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

John: Welcome to another edition of the impact podcast. I am John Shegerian, and I am so excited and honored today to have Rob Oliver. He is a speaker and author and a podcast host. Welcome to impact Rob.

Rob Oliver: John, thanks for having me on man.

John: Hey, Rob you have a great great backstory in Journey to share with our listeners today much better than me reading your bio or anything like that. Can you please just begin sharing how you got on this fascinating journey which led to where you are today?

Rob: Sure. My life has been one of those interesting experiences. It started when I was ten years old and I had this mysterious weakness and they took me — my parents took me to the doctor and tried to figure out what was wrong with me. They could not come up with anything. They figured I must have had Muscular dystrophy and that I was going to be in a wheelchair by the time that I was thirty. Okay. So it turns out that that was absolutely incorrect. However, the weird premonition about it is when I was twenty-one years old I was on the Outer Banks of North Carolina. I was body surfing. I was riding a wave in towards the shore and instead of it carried me forward it pushed me down. I hit my head on the bottom. I broke my neck, and it left me basically paralyzed from the chest down. And so their prediction about me being in a wheelchair by the time that I was thirty came true. However, it was totally unrelated to the diagnoses that they had given me.

John: When you say you got paralyzed from the chest down, what moves? What does not move? If you do not mind me asking since we are not sitting across from each other, we are doing this from Pittsburgh to Fresno today, which is a great connection. I love your City where you live right now, Pittsburgh but since you and I are doing this via the world of electronics and and speakers. What moves? What does not move?

Rob: Sure. Well, let me just start off by saying my understanding of Pittsburgh because I am not a Pittsburgh native although I have been living here longer than I have lived anywhere else. Pittsburgh is a football town with a drinking problem, is what I have been told. Well it works the other way around. Pittsburgh is a drinking town with a football problem, either direction it is the same thing but those — so for me, for any of your folks that have a medical background, my injury is at the C5-C6 level. So that means it is in my cervical region and for me that means basically from just — I do not want to be too graphic about this but above my nipple line?

John: Hmm.

Rob: Down, I can not really feel and I can not move. So on my arms the part that where you would get a sun tan, that is where I can move. The part that you do not get a sun tan on and that is what I ca not move. So I have got biceps but not triceps. I have got the ability to pull my wrist up but I do not have the muscles to take it back down. So I use a lot of gravity. I use a lot of compensation and then with my fingers and my hands I do not actually have control of any of my fingers but if your listeners do this it kind of a strange exercise, but work with me on this John. So if you take your hand and you just kind of put it out there and you relax your hand at the end of your arm, okay? And now if you draw your hand up just using your wrist, it kind of naturally forms into a fist.

John: Right.

Rob: That is what I have got. It is a process called tenodesis. So what I use is that grip between my thumb and my forefinger, that is that’s what I used to do just about everything. I can hold onto a can of soda. I can pick up some potato chips. I can hold a hamburger in there and whatever it is — of course in that conversation you picked up very quickly that my life pretty much revolves around food and as part of life, but it is who I am. So that is the [crosstalk].

John: It is not a bad thing. I like that. [Inaudible, so was mine. So they were pretty much just the sip some of the guys.

Rob: You bet.

John: How many years ago was that?

Rob: So that was 27 years ago. It was August 20th, 1993. Listen on a quick side note. I just did on my — I have got my own podcast as well. It is called Learning from Smart People and I had a guest cancel on me at the last minute. So I had to do what I hate to do and that is do a monologue. I have got a new presentation that I was just working on that is called more than mere survival. Because I think that going through this pandemic has a lot of parallels with what happened to me with my injury in that — at first it was just complete devastation and then it was okay. I do not think that I am ever — well I am never going to be able to go back to August 19th 1993. I am never going to get back to where I was but it does not change the fact that I still am alive. I still am essentially who I am because that is on the inside. It is not changed by my physical condition. My skills abilities and goals are — well my desires and my goals are still the same many of my abilities are the same and it is just a matter of how I engage the world to be able reach those goals is what has changed. I think that is a very powerful message for this day and age with this pandemic to realize our goals are essentially the same. Who we are as humans is essentially the same. The way that we engage the world is going to be different but it does not change the fact that we still can get to those goals if we are willing to be creative, if we are willing to persevere for willing to do it. Not like we used to and if we are willing not to just pine for the days of old but to say, “okay, we live in a different paradigm but how do we get there given the abilities and the opportunities that we do have?”

John: I like that a lot. It reminds me of when this pandemic started and as you said it was shocking for all of us no matter where we are. I was thinking back to a video that I had watched. Nelson Mandela being interviewed and the question came up of how did you survive your time in jail? Your time in prison? He looked back at the interviewer, sort of quizzically and with a lot of short tears in his eyes and he said I was not surviving, I was planning for when I got out of jail. That is how I spend my time in jail. Not surviving, planning. And …

Rob: It is awesome.

John: Yeah, and I feel that is a great what you just said about staying open and flexible to the possibilities that when we get through and get over this COVID-19 tragedy, which we will. Science will win at some point here, that we have a huge opportunity to go and face the world and make the most of what we want to be and be the best that we can be. This is not an excuse for any of us to fail on any level and taking your great strategy forward, Mandela’s and others is just a great way of looking at this as just another challenge for us to get through because it is going to make us those who really thrive when they get out of this, when we get out of this it is going to just make us more resilient.

Rob: So let me just throw something in there and that is…

John: Sure. Go ahead.

Rob: I want to talk about kind of what I view as in the meantime. Okay.

John: That is good.

Rob: Because way back when twenty seven years ago I was in the hospital and they told me that they were three to five years from coming up with a cure for spinal cord injury. That is twenty seven years ago and now the newest numbers that I have heard is that there are two to four years from coming up with a cure for spinal cord injury. Which means in the last twenty seven years they have made a full year of progress. All right. There were a lot of guys that I was in rehab with there. We are basically like three to five years. I can wait three to five years. That is not really a long time. Their basic strategy was this, I am going to go home and I am going to wait until you come up with a cure and then when you do come up with a cure, let me know and I am going to hit the resume button on my life and I will just pick up where I was. What they are missing out on is I do not know where they are today, but they have missed twenty seven plus years in the meantime. So I have no doubt that science is going to win. I have no doubt that we are going to get through this. I have no doubt that it is going to get better. However in the meantime, yes, we need to plant but we also need to start implementing. We need to say, what is it that I can do today? Sometimes that actually involves building relationships and if I can just opined for one quick minute —

John: [crosstalk]. Yeah. It is your show.

Rob: — this has been a really powerful message for me. Hey, so — well, thank you. And this has been something that really really hit home with me. I am very faith-based person. I go to church. I am involved in church. I am the guy that goes and visits all the other people when they are in the hospital. Now listen I am working full time so it is not like I am just sitting around looking for something to do but I am making time to connect with people and make sure that people are taking care of. One of the side effects of my injury is I have a turbo propensity towards urinary tract infections and because I have had so many of them and have been on so many antibiotics I am actually becoming immune to a number of the antibiotics. So when I get something oftentimes I will end up in the hospital on an IV antibiotic because there’ is just nothing powerful enough to hit what I have got. So this was going on and it was like I was in the hospital every three to six months for a week or two and after about like the fourth or fifth time that I am in the hospital, it is over Mother’s Day weekend and everybody is so busy because Mother’s Day. It is springtime. Everybody is got stuff to do and so my wife and my kids are having trouble getting in to see me. Nobody else is coming in to see me. I have been in the hospital for like four days. I have seen my wife and kids once. I am laying there on Mother’s Day morning, and I am just thinking like this is terrible. Pardon my bluntness. This sucks. Okay.

John: I am with you.

Rob: Here I am. I am trying to build other people up. I am trying to invest in other people and when I am on low side of things I get nothing for it. I am laying there feeling sorry for myself. Feeling rather miserable. In my own mind, like it is a God thing where there is something that says to me like okay, so you are feeling low about yourself. Well, is there anything that you can do for somebody else?

And I am thinking okay, well, it is Mother’s Day, so I called my mom. I called my mother in law and I am sitting here thinking and I realize I have an aunt who never had kids and she loves kids. She would have been the best mom ever and I do not know what the circumstances are. I have never asked but I I realized you know what this has got to be one of the most difficult days of the entire year for her. So I called her up and I left her a voicemail because she did not answer the phone. Just to say — listen I am really glad that I got the mom that I got, but if I did not get her and I had to choose somebody else it would be. So [crosstalk]…

John: It is a nice message.

Rob: Later on we could get a call from her and she says the reason why you could not get me on Mother’s Day is because I heard my uncle literally go away camping where there is no cell reception. Where there is no anything because they just do not want to be around people because whatever they say, it is just that difficult of a day for her. And so what I realized as a result of that experience is this when I am feeling low when I am feeling like everything is crashing it around me that is a time when I can take and turn it around and say, instead of making this about me. Instead of making this about what I am not getting. How about if I start giving?” And as I give to other people I am going to build them up and in doing so it is going to enrich my relationship. It is going to enrich their lives and and it is going to leave a part of me. I give a part of me to them and they carry that part of me with them for the rest of their lives and that is a gift that is — it is beyond value.

John: Great, that is a great message and I think you are right. I think those who are the happiest learn that giving has more rewards than just the gift itself. The gift is just as is everlasting for the reasons you just outlined and I think that is just a beautiful story in man. Who knew your aunt was suffering until you even got into your own self and and came up with that idea to call her. Who knew she was suffering that much every year, year after year that she could not even bear being around electronics and all the commotion.

Rob: And here is the rest of that story is that as a result of that I call her every Mother’s Day after that. Okay.

John: Sure.

Rob: The funny thing about it is that she now specifically does not answer the phone when I call because she wants me to leave her a message because she actually takes and listens to that message throughout the rest of the year. When she is down and having a difficult time she goes back and revisit that so I know that she is not sliding me that she is not answering the call. She will call me back later, but she is waiting to get that voicemail [crosstalk].

John: So the message is the gift.

Rob: Exactly.

John: That is awesome. That is awesome. This is where talking about Pittsburgh a little bit also in your in Pittsburgh. The the great linebacker for the Steelers few years back at a spinal injury, Ryan Shazier.

Rob: Right.

John: The key benefit from any of that new technology or is it just because he was an athlete and the injury was in a different place that he was able to make the comeback that he is made. Not professional football come back, but come back nonetheless in terms of making great progress or is it been Science and Technology combined with his athleticism.

Rob: No, I am not a medical doctor, so my my opinion on this comes strictly from my own understanding.

John: Sure. Sure.

Rob: Listen, I will tell you this that I do a lot of speaking and one of the target groups that I do is medical professionals. So I have spent enough time in the hospital that I should have like an honorarium deed or something like that. Because I have a spinal cord injury I feel like I need to know everything there is to know about myself and my injury so I do have some information on this but what we are looking at is it is for me and him it is two different types of injuries. Okay.

What he had was a spinal bruised and so the nerves that go through the spinal cord or impacted, but they were not cut. So it is what would be referred to within the quote unquote industry as an incomplete injury. So yes, there is the benefit of modern technology. There is the benefit of him being in good athletic condition but there is also just the fact that it is a different type of injury. So because you remember many years ago, there was a linebacker for the Jets, his name was Dennis Byrd. He had an injury on the field of play. [crosstalk] carted off.

He wrote a book called rise up and walk which was a very inspirational book and actually on a personal note it caused me a great struggle because someone got me a signed copy of it which was a most thoughtful gift. And they told him you broke your neck, you are not going to be able to walk like we are going to do the best that we can with you and he has some determination and he has a strong work ethic and ends up being able to walk out of rehab and I am like great. I will take that. I have got my faith. I have got will. I have got determination. Nobody will work harder than I will.

What I came to understand is the nerves in my neck are cut. There is no amount of will and determination and just unwillingness to accept no for an answer that is going to regenerate those nerves. So I am just got it is a different type of injury and I have to deal with what I have got. They can deal with what they have got and at the end of the day this is really my message for everybody. Everybody has got problems. Everybody has got limitations. Everybody has got obstacles to getting to the goals that they want to achieve.And the question becomes do you focus on your your deficits or do you focus on your strengths? If you are focusing on your deficits, you will never be able to achieve anything great. John Wooden the great basketball coach said “no one ever achieved greatness by focusing on what they ca not do.”

John: It is true.

Rob: You take what you can do and you make the most of that and that is what is going to get you to the goals that you have set for yourself.

John: For our listeners who have just joined us, we have got Rob Oliver with us today. He has a wonderful website where you could book him to be as a motivational public speaker at yourmotivationalspeaker.com. Yourmotivationalspeaker.com .Rob, you are a top speaker, that is what you do. You have won twice. You have been named in Pittsburgh top motivational speaker of the year. Were you prior to your twenty one year old when you were twenty one years old, you got injured which is approximately twenty seven years ago. Were you a good public speaker prior to that or is this something and a skill you honed and learned and really molded after your injury?

Rob: I grew up in church. My dad was actually a preacher. So I have listened to more messages more people speaking and — so listen, it was like I was in church every Sunday and our church had two services. We had one on Sunday morning and one on Sunday night. Then my dad would have like special services over the summer where he would go somewhere and he would have services every single night and sometimes there were children services in the morning. So I grew up listening to faith-based public speaking. With that when I was sixteen years old, I started to help out.

So I am giving a message to the kids doing that kind of stuff. So I had been speaking a little bit before the time of my injury. I had never thought about that skill as being something that would be useful outside of the church, kind of church environment, but then after my injury, I am having an opportunity to speak in some Churches which is a great thing for me but then someone says hey, can you come talk to my school? I am like, I got a church message. Well, you can not really talk about church stuff at school, can you adapt your messages. Well, I think so.

So then it is a matter of you are going, I am going to a school and I am sharing the message of dealing with adversity and being able to be different and be okay with being different. It goes really well and all of a sudden now, I am seeing more and more opportunities open up where I am able to go and share a message that it is not what I was originally intending to do with it, but it is such a great opportunity to talk to medical professionals and give them the patient’s perspective on quality healthcare. To talk to human resource professionals and give them the other side of the desk perspective on employment and people with disabilities. To be able to talk in schools about bullying and about people having their power taken away and to be able to share what it means to be that person that is different. That looks different. That moves different that just is seen as different and how to build your self-esteem to understand that it is okay to be different and also then to understand the concept of advocacy where when you are seeing someone being bullied. To say, that is no okay.

To speak up for those that are less powerful. Those that are being picked on. Those that are having their power taken away from them Those that are being marginalized and denigrated and that really moves into advocacy in the world and it moves really into a message that I think is almost a universal message and it is the message that I said before listen everybody has got issues. We all have things and it is a choice where we focus.

One of the analogies that I use is it is kind of like a drink and there are people in this life — the Optimist and the pessimist they talk about the glass being half full or half empty. Well there has not very many people that have a glass that is exactly half full or half empty. There is a lot of people and they have got a glass and it s like ninety percent full. Then you look and there is other people and they just have a glass and it has got just a little bit in the bottom of it. The question becomes where do you put your straw? Because you know those ninety percent people who have got it just a glass that is almost folded the top and their straw is in the top and they are just — they are consumed with what they do not have. They are consumed with what is in other people’s glasses. They are consumed with that ten percent that is missing. That is where they live their life and they live a life of emptiness without fulfillment and without nurturing because they are not drawing sustenance from what they have.

You know those other people who do not have much but they have got that straw jammed all the way down in the bottom and they are living a life full of joy and happiness and fulfillment and success not because their glass is full to the top but because they have got something in their glass and that’s what they are drawing their sustenance and their life force from.

John: So you started public speaking after you were injured?

Rob: Yes.

John: When did you create yourmotivationalspeaker.com and what was your ultimate goal with that?

Rob: It is really funny. I have got an intern working with me over the summer and I was just talking to her today about when did this come into because I got on the whole domain name thing way back in the beginning. Okay. So 2005 is when I registered yourmotivationalspeaker.com. The reason why I went with that name was because search engine optimization was the thing and you have got to have the keywords in your domain name. So I went and I looked on motivationalspeaker.com already taken and themotivationalspeaker.com already taken. A motivational speaker I thought well, that would be cool and everything but I do not just want to be a motivational speaker. If you are looking for a motivational speaker and you found me guess what you have found your motivational speaker. That is who I am. I am your motivational speaker man. If you needed one, I am your guy.

So back in 2005, that was when I registered it and it was kind of a side gig at that point and then three years ago I ended up getting laid off from my job and that was really a mixed blessing for me because I had been unhappy with my job as it was and I kind of wanted to go out on my own and to do this as a full-time gig. This is what I am passionate about. This what I love doing. I love being able to connect with people and to see heads nodding. To see the light on people’s faces turn on when they are getting the message.

Now we are doing that in a virtual environment and it is a little bit different but even through doing virtual presentations I have got my certification as a virtual presenter and being able to use the chat feature so that people are giving me feedback as we are going through and you are seeing the message be reinforced there and people are giving you those like ” ah, I see. I get it.” That is what is really cool. So three years ago it went from being side household to being main gig and it was kind of one of those things that I wanted to do it but I did not have the guts to pull the trigger so to speak. My employer pulled the trigger for me and it was like, you know what? Here we go. This is what I have been looking for. No looking back. Let us move forward and let us do this.

John: That is awesome. That is awesome. How is it gone since you launched the site?

Rob: So it has been good. It has been very well received. I have done a lot of different presentations and right now things are a little bit difficult and trying to figure out how to kind of adapt to the new environment. It looks like virtual presentations are going to be the thing for a while and having the necessary equipment for that is very important. However, what I have come to realize is this, getting certified as a virtual presenter and having a third party say, yes, you have the tools to be able to do this. You have the technical know-how to be able to do this. I consider that kind of like about two percent of what is important when it comes to presenting. Ninety- eight percent of it is still the content and the delivery. You can get somebody who is excellent with the technical side of things but if they stink as a teacher or as a presenter, your audience does not get anything out of that. What I am coming to this with is I am coming in with my story. I am coming in with my experience. I am coming in with what I bring as a presenter and now I just got a new way to engage the audience and is virtually it is different. But you know what, that goes way back to what I talked about at the beginning with my injury. Yes, the way that I engage the world has changed, but I am still engaging the world and now I have just got to use that new engagement style and those new engagement tools to make the most of the opportunity.

John: Got you. Speaking of — you talked a little bit about when you go out and speak some of the people you speak with are HR directors and share the experience of being handicapped person and what is important to handicapped employee when they are working for an employer. We just passed the 30th anniversary of the ADA. When you have learned about the ADA and its role in empowering those who have historically been marginalized in American society, the handicapped. What has been your experience with the ADA and is it gone far enough? And how far can we go in the next thirty years in terms of making improvements for people that have various types of handicaps?

