations? And how you even got to become a woman entrepreneur in, basically, the vegan plant-based world?

Mollie: Truth or a lie? No, the truth was I have always been entrepreneurial. I have been, you know, I was the kid with the lemonade stand at the side of the road. I have always been, my parents used to do craft shows with their clothing and I would go around all the other craft booths and say I could babysit your kids for this much an hour. I was always trying to like figure out how, what my way to make money. But my parents raised me to have a lot of moral compass that- well, a lot of due north and knowing what is right and what is wrong, and that we do not do what is wrong. So, I have always thought I want to build stuff, that I want to do stuff, but I never wanted to do that in a way that was harmful or impactful to the environment and the future, and people as a whole.

Mollie: My first business out of college was a recording studio. I was first working in Urban A&R at under Max Gousse when he was at Epic Sony. Then, I went on to opening my own recording studio. The music industry took a huge crash like just the budget when downloading music became a thing, which people that are not our age do not remember that when downloading was not a thing, but people used to buy CDs in the store and that was how artists made money. All the sudden, it all crashed and the music industry had to like re-evaluate how it made money, and during that time, I lost my first business and I was kind of lost. And then I went into doing poetry. I became a fairly successful poet and toured all around the country, and then I did not want to travel anymore.

Mollie: So, I started growing pot, and this is in the early 2000s. It was fully illegal still then. It was very lucrative and illegal. And so, I do pot for some years and then my brother-in-law, from my first marriage, went to prison and I was like, “Ooh, prison seems terrible” and I think I want to grow pot anymore. And so, I started trying to look at like, what could I do? It was, every weekend, going in my husband to go visit Trevor in prison. I was like, “Okay for sure, we got to stop doing what we are doing.” What can we do? At the same time, my best friend got pregnant. She was an actress and she was like, “I cannot just be living like, I got a commercial I can eat. I do not have a commercial, I cannot eat when I have a baby.” So, we decided to open my ice cream shop’s kind cream and that was our first food endeavor.

Mollie: And so, me and Mimi started. We started with the Studio City shop and then Pasadena. It is kind of all history from there. We started the Echo Park Restaurant and we grew over the years. After Echo Park we needed investors and that was when I met you. It was the night that the returns for Obama, the second election, right? Not the first election because I remember where I was the night he got elected the first time. I was in a trim house trimming marijuana, so I know that was not that night.

John: We were not together that night.

Mollie: That night, we were together. The second night, we were together and you had an iPad and I did not have a TV in the restaurant. And so, I was like, “Hey, can I-“ and you were the only person in the restaurant! So, it was a really slow night because of the election returns. I was like, “Hey, let me snuggle in next to you,” and we started watching. That was how we became friends and how you end up investing in my next restaurant in Culver City. Now, I do not have ice cream shops anymore. We just have the four locations for Sage working on a fist and we have a farm.

John: It was incredible.

Mollie: My journey to that was really-

John: Wait, we are going to get into the farm in a second, but I got to just tell our listeners a couple things about you. First of all, the first night I met Mollie, that night that she just outlined. She outlined after we started seeing the election return she started talking about her vision of building more of her Sage restaurants. I already had been in love with her food. Her ice cream is beyond amazing anything else I have ever tasted. Her food is, being a lifelong vegetarian and ten or twelve-year vegan, was the best food I have ever had in the plant-based world.

John: And so, when she started outlining her vision, even though I did not know her yet, except for just that one night, I literally bought into her vision and bought in- I was just telling her off the air, she is one of the rare people who now lead executed her vision fanatically but did what she said she was going to do. That is a rarity to have those duel pasts followed concurrently. You are a rare person, Molly. That is why today is really an honor to have you on. I know You are busy. I know you are ever growing and I know your mind never stops because I have gotten to know you over the eight years. You are literally, your energy is boundless and your mind is always on the go.

John: I am grateful to you not only because of the investment, the investment as I shared with you early on those kinds of investments for our family, my wife, myself, my brother. We believe in investing in people that are doing things we believe in. Whether it makes or not does not affect our lives all that much, but what it affects is how you have recreated the food world and how people see food, the plant-based food world in the Greater Los Angeles area and on the West Coast. That has been just so much fun bringing people into your restaurant and letting them taste your food for the first time if they are never been exposed to plant-based food. Literally, people are converts very quickly after they enjoy what you have put together meticulously over your career. So, I just want to tell you thank you because you really are an inspiration to me and so many other people that I know that have been involved or see you grow your chain. So, great job on every level and just gratefulness to you.