Rob: It is funny that you say that and because when I was growing up, I used to listen to Bruce Hornsby and the range and they had a song about that is just the way it is, right?

John: That is right.

Rob: Some things will never change and because the law does not change and other man’s mind when all the — when all he sees that the hiring time is — I do not remember exactly what the lyrics are but the understanding is the law is wonderful and I am so excited and listen you talk about good timing and that not there is ever really good timing to acquire a disability. Okay?

Rob: I acquired my disability three years after the ADA passes. So I talked about the fact that I have got experience on both sides of disability. First twenty-one years of my life I am living without a disability. Then the next twenty-seven I am living with. So I know what both sides of it are like. I do not know what both sides of the ADA are like. I do not know what it was like pre ADA. I know what it is like post ADA. Yes, I think that the ADA can cover a lot of physical elements of it. So making buildings accessible and having making sure that there are opportunities and just all of the kind of the law things that you can do are fantastic.

Listen, that does not just benefit people with disabilities. When you making a building accessible, when you put a ramp up to it, you are also helping out the elderly who may have trouble with some stairs. You are helping out moms that have kids in a stroller, going up and down stairs for them also almost impossible as well. So what you are doing is you are not just making it accessible to wheelchair users, you are making it accessible to the entire community. So that is great but what my biggest thing is, and I actually liking this very much to the Civil Rights Movement for African Americans in which there were laws that were repealed.

There were all types of governmental things that were put in place to eliminate the barriers to employment and to community integration into all of those things. But what we are seeing today is the fact that all of those laws that were implemented fifty, sixty, seventy years ago, still have not changed attitudes and they still have not changed perception and we still have a problem with bigotry, with bias, with prejudice in this country. Even though we have changed the law we have not been able to change people’s minds completely. So that is really where I come from. I think the ADA is wonderful and I think that from a physical perspective it has done great things as far as increasing accessibility, but the next thing, the next hurdle that we are looking at for people with disabilities is the misinformation that is out there and breaking down the stereotypes. Breaking down the bias. Breaking down the stigma that goes with having a disability. Having an understanding my disability does not define who I am. I am Rob. That is who I am. I do not classify myself as being disabled to handicapped. A person with a disability. Those are all things that if I were to put down my list of who I am, I am not sure if they would make the top hundred.

Everything else is what defines me. Those are just part of my physical circumstances and again not to beat up on this point, but that is how I engage the world but it is not who I am.

John: His name is Rob Oliver. He is our great guest today on Impact Podcast and you could find Rob at yourmotivationalspeaker.com or on this podcast learningfromsmartpeople.com. Rob, tell us a little bit about learning from smart people. What are you trying to accomplish there? What are the type of guests that you are having on your show and how is it going so far?

Rob: So yesterday we released episode number 31, which is pretty cool. The whole thing originated because I have always thought — not always but for the last couple years I felt, would it be cool to have a podcast? Then I am a member of the National Speakers Association chapter here in Pittsburgh, and we had a guy come and present in January and he is like podcasting is where it is at. Everybody should have a podcast, like yeah, that is really cool and everything but I do not have time to do a podcast. Then covid hit and I am sitting at home and I have got all kinds of time to do whatever. I am like this is a great idea. Now, I have got time, let us do this. So I have been doing two episodes a week for the past obviously fifteen weeks and it has been really kind of — it is been fun. The concept of learning from smart people, here is where I am coming from. I am an entrepreneur. I am a speaker. I am an author. I have also run a nonprofit that does anti-bullying stuff. I have got a lot of stuff going on and so my first thought was I would love to have people on that are going to help me build my businesses.

So I am bringing in national and international experts to talk to entrepreneurs. To talk to business leaders. To talk to small business owners about how to build your brand. How to market your brand. The experience that they had of starting a business and growing their business and where their business is today, and then I am also thinking you know what? I believe that everybody has something that you can learn from them if you are just willing to listen. I know a lot about a lot of different things and the way that I have learned those things is to find people who are smarter than I am about those topics and I asked them and then I listened. So my thought was there are everyday people out there who have no idea the wisdom that they actually have and let me bring on people that I know. People that are my friends. People that are my neighbors. People that are in my community and to bring them in and to talk to them about their lives and to talk about what they are doing and to learn from them.

So I have a friend who drives a gas truck and I brought him in and we talked about problem solving and he dropped a gem on me, which was the best way to solve a problem is to anticipate it and prevent it from happening in the first place. I was like, holy cow never thought about it that way. I had a friend of mine come on. She has a child with multiple food allergies, and she talked about adapting to the New Normal and now she is completely had to her diet. The diet in her whole house because of her child with these food allergies and heard life is no less rich than it was before she had her child and her child is not missing out on the developmental milestones or on experiencing life or being a happy kid who loves excavators and tractors because he has food allergies. That is just part of life. That is the new normal but in the meantime life is wonderful and raising that child is wonderful and you are seeing that the child grow and develop and that is what life is all about. It is not about focusing on the detriments, the fear all of those things. So the answer your question is I am bringing on people that I can learn from and that involves experts in specific areas of business building and growth but it also involves bringing in everyday people to share the wisdom that they have gained from the experiences that they go through.

John: Rob, you wrote two books. Still Walking, which was a best-seller and its sequel Still Falling. What do you want our listeners to know as the top three takeaways from those two books?

Rob: So Still Walking was actually — my friend helped me come up with a title on it because I had some other title. I do not know what it was but he was like, yeah, your title sucks. You going to have a better one. He suggested Still Walking. I am like that makes a whole lot of sense because what I wanted to get through in that book is this, life is a journey and even though I may be paralyzed I am still walking down the journey of life. So the the number one takeaway is still walking as in continuing to walk on the journey of life. Number two take away is still walking in that would be still as in not moving, right? So even though I ca not move the journey is still taking place. So it is a different way of engaging it but the walking. Dire Straits talks about the Walk of Life, right? The Walk of Life is happening and even though I am paralyzed I am still doing the Walk of Life. No matter what my limitations are I can still live.

Then with Still Falling a friend of mine came to me and is like, Oliver I read your first book. It was really inspirational. It is really wonderful but it seems like everything always works out for you. Is that really the way it goes? Do you lead a charmed life? I am like look at me for crying out loud. Do I really lead a charmed life sitting here my power wheelchair? Let me think about this and I realized listen having a good outlook and a positive attitude will not prevent you from tipping your wheelchair over in the middle of the driveway or in the middle of your college campus, things will happen to you. So I wrote Still Falling with this understanding no matter how positive your outlook is you are still going to hit those down times. You are still going to wipe out and when you wipe out there are three things that have to happen.

Number one, you have to understand that you can not stay there. The cover of the Still Falling book is footprints through the snow and the idea is that when you are going through the snow, there is ice, there is danger. It is all hidden underneath the snow and the snow itself is a danger and if you fall in the snow and you stay there you are going to experience hypothermia, you are going to experience frostbite. All of those things are a danger if you just stay down, so do not stay down.

Number two, you have got to get back up and keep moving because you did not go out in the snow just to go out in the snow. You went out to go somewhere. So wherever it is that you are going you have to get up and keep going to where it was to your destination. Third, you have to realize as you look back at it, what was it that caused the fall? What happened with that fall? How do I learn from that experience so that either A I can prevent it from happening again or B, when it happens again I know how to handle it and I know how to get back up that much quicker. So those are my three quick takeaways. Number one, that life is a journey and I am still on that journey. Number two, even though the way I have engaged the world has changed and I may be paralyzed I am still living life and enjoying it fully. Number three, we are all going to have those slips and falls, but we need to make sure, A that we do not stay down, B that we get back up and keep moving towards where we are going and see that we learn from every time we fall down, so that we can grow from it and be in a better place when we get back up than when we started.

John: All those are some great words of wisdom and lessons to leave with our listeners today. Rob you are inspiring for me. I am listeners and again for our listeners who want to find you and book you to be a motivational speaker, they can go to yourmotivationalspeaker.com. Rob you are making impact. A great impact on the world, on people that you come in contact with and just you know you are making the world a better place man, and I am so grateful for your time today and for your message today and thank you for being a guest today on the Impact Podcast.

Rob: Hey, listen, thanks for having me. On your listeners if they go to yourmotivationalspeaker.com, I have got a little form on there. Fill that form out and I will give you twenty-five lessons from twenty five years. I wrote this little paper a couple of years ago and it is twenty-five things that I have learned in the twenty-five years since my injury. It is free to all your listeners. Get on there, enjoy that and it is a gift from me to them.

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 on John Shegerian. I am so honored and excited to have today, my friend Mark Sadovnick. He is with us as a guest on impact. Welcome to impact, Mark.

Mark Sadovnick: I am super delighted to be here. Thanks for having me, John.

John: It is absolutely my pleasure. We have known each other through common friends for years. We have been to conferences together. I am a huge fan of your work at The 5th Element group and I just would love for you to share today a little bit about your background first. I want our listeners to get to know you Mark about your journey leading up to The 5th Element group and how you even got to where you are today.

Mark: How much time we got John?

John: We have as much time as you want, Mark. This is all about you.

Mark: All about me? That is dangerous [inaudible] to go down. Well, originally from Montreal huge hockey fan and learned a lot about sports. I guess if you want to start, one person that taught me a lot in my life was my grandfather who — him and grandmother were from Kyiv, Russia. My mom and aunt[?] came over again in the 20s or something and the things I remember most about him was, we would go for walks as a kid with him and he would smile at everybody and it’s followed on the next one, next one. They would call him Zeta which was the Jewish term, I call him, “Zeta, how do you know all these people?” He said, “What do you mean?” “Well, you smile all these people, how do you know the most?” “I do not know them all. I just noticed that when I smile at them, they smile and look happy and then I smile and I am happy so it’s great.” Okay cool, and he was super kind super friendly to everybody and he would share stories with his past in Russia and then after that, but that stuck with me for so long about kindness and caring about people and that was like the first maybe youngest glimpse and then it all went to school and I was involved in community stuff and I enjoyed it. I was enjoyed it is like that when they say around Christmas. It is better to give than to get you feel better about everything. Being involved in the community just there is a light inside of me that it just felt good and then actually wanted to be a sports broadcaster when I was younger. They are going to change my name to David to Mark Jensen[?] but then my mom and dad said, “I do you think should be like an accountant or an attorney or something?” So I went into accounting. Thanks, Mom. I learned to accounting. I was really good at it which was the bad part because I really did not like it at all and but this all just a flowing this may be a little bit faster. I had an influencer at Deloitte, a partner who is the only partner that actually recognized — the other partners saw that I was really good at what I did and wanted me to work on stuff which is fine appreciated that but he saw that I really did not like it and he actually was caring enough to say, “Well you should be talking to clients.” He made me the emcee of all the events they did. [inaudible] we talk to clients and everything like that and he made an impact on me about the people and their relationships is equally as important if not more important than everything else and so it is kind of through my career at Deloitte. Then I was in Winnipeg Canada with a large real estate company there and I got offered a job with the pro hockey team there. That was my dream job. There is a kid from Montreal who plays hockey, loves hockey the whole bit. I got involved like I organized a fan club for kids there and we had three thousand kids in the club in a week. So that was great community things. I got to know the team and so they made me an offer for a senior marketing position at the team. I said, “Damn. This is awesome, my dream job,” —

John: You hit the jackpot.

Mark: Yes. I almost won the Stanley Cup myself and but at the same time, I was in an organization called the Jaycees which is now called Junior Champion JC’s for it is about leadership development and community and we lost having their World Congress in Winnipeg. We lost it Taipei with the two finalists, and we lost. I have talked about this somewhat where things happen for a reason and so they offer me to come down and the executive director at this global headquarters nonprofit for leadership development. At the same time, I got offered my dream job with the hockey team and I am thinking, every single person told me to take the position with the hockey team except for the person from the hockey team that offered me that job.

John: What do you mean? I really thought you took the other job?

Mark: He told me to take the other job and I thought he is just seeing that if I really want this but he was not. He actually sat down with me and I was pretty awestruck with this guy. He used to be a player on the Montreal Canadiens, a tough player, good sworn[?] player, and whatnot and he was heading up the team there. So he was like I am an adult with a kid inside talking to this guy and he said, “Mark, I know you love this. You do a good job. That is why we offered it to you but you know what if I really cared about you,” there is that word again. I remember it. “If I really cared about you I would be saying you are going to travel the world, you are going to meet leaders, you are going to have exposure and other countries that are going to be incredible. Hockey is a game. It is a business. It is fun. It is fantastic, but you are not going to get another experience like that. You may get another one in hockey and you are going to have another experience like that.” The only one including myself that told me to take the other thing and I did. I took that and which I believe that was major for turning down a dream job, but the [inaudible] for me and–

John: No kidding as a young man.

Mark: Yes, exactly. So weird character kept following me and I saw a lot of incredible leaders that were great salesmen tucky[?] ones to use the technical term and it was an awesome experience of how leaders can make a difference around the world and all different ways. Economically socially whatnot and so I did that for a while. A lot of relationships have gone into the executive search business, which is the core business that I do and long story short throughout those years I always had a lot of discussions with leaders of how do we get the very best people? How do we get the eight players? Why are people leaving this not the other and it was examples like a rider system was a big client. I had a lot of young families there and kids now so stressed out working a lot and so I remember talking the [inaudible] just got to figure out how do we get more and better people somehow got to care more about them. So someone says more benefits from this that. Well, they missed their kids why do not we build a daycare center? So they did. They built a daycare center and we were able to talk about that that the leadership ride[?] really cares about their employees. You can be close to your kids and I started getting better people. [inaudible] change one of their HR directors to a director of well-being and back then that was 1990. It was an article in the paper saying give me a job in a treadmill they should be happy basically and unfortunately, it took guts to actually do that but to represent them as leaders who cared made a difference for them and they were low key people that just kept following me through to my career and let me– my own firm were pretty successful regionally nationally and internationally because I had relationships and then even coming to LA growing it there and I join a global firm and it was going well and good people but I found that they were actually uncomfortable with the word care and I think I told you that they were uncomfortable with the world care. It was too intimate for business and I joked with them saying, “Wow, what are you going to do when I start using the word love? You are going to get crazy.” So it was around that point that I met now are my 5th Element group partners, and we together 5th element, but two years ago I was still with my other firm at the same time as launching the decade of women initiative, which is about SDGs Sustainable Development Goal number 5 and empowering women and whatnot in and 5th Element and I just decided that we have a few people that we are together. We decided we need to be together. We had a complimenting different background. One top executive marketing and branding with Coca-Cola, Citibank, Ford, and Kellogg’s, and the other one worked at Matt Damon and water.org and in sports entertainment and another one with foundations and nonprofits and well-being. It was just the epitome of what I wanted to do and I tried trademark just before that the term leaders who care and we made a commitment that what we are is 5th Element, which is basically named after the fifth industrial revolution, which is pretty well been declared as Humanity to oversee the fourth industrial revolution, which is also going on right now about AI and blockchain and whatnot. But we are in charge of it, not the other way around. It is about humans and caring. So that led us to great things happening were as partners, the core of how we are making an impact of why we make an impact is aligning corporate brands, aligning family offices with a social impact not just because not a donation but getting them a higher return on investment, a higher return on value, a measured brand warms how consumers and towns feel about them and at the same time allows us to attract them the best best best people who only want to go work for leaders who care who are making a difference but it is not sacrificing money for that and it is not just making a donation, there is if you can be for a profit and for good as you well know because you do. I have done this for years and you can do both and do better for both.

John: That is well said. For our listeners who just joined us, we are honored to have today with us Mark Sodovnick. He is the partner at the 5th Element group to learn more about Mark’s great and important and impactful work at the 5th Element group. You could go to 5th and you go with a five, use the number five, 5thelement.group.

Mark: You know what is great about that? You said it more times than you would have so it gives us [inaudible].

John: And then I will say about five more times and I might get it right by the end of this broadcast. Mark, first of all, you are so humble and you are such a good human being. You just glanced over your headhunting days, and I do not want our listeners to just think, “Oh, well Mark was a head hunter.” You were recognized by Businessweek as one of the most influential hundred and fifty head hunters in the entire world. So I just want you to give us a little nugget, when you are headhunting and you are doing this for quite some time as a profession you become an expert at people. You become a people expert and so before we go into all the great stuff that you launched two years ago at 5th Element, which is tons to go over. Give our listeners a nugget or two. What did you learn about people to become one of the top head hunters in the world that we can all take with us to interrelate with people better than we do today?

Mark: It is such an important question. One of my favorite quotes in the world is Maya Angelou who said, “Most people will forget what you said. most people forget what you have done, but they will always remember how you made them feel.”

John: I love that quote. That is just the best.

Mark: It is. It is so deep and yet so simple. It goes back to my grandfather making people smile basically. If you are looking to build long-term trust, long-term relationships, and not just quick hits then people have to trust you. People have to really see that you really do care like for real care, authentically care and I learned the very very very first search I did was for some kind of tax position and everything. I worked really hard and it was my first one and got them the company made an offer to this guy and he declined and I was thinking I work so hard in this and he declined. At that time we were just doing contingency search. In other words, you get paid if you place a person. I was thinking, “Man that sucks. How could you turn it down.” I worked so hard and how can you turn down. And he said to me, “I just did not feel it was the right fit,” and it hit me. It is not about me that I did all that work. It was about it is not the right fit for this person. You just see the right fit for the people in the company and sometimes you got to fail or get smack to get what you already know, maybe even and so I do remember that and I am in it for the long term relationship all the time because that is the way you do not get burnt out basically is if you are really in it for the right reason to help people then it is not about making a sale. It is not about all this energy to be on. Remember I did a vlog once that you do not need to be on all the time just being live all the time is exhausting actually. Again back to that caring thing that goes back to my grandfather again the whole thing about. I think people know if you care. I want to tell a little thing I have done over the years is when someone gets an offer I would say do not answer me now or whatever, go home, you obviously want to talk to your family went up but I want you to and I learned this from Sports. Sports teach us a lot. It teaches us so many things.

John: So true.

Mark: But I had a great teacher that taught me about visualization. He taught me visualization. He was a coach also in the game. He taught me visualization if I am preparing for a test to visualize myself sitting at the desk before hands when I get to sit down in the time starts. I do not waste ten, fifteen minutes organizing my stuff. I have already been there and I am doing it or I have already been in the game before I am in the game. I actually tell them to go home. I want them to close their eyes, it works a lot better that way if they are cool with that and I want you to think about getting up the next morning, getting dressed [inaudible] whatever going to the car driving there, get there and you park, in the parking lot you walk in and say “Hi” when you go sit in your office, you go get some coffee or talking to people, getting on the phone to talk to whoever you are going to talk to your boss and then you go home and back home again. Tell me how it was and the minimum it does is it makes them think more about this is real. I have got to go do this now because we all love to date and being courted and all that but then when you get married you have laundry and bills and stuff to handle and everything so it is like the same thing. It is fun. They want me. They are going to pay me this and that. I think I can actually go to do the work. So in almost thirty years, I have had two then I remember maybe three that have told me, “Man, that was great. I do not even want this job. I was just caught up in the whole and a whole thing.” I will have to turn down and different from my very very very first search as a young guy where I was ticked. I was singing great. Now is the time to know not after. The client obviously super happy because it costs money to have someone accepting and not be happy. So really that type of thing where the person sees that I really really really it is okay if they turn it down. In fact, there is no obligation of the leaders of the company to make an offer. There certainly is not an obligation for the person to take it. That is not the game. The game is to, are we the right fit for each other? This is going to be fantastic and I think that is where if you come across because the people I work with now are mostly Senior Management Executive boards and they are busy. They are smart, most of them and it is all about trust. You do not really want to waste their time talking about something that is not an opportunity and certainly not going to try to sell them something. It has to be what we have called the right fit culture ad. What I mean by that is, right fit does not mean you are exactly like everybody in the company. It means you bring you add to the culture in what you have which includes the diversity of experience, diversity of background, culture, language, whatever you add to that culture. You do not want to hire people that are exactly the same as you. It does not make any sense at all, even though people have done that for years before, but that is another thing that really makes a difference is where they especially a lot of younger people these days they are looking for that diverse. They are looking for the right opportunity to not looking for a recruiter to shove them into a job somewhere. So that is kind of where I come from. Again, I compared a lot to sports where people have a pro athlete [inaudible]. It is a blast to be a pro hockey and it is great. If I was playing pro hockey [inaudible] than ever, but they have crappy days too and they have stuff that goes on it becomes routine and everything, and you get burnt out even if you are doing the thing you love the most. You get burnt out unless there is a why there unless your passion is really there and you have got people around giving you the compliment that and so that is kind of, I was honored when they said that about the book business week, but again it is not rocket science. It is about taking care of people.

John: Got it, and again for our listeners out there find Mark or his great organization. You can go to 5thelement.group. At the 5th Element group, you are the Chief Human Element Officer. What does that mean to you?

Mark: You could have stopped what is that means. We were looking at titles but it was a different title. Sometimes people would think I am the HR Director just because this they would think but we have a Chief [inaudible] Officer. We have a Chief Impact Officer. We got a Chief Family Officer and this on. The key to that title is we have a human element practice which is the complementary practice for our [inaudible] Consulting practice of aligning brands with social impact and the human element practice includes the whole executive search practice and includes a well-being initiative and it was diversity and inclusion. We wanted to make a point of again the 5th Element is about humanity. I want to make a point that again it is not about just placing people. The human element is critical to everything we do as obvious as that may sound. It is critical with technology moving at the fastest pace ever. It is very easy to get in a riptide and forget that we are human beings and people that I deal with that are looking potentially open to good opportunities they want to work with human beings that care. They really really really do. They want to work with you and beings that have a purpose that has a why because they do also and the other important element is they want to want to work with people that listen to also what their why is and what their passion is and not just be all the same. This is what we do. You do have to be a team but we are also individual human beings and we have to listen to each other here what is going on with each other. There is one leader of a major company I was with recently and he took me to his office and he knew everybody’s names. It is a big company He knew everybody’s names. He knew if they are having a baby knew, this was going on, that was going on. It was incredible.

John: How great is that that is awesome.

Mark: How does that make you feel let me know and it reminds me of another story. Way back when with Deloitte at that time was called Northern Telecom [inaudible]. There were clients of ours and I was a young kid. I was like a little, little kid because I would ask questions all the time like the sky is blue, why, because he does this, why. You just keep asking why and so the CEO happened to be in the office as we were at corporate headquarters and I am doing some grand twerk[?] of adding numbers or God knows why. I would go to one of the factories there to do an inventory which is actually was that part was kind of interesting because you get to see real the business is about. He happened to come by and say hi, which I thought was cool. I said Hi. I said I was just at the factory. It was really cool. I was talking to this one and that one. I saw how they were making these phones that no one has even seen yet and they work. They are making flip phones. This is back in like the late 70s, flip phones and all sorts of things that are going on and it was really cool. Then somebody told me how they improve this and that. He said, “Well that is amazing. I have not even been there myself,” and I said I started thinking to myself. I was not a genius but how does he know what is going on if he has not been there and it also reminds me always about how at that time head of production people were not even on the executive committee or anything. They would just consider that they were out there and we will decide what to do over here. But you do not know what is going on. I told them they are amazing what is going on over there. When he said he was never been I was kind of surprised but it was funny. Two or three days a week later when I saw him and he said and he came over he said, “I went to the factory. I was amazed too. There is so many things that most people know. He started doing an address that they have communicated to factories and all their employees about the CEO talking about stuff like that. I am thinking, “Man, I was not genius but actually made an impact there,” by easily telling him that those people know what they are doing it to so interesting, and to his credit, he went basically. He could have not gone back then. You see these things to your life to catch you at a time whatever it is and they make an impact. So he made an impact on me on that and I hope that made an impact on him and but it is all about people, right? It is all about people.

John: So leaders with care. Leaders who care. Talk about or the original coming together of that partnership and launching that program, leaders who care, and then take us into what you have been doing recently with your video interview project and how that was evolved and developed over since your initial launch of the Leaders Who Care initiative.

Mark: I almost could not call it an initiative. I would call it a way of being or something that we work and engage and commit to working with leaders who care which gives them basically an extra recognition because really good talent knows that we work with leaders who care about their financial well-being, their physical well-being, and their mental well-being, as well as, they care about the planet, they care about our environment, they care about the sustainable development goals, and we do not just say it because the other half of our core business is aligning their brand with social impact. So they really have to show that they really do care because I learned a while back, candidates are smart, especially younger ones now and every era the young generation comes up and adds new stuff for sure, but this one is an amazing one. They will go into interviews and I will guarantee you they will ask. What are you doing about the environment? Do you care about the oceans? What are you doing for the employees with respect to our well-being? They will ask these questions which we did not really ask.

John: No, and they want tangible answers. They do not want just some fluff, right?

Mark: Oh man, it is not. Yes. We will give you an extra week off when you work your seventeen years or something.

John: That does not cut it anymore.

Mark: No and it is beautiful. It is beautiful because life is not all about money, obviously, and it does not make you happy but you do not sacrifice money to do good. You do not have to do that. It actually has finally come to the point that leaders who care about both making money and having an impact do better in both of those at the same time.

John: I love it.

Mark: So that is kind of where the whole strength of the leaders who care thing is and some of the work we are doing with amazing leaders. We were in Davos in January this year.

John: Yes. Talk about Davos like who you interview there and how did that go?

Mark: Davos was actually great and it seems — well it is just the end of January and we are in May and it seems like it was years ago.

John: January for all of us seems like it was years ago. I mean you are so right on that.

Mark: It is much how the world has changed. So we went specifically with four clients, but we also have really amazing Community, which I am proud to say that we were fortunate Forbes recognized our community as outstanding Global Brain Trust Network and it is really amazing leaders and influencers and inclined[?] leaders and so on that are entered in and we went specifically with four that wanted to do something specific there and then we bring delegates from our community to different events when we were having events and they will come back. For example, one of the big clients we were able to set up with media plays strategic meetings sitting on panels, making announcements. Another one we set up with two or three corporate players there. This was a non-profit one and set up [inaudible] players that were really interested in what they did about trauma and counseling around the world and mental health is a major major issue. Another client of ours is a company that actually has an AI technology that actually identifies, measures and fixes with respect to your eyes and how it affects diabetes and they are going to be expanding that into much more of how it impacts your eyes and your whole body so technology there. So Davos is basically a platform. We are going to go back in January next year with more of that more clients, but it is about really putting our clients in a position to achieve what they need to achieve and a lot of it is about kind of like the search kind of like what we do about putting the right fit together, people in people or putting the right people to the company A together with right people Company B, or the right non-profit for social impact. It is again what we call is an Omniwin. I guess we used to say a win-win but it is really an Omniwin where we may have two we may have five parties involved at the same time and they all benefited AI or win if you will in one way or another and it is interesting. I was told a long time ago I had someone [inuadible]. I never understood why in a sports League the media would say well company or Team A and Team B had a trade. Team B won the trade team A lost the trade. So that cannot be very good for anybody. If one team keeps losing trades and then one team keeps winning championships. If the league is not valued because those teams are crappy or teams losing trades and how valuable is your championship? League has no value. So we live on one planet and if the planet sucks then and you are making a ton of money over here, but the planet sucks what good is that? We are all on the same planet, we are in the same league. Now that does not take away from the competition. Competitions are great because it makes us all better but to win a competition in a league that is super valuable is way better than playing tennis with somebody that you win all the time. Who cares about that? It all applies and one of the things I mentioned to you, one of the exciting things we have done recently is we combine with John Krasinski some good news.

John: Yes, tell us about that story and you had some big wins recently with some huge brands. Please share those stories. I really want our listeners to hear about those.

Mark: Yes, very cool, super honored to be part of it because John blasted this thing and some good news was exactly what everybody needed during this whole time and he put out the news and people started responding because we were craving good news. People started bringing some good news about the nurses and for my workers and drivers and little kids that are creating masks and you name it all on and just grew and grew and grew and then being that what we did we start talking to John and his team and he sees that we bring corporate Brands, online them to social impact. Well, there is a play here. So restaurant employees were suffering a lot. [inaudible] started this restaurant employee Relief Fund. John knew him. We talked to some clients to come in on this and it is not about hogging the whole show you are going to get mentioned for what you did but it is about making a difference and aligning yourself with social impact. So the executives of PepsiCo were amazing. In two days they were able to put a budget together from Pepsi in the foundation of three million dollars to surprise John surprise Guy Fieri saying, [inaudible] seventeen million dollars in your employee fund well, our friends with PepsiCo want to bring that to twenty million in Guy Fieri was like no way. I got goosebumps. It is really amazing to see and then it exploded and social media after that a half a billion people or more now. I have seen it. Pepsi is super thrilled AT&T got better coverage on this. They said in their Super Bowl ad basically. John’s daughter does all the drawings and she draws a Pepsi logo as a kid would. She is now putting that on t-shirts and selling at all for charity and so on and so forth and recently this last the same thing with Starbucks who are spectacularly wonderful and they helped start. This is going to be the show from now on. It is going to be John still be in it and tidbits but it is going to be people around the world bringing some good news to the show and there is now going to be some good news some good merch for merchandise Marketplace that is already open now. It is some of the new stuff and Starbucks initially for a million is going to match the first million that comes in to give to charities that are identified and it is going to keep growing and growing and growing and growing to bring the news and to have social impact and guess what, it is good for business too. We got to have it be good for business because people have to make, people have liveliness, people have whatnot more good news can happen.

John: Yes. So here is one of your Omniwins you have. John’s Channel getting more publicity and more visibility, which is only going to attract more good news for all of us to share and enjoy and get inspired from Pepsi wins, Guy Fieri organization win, Starbucks wins, there is wins all over the place here. So that is why it is much more than that you just said win-win. This is an Omniwin, this is an Omni impact really.

Mark: Yes. This is the opposite of a pandemic on that side. This is a good contagion thing right here.

John: That is awesome. That is just so amazing. Hey, before we have to split for today, you mentioned your grandfather. Give our listeners one other key influencer in your life besides your grandfather who was obviously a huge figure and impact in your life.

Mark: Well, this one maybe a little bit weird. So I am Jewish and I have always been interested in peace. We are doing stuff for peace right now actually called business for peace, business leaders who care about peace and it was good for business and it was good for people but one person that influenced me that I have never met but I did see was Anwar Sadat. It just inspired me when I heard him speak, inspired me that he knew he was probably going to be assassinated at some point. It is an amazing story. Egypt was the archrival to Israel as we all know forever ever ever ever. Funny enough they still have a peace treaty between each other and it is others that our problem but he went against everything. I mean talk about a big dream and knowing that he is in danger all the time. So I read a lot of his stuff but what he wanted to do and how we teach this important that is on his stuff but we are really then hit home as he was the first Egyptian president to make a speech in Israel literally and he was in Haifa and I saw the thousands of Israelis cheering an Egyptian president in Israel. To me, it almost shows what is bigger than that almost and I am sure there is something bigger somewhere or equally good or does it is. It is not a matter of size but how like humble, how inspiring, how big a dream, how brave and how loving was he to do something like that and see how the people of Israel were so taken by how much he cared to be there no matter what the danger was that he was there and it just shows time and time again that whatever you think is impossible it is not impossible. It is super possible and it does not mean it is going to be easy, but it is possible. So that is something– that was a big influence for me too.

John: We are going to end but we are going to bring it all back to sports and I know you and me are both Sports junkies and we love the analogies and sports and life and sports and business. Recently last weekend the Michael Jordan documentary ended the last dance. Did you have a chance to watch any of those episodes?

Mark: Every single one.

John: Okay, and me too, and more than once and my favorite, my favorite episode was episode number eight. At the end of episode number eight, Jordan was on screen and he was finishing his comments and he got very emotional. He ended with this quote and I want to ask you what this quote means to you and to leaders who care. He said winning has a price and Leadership has a price. Was that mean to Mark and to your great work and important work that you are doing at the 5th Element? How does that interrelated with the leaders who care series that you have created? What do you think of that?

Mark: Yes, it is pretty amazing because you saw, he saw his determination throughout that whole show. The highest level of determination, which is absolutely necessary to achieve what he achieved and that is the price and he was willing to pay the price to get it. Out of the circle back in the circle, Colby always said something to Kobe Bryant, that before he passed away then when he passed away they said [inaudible] and he said most people are looking for the dream, the dreams over there and you got to have the dream but they are not realizing is this is the dream right this second. It is almost like enjoy the journey if you will in a different way. This is the dream and I think Michael just like all of us is not perfect but he committed to what he had to the hard work he had to do above and beyond to be at that level in almost lot of times take the team on his shoulders, but he also committed to making Pippen and Rodman in them better. He committed to making them Steve Kerr better and how much it contributes to Steve Kerr’s life because of that and he did not judge Rodman. He would be pissed at him if he was not at practice and he did not judge them. He said he said [inaudible] we need you, we need you here and he brought him in and I do not know if you remember the story he said when Rodman once did something stupid came to his room and asked for a beer and he gave him the beer. He said Rodman never said he was sorry, but that was his way of saying he was sorry by going to his room.

John: Because he never did that, ever did that before. That was way out of his character.

Mark: Yes, exactly. So a leader and a leader who cares listens and knows about the people around them and remembers and gets that because we are all the same but we are also all different and I think if you want to — winning is not who said how did he say when he is not everything but would really is. I think Michael was committed to being the best he could be and in that same light, he made others around him so much better and the devotion that he had to his parents, especially his father you can see the emotion when his father was not there and how it impacted him. So you saw his vulnerability as well and I think people around him knew that and he was okay to do that, but I also think he kind of wished he could be allowed to be more vulnerable to and that is another sometimes hard thing a leader has to go through is to not fake it by a long shot. Do not fake if you want to be authentic and Leadership is not being vulnerable, but it is not easy sometimes when you are leading and so I think he cared about his team. He cared about representing Chicago. He cared about his parents and I think that is what a leader does and even if people and he even said it, be kind of said it like not everybody is going to love him. You cannot get everybody, all the people to love you all the time.

John: He said if I am not for you then find somebody else to inspires you.

Mark: Yes, right fit right. It is got to be the right fit but the bottom line is people recognize the leaders that we really do care about them, really really really do care about them because the end of the day the thing that fills our heart and soul the most is actually feeling like you belong and you are part of a community whether that is a Chicago Bulls team or your family or your department in your company or your city or your country and if somebody that makes you feel like you belong is amazing, amazing leader.

John: Well, you are amazing Mark and we are just thankful for your time today, for your thoughts today and for all the great work and impact that you are making. You are constantly making the world a better place and making a great impact with your organization the 5th Element group. You could find them at 5th. It is a 5-T-H element.group, 5thelement. group. Mark, thank you for all of your impacts. Thank you for your friendship, continued great work and I look forward to having you back on to tell more stories like today that you have done with John Krasinski, StarBucks, Pepsi, and with your leaders who care series. We are so honored to have you today. Thanks again for all the impacts that you make. It is an Omni impact for all of us.

Mark: I want to thank you for everything you have done and we have known each other for a while now and I think I have recycled myself just based on everything you have done. So it is a super pleasure being with you and I appreciate the positive attitude and let us keep making a difference man.

John: You are on.

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

John: Welcome to another edition of the Impact podcast. I’m so honored and privileged today to have with us Jared Blank. He’s an author, a speaker, a motivational coach, and runner, but you’re going to learn today he’s much more than all that. Welcome to Impact, Jared Blank.

Jared Blank: Hey, thank you so much for having me. It’s great to be here.

John: Jared, we’re going to get into your whole journey and story but just for our listeners to get a little frame up here, where were you born? where did you go to school in college? Where do you live today?

Jared: Definitely, so I grew up in Portland, Oregon and I went to Lincoln High School. Then from there, I went to the University of Southern California for college and been in LA and kind of up and down the West Coast, but now back in my hometown of Portland, Oregon.

John: You’re working for a great company called Columbia Sportswear now, right?

Jared: Yeah, that’s correct. I’m doing footwear merchandising for our EU team at Columbia’s headquarters here in Portland.

John: So that sounds all great, but there is a huge back story to the Jared Blank life. I’d like you to share with our listeners a little bit of it. I’d like you to share about when you were a young man, a kid really, 4 or 5 years old, what did you learn about yourself that was different than most of the other kids and how did the beginning of the journey look like?

Jared: Yeah. So I guess the best place to start with that would be this, a doctor’s visit that I had probably when I was five years old. They’ve been giving me glasses to try out. They thought I was having some sort of visual problem and I was still having headaches when I was trying the glasses. So we went back to the eye doctor and I’m sitting in the chair and she’s like, the doctor was like, “I want to do this test with you”. She had me look at the board and then she’s like, “I’m going to get your mom”. That feeling as a kid when you’ve done something wrong, I always equate it to like taking too many cookies out of the cookie jar. I knew something was wrong or I’ve been caught in this moment and my mom comes in. She’s like, “The problem isn’t that he can’t see the board. It’s that he can’t recognize what the letters are”. At that moment, she was like, “I think he has dyslexia”. Fortunately and my growing up in Portland and my parents having the resources, we went down to California to do testing and sure enough, diagnosed with dyslexia and this other thing that they referred to as sensory processing, which is like holding a pencil or tying shoes, using scissors, just the day-to-day stuff that kids do were challenging for me and I had known this and my mom being an educator at the time knew it, but we didn’t know about dyslexia and what it all meant. So that’s really where my journey with it began.