Mollie: Oh, thank you! I wish all my investors felt that way, but believe me, they do not all feel that way in early days when people were not making money. Nowadays, everybody is quiet because they are making money, but early days when people were not making money people did not feel that way. And so, I always appreciated that no matter what the quarterly returns said you guys were always like, “Great job! Keep going, blah blah blah!” That means a lot. I do not know if people know that ninety-six percent of venture capital money goes to male-owned businesses. And so that means only four percent goes to women-owned businesses. So, money does not flow as easily to women when they have ideas and they have visions. So, I am glad that there are people out there that are willing to invest.

John: Yes, and it did not flow. By the way, Molly, you are so right. Not only it did not flow in 2012 towards women, but even in 2020. That is why your appearance today on Impact means so much to me because to be able to highlight your vision, your journey, your success is ever more important. As a father of a daughter who is an entrepreneur, and now of a new granddaughter, we have got to make changes by just leading by action. It is no longer just about words. You are truly one of- you are still so young and you have so much more to give but your journey will be inspiring to so many other future women entrepreneurs. That is the importance and the impact that I also believe you make besides on the on the food-based stuff. So, that is great stuff, but you are right that we got to work on that money issue because it is not cool. It is not cool the way it goes now.

Mollie: No, and I appreciate that you have always been very supportive. I appreciate that because it is not easy to find people that are willing to invest in women, businesses specifically.

John: Talk a little bit about the food industry. Where are things, before we get into all the new things you have done and your soul, heart, by the way for our listeners who want to find Mollie and her great food, you go to two websites, sageveganbistro.com. or sowaheart.com, which we are going to talk about in a little while, sowaheart.com. Molly, food industry, where we now? Are we still all living in McDonald’s or as your success and the successes of Beyond Meat and Impossible, and all these wonderful new vegan foods that have come out even since I have met you as the world transforming and is it not or is it still pretty much, you know, we are still where we were.

Mollie: I mean, me and you may find a different opinion if like, I do not know that I think that Impossible is a wonderful food. I actually think that what is happening is the centralization of the food industry in the same way. The banking industry is centralizing. It is banking Industries are, is all like centrally controlled and the food industry is becoming that same way. We have multiple problems with the food industry. But the fact that people want to eat plant-based for their health, want to eat plant-based for the environment, want to eat plant-based for the animals. Those are like the main things. Those are all admirable things, but it has become that we are looking at it with such a macro lens- such a, like micro lens, microscopic part of the problem when we look at just veganism, like eating a beef versus Impossible order, whatever. But we have to look at the bigger issue.

Mollie: For me it is about people not being abused. And so, the food industry is filled with abuse and it is mostly abuse of migrant workers. Mostly abuse of immigrants that people pretend we do not want in this country. But it is this like free, I mean as free, that is inexpensive disposable work source where they work super hard for very little money and very dangerous jobs, exposed to very dangerous chemicals, get sick at higher rates with cancer, miscarriages and all of this, and many of them died before in time that they should, but mostly go back to their country of origin to die. And so, we have this like, disposable work force that is making all of our food and we all are like fat on the hog here in America. No matter what you are eating, whether you are eating vegan food or you are not eating vegan food, we are all like eating this cheap food. That is on top of immense suffering and just there like, and the vegans like, “I am eating oat milk and so I did not hurt any cows” like, “Great.” But what about the women that, you know, were touching the chemical and then what about the men that were spraying the chemicals in, you know, what about all of those people that are being harmed along the way?

John: So, your approach is holistic. You look at everything. It is not just about the food. It is the whole food ecosystem is-

Mollie: The whole thing.

John: Right, got it. Got it.

Mollie: What I think is that we do not tend to look at the whole thing. And so, when we look at it close up, like is it a ruin for Burger King to have Impossible Burger? If you are a vegan and you are on a road trip on the five, you think that is a rim, right?

John: Right.