John: For those who don’t truly understand or have misinformed misconceptions about dyslexia, can you share really clinically and operationally what that means to a person who has that extra burden on his shoulders?

Jared: Yeah, definitely. So the best way that I know how to explain it was this conversation that I have with the doctor. She’s going to be like school is going to be like running with a cut on the bottom of your foot, it’ll be really hard and painful. I didn’t really understand what that meant at the time and I don’t think she expected me to take it so literally as I’m sure we’ll talk about today. Basically, it’s disability to process language. So it’s how our brain views language. So when it comes to reading and what that does in terms of how your brain interprets that data becomes a challenge and dyslexia can manifest in several ways. So it can be from reading to writing, math. It can be which they would probably call my fine motor skills issue, dyspraxia, today. So those are challenges associated with dyslexia has nothing to do with intelligence. So that’s becomes a misconception because we equate reading and writing to intelligence a lot of the times and that’s just not accurate. So that’s where a lot of students will kind of feel the emotional and social effects of dyslexia and feeling because you’re slower at processing those skill sets.

John: How did then you also having sensory processing disorder compound and make the burden of overcoming the dyslexia more difficult?

Jared: It’s a great question, best to answer it probably in the snapshot of my day when you look at elementary school. So I would get up and I’d practice spelling with my mom. She taught me how to count the words on my hands. So if it was a word like “prepare”, we divided in three and four. So I would count the letters and that worked most of the time but sometimes I would actually flip it and so I had spell it “parepre” on my spelling test. Fortunate enough, I had an accommodating second grade teacher that as long as I had all the letters there she would give me credit. Then my mom would pick me up and we would in the middle of the day after my spelling test and we go to occupational therapy. So I was doing occupational therapy where I’d be working on writing in sand or I also had balancing issues. So sitting in a chair was even hard for me and they would work on those skill set to kind of and try to help with balance and coordination. Then it was back to school and then I’d be lucky if the day got broken up by a physical activity like a soccer practice or something and then usually time at the tutors which we called school on top of the school. That was how we kind of as hard as it was, I was fortunate enough to have those resources to be able to work on the things that I needed to improve on, but that was how that was integrated in my life. I used to joke that as long as someone opened the corridor for me, tied my shoes, and got me to the soccer field, I could play the game okay. It was those skill sets that would make the day-to-day challenging.

John: Socially, were you embraced and accepted by all your friends, peers, colleagues your age or were you treated as an outcast?

Jared: I think I had core support with family and friends and educators. So I was I was fortunate but at the same time, you’re in the slower reading groups. At times I was in the hall with the ESL students. So there was this, it was kind of a mix of not really knowing where you fit from that standpoint. So it was kind of this middle ground which can be challenging to navigate.

John: At what point was there a light bulb that went off that you realized that you could turn your challenges, your extra burdens that you were carrying that you were overcoming on a day-to-day basis and turn them into a superpower that would allow you to not only survive this journey, but thrive in it and become the overachiever that you’ve, we’re going to get into in a couple minutes, have well shown that you became?

Jared: Well, I think in looking at it, I was told in elementary school that I probably might not graduate high school, that maybe not for my parents not to expect higher than the C average. That kind of stood or that did stick with me in the back of my mind kind of going through. I think the real turning point for me was I would say high school is when I really started to compete and try to compete. I wanted to be able to show what I could do academically. I remember having a conversation with my mom because I had fought to go to the typical public school and she’s like, “You wanted this choice. You made this choice so you got to own up to it.” That’s when I really started to put in the work.

John: So you went on. You got to admit it to USC which already was an overcoming of all the odds that everyone had predict. USC is a very great educational institution in the entire planet and not easy to get into. How was that? How did you navigate like getting into USC when everyone said, “You should probably have lowered your expectations and not shot that big”?

John: Well, the conversation had changed so freshman year, I’d finished my freshman year with a 4.0 in high school. I remember the resource teacher came to me one day in one of my sessions and she goes, “So what colleges are you thinking of?” At that point, I still haven’t really made that turn or pivot in my mind that that was going to be a possibility for me. I was still like I was in that flight or fight mode with just trying to show what I could do in the classroom. I started listing all these schools that I’d only seen in the NCAA tournament. So I’m like Michigan and Duke and teams that you just get recognized from the NCAA tournament and not even knowing where those places were. As I kind of continued down this path, my oldest brother went to USC to study business and my middle brother, I think, saw the opportunities down there and ended up going to USC. The joke in our family is that I went to USC because I said, “Well, if those two can do it, so can I.”

John: That’s awesome.

Jared: That was a big part of the reason why.

John: For our listeners out there who have just joined us, we have Jared Blank with us today. He’s a speaker, a motivational coach, a runner. We’re going to discuss in a second how he became an author, but he’s much more than that. We’re about to get to a very interesting part of his story. So I really want you all to listen in here. Jared, now you’re in SC. What did you decide what subject matters were interested you the most and how did that journey go compared to your lower school education?

Jared: Yes, so I knew going into college that I wanted to work in sports. So I was kind of looking for that avenue. I didn’t know exactly how to navigate that world from an educational standpoint. So I was trying the sciences, I was looking at maybe like athletic training, kinesiology. I ended up, I met with John Spoelstra who is a brilliant marketer and a person that had worked with the Portland Trail Blazers. He talked to me about Communications and why he thought that might be a good avenue. So that’s what I ended up studying. From there, I started working with our football program at USC.

John: You graduated USC with two masters degrees?

Jared: Yes. So I–

John: Most people, by the way, Jared, most people are just happy to get out with an undergraduate degree. You go out and get one master degree and then two.

Jared: Yes, I did.

John: Come on, man. That’s crazy good. It’s crazy, it’s incredible.

Jared: I did my masters. Yeah, I got the Communication degree and then I did a Masters in Communication Management at USC. When I was working at the University of Washington, Seattle Pacific was actually right near where I was living and that’s where I got the second degree. I got my Masters of Business Administration from Seattle Pacific up in Washington.

John: Unbelievable. I mean, you overachieved in everything you’ve touched. So how many people out of your group of friends and colleagues and people that you met along the way, including the football program that you went to go work with and for at SC, knew about the challenges that you overcome on a daily basis, both of dyslexia and the sensory processing disorder?

Jared: Not many. I didn’t talk about it too much. I really kept that part of my life as much as I could to myself. There is a few people that I talked to about it, I guess like core group that I shared it with, but I really kept it private as much as I could. I think there’s a level of shame that you carry with it that you’re constantly fighting and then so I think I had to to figure that part out.

John: I want to touch on that as someone who’s been through rehab myself. What I learned in rehab, one of the greatest lessons you learn in rehab is that secrets will eat you from the inside out. Is this you just kindly used the words, softly used the words, kept it private and kept it to yourself? Was it more of a secret and a burden that once you did share it you felt relieved that the story was out?

Jared: Yeah, I think there is some relief to it to being out for sure. I think there is definitely some breathing room that happens when once that occurred. I was so concerned that people would take opportunities away from me from sharing it that I just wanted to be able to prove that I could do things even though they were hard.

John: Because of the historical misconceptions and potential as you said of shame, once the story started getting out, was it the opposite reaction, was there some shame and do you feel that any opportunities along the way were did evaporate because of your story?

Jared: So I think it’s interesting because I really started sharing it when I came back to Portland and we can get into the reason why. What I recognized was the problems that I was facing in the education system 30 years ago were still occurring today.

John: Unbelievable.

Jared: I was starting to feel a really strong pull to change that and that’s why I shared my story.

John: Everyone decides to come out with their story, with their hero’s journey in different ways. Talk a little bit now how you formulated getting your story out and then we’ll go into some of the great accomplishments that you have made here.

Jared: Yeah, so I was learning kind of about the education system and challenges that were still being brought in our world. At the same time I was following this race, which is called the World Marathon Challenge and I learned about that on ESPN and then it’s where someone runs seven marathons in seven days on seven continents. I’ve felt this pull to do this race because I’ve kind of how I was growing up like my schedule was seem super long every day and always disjointed but then you had to operate and I was like, “Oh, I was really born to run this race”. Seeing that race, I wanted to help connect it to something bigger than myself and I learned about this organization called The International Dyslexia Association, which have this program that was run until everyone can read. From there, I called them and I talked to them about what I was doing and we formed a partnership to do the races and also combine it as a fundraiser.

John: Okay, a couple of things. First, I should have asked you this earlier, but for our listeners out there, how many people are affected with the challenge of having dyslexia?

Jared: So it’s somewhere between 10 and 20 percent. A lot of organizations identify one in five. I’ve heard anywhere between one in ten and one in five.

John: So this is a huge issue that many people are dealing with every day, are overcoming every day, but also in potentially still harboring that secret every day because of the issue of potential shame and other mitigating issues. Is this what you’re still seeing in your journey?

Jared: Still seeing it in the journey. Yes.

John: Yeah. So, were you a runner before you decided to do this or did you have to take on a whole new challenge here? Were you are runner just for your own health and wellness prior to this or is this a whole new thing to you physically?

Jared: Well, so running had been something that I’d used as a tool throughout growing up and I probably should have mentioned that earlier. I would used to run to kind of deal with the frustration of school and life and I would basically put on my shoes and run around the neighborhood at the time.

John: So, I mean, I just want to read these numbers out loud because when I just read them it’s just hard to even, so saying them is even going to be more fun. So and you correct me if I’m off here, but from what I’ve read and everything I’ve learned about you, you ran 183 miles in seven days on seven continents?

Jared: That’s correct.

John: Wow, I mean like so how old were you when you started this? I mean, how old were you when you started, when you came up with the idea, started working with the International Dyslexia Foundation and started training for this prior to departing and doing the seven days?

Jared: Yes. So I was 35 years old when I really committed to it. I learned about it in 2015. So I would have been like 32 at the time. I was actually watching The Challenge on my couch with the family and I was like, “I was going to do this race”. They all have to admit that I was crazy at the time, but that race just hung with me. After 12 years working in college sports, I’d quit my job and I committed six months to fully training for the event.

John: So six months to train for this. Wow, for our listeners out there that want to support what Jared is working on in terms of sharing this message and taking away the shame from dyslexia and getting other people out there with this burden motivated and inspired, you could go to his great website, the book’s website www.runningthedistancebook.com, I’m on it right now. It’s a beautiful and very educational website. You could buy his books and all the money goes to, you share it Jared.

Jared: Yes. So all the sale proceeds from the book is going back towards the International Dyslexia Association. So we’re doing the book as a fundraiser.

John: They take that money because people, the world is different now than compared to 30-40 years ago where you give to an organization, just hope they do well with it. What are they specifically doing with the money you’re raising with your challenge so our listeners can know where their money is going towards when they’re buying your great book?

Jared: Yeah, definitely. So the International Dyslexia Association puts on conferences and events from that standpoint. So a lot of the putting fund back into it helps support teacher trainings. In that regard, you’ll see on the website there’s a specific campaign going on where so I’m connected to the International Dyslexia Association Oregon branch and they have let me, normally when we do fundraisers like half the money would go to your home branch and half the money would go to the National Organization to help support these conferences and literature that they put out. What we are doing right now is I also connected to the branch in Kenya. So the donations that get made on that page, 50% are going towards the International Dyslexia Association branch in Kenya as they are continuing to build a school in Kenya and then the other will go back to international organization to throughout our country to work on various projects.

John: When did the book launch?

Jared: So the book launched last fall of 2019. We did it at the what we call Dyslexicon, our National Convention, which was hosted in Portland, Oregon.

John: That’s so great. So for our listeners out there, again go to www.runningthedistancebook.com, buy one of Jared’s books, support this great cause and also get inspired and motivated yourself. We all have challenges. We all have burdens. We all look for new ways to get inspired, especially living during this critical moment in history where Covid-19 has challenged all of us to rise up and overcome this tragedy. This book could be another source of great inspiration. I’ll tell you what, we bought a bunch of the books, we support what Jared represents and who he is because of the great impacts he’s making, and we’re going to be giving out some of those books to our listeners who write to us and tell us why they’re so excited and interested in learning more about Jared’s story. So Jared, we’re true believers, can you share with our listeners out there a little bit about what our listeners can expect to see in the book and talk a little bit about those seven days and 183 miles that you traveled and talk about some of the biggest hurdles you had to overcome to make it through and get through this challenge.

Jared: Definitely, so one, thank you so much for the support and purchasing the book. So that’s amazing and I know the organization will be very pleased with that so and I am as well. So thank you. The book just to give, I guess, the concept is it’s how dyslexia helped me prepare to run this challenge. We land in Cape Town, South Africa and we meet as a group and from there we go to Antarctica to start the first race and it’s very surreal at this point. You land in Antarctica and you get on these snowmobiles and you go to these bunkers because what they do, they have to wait till they know the planes can take back off towards Cape Town, which is the second race, before they can start the 168-hour clock to make sure we finish all these races within seven days. Richard Donovan is the race director so he’s really adamant about that. We start Antarctica’s race and you’re running these loop and courses and it’s you’re in the sun for half of it and then you’re in a headwind for the other half of it and you just keep doing these loops, but Antarctica is an amazing place to be able to run, I’ll tell you that.

John: That’s where you started?

Jared: Yeah, that’s where we started.

John: Wow, okay and then from there?

Jared: Then from there we go to Cape Town, South Africa. So it was, I think, temperature-wise I think it was 20 degrees Fahrenheit and then we go to Cape Town in it’s 75 degrees Fahrenheit. So you have the full change there weather-wise and we ran in the middle of the day in Cape Town. So it’s pretty hot.

John: How many days in between? How many days from the first run to the second run?

Jared: It’s ten hours.

John: It’s ten hours. So it’s literally the next day.

Jared: Yeah, basically we finish, we get back in the plane. We fly ten hours and then two hours after we land, we’re running again.

John: Okay, so time out. Just from someone who all my life, I’ve had athletes around me and I try to work out on a regular basis. I just know that recovering under normal circumstances in the same city that you just ran a marathon in is hard enough. How do you recover? Seriously, how do you physically recover on a plane when planes dehydrate you, planes have their own challenges? How do you recover from just running a marathon in those ten hours and are prep for the next one?

Jared: Yeah. Well, fortunately for us it’s just the runners on the on the plane which kind of helps space-wise. We had a little bit more room but I’d worked with this group, Wise Wolf Pack out here in Portland, Oregon. Yassin, he trained me to run and then I worked with Flex and Flow Yoga Studio and they gave me some stretches to do while I was on the plane.

John: Really?

Jared: So I had a whole kind of–

John: Protocol, you had a protocol.

Jared: Yeah, totally.

John: Seriously, Jared, no one because this is in many ways uncharted territory, where do you get the protocol for dealing with dehydration, altitude stuff, all that kind of stuff and also just what your body takes for natural recovery processes? I mean, what did you eat? I mean, how did you eat and how did you even sleep besides the stretching and that stuff which I told we get? Eating and sleeping, how’d you do that just to recover?

Jared: Yeah, so you kind of just got to force down calories when you can and you get the opportunity. The plane had food so that the plane essentially becomes your hotel. So it was basically catnapping, stretching, and consuming calories until the plane landed and it was time to run again.

John: Was the adrenaline of the camaraderie also just like electrifying?

Jared: Yeah, that’s like none other. I mean, the community that you get surrounded by is they become your family. I mean, you’re sharing foam rollers, you’re sharing stories. It’s really unreal and you just meet so many inspiring people. There was a gentleman with Parkinson’s that ran all seven marathons. There’s a woman who did half marathons on a prosthetic leg. Just incredible people out there that keep you going for sure.

John: Are there trainers, doctors, nurses physical assistants, all that kind of stuff, PT’s also helping you get through this?

Jared: Yeah, there’s a doctor on board which which is really helpful and then it’s you’re kind of on your own after that, but they definitely had medical so that was a good thing.

John: So now you’re in Cape Town. Number two, talk about that.

Jared: Yes, so Cape Town was really interesting because so as I mentioned, I’m connected to the International Dyslexia Association branch here in Oregon and the president at the time was from Cape Town, South Africa. So she was actually at the first race, so she met me so I had a support while I was on the course there. We were running in the heat of the day and that one took a lot out of me, I think, to get through that marathon out there. It’s an unreal place to run, just really thankful for the opportunity to be out there.

John: So, now from Cape Town, where did you go?

Jared: So we go to Perth, Australia, and it’s like perfect conditions. T-shirt and shorts were running actually at night on this boardwalk.

John: It sounds great.

Jared: Yeah. It’s amazing. It was like and I’m finding my stride at this point too. I didn’t know what Antarctica was going to be like. We had the heat but I was on kind of back towards where I was running on pace to where I thought I should be and everything was just perfect. All the sudden at mile 22, I hear a pop and I am all locked up on my left side. No rotation, no stride, I didn’t know if it was a cramp or what had happened.

John: Was it an ankle or a knee?

Jared: It was neither. It ended up being the IT band and I remember a runner came up to me and he’s like, “Just think about getting to Dubai and finishing.” We’d already had somebody drop out, I guess, of the race that night that I was unaware of it at the time. He’s like, “Just think about getting to Dubai”. So I hobble through these 4 miles and I called my coach that night and I’m like, “I don’t know what to do because I’m all locked up on my left side.” He’s like, “Oh it’s like in the middle your knee?” I’m like, “Yeah”. He knew exactly where it was. He seemed just knew where everything was. He is like, “I’ve had this before. It’s going to be really painful but the good news is you can run on it. I did for my 100 Miler”. Yeah, and this is the coach. He’s like, “I remember I trained you to get hit by a sledgehammer and keep going”. I go “Yeah, that’s right.” So it reminded me back to when the doctor told me that having dyslexia is going be like running with a cut on the bottom of the foot. So these parallel stories that have now come into play. So I go down the hall, I put ice, I get the ice towel. I turn the bath as hot as I could take it and I’m back and forth doing hot and cold. The leg just feels really unstable, the pain is gone, but it’s just it doesn’t feel stable at all. So I go down and the runners [crosstalk]

John: You’re doing this when you’re supposed to be resting and sleeping?

Jared: Right. Yeah [crosstalk]

John: Okay, this one I mentioned that too. This is the same.

Jared: We have four races left to go and I put everything into this race and I really believe that I have prepared.

John: You’ve come too far to fail now.