Mollie: But like, do I actually ever want to support Burger King as an entity? No! Do I actually ever want to buy food with glyphosate or Roundup in it? No, I do not. So, for me, it is not a win. Me, my dollars going to Burger King not a win. Me, buying food that has a chemical in it that has from when we became aware that we were allowed to spray it on grain, we started spraying it directly on non-organic grains in 1996. The cancer rate is now fifty percent in adult. Fifty percent of adults will die of or fight a major- this is not including skin cancer. So, from 1996 until now the cancer rate went from like one in, I think it was one in seven, but do not quote me on that. You can look it up, but it was definitely not one out of every two, to one out of every two. There are lots of other things that have gone up and they are all based on inflammation. So, all of these diseases that have gone up are based on inflammation. All non-organic grains, everything, every buy the pizza, every- so, I do not care if it is plant-based or not are being sprayed with glyphosate. Glyphosate is Roundup. Roundup is a chemical that was originally actually invented to clean drains. When we were cleaning drains with it we realized it killed all of the weed when it would come out of the drain on the side of a building or something. So, we repackaged it with notes further investigation with the FDA and we made it into a weed killer. And when we made it into a weed killer it was used primarily in household. It was not even an agricultural fan or if you remember in the early 80s, there was some ads of a guy…

John: Yes!

Mollie: It is a Round up and see he was fighting that one dandelion in his driveway, right?

John: Yes!

Mollie: That was the ads. Okay. Well, from then in the 80s till now, we started spraying it. First we just started spraying it in orchard below the trees. That is bad because then the roots are taking it up, but it is getting processed through the Earth, through the soil, through the roots and up into the avocado or the orange. And then I do not know if you can imagine like, a field of wheat. It is all golden brown and ready to harvest and there is a machine that “chuck, chuck, chuck…”

John: Right!

Mollie: And it needs to have it, the shaft needs to be loose and it needs to be easy to get and need to be dead. So, imagine now if you have got it in airplane or in a machine and you sprayed the whole field with glyphosate, Roundup, the whole field would die, right? Because it is killing the plant. Now, fourteen days later combine it, harvest it, make it, and now that is your pizza. We have never investigated what is the impact of that? And there are some really incredible doctors doing a lot of great research on this. Dr. Zach Bush has done a bunch of research about how it is eroding our stomach lining and causing massive inflammation, about how the cancer rates is now every other adult is going to have a severe form of cancer, not including skin cancers. There are also connections to the rise in autism and there have been tests in rat with glyphosate exposure, and only in three generations they are no longer able to reproduce.

Mollie: So, to me this is urgent. This is like an emergency. So, we can talk about plant-based all we want, but if there are no humans or cows, or chickens left on the whole planet because we can no longer reproduce because of the high levels of this toxin that is in all of our food, then it does not really matter. And so, what I really want to get people to realize is that they do not- And people have a choice. If you start calling every company and saying “Hey, is your grain… have you been tested…” like, if people stopped buying Cheerios because it has the highest level of glyphosate in any food on the market right now, then maybe there will be an impact. People will say, “Whoa, whoa, whoa…” to the farmers. “Can we do it the old-fashioned way where we just let it dry out in the sun and then you harvest it when it is ready not, when you schedule it.” But right now, there is no pushback. People are just feeding their babies Cheerios.

John: Mollie, what can, you know, like I have on my desk here Jane Fonda’s new book. What can I do for our listeners out there? For me, I mean, I have heard about this problem with glyphosate, but what can we do? What can we do to push back and vote with our pocketbooks or otherwise our politicians? What do you suggest we can do so we can start joining as an army to fight push back on this, one of our food tragedies? One of them.

Mollie: I mean, the grain thing is just, do not buy any grains that are not organic. And we can sit here all day and say like, organic, is this elite? And…

John: Right.

Mollie: You know, people cannot afford it and blah blah blah. And that is true. But people can afford not to. I want mothers to put the same love that they are putting between the grocery store and the table. I want that to go from the seed to the grocery store. And because it does not matter how much love you put into that bread you bake your children, if it is filled with a poison that is going to erode their stomach lining and have them have all types of inflammatory diseases and cancer, does not matter how much love we put. And how about the person who is spraying that? How about the person who is harvesting it and breathing it in at the factory where they are cleaning the grain, and all of those people which I am going to guess are mostly migrants? And so, I really want us to remember the people all the way along the food chain. I want us to think about that. So, avoid non-organic grains. Do not just, “Oh well, let me just do this.” And that is the first thing.

Mollie: The second thing is where you can buy locally and talk to the farmers. I know here in Los Angeles there is a SNAP program. So even if you are on food stamps and whatever you can buy at the farmers market and the government pays for half by double. So, like if you were going to use your food stamps at the grocery store would be forty dollars, but at the farmer’s market you get eighty dollars. That is an awesome program. So, politicians and stuff, we can push them to make it so that fresh foods and vegetables are accessible to everybody. And then we really, really, really need to vote with our dollars. We need to call. We need to demand that we do not want Cheerios to have glyphosate in it.

Mollie: We Google what are the most toxic foods with glyphosate. What foods have it? You are going to see that all the beer, all the beer right now is filled with it because imagine what beer is made out of grain that boiled in water and fermented. I mean, we really have to think about it everywhere and it is confronting. My mom sent me this thing the other day, it was like about how people choose to not want to know because it is too confronting. I think that this time that we are in we can no longer put our heads down and say that we do not want to know, it is too much, it is too bad, it is too confronting. Because if from a farm perspective the United Nations and multiple other people are saying we only have sixty years of topsoil left. So, that is one issue. Zach Bush and these other people are saying we only have three generations that are going to be able to reproduce normally. So that is also sixty years. We are looking at a crisis in sixty years and you and me may not be here in six years or we may be here. But our children for sure will be here. And you need push. We need to care about that. I tell people if someone came to you and said your grandchild or your great-grandchild is going to die if we do not get this surgery, they are going to be incompatible with life without the surgery, we would be GoFundingMe, running around, begging, pleading, everything. But we are saying everybody’s grandchildren are not going to be compatible with life and we are like, “Agh! Just too confronting.” We cannot be like that. We have to care and that brings us to the next thing. It is like, I would go out on the floor of my restaurant. You see me come out and talk to you multiple times.

John: Yes. Oh, yes!

Mollie: I would tell people, “We have got to buy land. We have got to drawdown card and we have got to grow our own food. We have got to be independent. And you know, nobody, not one customer ever was like, “You know what, Mollie? You are right. Let me go buy some land.” So, I realized like, “Oh wait, I have got to buy land.” Like, I am not going to convince anybody for my soapbox and still living in my little comfortable plan community in Granada Hills. I actually have to do it. And so, that is why I am farming now because I want-

John: Talk about that. Talk about what you have done as a regenerative farmer. What your involvement was in terms of- I know you are now a movie producer, you are board member of Kiss the Ground, a very important organization which has been on our podcast before. Can you talk about what regenerative farming really means? And how that interrelates with the glyphosate issue that you just discussed, well discussed?

Mollie: Regenerative agriculture is a kind of catch-all term for growing food well. Pulling carbon, more carbon out of the atmosphere than you are letting up. So, if you are pulling out a cabbage and it is however much carbon, but in the process of growing that cabbage, you put more carbon down. So, you have negative, there is less carbon in the air after growing that cabbage not more carbon in the air. It is pretty simple and we do not think about it as like, plant, take carbon out of the air, turn them into carbohydrates, feed them to microorganisms in the ground, and the microorganisms store the carbon as carbohydrates in the soil. That is a simple process. It is like almost too simple for us to like remember that is this process.

Mollie: And the balance of this has been happening for years and millions of years on the planet and we, humans, have put this out of balance. We have taken too much carbon out of the fossil fuel- foil reservoir and put it into the air. But a huge place of where the top eight inches of topsoil is missing tons and tons and tons of carbon because of tillage, where we open the ground between every crop. So, you grow cabbage and you till it all and then spray it, and then plant something else, and then till it all. So, the microscopic organisms, the fungi, the viruses, the parasites, the tiny bugs, all that live in the soil are getting disrupted and killed over and over. And then whatever they are storing goes into the air. Also, with tilling, we just blow away tons of our topsoil into the ocean and we cannot get it back time and go like, “Oh, let me get that topsoil back out of the ocean.” We do not have a vacuum cleaner for that.

Mollie: So, we are losing topsoil. So, no-till is a big thing in regenerative agriculture where you till as limited as possible, as least amount of disruption of the soil so that the, especially the fungi, they have very long pieces and when you till it gets broken up. And then when you put it back together, the bacteria, which are shorter pieces, overrun and then it is not in balance. And so, in order to have balance you want to not disrupt the soil as much as possible. And then there is kelp farming which draws out down tons and tons of carbon and helps with oil acidification of the ocean. There is bamboo farming where the bamboo, the roots keep getting bigger and bigger but you are cutting the tops off. So, the carbon is staying in the ground, and the bamboo is growing very, very fast. There is eating more perennials. There is using animals in Holistic Planned Grazing. Holistic Plant Grazing is probably the largest, most widely accepted way that we can reverse climate change in a major way. There is huge swath of the world that has been decertified by us over farming them or overgrazing or just drought. The way to bring those areas back that it has been proven in lots of different places is by bringing bovine and hooved animals and pushing them through in a holistic way like the way that the elk or the gazelles or the buffalo would move through an area. Well, there is fresh grass. They eat it, eat about forty to sixty percent of it down, poop, pee, and move on. And then come back after the next rains or after the next time when it grows back.