Jared: Right, exactly. We get to Dubai and I start running and I’m actually back on pace for 23 miles before it locks up on me again. This time I just had a plan for it. I put my headphones in and just hobbled through the last part of the race the best I could and then got through it. I was swinging the leg out really wide, but it was working.

John: You proved to yourself you can do it and that this was like all was not lost.

Jared: No. It felt like it was for a minute, but no. You get it back.

John: Right, but then your mind started to calm, the emotional side of you, the mind side of you start to calm down. All is not lost, we’re going to get through this. We’ve come this far, we’re going to go the distance.

Jared: Yeah, exactly right.

John: For our listeners who just joined us, honored to say we have Jared Blank with us. He’s a speaker, a motivational coach, an author and a runner and he’s telling us one of the greatest running stories ever. I asked you all to look at his great website, runningthedistancebook.com, buy a book, support the cause, it all goes to the International Dyslexia Foundation. Jared, from Dubai, where did you go for number five?

Jared: Yeah. So we go to Dubai, we go to Lisbon. In Lisbon, it hadn’t rained forever and the night we get there it rains. Ever running on cobblestone wood and concrete and wet.

John: Cobblestone wet is a bear.

Jared: Yeah, and just I set a record for myself that night. It’s the longest time I’ve spent on a marathon course. I think I finished that race somewhere around five hours. I was just hobbling on it.

John: I mean, cobblestone is hard to run on when it’s dry in perfect conditions.

Jared: Totally.

John: Wet, it’s a nightmare.

Jared: It is, yeah.

John: Wow. How is your knee now? How is your leg now?

Jared: It was fine. It was a 10-day injury. It was just one of those things that it was time. Yeah. Now everything’s just healed up great.

John: My question is when you were in Lisbon, how was it? How was now go through Dubai, mentally you’re good, now physically, where were you on level of pain and operation?

Jared: Operation, I was as probably in a 3 on a scale of 10, but I was just thinking I was in a good positive mindset at that point. I knew what I had to do. I knew what the challenge was going to be. I knew that the challenge is kind of transformed for me. So it was really just kind of staying the course of keeping one foot in front of the other.

John: So technically you knew you could work around it because you had done this your whole life doing technical workarounds. So you then created the workaround and you knew that you would be able to work around this hurdle that was your knee at this point.

Jared: Yeah, exactly.

John: Awesome.

Jared: Yeah, that’s what had occurred. It just it became how to work when something doesn’t work the way you wanted to.

John: That’s awesome. So now from Lisbon, where do you go?

Jared: We go to Cartagena, Colombia and it’s amazing there.

John: I mean kidding aside, I’ve had friends who’ve gone to Colombia and this is in the wake of all the Netflix specials that everyone is seeing now. I heard that Colombia’s maybe one of the most gorgeous places on this planet.

Jared: It’s by far, it just blew me away. It was so awesome.

John: So talk about this. Tell me about this run.

Jared: I’m on the bus and I actually I’d worked at the University of Washington and I call one of the trainer’s that I stay connected to. His name’s Rob Scheidegger and I call him up and we’re talking and he’s like, “You need to start Advil, like take Advil”. I hadn’t taken Advil for five years.

John: Wow. That’s interesting. I didn’t realize that, okay.

Jared: I didn’t know so we start, he’s telling me how to do it. So you properly take an Advil and so it builds up in your system. So I’m starting to take Advil at this point and then he told me about this pressure point that you have that I might be able to get some relief from the leg on. So you push on your leg and it kind of releases the IT band. So what I was doing during this next race in Cartagena was I was at the rest stations like it were the larger stops where I would take a minute and push on my leg. The leg would actually become more like it would continue to rotate for me. So I was actually getting my momentum back and I was able to finish that race kind of back where I was starting the week time-wise and started feeling like I could actually run again.

John: So how much was the Advil helping in terms of cutting the pain?

Jared: I don’t know if it was maybe changes some of the inflammation or what, but it just I think between it’s kind of I always say it’s doing all the little things that you might not know whether it’s the Advil or the pressing on the leg or the eyes or what. If you do all the things and you just try to do them to the best of your ability, I always say that’s kind of where you get the winds. So I think just between all the little things that I was doing, things were starting to change for me.

John: In between each leg, were you FaceTiming with Mom, Dad, brother, sister? Who are you leaning on? Who are you calling? Who are you talking with and drawing strength from in between each of these journeys?

Jared: Yeah. I think I try to talk to each of my family members. My brother Josh was actually at the Lisbon race and he did the last lap with me, which was amazing.

John: Amazing. That is awesome.

Jared: That was pretty cool. Then I was talking to my middle brother Adam a lot. We were going back and forth like just mentality wise we were talking about how it’s kind of like the seven-game series. He might be down 2-3 or 3-2 but now I’m coming back closer to home court like time detention center amped it up. So we were just trying to, between my whole family and coaches and stuff, there is just so much support and love that I’m truly grateful for.

John: On the courses, you listen to music or you just tried to take in the surroundings or a little bit of both?

Jared: A little bit of both. I don’t mind running with music. I don’t mind running with or I just try to just kind of go by feel for what I needed at the time.

John: In Jared Blank’s life of running and during this challenge, most listened to song?

Jared: Oh gosh, that’s a great question. I don’t know that I could even answer that. My music list is so eclectic.

John: First thing that comes to mind, though, just give me one of your top songs [crosstalk]

Jared: Eye of the Tiger, I would say.

John: Come on, I love it. Come on, Rocky still rules. That’s all we all have to know. The world is still on its axis. I mean, in 2020, Rocky still rules. I love it, for a young guy like you to go back to Rocky Balboa, that’s awesome. Come on, it’s the best. I love it.

Jared: Yeah, it’s so cool. Yeah, I mean you [crosstalk]

John: It’s hard not to get excited when you listen to it. It’s going to fly now.

Jared: Yeah, it’s so hard not to get excited.

John: When you hear it, going to fly now, you look on this great song, I mean, come on, that’s as good as it gets.

Jared: So many classics.

John: So many classics. All right, so now you’re on to the final. Seven, where’d you go and how’d it go?

Jared: It was awesome. It was in Miami, Florida, so it’s only a two and a half hour plane ride from Colombia to Miami. So sometimes you kind of wanted it to be a little bit longer to get your legs back, but we land there. A large portion of my family come out to Miami for the last race.

John: Now, how many hours did you have in between Cartagena and Miami?

Jared: So it’s a two and a half hour plane ride. I think it must have been seven hours before we ran again, I’m sure.

John: Oh my God. That’s incredible.

Jared: It might have been a little bit more but I know it was at least seven.

John: What was your go-to best recharging fuel in terms of food or drink or whatever you were eating at the time that kept you energized, but what didn’t rumble your stomach and your bowels?

Jared: Yeah. I know totally it’s part of the ordeal.

John: Challenge.

Jared: Yeah, so I was actually the thing that I think helped me the most was I was using the stuff called Trail Butter, which is like a nut butter of some sort and I was putting that on everything. I would make a smoothie with it. I would use it to put on the bread that we had.

John: Were there people who we’re making some of these things for you or how are you making your own smoothie? I mean, I got to understand what is going on here.

Jared: I made my own smoothie after when we were in the mess hall at Antarctica and it was literally just, I mean it’s not great, but it was water and Trail Butter and a powder that I had and I just kind of put it all together and mixed it with a spoon. It wasn’t the perfect smoothie but it made it work on the go.

John: Got it.

Jared: Truck stop smoothie, right?

John: Right, and like the Stones used to say, if you can’t get what you want you get what you need, that’s all that matters.

Jared: All that matters.

John: So you’re in Miami now seven hours or so in between which is nothing and you’re on the last leg and a lot of your family’s there, talk about that.

Jared: It was just incredible. You get off the bus, see all the people there. It was just a lot of people running were from Miami, so they had their family there or at least had Miami connections where there was just so many people there and just start running on the boardwalk there.

John: That’s amazing. Approximately what time of day did you cross the finish line?

Jared: It must have been just dinner time. I think it had been, it’s just getting dark, I think, when we finished or when I finished that last race.

John: So how did you guys celebrate? How did you and your family celebrate?

Jared: We just hung out that night. I think everyone and we went to dinner and everyone was kind of hanging out. Nothing crazy, but it was awesome to be around family.

John: What was your victory meal now that you can have actually a proper meal before going to get some rest. What was your victory meal?

Jared: I think we went to eat Chinese food, I think.

John: That’s awesome.

Jared: Yeah, it was really cool. It was just super chill and I think we just hang out and had Chinese food with the family.

John: That’s so great. I mean, it just doesn’t get better than that. How long did you spend in Miami before you went home?

Jared: Just a day, I think. I got up the next day and I actually went to the gym and just did kind of my things.

John: Worked out the things?

Jared: Yeah, exactly, just tried to get everything as loose as I could and then we flew home the next day.

John: That’s amazing. For our listeners out there, Jared’s great journey can be read all about in his book runningthedistancebook.com. All the money goes to the International Dyslexia Foundation. How much have you raised so far?

Jared: So for the race, the goal was to raise 50,000 while I was doing the World Marathon Challenge. I finished the challenge and I was still short on the fundraising goal. So I signed up to do this 100 Miler at Lake Tahoe.

John: Of course you did. What did you? Oh my God.

Jared: I spent this spring just trying to continue to talk and get out to different events and share what we were doing and what this organization was all about and through a very generous donation. Right before the 100 mile race, we hit that 50,000 benchmark. Then this past fall we launched a campaign to raise another 70 which will get split between the branch in Kenya and then the national branch.

John: Through the book sales?

Jared: Not directly through the sales but through the Running The Distance Campaign that we’re doing, yeah.

John: Go it. How’s the book sales going so far?

Jared: I think we’re just kind of getting started still a little slow roller.

John: Well, let me tell you why it’s a slow roller. Let me just cut you some slack here because I know you’re an A+ winner on 50,000 levels. I mean, it’s hard to launch or promote a book during a tragic pandemic period. Let’s really be honest here. It’s science so I get it, but for our listeners out there, seriously, I’d love you to just help and support runningthedistancebook.com. All the money gets donated and it’s a great sports story and we all need inspiration. Jared, before we let you go for today, talk about a couple of things. First thing is heroes. Who has been some of your biggest? I look for inspiration, I’m 57 now and I constantly look for new forms of inspiration. You’ve inspired me. I’m going to tell your story over and over again. Who have been some of your stories of inspiration from the time you were first diagnosed at 5 to today, who’s one or two or three people you’ve really looked up to who’ve inspired and motivated you.

Jared: Definitely, so I think to answer that question I’m going to take two parts. One, it’s my parents. My mom from the very get go was jumped on this thing with dyslexia. On her nightstand were tables and stacks of books about dyslexia and she was trying to figure the whole thing out. We didn’t know anything about it at the time and we joke now that she put the whole thing together with string and duct tape, trying to find tutors and do the whole thing back then because no one was really talking about it. My dad would show up to every IEP meeting and made sure that I had the accommodations that I needed. I know how hard it is with dyslexia and without their support, I don’t know if I’d be where I am today. I don’t think I would be and so that’s why I’m so passionate about trying to get back to this community. I feel so responsible to give that to everybody. It shouldn’t just be people that have the resources. It should be for everybody. So that’s where that all generates from.

John: You honor their sacrifice by all the achievements that you go out and do. That’s incredible. That’s really incredible stuff. Well, Jared, I’m going to leave it at that because there’s not much more to say. You are truly a hero, an inspiration. You make so many impacts for and make so many positive impacts for so many of us in terms of helping people who are burdened with the challenge of dyslexia or sensory processing disorder or any other type of mitigating factor that has to be overcome to live your best life. You’ve definitely inspired me. I know you’ve inspired all listeners today and I really want our listeners to go out and buy your book at runningthedistancebook.com. Jared Blank, it’s an honor to have you on today and continued success and great health and keep on winning. I hope our paths cross again.

Jared: Definitely. Thank you so much for having me on. I really appreciate it. I have arrived in Portland.

John: Awesome. I will definitely reach out to you next time I’m in that area. Now if you’re coming down to Southern California or Fresno or any of those kind of areas, please tell me. Anything I can ever do to help continue to get your story out or you have something else you want to promote, you’re always welcome on this show. You could even come back on and bring someone from the International Dyslexia Foundation or some other great athlete, whoever you want. You’re always welcome on this show.

Jared: I appreciate it. Yeah. Now, I definitely looking forward to catching up whether it’s in California or Oregon. It would be great to meet up in person.

John: Continued success, continued good health. Keep up the great work. You’re really an inspiration. Thank you, Jared.

Jared: Thank you. Have a great day.

John: Take care. You too.

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, we are so honored to have with us today, Petri Hawkins-Byrd, you know Mister officer Byrd on CBS’s Judge Judy. He is with us today, and thank you for being with us and being so generous with your time today, Petri.

Petri Hawkins-Byrd: Hey, man. Thank you, John. I appreciate the opportunity, man, to be on your podcast. I love this.

John: Hey, we were talking offline before we started taping. It is so much fun when two New Yorkers connect. I am a boy from Queens, you are a kid from Brooklyn. It is just instant chemistry. So it is just so much fun, and it really is an honor to have you on today. Someone with your background, this is going to be a great conversation, and an important conversation as well. But before we get talking about your twenty-five wonderful years on Judge Judy, I would love you first to share, how a young man from Brooklyn ends up in Hollywood and share that journey, leading up to becoming the officer Byrd on the very famous Judge Judy show.

Petri: Man, I got to tell you, if I told you that it was plotted out and I knew I was going to be in Hollywood, a year much less going on twenty-five-years. I would be lying to you, dude.

John: Right.

Petri: Now the funny thing is, ever since I was a kid, I wanted to be in a show. When I was a kid, I did a lot of impersonations. I watched a lot of TVs; I watched the old Ed Sullivan Show, Great Calvin, Carol Burnett, [inaudible] show, Bill Cosby Show. I just love TV and probably amongst my favorite performers were impersonators, the impressionist man. I just thought Frank Gorshin, Rich Little, cast like that, just to watch them impersonate famous actors, and of course, our famous actors back then had the bigger than life personalities than these distinctions to their voices. They even all sound cookie cutters. I mean, I could not tell you but, Brad Pitt sounds as opposed to Tom Cruise. But I knew who Cary Grant, what Cary Grant sounded like but Sydney Poitier sounded like what James or Jones and Bill Cosby sounded like. So anyway, I love doing impersonations, I love to sing, I play clarinet in school, and I was in school plays the stuff like that.

John: Wow.

Petri: So, all of that was in me.

John: You already had – already a little bit of Hollywood twinkle going on, well, as a young man growing up in Brooklyn.

Petri: Oh, yes.

John: Okay.

Petri: But I also had a mother, who was like, “Listen, get your education, at least get your high school diploma, go to college if you can, and get a good job in the post office.”

John: Right, right.

Petri: I always stuck with that, make sure that you had a steady paycheck coming in. To that end, the other thing I wanted to be was – I had the ideation of being a lawyer, right? The thing about that was I was always good at school. So what I did was, I went to college, I went to John Jay College of Criminal Justice. I got a Bachelor’s degree from John Jay. At one point, I found out that my daughter’s mother was pregnant. I said, “Man, I got to get a better job.” So I looked in The Chief, which is the newspaper back home, for civil service jobs and they were giving the court officers test. I took the court officers’ test, passed it with flying colors, and became a court officer.

Now while being a court officer, I happen to work in Manhattan’s Family Court. I taught in the Brooklyn Family Court, got transferred to Manhattan’s Family Court where I met amongst other people one judge, Judith Sheindlin, and I was not exclusively assigned to her but we would rotate in and out of the part, the different parts of the court every month. So, you would go down to the locker room, you would look up there and you would see if you got a good judge or if you were going to have a month of suffering. I always kind of delighted when I would look up there and see that I was assigned to Judge Scheindlin’s part because she was like a comedian. She was like, I once called her the Joan Rivers of the Judicial World Africa. She was like a smart ass. I think the feeling was mutual because I was the officer who would go out and I would do different impersonations in calling the court to order, just for laughs. I would go out and, “The party is on. Members of the judge come here right now because we are going to start to sing”.

John: You took your cue from her. Got it. Wow.

Petri: You know people come up and go, “Hey wait a minute, was there probably just you?” Oh, no that is your imagination go sit down. That is how we came to know each other. And then in 99, that was sort in 1986 to 1990. In 1990, because of some marital issues, my wife at the time, we separated. She moved back out to her native California and I, in turn, got my thing together and followed suit. I moved out to California and that was in 1990. I worked for the US Marshal Service for a couple of years and then I got an opportunity – the third love I always had was working with kids. I used to run a community center, Recreational Center in Brooklyn back in the ’80s and I also worked in a daycare. I always had this thing – some kind of way God always connected me to kids. A friend of mine asked me; would I be interested in becoming a student conduct liaison, which is a long title with short money for a counselor at a high school.

I said, “You know what? I am not really a law enforcement type.” I mean, I worked in the courts and everything like that but I was not like a guy who patrols the neighborhood or anything like that. So I said, “Yes, I will go for the interview,” and I got the job and I started working at Monte Vista High School, which is in Cupertino, California, which is in Silicon Valley in Northern California. I went to work at that high school for about three years and during that time – now mind you, we were just getting to the internet. This school was ahead of its time. I remember Al Gore visited this high school, to talk about the future of the internet and how it would one day affect the world, but at the time, I was just happy to get an email address.

John: Right, right.

Petri: I still have the same email address from twenty-five years ago. Anyway, so one day I happen to be reading the paper and I was reading Liz Smith Scott’s column. Do you remember Liz?

John: I remember Liz Smith, of course.

Petri: I used to read her in the Daily News before I left New York. When I got out to California, the newspaper, the San Jose Mercury News, still carried her syndicated column. I have been reading it one day and I get to the bottom of the column and it says, “Oh, congratulations to Judge Judy Scheindlin on her new book, ‘Don’t Pee On My Leg and Tell Me It Is Raining’,” I said, “Hmm, I remember that saying. I remember saying that a lot from the bench.” And that they were developing a TV show for her and so I wrote her a letter to congratulate her and using the technology of the time, the swiftest technology of the time which was the fax machine. I found out the fax number to the court, to the judge’s floor and I had a friend of mine who still worked in Manhattan’s Family Court to intercept my letter that I faxed and give it to the judge. In it, it was like, “Hey judge, it could not happen to a more deserving person. I wish you well. PS: if you ever need a bailiff, I still look good in uniform.”

John: I like it.

Petri: That little joke prompted her to call me. She got my number from a friend of mine back there and she called me one day and she said, “I want to thank you for the letter. You are the first person outside of my family to congratulate me.” She said, “I know you were kidding at the end of your letter but we do need a bailiff. We tried it with the regular actor and it is an unscripted show and we need somebody who understands how I work. As I remember you are kind of crazy.” I said, “Well, I am still kind of crazy.” She said, “Well, if you are crazy enough to try this with me, I will recommend you for the job.” And the rest, as they say, is mystery because the next thing I know they flew me down to L.A., they interviewed me and they told me right there on the spot, “You have the job.” Naturally being a New Yorker, everything is suspect, so I was like, “Well, I will take a leave of absence from the school until I find out if this was going to stick,”

John: Right, right.

Petri: And it stuck for the last twenty-four years, it has stuck.

John: Wow, twenty-four years. What a run and it has become one of the top-rated shows on television of all time, right?

Petri: Yes, man. For a long time, we have been the top-rated daytime TV show, and our ratings are phenomenal, man. I guess people just latched on and stuck with us, where the price is right of court shows.

John: Right, unbelievable. So, you have had twenty-four years, but you are still a young man. When we were little boys, sixty-two or sixty-three people retired, but now, there is a whole new generation of people that work now into their 70s and 80s and stay very relevant. So, what are you thinking? What is next for Petri Hawkins-Byrd?

Petri: Oh dude, well, I am still people man. Right now, with this situation being what it is, well, here is a couple of factors.

John: Okay.

Petri: One, we had to shorten by about twelve weeks of the twenty-fourth season of Judge Judy. We had to go, we went into lockdown and so now they are trying to get the show back up in running and that means trying to figure out exactly how we are going to do the show. For twenty-four years, there was no doubt as to how we were going to do it, we did it the same way every year for twenty-four years and now with this damn-demic, we have to look at things in a whole another light. So season twenty-five is on the books. They want to start, they say at the end of next month so at the end of August. They want to start re-taping the show and starting the show up again, but regardless, just before we shut down the Judge infamously went on Ellen and announced that season twenty-five would be her last season of doing Judge Judy with CBS. But she also announced that it was not her plan to retire, that she was not tired yet.

John: Okay.

Petri: So she was going to try something that she called Judy Justice, at least tentatively. That is the name of it. What my place is in that, if I have any place in that, is anybody’s guess. When I talked to the judge about it, she said, “Well, I do not know quite what type of structure is going to manifest itself in that show, but I will keep you apprised.” I went, “Okay”, so that seems to me to be a signal that if you find something else that you are interested in doing, I would really, really investigate that. So for me, that has taken the shape of a production company that is interested in developing a show around me and my personality. The only thing I could tell everybody is to stand by, keep your ear to the stone, and something will be coming up, but that is one of the irons that I have in a fire. The other thing that I am doing is I have discovered during this pandemic season, that my wife and I – and my wife is considerably younger than I am, this is definitely a May-December romance with yours truly being the latter part of the year.

John: Got it.

Petri: But we have been on the internet, we have been on IGTV on Instagram with a little show and it is getting pretty popular and people seem to like it. They seem to like interview together.

John: What is the show called?

Petri: The name of the show is “Bonding with Byrds”. So, my wife’s last name on a maiden name was Bond and I am the Byrd so, Bonding with Byrd.

John: I like that.

Petri: Yes, so on Tuesdays – just to give you a brief history. It came about, I started doing this one-minute sort of rants on Instagram every Tuesday and I called it – they have Man Crush Monday, they have Throwback Thursday. I said, “Well, wait a minute. Do you know what they need? They need a thinking Tuesday, man.” That is a West Indian accent. I said, “Yes, I am on it. Exactly, how about – thinking Tuesday? they have got their Wacky Wednesday and a Freaky Friday, you have to have a thinking Tuesday where you think, man.” So I started doing that and then my wife said, “Listen, why do not we just expand it and go on IGTV?” And so now we do an hour on Tuesday and we have, Bonding with Byrd and Thinking Tuesdays at 6 P.M Pacific Standard time.

John: So people can find you – is this online or tell us, where can our listeners find you doing Thinking Tuesdays and Bonding with Byrd?

Petri: This is online. This is on Instagram @ByrdtheBailiff, B-Y-R-D the bailiff, all one word. You just go in there and on Tuesdays at 6 P.M, 9:00 o’clock on.

John: Beautiful. So it is Instagram live @ByrdtheBailiff and also you have a very active Twitter account @ByrdtheBailiff, as well, correct?

Petri: Yes. Absolutely. Absolutely, and also I can be found on Facebook at Petri Hawkins Byrd.

John: Perfect.

Petri: Folks come in there, and check us out. I think you will have a good time, especially with the bonding with Byrd because we discussed hot topic. We have special guests come on, and we interview people.

John: Wonderful.

Petri: It is just me and the wife messing with each other day.

John: That is great.

Petri: We have a good time with it.

John: Petri, talk about – you talk about hot topics and you and I were talking off the air given that we are just two New Yorkers and have instant chemistry and things of such. I was sharing with you that over the weekend, I was just flipping channels and I happened to land on seeing the movie “Do the Right Thing” and I had not seen it for decades. Can you share first of all your experience with regards to growing up in Brooklyn and the issues that were growing up back in the days of New York? I, also in Queens was part of the first integrated schools in a public school in Queens. How was how that growing up as a young African-American Brooklyn? And then jump forward and talk a little bit about black lives matter and where we are today and where we have got to go constructively and productively together. You have a great take on this and I would love you to share that with our audience.

Petri: Well, when you mentioned that, the movie “Do the Right Thing” was made, I believe in 89 and I told you it really – that movie really hit home to me because it was filmed right around the corner. I do not know what the name of the street is now because they changed the names of the streets so much and it is that. But it was once Stuyvesant Avenue and a matter of fact Stuyvesant between Quincy and the next block over which I believe is Lexington. On that block, that was right around the corner from my great grandmother. My great grandmother lived on Quincy Street. So I knew that neighborhood intimately. Spike’s movie was brilliant in that, it made sure to tell the story of race relations in Brooklyn. At that time there had been a number of incidents that happened to African-Americans, one Clifford Glover was a victim of police brutality. There was a show called Crohan Hymn. There was a situation where three young men went out to buy a pizza out in Queens and one of them was running onto the Belt Parkway and subsequently killed. He was hit by a car. Now, the odd thing about that particular incident is that the person who was driving the car who hit him, now mind you this is the Belt Parkway at rush hour, so there is no way to actually tell or plan to hit somebody-

John: Yes, of course.

Petri: -with your vehicle, but the person who hit that individual, who hit the young man who subsequently died. He was a court officer in Manhattan Family Court. I knew him.

John: Oh, my gosh. Wow.

Petri: In fact, for a long time, for almost ten years, he was the main court officer working with Judge Judy Scheindlin and I remember Dominic was a good kid. He was an actor. As far as I was concerned, not a prejudiced bone in his body far from being a racist and I remember there was tension in our locker room at Manhattan Family Court because everybody – I was very outspoken then about black issues. I would go on protest and with Al Sharpton, protesting in racial injustice. Eleonor Bumpurs, being a grandmother who was killed when the police burst into her door and shot her. Michael Stewart, who died in police custody.

John: I remember that.

Petri: Yes, remember he was just arrested for graffiti. So, BNL has spoken, they knew, all the guys knew and they want me three black guys in our locker room at Manhattan Family Court, three black males. I remember everybody, there was tension. So I said, “Dominic, come with me over. I want to talk to you for a second.” And we went off into a room by ourselves. I said, “I have one question for you and all I need is an answer to know where I stand on this issue. Did you mean to run over the young man who was running out onto the Belt Parkway?” Dominic looked at me and I will never forget he had tears in his eyes. He said, “Byrd. Man, it was dusk. I could not tell. I thought I hit an animal.” He said, “I thought I hit an animal. I am on the Belt Parkway, you cannot stop.”

John: Yes.

Petri: He said he got home and he heard on the news that this young man had been run over on the Belt Parkway where he had just been and he went with his father. His father was a detective and he went with his father and his father took him back to the precinct over in Howard Beach. That is when he discovered that the young man had died and that it was, in fact, his car that it hit him and I said, “Listen, that is all I need to know. So from now on, anybody asked me about you, I could defend to the death your character because I already knew the answer, okay-

John: That is such a nice thing you did.

Petri: – I just wanted to hear you say it. Come on, man, you know we are New Yorkers, man. We are New Yorkers, we are going to bring it straight to you. ‘You, hey listen, did you fucking driver, you can put the driver warm?’, and you are like, ‘No, I know what to do.’ ‘All right, good enough.’ So now, anybody comes to you, you go, ‘Hey! Listen, he said to you to it. That is enough for me.'”

John: Right. That is how we are.

Petri: Yes, like I said do the right thing foretold. Of course, it kind of called those things that were happening then, okay, and it foretold about what could happen now if we did not deal with it then. What we did as Americans is we sort of ignore it because if you did not see, do the right thing, that was Royalists the movie of the CEO. I did not watch certain television shows or if you thought rap was something that was just a bunch of guys spouting a bunch of words and bragging about their talents and their money.

John: From Hellas.

Petri: Yes, if you did not know anything, if you did not know any better and you do not have any real dealings with the African-American Community, then you thought, “Well, you know, that is a shame that that happened but I do not really know about it.” Well now, these things are being shown to you live. Okay, it is not, “Oh, it happened yesterday, oh, it happened a few hours ago.” It is, we are recording it right now where the world is seeing it right now. If you go on Facebook, this is what is happening right now. If you go on Instagram, this is Instagram, this is happening right now.

John: Right.

Petri: That is why you see all these people of different nationalities and different sexual events and different mindsets and different religions. That is why you see them taking to the street because they are saying, “Listen, if it can happen to those people, if it can happen to Black’s, it can happen to anybody and if it can happen to anybody then none of us are safe.” So, right now–

John: That is basically MLK, he said, “Injustice against anybody is this can tell injustice for all.”

Petri: Right. That is right.

John: So, you are right.

Petri: That is right. That is right, and one of the things that people fail to realize, you get a lot of people that are complaining right now that Black lives matter, Black lives matter. All lives matter and to that I say, “Hey! Listen, all houses matter.” What if one of the houses is on fire, what are you going to do? You going to put out that house so that it does not happen to all the other houses. So in regards to that, Black lives are the lives that are on the fire right now. So, we have to emphasize that Black lives matter, okay. It is not black lives matter more than other lives. No, that is not it. It is not Black lives matter the most for my–

John: For only – do not put the word only after that, right?

Petri: Right. I think my wife said it does. She said, “Maybe we should change it into Black lives matter too or Black lives matter also or Black lives matter elsewhere.”

John: Right.

Petri: During the Summer Rights Era, fighting for civil rights was not just – it was concentrated on Blacks and especially the place of Southern Blacks but if you have a civil rights bill that protects the civil rights of Americans. Okay, and those Americans happened to be Black. Well, guess what by virtue of that bill or that those laws being passed, everybody benefits, everybody. So you do not have to distinguish between Black lives matter and Mexican lives matter and Native American lives matter and gay rights matter. The poet Gil Scott-Heron once said, “Civil rights, women’s rights, gay rights are all wrong.” And it was Gil Scott’s way of saying, “Listen, if we fight for human rights, then everybody would benefit, but somebody’s civil rights being violated has to be the catalyst.” It has to be the one that you focus on so that you could say, “Hey! Listen, right now that house is on fire. Let us put out that fire. Okay, and we make the neighborhood safe for all the other houses, for all other people, if we take care of those people.”

John: For our listeners who just joined us, we are so lucky and honored to have with us today Petri Hawkins-Byrd. He is Officer Byrd’s known in Hollywood and for all that watch the great CBS show, Judge Judy, as Officer Byrd. You could find him @ByrdtheBailiff, B-Y-R-D the Bailiff on Twitter and also on Instagram @ByrdtheBailiff where he does is Thinking Tuesday and Bonding with Byrd show and on Instagram live. So, I ask you all to watch that. I am going to read you something. After I watched, Do the Right Thing, I went online of course to try to explore more about the movie because it affected me more this past weekend than it did the first time when I was in the theater because I was a kid from Queens. I grew up, my best friends were African-American. My best friend growing up in grade school was African, I mean, so this was not like you said in the Coast compared to Middle America this was sort of our life but in the maybe you said a lot of people did not see this as much as we saw growing up in Brooklyn Queens. So, I am going to read you what the great late Roger Ebert wrote and I want to just go into this a little bit more here. It said, he said–

Petri: Roger was a man.

John: Right, was not he? He said, “I saw, Do the Right Thing.” He said, “Most movies remain up there on the screen, only a few penetrate your soul.” He said, “I walked out of the screening with tears in my eyes. Spike Lee had done an almost impossible thing. He had made a movie about race in America that empathized with all the participants.” And Petri, I gotta tell you, man, that is stuck with me and I am and I got to tell you and you coming from – prior to becoming a known television in Hollywood star, which you truly are now millions upon millions of people know you, know your name, know your face, know your persona. Twenty-five years, what the long run in Hollywood you have had but you also we are in law enforcement prior to that. You had a very successful career on the other side as well and you are African-American. I find myself a White kid from Queens. I literally, my heart breaks for so many of the participants in my empathy as with all, and like you said, “Where do we move forward together now constructively? How do we create more of these conversations and get more of us onto the playing field to make a better and just America for all?”

Petri: We have conversations like this.

John: Okay.

Petri: We have conversations like this. You and I were talking earlier, a lot of people’s perception of who people are is drawn from movies, TV commercials, and shows. The introduction to a certain kind of music, the “N” word, okay. I hate using that because I think what it does is it gives everybody an excuse to pay so much attention to the word as opposed to the power behind the word or the venom behind the word. But I remember that people would always, well, I never heard anybody the entire time I was in New York call me a Nigger. Never heard it, never heard it. Now, if that is what you thought, I am not in a position to control thoughts, okay.

John: Right.

Petri: We are not in a position to change people’s hearts, but if I can break bread with you, if I can live in the same neighborhood with you, if I could come out to your neighborhood to purchase a car and go home unscathed and not menaced, if I can stop in your neighborhood in a certain neighborhood had to buy a pizza and just get that Pizza which I am enjoying. Like everybody else is not trying to enjoy their Pizza. Okay, must be a pretty good place to get Pizza and I am finally out here to get a slice. If I can do that and it is your proximity to me can – somebody said proximity close proximity breeds understanding and separateness breeds mistrust. So we have to come in contact with each other. We have to come in contact with each other. We have to come to an understanding of the things that offend us, and why they offend us.

John: A point.

Petri: If you are if you were hanging a Confederate flag outside of your door, and it is waving in the wind, you think, “Well, hey, it is just the flag and it has to do with my Southern roots. I am from Tennessee, you know.” But if I come to you or if I say to you, “Hey! Listen, I was wondering if you would not mind looking at this short clip on the history of the Confederate flag.” All right. Well once you see that history, once you understand that it a symbol of hate, once you understand that it was constructed as a symbol of hate, then you have a choice to make. You have a choice to make, whether or not you want to represent that flag. Okay, never mind the flag representing you. You have a choice as to whether you want to represent that flag but that comes, John, with knowledge. It comes with knowledge. It comes with having proximity to one another. You and I, we grew up in a place, it is not New York is perfect and a monkey of eight million people. Everybody loves one another. We had neighborhoods that were pretty much segregated but they were segregated by choice. They were segregated because that is where most people gathered in that particular neighborhood.

But I never felt really in New York like there was a place that was off-limits to me. I went over in Bensonhurst and different neighborhoods in Brooklyn to go shopping. They had great clothing stores and great deals out there, and so I went there. I went out to King’s father to go shopping. There was not a place in Queens that I did not go to. If had a friend that lived there, I went there. One of the things that we always have to do is we have to realize that we are all occupants on the same planet and we are all sort of journalists here. We are all passing through. We are born and if we get the three scores and ten that the Bible says if we get seventy years here, we are good.

John: Right. What a blessing.

Petri: Yes, over seventy years, we are blessed, we are on overtime.

John: Overtime – I love what you just said that. I love it. It is so true, though.

Petri: Right, and so while we are here, what difference does it make where that guy is coming from or where that guy, we are on the same train. What are we looking at each other for? What we mean mugging each other for? For what?

John: Yes, for what.

Petri: We do not own the train. We are on the train for a certain distance. We go from stop to stop and we get on about our business. If more people just kind of understood that that guy over there is trying to raise his family and he is trying to keep his job and he is trying to make ends meet and every round and he wants to save up his money and go on a little vacation or take his wife for a date, that makes him more me than it makes us apart. We have more in common than we have than we are different right?

John: Right. That is true.

Petri: I just really would like to say that if we would just take the time take the time to get to know one another and to know that no, it is not that LeBron James or Michael Jordan or Serena Williams or this actress or that actress or this singer is special? Yes, they got a special talent, that kind of separates them from the regular Joe’s but those individuals I mentioned our black just like me. I have offered the world, but when you are afraid of me and when you are so afraid of me that you see me as a threat as opposed to somebody who is just trying to walk out his life and peace and stuff then that is where we have a problem. And that is where the whole country suffers because we believe the hype of some people as opposed to what we experience every day with people.

John: That is the truth. You speak the truth, my friend and that is a good way and a healthy way of looking at its proximity and closeness.

Petri: Yes.

John: It makes you feel even closer, my best friend growing up was Alonzo Brian, my parents were divorced. I felt the safest when I got the sleepover in Alonzo’s house and I felt his mom Audrey was my mom and his father. Joseph was my dad and there was the safest house to be in. That is how I thought it was just supposed to be in this world. I did not, I just and I felt that was my happiest part of my childhood being with their family and spending time with them. So it is just funny though like you said a lot of the country does not get to grow up the way we had unique circumstances in Brooklyn and Quincy in the time that we did which is very similar, we are about the same age. It is just so interesting, but I am so grateful for your important wisdom and vision on this it is and you have a unique one given all of your history and both in law enforcement and as a person who has a platform, who is a star in his own right and I am very grateful for that. I do not leave today’s show without talking about your OK Foundation, that is important stuff can you share with our listeners? What are you doing with Byrd OK Foundation?

Petri: Well, here is the deal that the– okay, so the neon program is actually the OK Program and it is a black-male mentoring program. It is a black-male mentoring program that was started in 1990 by gentlemen from Ashdown, Arkansas named Donald Norcross and he was a deputy sheriff in Sacramento and he kept seeing, while he was a deputy sheriff he kept seeing an inordinate amount of young African-American males going into the penal system and into the jail system, but not emerging, unstable. Then be problematic for him and he kept saying, somebody ought to do something about this somebody ought to do something about it and his wife took them one night. He said and just said, “Yes, you know what that someone is you, you keep asking the question. Obviously, you are the one that is supposed to come up with the answer.” He started involving himself with young black men ages twelve to eighteen and started meeting with them on a regular basis on Saturdays. The school would allow him to utilize their all-purpose rooms and to gather young African-American males together and to have what he calls kick its sessions and be able to engage them in conversations about their lives and what they face every day.