Mollie: This is called Holistic Planned Grazing. There are lots of cattle farmers that have brought back huge swath of area that were just decertified. Now, the vegan, they will say, “Oh well, we should not have that happening because we do not want animals to be our partners in agriculture.” And my argument would be, “Okay, but we do not want to not have a planet for animals at all either.” So, this is like, this is a way that we can bring back. And I feel like the vegans and regen people have got to be able to come together on no pantry farm, pastures like, and drawing down carbon reversing climate change and better treatment of animals. Like those things have got to be where we can come together.

John: Right.

Mollie: And let us fight against the big factory farms on the 5 Freeway when you are driving up, and the CAFO, and the chickens in the terrible conditions. So, the way it works basically as you would move these animals along through in a holistic way where the grass grows up behind them and then they come back to the graph. And as you do this cycle, you bring back. And the roots of the grass stay in the ground even if it is dry season or whatever. They are still in the ground with the microorganisms. They are still there and then they come back to life when there is rain. This is the way of the world for tons and tons of time. And then we got too many animals, smoosh them all together, did not move them around, and we made areas into deserts that do not need to be deserts. This is a huge way. Now, we could just, vegans could fund raise and have cows that get to get moved around for free and that is a non-profit. Vegans could do that if they wanted to do that. But I would say the easiest lift is to enroll ranchers. Enroll people that are already growing cows in transitioning into this way and renting or leasing or making agreements with government agencies or whoever is responsible, private entities that owned this land that is turned into desert and bringing it back.

Mollie: Those are just one or two or three or four cover crops. There is another way where you do not leave your ground uncovered between the crops that you are growing for money. You keep the ground covered. You keep the microorganisms fed, because remember microorganisms can only eat through the acts that are in the soil, can only eat through the actions of the plants taking down carbon out of the atmosphere through sun air and then turning it into carbohydrates sugars for those microorganisms to eat. We have to think about all of this when creating food not just like how treating the soil like a medium and a hydroponic grow room like, “Pour more nutrients on it, pour more nutrients on it.” And that we have to realize that healthy soil equals healthy humans. We have not even discussed the microbiome in our gut that is being destroyed by glyphosate, but the same, that microbiome exists in the soil. And the reason we are getting sicker and sicker is we are getting more and more disconnected from the soil.

Mollie: Think about just a hundred years ago, all of us had farmers in our family. All that for eating cabbage that just got locked off at your neighbors or your local farm, got rinsed off and brought to the little grocery store, not HTPP killing every little bacteria and virus like, we are crazy. We think we can vaccinate and sterilize against all the viruses in the world. There is like the one, I mean, it is three to the ten, so that is how many viruses, whatever that is. Three with ten zeros does not have a number name.

Mollie: So, what are we going to do? Like the vaccine schedule for kids would be every 10 seconds to get a vaccine. We cannot vaccinate against everything. We need to live with the microbiology. We have to realize by the grace of God in the form of microbiology, we were enabled to live. The viruses, bacteria, the parasite, the microbiome is what gave us the ability to live. And viruses update us. They tell our DNA what needs to happen next. We are getting more and more disconnected from nature and more and more just disconnected from the soil. And healthy soil is imperative for healthy humans. As we are more disconnected from the soil, allergies are going up. All types of things are going up because we are not living in conjunction with these microorganisms. We are only fifty percent us and fifty percent other stuff.

John: Right.

Mollie: But if we try to eliminate all that other stuff then what are we?

John: Before we go into your restaurant chain, which is just booming. Can you talk a little bit since we are on the issue of farming, regenerative farming and all these important topics, talk a little bit about your new venture Sow a Heart. I am on your website. It is amazing. For our listeners out there, please go to www.sowaheart.com. Talk a little bit about what you are trying to do here. Your vision here. I love it. I am blown away by it. Explain to our listeners how it came about, what you are trying to do with it, and how they can be involved and support this great venture.

Mollie: So, I like I said, I was telling everybody I heard Graham Faith did a TED Talk and I said, “I had felt hopeless, like there was no plan. There was no way we could get out of this.” I just, I have said this a lot of times that I just did not want to say like, “Well, I drove a hybrid, and I drank an oat milk latte, and I used my own cup when I went to the coffee shop.” Like, “I use my own bags at the grocery store.” Like, that is what I was going to tell my children when the planet is burning down in flames. That was not enough and so when I heard about Graham Faith and I heard about regenerative agriculture- You know when you hear something that is like, the truth or it is like, cut-you-though-like-a-knife, like something that is real, is more like powerful almost than something that is like, maybe partial truth or part- I remember being totally moved by him. I was telling everybody, everybody needs to come toast. Everybody needs to be doing cover crops. Everybody has to do no-till. Everybody needs to buy land and drawdown carbon, do for us, food for us. I am like telling everybody. And everybody is like the same as me, driving a hybrid and using their reusable bags thinking that they are doing enough. I just realized that I had to do it. That nobody was just going to do it because I was saying it was a good idea.

Mollie: And so, I took every single penny I had, everything that I had and went all-in like, that when I closed escrow on my farm, I only had like seventy-five dollars left in my bank account and I had not taken every single thing. I was at Coachella and it was everything and I was like, “Well, we hope Coachella goes good,” because I am not just for stealing money from the restaurants until after we reconcile Coachella. Some do ask me on to my house like, “Hey, why did you do it that way or that seem-“ and I am like, “Oh, I had no money when I moved in here, so-” And then I had to wait until I sold my house to be able to, you know, have any money again. But anyways, I just did it. I just said we have to do this for my children. We have to do this. So, I closed escrow on my farm. I have no idea. I am not a farmer. I have no idea what I am doing. I just start in the wee hours of the night while breastfeeding crying babies. I just start researching and just start trying stuff.

Mollie: Two and a half years later, it is unbelievable what we have done. The soil infiltration like for four cups of water in our soil when we got here, it was more than four minutes for four cups of water to infiltrate. We are at nineteen seconds right now, which means that on my farm versus the farm next door that spraying rice and has just dirt exposed, whatever. So, for them four cups of water is going to take four minutes to infiltrate into the soil and mine is a nineteen-seconds. So, when it rains I am taking all that water and putting it down into the- so, forget even about everything else I am saying, just about California and water, should we be not drawing everything down into the aquifers that we can be. So, my farm versus the farm next door, it is nineteen seconds for four cups of water on my farm and more than four minutes on a farm next door on the bare soil. So, just in two and a half years, we have made that impact and we are growing food for the restaurants and we have been growing food for the restaurants.

Mollie: And then COVID hit. I have a couple other farmers that we supported since even before I had a farm, that have been growing food for us. They are small Latino family farmers and they came to me right after everything happened with COVID. They said, “Well, when are you going to be ordering the normal amount?” And I said, “I do not know what- I do not know. I do not know what is going on.” And so, it took me about two to three weeks to get my restaurant set up. We pivoted and we started doing a like groceries and all the different stuff that everybody did in the beginning there. I got everything free. And then I could breathe for a second and I said, “Okay guys, let us start a delivery to LA the produce from your farm in my farm. We will be a collaboration box.” And at first it was, literally, me like, “Okay, I am going to be on Santa Monica, this and this.” Who can then move me to pay, but now it is more organized. You have apps and stuff, delivery routes and everything. And so, we did it. We just started doing these boxes. So, one way that people could support and also know that they are getting food that has no pesticides, no herbicides, no fertilizers other than good compost then they could be really happy to have that box getting delivered to their house. And we deliver in all areas of LA and in Ventura County five days a week each day…

John: Amazing!

Mollie: It is different areas or different neighborhood. And so, that is one way that you can support. And Kiss the Ground has a film coming out September 22nd on Netflix. So, please watch it and understand more deeply and profoundly the impact we could have with regenerative agriculture.

Mollie: And we are in the process of trying to buy this additional hundred and sixty acres that has been organic since the 70s and it wraps around the back of my old property. We would like to make an Agro-tourism Bed and Breakfast, just eight bedrooms. People could come and have an experience beyond a farm and have vegan meals or vegetarian meals. All the food coming from the farm. They could go out. They could pet a cow. They could go on a hike. They could wait in the river and have that experience so that we can get related to our food. Because maybe we would not need every pepper to look perfect. If we realize we look at row of peppers and realized only fifty percent of them look perfect and the other fifty percent look weird. Well, maybe we would be more willing to eat those weird peppers if we realize that everything does not need to be perfect. Maybe we would be willing to eat watermelons with seeds in it. If we understood that nothing that is not fertile has ever been high- like we do not want anything that not fertile. Really, we want food that is fertile. We want it has all of what it needs, you know.