The program started to expand by I would say by the year 2000 he had affected the lives of over a thousand young African-American males. He would encourage them to have good grades 2.5-grade point average or better to have perfect attendance to continue coming to kick it sessions and they would be rewarded by having these trips at the end of the year. He started to expand the program of the other communities started noticing how effective the OK Program was and so he replicated it in different cities around the country up to ten different chapters of the OK Program today in places Indianapolis, Little Rock, Arkansas, Oakland California. At the Hub of the program, it uses that utilizes black officers to mentor young black boys. In essence, the OK Program has become a link of the bridge if you will between the black community and law enforcement by utilizing black officers from law enforcement to effect change in their community.

They bring a number of teammates along with them and those teammates are drawn out of the community also generally out of the church. But any men who find themselves of wanting to help out in venturing join forces with that officer or those officers who act the Hub of the program and a joint they join with them to effectively mentor young black boys. It is a wonderful program and it continues to do in that boy scout, girl scout type of way, with positive peer groups influence, and today most of the participants in the OK Program have not succumbed to the Grim statistics that face African-American males, fifty percent dropout rate, fifty percent incarceration rate. The fact that the number one killer of young African-American males between the ages of eighteen and thirty-four is homicide. Unfortunately, homicide at the hands of somebody that looks them. The OK Program seeks to turn those grim statistics around by the use of positive peer group influence.

John: Where can people find this great organization, Petri?

Petri: They can go online to OK, the letters okprogram.org-

John: Got it.

Petri: -okprogram.org

John: They can and they could mentor an African-American, young African-American…

Petri: Well, they can find that, one they could find out about the OK Program that is near them or right they can go in, and contact the director of the Okay Program. If they think that they would start an OK chapter in their community.

John: Wow. I love that.

Petri: Let me also say this, they can also contribute to the program. Of course, is not necessarily a popular thing. So, we find ourselves constantly in need of funding, so they can make a donation to the OK Program. But like I said, one of the first things the Bible says, “My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge.” And so one of the first things we must always do even when you have something as wonderful as the OK Program is going in this day and age the answer to almost every question is right there in the palm of your hand. I cannot emphasize enough that telephone, if you have any kind of connection, through any type of service you have access to the world wide web. When you are giving us some information or give it spike to go and check out something going there and investigated fully. I encourage people first to learn about programs like OK Program and then ask yourself, “Well, what can I do? How can I get involved?” I got to tell you, John, that is what I hear from people more now than ever before is amazing. I have been on this planet, sixty-three years, my consciousness about world affairs and about civil rights affairs and stuff in this country. I have been aware that since I was eleven, twelve years old, but this is a different time. This is a different time because of the access that we have two other communities, other people to each other. I think it was, I think it might have been George Carlin that said the Paradox of all time is, “We can communicate with people around the world in an instant and we do not know who the person is that lives next door to us.”

John: So true.

Petri: So, I implore your listeners that, listen, you have access to communication, you have access to information that is unparalleled in our time, use it to educate yourself to gain knowledge. Not that knowledge that puffs up but the knowledge that leads to wisdom as to how to best use that knowledge to create a better world. It is within our grasp and if we do not take advantage of the advantage of it then shames on us.

John: Man, I am so glad you came on today, Petri your message of creating a better world and of leveraging the technology as you say is in the palm of our hand is so simple, but sometimes yet so ignored and I am so grateful for you emphasizing that important message today. We are living in interesting times and the world needs more great people like you that can continue to message the message and carry on were great, great people have just left off or life are coming just left off. We just lost John Lewis and I had just watched the weekend before could trouble. I will tell you what for our listeners out there to watch a real icon who dedicated his life to the message that Petri has been giving today. Again, that is a life of service that he dedicated. I mean just pure public servant with all the right intentions from a young man. I did not realize how young he was. I did not realize he was the youngest speaker in the mall the day the march of the mall. When MLK gave his famous music I did not realize he was the youngest speaker that day. It is such a great movie good trouble–

Petri: If you need at something and he is the living embodiment that is never too early, it is never too early. Unfortunately, childhoods are being shortened, daily, and what I mean by that is not just by, pandemics and different things like that. But that that we have to grow up, we have to almost grow up faster because the evil is not going to wait for us to get to come of age. The thing, evil is going to happen right now and so as soon as possible, we have to get our children on to the fact that, they have a place in this world and they have a purpose in this world. Once we get them to understand that that purpose is to make of his to make a better world then whatever contribution they can make at whatever time is important. The word says, “And a child shall lead them.” But we have to mentally and emotionally and spiritually prepare our children to take over, as soon as possible because God knows we have screwed up enough.

John: So yes, well, Petri I have been blessed today to have you on our show. You are always invited back here to share any of the projects that you are working on and all the important work and using your celebrity to continue to share the good word and for our listeners out there who want to connect with Petri known as Officer Byrd on CBS’s Judge Judy and they are about to go film their 25th season together. You can find them @ByrdtheBailiff and BYRD is B-Y-R-D, Bryd the Bailiff on Twitter and also you could catch him on Bonding with Byrd on Instagram live on Byrd the Bailiff which he is on Instagram with his wife doing Bonding with Byrd on Instagram live. You are the reason why I do this show Petri to have great people you that use their knowledge and their history and their platform to make an impact and make the better place. Thank you for being honest today. I am thank you.

Petri: John, I just want to say man when they told me I was going on with you. My first reaction was John who? No.

John: That is okay.

Petri: No, but on the real, I do interviews, do a bunch of interviews every year, and every now and then something stops me in my tracks and I am going to tell you right now John you stop me in my tracks, man. Just a brief conversation I had with you before we came on on your podcast. I felt at home with you man, I felt at home with you. You have done exactly what you told me your son told you to do, it is just your–

John: They got out of the way and let you do thing, man.

Petri: Just get out of the way, but the nice part is that when you do come in, that is an art brother, that is an art. Very few people, Carson was one of the kings of that, just be able to allow you to say your thing and do your stuff and but had enough of a personality and I am going to give you that one. You got enough personality man to carry the conversation to make your guests feel welcome and at home and at ease, man continues to do that man. You are a blessing man, you are a blessing man.

John: Thank you Petri for that, but you are always welcome back here, this is your home.

Petri: I will be back.

John: This is why I do the show you come back and when we get through this COVID crazy period. We will come to LA and you and I going to get together and I get to give you a hug in person and we get to connect in person. Okay?

Petri: Well, man when I am back home and I will be looking for you. I will be letting you know, okay?

John: All right. That is a deal with this.

Petri: We will go get it to slice.

John: We will go get a slice at Sal’s Pizza together, and then continued success in the 25th season continued success with Bonding with the Byrd. Thank you for your dedication and Servin see with the OK Foundation and again, you are always welcome back here. Thank you for the generosity of your time today.

Petri: It has a blessing, brother. Bye-bye.

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 so honored and privileged to have with us today, Krista Stryker. She is the Twelve-Minute Athlete. She has her own website. She has a book that I have read and it is in my hand right now, which is a wonderful book. Welcome to the Impact Podcast, Krista Stryker.

Krista Stryker: Thank you so much for having me.

John: You know Krista before we get talking about all the things that you have created- the app, the book, and your website and the mission that you are on, talk a little about the journey. Where you grew up? How you even got to this place in this world right now?

Krista: Sure. So I grew up in a rainy Washington State. Growing up, I played a few sports here and there but I really did not consider myself to be athletic and failed all those presidential fitness tests. I could not do pull up, pushup, anything like that. I really left high school believing that I did not have any athletic gene in me. So I went to college just kind of resigned so that I was going to be weak. I never was overweight. I did not struggle with too many eating issues but I just felt very weak. As I said, I could not do anything. I got into fitness kind of just because I was super depressed and had nothing else that I was interested in my life. There was a moment where my older brother encouraged me to do a push-up. He found out that I had never do push up and I did three of like the worse push-ups anyone has ever seen. But that triggered something in me that day where I decided “You know what, I am going to give this a real shot. I am going to see if I can try to get better, try to get build some strength.” That is really where it all started. It took me years, seriously years, of trying to figure out the right work out something that stuck. It did not come naturally to me at all. But it has been an amazing journey so far.

John: How old were you when you had that sort of epiphany of doing your first push-up and starting the journey? The starting of the official journey towards the Twelve-Minute Athlete.

Krista: This was in my early twenties.

John: Okay.

Krista: I am about twenty-two.

John: Right. I assumed like any journey, because, in many ways, this is not only about your fitness journey and your personal journey of health and wellness, and I mean overall health and wellness. But also this is the beginning of your journey as also an entrepreneur.

Krista: Definitely.

John: That has ups and downs and zigs and zags. Share a little bit about how it evolved. How your workout journey evolved? What you found work and did not work, and also mixing that with food. Because so many people that we either know personally or acquaintances, they always say “Hey! I go to SoulCycle and I go to Equinox every week and I do some yoga but I am still carrying five or ten or twenty extra pounds.” But you see they drink soda regularly and they have a bad diet. Why do people think they can outwork a bad diet? How did that fit into your journey as well? I am just asking about the whole thing.

Krista: Oh man. Diet is an interesting one. First of all, I do not believe in any one diet. I do not think anything is perfect for everybody. So I am not going to say do this and this will work for every single person.

John: Right.

Krista: But there is some good baseline. You know, eat lots of vegetables, try not to eat processed food, get in some protein, focus on whole food in general. I did not know any of this stuff. So when I went to college during that time in Sayamille[?], I pretty much ate like boxes of mac and cheese and wondered why I could not look the way I wanted to look.

John: Right. Which is sort of, but that is not abnormal. That is part of the college journey. People will eat like that through college, right?

Krista: Exactly. So it took a long time like I said for me to learn that. I also had a fairly unhealthy relationship with food where I had this crazy idea that the less food you eat the better you are. I thought if I just do not eat all day that will be great. I have this relationship with food where any food that I ate, I thought I was being a bad person which looking back is insane.

John: Right.

Krista: It took a lot of time for me to kind of switch that mindset to thinking about food as real fuel for your body, for your workouts, for your daily life. So it said, you know, vegetables are maybe in the things that just give you energy and make you feel right.

John: Let us talk a little bit about the journey. So now, you start this journey as both an entrepreneur but also a personal journey on getting really fit and getting feeling better. Who did you look to for inspiration, first on the fitness side, and then on the diet side? What were some of your “aha” moments that, “Ah, this person has a ride[?]. I am really learning a lot from this person’s inspiration or journey.”

Krista: That is a great question. When I was early starting out on the fitness journey, I actually moved to Amsterdam. I was in the Netherlands for a few years. Yeah, so that was like crazy. I just graduated college and this is probably where my fitness journey kind of took place. I could not work at that time which is terrible for a person just out of college. So I have had something that I was focus on. Decided to get my personal training certification because I had met some really cool trainer, who were very encouraging. From those first push-ups, like really encouraged me that if I stuck with it, I could get stronger and fitter and do all these things that before, I never thought were humanly possible. So that is some really cool people there.

John: Talk a little bit about that. I have traveled the world on business and on some pleasure. I was supposed to actually have a speaking event this summer in Amsterdam which of course is canceled or postponed because of the COVID-19 tragedy. Talk a little bit about health, wellness, and fitness in the Netherlands. Are people generally into that? Is that a big part of the culture there, is working out and eating well as well?

Krista: Biking is. People are outside constantly year round even when it was dark and rainy and freezing in the wind center. Always biking outside.

John: Really?

Krista: In Europe in general, I would say that like working out in a gym or even doing just like a specific workout is a newer thing. It is not as big as you do not see SoulCycles everywhere there.

John: Right. We can not cease. [crosstalk]

Krista: But people like to do an outdoor workout. Exactly. It is getting to be more popular but in general, people are very active in their daily lives.

John: That is interesting.

Krista: Biking, walking everywhere. The food tends to be better than American food- fresher, and a lot of produce. That was great. They do not supplement it sugary. You can get a coffee and it tastes like espresso and water and milk. It is not like laid them with tons of sugar like many American coffees are.

John: Right.

Krista: But that was a good teaching experience for me.

John: So a good launchpad for the beginning of your journey, in Amsterdam and the Netherlands.

Krista: Yes.

John: On the food side, the quality of produce and more produce. Did you find anybody or someone in particular, or book you read, or the video you watched inspiring about food as fuel versus food equals bad because starving is supposed to be good? Which is, of course, you know, is the tragic misconception out there that so many of us fall into. I think I was into that at some point when I younger man my self. Where did the food is fuel mantra become part of your DNA and how you go forward every day?

Krista: That is a good question. So again, there was one trainer specifically that I let and we became friends and he was really the star of that inspiration for me. Because again, it is like I would look at it as less is more for food and he is like, “No if you want to get stronger, you actually have to eat and I want you to eat these things,” and it was the start of a much healthier relationship for me with food. That was pretty amazing.

John: How many years in your journey… Now you come back to America. You settle back in your home, or did you go settle somewhere else when you came back from Amsterdam and the Netherlands?

Krista: I moved from Amsterdam to New York where then I worked at one of the Big Boss gyms for quite a while.

John: Okay and then from New York, you then migrated west eventually?

Krista: I did. I came to California.

John: Sunny California.

Krista: Sunny California, always chasing the sun.

John: I do not blame you. I love it too. I am a native New Yorker who now lives in the sunshine. So I totally get it. When did you feel that you have reached the point as both in your journey, personal and entrepreneurship, where now, your two journeys which start, to even converge into something new and you create your book, your app, and your website? How many years into the journey did that happen?

Krista: Well I learned very early on that I was really bad at working for other people. I really did not like the kind of standard nine to five situations. So I was always trying to create something different. I thought for a while that working in the gym for some training thing would be great. Anyone who has ever done that will know that it is absolutely exhausting. You are up at five A.M., training clients early morning. You have a long break during the day. Then you are training clients at night, usually six days a week. It is not very fun long term. I knew that was not going to last and I had always been a writer. I studied Journalism in college and actually worked as a journalist for a little bit. So I always looking for ways to kind of mesh the two things- fitness and writing. I really started, for my app, as just a blog. This was about seven years ago when blogging was really big. I started that with the hopes that I could create my own job and not have to work for anyone else.

John: When did you launch your website? Was it website first, the book first, or the app first? Which came? Like, explain the order of that and how you came up with your vision and your execution of the vision?

Krista: Yes. So as I have said, it started just as a blog and really was super consistent with that. At the time, everyone was starting. Again, it was two thousand thirteen. Everyone was starting a blog. I was very conscious of that. I had three months of content before I even told anyone that it existed. I had the whole kind of brand figured out and launch that. I think mid-two thousand thirteen. I did that for a while. My next product was my app. I really stuck with that. It had been extremely consistent content-wise, and I had seen the world change in that another time as well. Then I released the book early this spring.

John: That is awesome. For our listeners who just joined us, we are just so excited and honored to have with us today Krista Stryker. She is the Twelve Minute Athlete. She has a new book out, The Twelve Minute Athlete, which you could buy on her website which is www.12minuteathlete.com or in Barnes and Noble and other great bookstores and of course on Amazon.com. I have the book on my desk. We are going to talk about that. I have read your book. Before we get into that, you kept saying the word consistent. I think as an entrepreneur, for our listeners out there, there is a lot to that. A lot of people have good intentions and they start up a blog or they start the other version of the blog which is really in many ways a podcast. But most people do not stay consistent with it. It is the consistency of you just sticking to the blog and continue to get your thoughts and your energy into that, and the app that has made a success to date.

Krista: I think I would say yes. I think my philosophy in life is consistency. I kind of go slow and shift away on things. This is the same as my fitness journey, go slow but just stay consistent. I do that. It is the same thing with the blog, the app, and you know the book. It is always overwhelming to write a book. But if you chip away at it a little bit each day, eventually you will have an actual book. So yeah I think it is a huge difference.

John: Right. So you came up with the app first. Then I am on your website now which by the way is just not only gorgeous but it is full of great information. It is vibrant. The colors are beautiful. Again for our listeners, it is www.12minuteathlete.com. Then the book just launched this spring. Talk a little bit about how many years that it takes you to put a book together, edit the way you want, and get it out there?

Krista: I had the idea for the book may be like three years ago. Then I put too much pressure on myself to put it together. But then once I did, it was about a six-month process. As I said, I just committed to writing a little bit each day and it came together not easily. There is always a struggle with these things, but I was pretty happy with the end result. It was years of thinking of doing it and just kind of malling the idea overnight in my head.

John: Well for our listeners out there, I shared this with Krista while we were off the air. It is important that you hear this. I went through the whole book. Read it, enjoyed every page, and thought that it was so valuable, not only because of the wisdom that you put down and aggregated on this book. But because of the simplicity of it. I do not mean that simplicity in a bad way. I mean that in terms of clarity. There are pictures that go along with what you are discussing. There are programs that go along in terms of nutrition and work out programs. You make it real. As I said off the air, you make it goofproof. You know what, life is complicated enough Krista, so the fact that you made this accessible to all of us in terms of your clarity and your simplicity, my hats off to you. The book is so well done and I really have to share with all listeners. This book is really well worth it because it is just all there for you if you want it. If you want it, it is there. So a really great job.

Krista: Thank you so much.

John: Great job on every level.

Krista: You make me feel great.

John: Oh well, it is the truth. I mean you know and that is why I do this show. It is to have great people like you that have put the work in. Put the real work in, and have something of importance to share that can make people better, make an impact on their lives, and make the world better ultimately. You have done that. You have done that in spades here. I have to say this though. I am so glad you put in the book. It is under your bonus section. We are going to go back and go over some of the other sections as well. But I just love this section because I never heard of the word until I had, and I bought this way before COVID for my wife and myself. I bought a Peloton years ago because my wife really does not like to going to gyms and she enjoys the privacy of working out. We bought enjoyed the Peloton. But I never heard of the word in my life before Tabata. In your book, you even cover that. Can you share with our listeners a little bit about what a Tabata workout is and why it is so important to our general health and wellness?

Krista: Sure. Tabata workout is a four-minute workout. So super, super short. But the idea behind it is that it involves a period of work that is twenty-seconds long and a period of rest that is ten-seconds long. There is research behind this. When you are in that work and in a roll, you want to go as hard as you possibly can. If you think about it, if you are sprinting, you want to actually sprint so that you are exhausted at the end of that twenty seconds. Then you get a short break and you go again. It ends up being eight-rounds. It sounds doable because it is four minutes but they are very hard. There is tons of research that they are incredibly effective and can take the place of a much longer workout and really boost your endurance, [inaudible]. All these great things and it does not take very long. You can do Tabata workouts with a variety of different types of exercises. I really like it. The classic ones would be sprinting. Sprinting on a bike, plyometrics which started with are… Jumping-base exercises like squat jumps or burpees. Jump burping is a great one. So there are all sorts of ways to make them up.