Mollie: But we do not understand anymore. We are so disconnected from our food. We are so disconnected from the earth, so I want to create a place where people can come and get connected. It is going to be very nice and it is going to be where people can come. But it is also not going to be like, so chichi that people- We are going to tell people to bring a sun hat and bring shoes that can get dirty. You are coming to a farm and the farm experience.

John: That is so wonderful.

Mollie: And hoping with that, that I would inspire more people. I am hoping with this Agro-tourism thing I will inspire more people to take the steps that we need to do. I think there is a lot of people that want to farm and do not have money. I think there is a lot of people with money that do not want to farm, but maybe want to feel like they are doing something good with their money. I think we got to get those people linked up. I mean even me, I am struggling at this other piece of property because with agricultural loans, you need forty percent down and this is more of the centralization of the food system. If you need forty percent down on a arg-land and it is two million and five hundred thousand dollars, you need almost a million dollars down. Most people do not have that, you know.

John: Right.

Mollie: So, it is very, very hard to get on to land. Even if you want to stir it and do the right thing. And that is set up all for the big corporations to win if we treat farm land like a commercial land, build a commercial building or something, then only people that have that kind of money can do it. And then what happens is the family farm disintegrates if one child wants to stay on and the other one does not. The one child cannot buy out his sibling when the parents died. And so that is how we lose hundreds of farms a day here in the United States.

John: Well, are you raising money now for that?

Mollie: I am trying to figure out what I am going to do. I do not know. I do not know exactly. I do not know what I want- people. I am looking for people that are interested in doing it because they want to make a difference in the world. And we will try to make money with it, but I do not want to be pressured by people that are like, “We need to get this possible. We need to get this profitable.” And then we become the same as the corporations who say they are doing it right and then are cutting our corners.

John: So, you are looking for the right investors and if people are interested they could contact you with sageveganbistro.com or at Sage. They can reach out to you. If they are interested for the right reasons, I am just throwing a line out there for our listeners.

Mollie: Yes, for the right reasons.

John: Yes.

Mollie: That is why I pause because we have people that have come up to me that make- I mean that I have invested in my restaurants and are doing well with those Investments. And I have said it is very different to be investing in this, what I am doing with the farm and so far I have just been doing it with my own money.

John: Yes.

Mollie: I am really wanting to make a difference. I am the only restaurant in all of Los Angeles, and I do not know maybe anywhere, but for sure and all of Los Angeles, I am the only restaurant that has four locations and a hundred percent of my pre-consumer plant material is going back to the farm. So, that means every time we chop up broccoli, we chop up cauliflower, we chop the heads off of cabbage or bottoms off the cabbage, the heads off of carrots, heads off of tomatoes, all of that every day is being brought back to the farmstead to earthworms and fed back out to the plants and coming back to the restaurants as food. Rather than going into the landfill and turning into methane. And methane is just as harmful as carbon in the global warming thing. And so, I am super committed to have doing the right thing. You and other investors could say like “Well, how much do you pay for someone to drive compost away from the restaurant?” Or whatever, and they could be mad about it. So, I want to make- and in the restaurant cases they are making money and there it is okay. But I do not want to be pressured by anybody to not do the right thing.

John: Correct!

Mollie: And that is where I am standing. That is why I have not been actively going out to get money in the traditional way because I do not know who those people are that have money that just want to draw down carbon and if we can make money doing that then let us do it. But if not, we are going to keep trying down carbon.

John: As you said, Mollie, those people are out there. But the ROI on that is the long haul. It is the ROI to making the world a better place and buying into your vision instead of making another dollar for them to just put in a bank account or give to their children or give away or whatever. It is the ROI to making their community and the world a better place. And that itself is a huge ROI and there is those people are out there. So, if you are listening today- Yes, go ahead.

Mollie: I always say the only bank account that matters is your soil. How healthy is the soil? I can look in- we are going to Bank of America or Chase or whatever, but that number does not mean anything. It is not. It is the whole world market can change that, the government can hand out a bunch of money during a pandemic and that can change what that value is. But my soil is going to be able to grow food and food is a tangible food. That is nutrients dense enriches the tangible value. And that is what I am investing in. My children may be mad when it comes their turn, but I hope not. I hope they see the value of what I do.

John: They are not going to be mad. I am not going to let you- we are not going to end this interview until we talk about your amazing Sage Vegan Bistro restaurants. You have got four already. When I met you, you had one. You are now looking to talk a little bit about the growth in the explosion of what you have done by building this really amazing chain.

Mollie: So, we focused heavily on farm-to-table. We always have whether it is my farm or other farms before even I had a farm. We are getting healthy food from very local sources. I really pride myself on making food that anybody could like, I think you could bring your grandpa, your dad, your mom or anybody, and before COVID when you could have more than six people at a table. You could have- mom could get her kale salad, and grandpa could get a whiskey on the rocks, and the kids could get “mac and cheese,” and the teenager could get a pizza. There is going to be something for everyone. My food is satisfying and flavorful and salty and spicy and delicious. Like I do not make bland vegan food. I was raised vegan and I have eaten enough bland vegan food for everybody for the whole rest of the world. Like nobody has to ever just eat grilled vegetables with salt and pepper on it ever again. As far as I am concerned I have eaten enough for everybody. So, I really-

John: Where is the fifth one? Where they located now? Where they located now, where is the fifth one going to go? Talk a little bit about your footprints for our listeners. COVID is, one day, God willing, going to be behind us. We are going to be vaccinated and there is going to be some herd immunity and like, say, where can they go and have your delicious food? And I know you are have pick up because I stop by your restaurants all the time and just order out now and pick up and eat in my car or take it home. So, where can your listeners get your great food now? What four locations? Where are you are looking to do a fifth?

Mollie: Right now, we have a dining on the patio everywhere except for Echo Park. So, Culver City, you can dine on the patio, curbside or delivery and then Echo Park we just have curbside and delivery. There is no patio dining because we do not have a patio there. Pasadena, there is patio dining, curbside and delivery and then our newest location we opened during the pandemic! We opened Agoura Hills and Agoura Hills has patio. It has like an indoor patio. That sounds weird, but it is like a covered patio. That is like, it is a kind of mall. And so, there is a thoroughfare with a glass roof with big plants. And so, it is like indoor/outdoor- It is outdoor, so we are allowed to eat there. But it has a glass roof and big plants. So even if it is raining you can eat outdoors in Agoura Hills location.

John: That is awesome.

Mollie: We also have curbside there and delivery and so, I just pride myself on super accessible food. Food that is not going to be hard for anybody to understand or interpret no matter what their normal day food is. That my food is really everybody can understand it. You can get pizza. You can get tacos. You can get salad. You can get [inaudible]. You can get pastas, homemade raviolis. It is all very, very accessible and it is all made with nutrient-dense foods, super high-quality foods, and super local foods. We are doing everything we can to have the footprint of the restaurant be the best that it can be.

John: No one I have ever brought there is not been blown away, whether they are vegetarians plant-based or whether they are just regular eaters. Everyone just loves the community you have created, the team you have created, the culture in your restaurants. And the food is just amazing. Can you talk a little bit about, before we say goodbye today, your YouTube channel? It is great. It is very descriptive. It really helps people get more of this messaging you are talking about today. Share a little bit about where they could find you and the importance of your YouTube channel.

Mollie: My YouTube channel is Chef Mollie and that is the same as my Instagram as well. So, you can find me on either of those. We make videos every week, whether they are cooking videos, how to make fermented foods, how to grow things, the importance of different aspects of agriculture glyphosate, all these different things. We make videos every week and we put them up just trying to give people tools and information and in an accessible way. Sometimes I read these studies or sometimes I listen to these podcasts and it is such good information, but so dead that it is hard for people to get all that. So, I try to take it out and make it something that is very, very accessible for people. And we show a lot of the farm, of my kids. It is basically everything from cooking to mothering to farming and we put up new videos every week. So, please check it out, subscribe, follow, share. I would appreciate that so much.

John: Awesome. For our listeners out there, to find Mollie or to back her in one of the new ventures she is talking about, you could find her at sageveganbistro.com or at sowaheart.com. She is a movie producer. She is a chef. She is a mom. She is a wife. She is my friend, and she is a great evangelist for women entrepreneurs out there that are making the world a better place. Mollie Engelhart, thank you for joining us today on the Impact podcast.

Mollie: Thank you so much for having me and I appreciate your friendship and partnership over all of these years.