John: That is so wonderful. Tabata is just another form of something you are a big advocate of, which is High-intensity interval training, right?

Krista: Correct.

John: This is something that took me years to learn. It is in your book and you outline this really well. But explain to our listeners, the science behind, which is something that we all have a little bit upside down. You go to a gym, you work out or you go on a treadmill and you do an hour walk on a treadmill.

Krista: Yes.

John: You could feel ravenous in terms of your diet. The rest of the day post-workout. But why, in what is a very short burst of energy workout. A HIIT, high-intensity interval training workout, does that reduce your appetite typically and actually shrink it, which sounds counterintuitive. But you talk about it in your book, it is brilliant. Can you talk a little bit about the science and the reality of that?

Krista: Yes. That kind of treadmill workout that you are referring to, it is what we call a moderate-intensity workout, where you are working at maybe fifty to sixty percent of your maximum capacity for forty-five minutes or more. What tends to happen is that you burn calories during that workout and then you return to baseline afterward. This gets into endurance work, which at some point like you said, you become very hungry. I used to do this type of workout and wonder why I was starving all day long.

Krista: HIIT workouts on the other hand, because you are working super hard for such a short amount of time, it actually increases your metabolism for up to twenty-four to twenty-eight hours after the workout, which is awesome. So you burn more calories. Because you are not putting your body through a longer workout, you do not get as hungry. It really normalizes your appetite, which again, is something that I personally experienced when I first started to get in fitness and they really, really work.

John: Right. For our listeners out there that just joined us, we have got Krista Stryker with us. She is the Twelve Minute Athlete. Her new book is out on Amazon.com, at Barnes and Noble and other great bookstores, and of course, on the www.12minuteathlete.com. You could also find Krista on Twitter, on her great Instagram page, and on Facebook.

Krista, talk a little bit about COVID-19. We are living through this very, very challenging period. People struggle with weight, fitness, nutrition, regardless of this kind of cloud that hangs over not only the United States but around the world right now. How has COVID-19 affected people’s health and fitness routines, and also mental health? You are a leader in this field now and because you have the app and the book and you have become a public figure, what are you hearing from people that follow you, that you have become an inspiration to? What are you assessing over the last four months? How are people struggling and what words of wisdom can you share with them to get over the challenges that we are all facing right now?

Krista: Yes. I am not going to lie. It has been a challenge for me as well. It has been a difficult, crazy time. That much is true.

John: Yes.

Krista: But one thing that has given me a lot of hope, I will tell you is that, before this, I feel like so many people come clean and they are just talking about their workouts and their fitness in terms of weight loss and appearance alone. There is research and I know from personal experience working with people that just having weight loss or appearance based goals, is not as motivating long-term. So, what I try and get people to do is have other reasons to work out. These are reasons like for your mental health because you feel better after your workouts. They really help with depression and anxiety, things that I have suffered through a lot of my life.

Also fun things, like having goals, to be able to do a skill or a strength-based exercise that you never could do before. One thing that I have really seen during this time is that people are switching their thinking around their workouts to, “You know what? I realized that I need to get out of the house for my mental health, so I am going to do a workout in the park,” and realize how much better they feel from that. That makes them so happy. Just that a little switch because people are just realizing that exercise, it is about so much more than just how we look and our weight alone and that it brings so much joy through our lives in general.

John: I could not agree with you more. I feel that my headspace gets really bad if I do not do cardio every day. Everything becomes almost overwhelming. I am a huge fan of what you are proposing here. There are many things that I love about your book, as I shared earlier. Talk a little bit about your eight-week workout plan. To get on the right track, to get faster, stronger, fitter in just eight weeks, if they follow a program that you put together in your book and in your app. Can you share that a little bit?

Krista: Sure. One of the amazing things about this type of training, HIIT training, bodyweight training is that you really can see and feel results fairly quickly, even within a few weeks. You are not going to lose ten pounds in three weeks, that is not really the goal. But you will physically feel stronger and fitter. You will feel an increased amount of endurance and just feel better overall. Eight weeks is a really great amount of time to stick with something. It is also really hard to stick with something that long.

Most people start a workout plan and they are super excited to start it. Then, two weeks in, they are already burnt out because they are trying to go too hard too soon, or worse, they injure themselves. This really takes you through workouts, mostly bodyweight exercises, things that people can do in their home or a park. They are really ideal for this time. Two months is ideal for making progress during workouts and also making it a habit.

John: That is so interesting. When I look at you on Instagram, we have never met or in your book, you look as fit as any human being I have ever seen. I try to get myself inspired by folks like David Goggins, Gabby Reece. You are as fit as these world-class athletes. What gets you motivated? How do you create new challenges for yourself now on a regular basis to constantly reinspire yourself, Krista?

Krista: I love that question. I am always looking up to people. People are amazing. There are so many amazing athletes and entrepreneurs. I love Serena Williams. She is so inspiring to me. She just works so hard. I also am always trying to learn something new. That is one of the things that I really promote that people do, to keep workouts and fitness challenging and interesting. In the last few years, I personally have been trying to get better at handstands and boxing. I came into those two things like a total beginner. There are so many amazing hand balancers on Instagram that I have gotten the chance to train with over the years, which is incredible. Again, boxing is a whole other type of training, but it has been so fun to learn and challenge myself and to see what I can really do when I try and stick with it.

John: Right. Boxing is so much fun. It is one of my favorites. But I am going to tell you a funny story about headstands in your book. I am reading your book and I get to the headstand part. Then I totally was deflated when you said, “Do not use a wall to learn how to do headstands. You will become much better, and stronger, faster if you do this the right way to start with.” I am like, “Oh my gosh, I have used a wall my whole time that I have been trying to master this. I am doing it all wrong.” Like you said, “The journey is the journey. You can always learn from everybody.” It was fun to learn that. I am like, “Okay, now I have got to start to do this without the wall.” When I got to that part, I was like, “Oh, she is so right, but the wall is so comforting.”

Krista: It is. You know, baby steps. You work up to it. You do not have to go full in right away.

John: Talk a little bit about two things that look almost innocuous from afar when you are watching other people doing them in the gym, but are truly two of your all-inclusive go-to’s. Pistol squats and pull-ups. Explain why they are so important and can be so explosive to getting fitter faster.

Krista: I love those two exercises. Pull-ups are just amazing. They were not here and there for the body, and I would say especially for women, they are an amazing confidence booster. Because so many women are told they will never be able to do a pull-up. So, when I break it down for them and say, “We start out with bodyweight rows, where you are horizontal and building strength there and the next step would be what is called a flex hang. You are just hanging. You are basically holding yourself up to the top of the bar.” All these things are an amazing strength-building exercise. But they also really teach you that you can do hard things. When I see people get that first pull up, it makes me tear up myself because I remember that experience.

Pistol squats, there are so many reasons that I love them. One is they require no equipment at all. A pistol squat is a one-legged squat where you are going all the way, basically, your butt touches your calf and then you stand back up. It is really hard. But a lot of people do not work them because they do not know how. A lot of people will go instead and use weights, which have their purpose for sure. But pistol squats, you can work on them anywhere and they build up strength unilaterally. Meaning that you are going to strengthen both legs.

Most people have one leg or one side that is stronger than the other. This really helps even it out. Just like pull-ups, there are pretty easy, doable steps that you can work to build up to the exercise. It is nice to have that kind of checklist where you realize that you have made progress because you are working at it. You are at this step, next is going to be this, and all of a sudden, you can do this thing that is really, really hard. It is just awesome.

John: In your book, you cover the issue of working out on a fasted stomach versus having some food and fuel in you. Can you share the pros and cons of each with our listeners? It is a fascinating analysis you put in your book. I would love you to share that little snippet.

Krista: All right. There are different reasons to work out, fasted, and not. I am going to say that everyone is different. So not everyone will have the same experience. If you are going for just total fat loss and your workout is a little bit less intense. Let us say you are going for a jog or just doing a moderate-intensity workout, fasted can be fine. The research shows that you can burn more fat that way. However, if you are going for total performance, meaning you are going for a new personal record or PR, or you are doing a really hard HIIT workout or a sprint workout, you really need some food beforehand, because you are just not going to perform as well, otherwise.

John: What kind of vitamins do you take if any, and why do you feel that they are important?

Krista: I take a specific kind of whole fruit-based vitamins. I have been a lifelong vegetarian. I have been supplementing like vitamin B and some sort of algae supplement is great for me. I think it is again, very personal and recommended. If people can find a good naturopath or something like a homeopathic type doctor, then they can get those personalized recommendations, versus just buying random stuff at the store that they do not know if it is good or anything like that. But it can be really helpful. Or a green supplement is another awesome one.

John: Right. I loved in your book where you talked a little bit about the benefits of caffeine before working out. Can you share it? There is so much that we are inundated with. Drink coffee, do not drink coffee. Coffee makes you live longer, coffee makes you smarter, coffee is anti-cancer. But beyond coffee, you also mentioned in your area on caffeine in our ability to work out and get the most of our workout, you talk about even great things like green tea, which I am a huge fan of. I drink green tea every day before my workout. Share a little bit about your science behind caffeine and getting the most bang out of your buck for your workouts.

Krista: Yes. Most of us love some form of caffeine. If you have it, fifteen or thirty minutes before a workout, whether it is coffee or green tea or some sort of pre-workout, maybe not the crazy kinds that are full of chemicals, but a more natural one, it really can help you push harder during your workout, as well as increase your endurance. Both of which are awesome. It can also even help a little bit with recovery afterward, especially if you are doing workouts more often, or if you ever do two a day. It has been shown that having a little caffeine after your first workout can help you recover faster for your second one.

John: Talk a little bit about when to cut it off. When do you cut off caffeine for the day so you can make sure you get enough rest so you can recover?

Krista: At least eight to ten hours before bedtime is ideal. Some people metabolize caffeine a little bit differently. So you have to really pay attention to your own body and decide. Just see. If you have an iced coffee at two P.M., does that keep you from sleeping? You just want to experiment with that a little bit. But generally, by early afternoon at the latest, you should cut it off.

John: Krista, before we say goodbye for today, can you share with our listeners one exercise that you recommend for people trying to stay fit, do the best that they can besides eating right as much as they can during this COVID-19 period until we get to the other side and they can go back to whatever their new normal is. Give us one exercise, one little taste.

Krista: I would say burpees, but everyone hates this. So I am going to say…

John: That is a good one. That is a great one actually.

Krista: It is a great one, but for some reason, everyone hates burpees. I love burpees. I would love to see more people get a jump rope. It is such a great exercise. To jump rope. It can be very fun. You can take your jump rope anywhere- to a park and do a workout there. Starting out with just the basic single under jumps, and then you can learn some fun skills. It is a way to make progress and challenge yourself always. As I said, you can take it anywhere. So, if and when we get to travel again, I would bring a jump rope with me anywhere I go in the world. It is like you have this amazing workout tool. They are cheap and you can buy them online. I really recommend that everyone try that.

John: What is you one guilty pleasure when you take a break from eating clean? What do you love to take a break with?

Krista: I have a huge sweet tooth.

John: What did you say?

Krista: I have a huge sweet tooth. So I love chocolate. I love ice cream. I love homemade, not store-bought, but homemade pie. Oh my gosh, blue[?]berry pie is my favorite thing in the whole world.

John: That is awesome. Krista, your work is so important. For our listeners out there again, Krista Stryker has a new book out. The Twelve Minute Athlete. Get fitter, faster, and stronger using HIIT, High-intensity interval training, and your body weight. It is available on her website, 12minuteathlete.com. It is also available at Barnes and Noble and other great bookstores, and Amazon.com. You could find Krista also on Facebook, Twitter, and on Instagram. You could download her great app on the 12minuteathlete.com.

Krista Stryker, you are making a great impact on everyone’s lives, making the world a better place. We are just grateful for all your great work and your time today. Thank you again.

Krista: Thank you so much.

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 www.letsengage.com.

John: Welcome to another edition of the impact podcast on John Shegerian. I am so honored and excited to have my good friend Matt Tullman back on with us today, welcome to impact Matt.

Matt Tullman: Thank you so much for having me, John. I hope you and your family are doing well.

John: We are doing well, given the circumstances, and Matt, It has been too long since we connected last years, you are doing so many important and exciting things. This is going to be a great show for our listeners out there, basically the plant-based space. First, I just want to tear this up. You are the CEO of No Meat Brands. No Meat Brands is the controlling parent company of Plant Bites, 80/20plants, Compliment, and The No Meat Athlete, I just want to say, thank you for joining us. Thank you for doing all the great work you do. Before we get going and talking about, all the important and impact for work, you are doing it No Meat Brands. Can you please share with our listeners give them a little taste, and a little bit of the Matt Tullman journey leading up to this Venture that you are running now?

Matt: Sure. Well, thank you for that introduction the kind words. To make a long long story short, although as you said, I am still a kid at least the kid at heart. I am right out of school went to work at a Think Tank and realized I had no business being at a Think Tank because I had much more interest in trying my hand at this great game of business and was lucky to have some mentors that allowed me to really understand this world and gave me a shot and venture capital. I started by investing other people’s money. Then I started to pitch those people my own ideas. I had the great fortune to incubate a couple of businesses at this time. I was in Chicago the last big one was in education technology. We helped schools transition from textbook to technology-driven ways of teaching and learning, the things that all of us are doing now, 10 years ago.

Matt: It was slightly more unheard of, but even today, we still have a long way to go to create the kind of learning environments at our Next Generation needs to compete on a global scene. In any event, I lost that, then 6-7 years ago. We merged the company continues today under the banner modern teacher helping to catalyze that change that we need, but my focus now is on health and wellness right after leaving an operational role. I spent about 30 days supporting a loved one and what I would learn is end-of-life care and during that time, I really understood that so much of what you deal with, later in life can be prevented if you get ahead of it. It says as the saying goes an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. I spent about two years building furniture and listening to audiobooks and put back about, I do not know 300-350 titles. I want to learn everything, I did not care if there was, clearly pseudoscience.

Matt: I wanted to understand what everyone was hearing, and then try to decipher myself and I went far too deep my wife will tell you I will never be the same, but I really educated myself and kind of unveiled what is becoming prevailing science. And that is a low-calorie diet, intermittent fasting, reduce calories all those things that lead to longevity as well as things that are still a little bit more controversial but I believe to be the truth which is fruits and vegetables are really really healthy, and so that is why I am so focused on plant-based nutrition for athletes for moms for the mainstream because I really think that is how we combat the broader epidemics that we face as a society. Hence getting involved and starting these brands to really solve problems in this space and try to spread that gospel.

John: That is just so wonderful, I am so lucky and honored to have met you years ago, through our good friend Matt Fraser who originally came on when this podcast was called Green is Good. He came on to promote the launching of his website back then years ago. I can not even remember how many years ago now.

Matt: Eleven, we are proud 11 years, Matt is one of my best friends and my partner in these companies. He was one of the first and help by himself. When he started that business it really was because there is nothing out there. He could not find any information about how to fuel his marathons on a plant-based diet. So he just said doing the research and blogging about it and 11 years later, We have touched millions of lives and could not give more blessed to have him as a partner.

John: You have a lot of Brands underneath your No Meat Brands. I want to break it down and make this show easy for our listeners to understand, I want to go in some sort of sequential logical order. I am on your amazing website right now called 80/20plants. Can you and for our listeners out there that want to access 80/20plans? You could go to www.8020plants.com. It is a gorgeous website is full of amazing information. Can you share with our listeners a little bit about the Advent and launch of this website and app and what your intention is with this?

Matt: Sure, well appreciate that, and 80/20 is one of our newest. It is an app-based service and it is really to help those who are looking to try out the plant-based diet, but they do not know where to start. It seems intimidating. Maybe they gave it a try but ran into some challenges and so it is kind of like uber for nutrition in the sense that will connect you with a nutritionist or a registered dietitian, you can text or call and we have actually built a layer of machine learning on top of it, to actually help you even before you need to engage a human. We really started with the premise of so many people in our personal circles and friends and family, they look at my wife who just had her second baby, and they like how did you lose all that weight so quickly and it is like well, we do not really do anything, we pasta we cookies like we eat a ton.

Matt: And no one can understand why we look and feel this way and I say, well it is all plant-based. Everyone says I want to try it. I want that, but they can not figure out where to start or how to start when they run to these challenges. That is the problem I really trying to solve with 80/20plants, and just a quick explanation of the name, 80/20 Obviously, we have all heard about the 80/20 rule we are taking some liberties with that but the point is that we really want to focus on that 80% whole or minimally processed plant-based food.

Matt: So we are talking about fresh fruits and vegetables, yummy stuff, and then that other 20% can be personalized, and that is our approach because we think that the mainstream consumer today needs to hear something that is a little bit more tolerance, a little bit more flexible, this is way too much religion and dogma and the extremism when it comes to eating, I am using the term religion lightly, but it is exact same fervor. People believe this stuff with Incredible Augusto and it is like, we just really want to go back to the facts everybody agrees that, even lot of fruits and vegetables, you are doing such a good thing for your body and to the planet, before I get on it my high horse about the nutrition. I will stop there, but that is the basic premise and we would love you can get a free trial with an on-call nutritionist. If you go sign up at 80/20plants.com.

Matt: Like I say totally free and you can right away start texting folks nutritionist, you do not have to go plant-based. You do not have to go vegan. It is not about that. We are just looking to get people healthy and get them the help they need from a certified nutrition coach.

John: So the basically it is an app and I have a coach by just texting, I will have a nutrition coach to help me on this journey if I know nothing about diet and nutrition and good food and I have had no exposure to that which is tons of Americans tons of people around the world. By the way, they could go on your app download it for free for a free trial, and then have access to your Cadre of experts?

Matt: Exactly! including access to a registered dietitian via phone. If you are willing to pay 19 bucks. If we think it is quite Fair especially when usually engaging a dietitian, you are talking about 75, 100, 150 dollars per session. here through our app, you can get on the phone with them right away and I guess our hope is just to help people to get answers of they are looking for because no one who I have told this story to has ever said, I do not think that’s a guy did it all, every single one says, It is interesting because I always wondered where are smoobees make you fat because the blood sugar hits your blood too fast. We all have these weird questions about nutrition. Because we never learn about it in school or otherwise and so we really want to be that go-to place to get those questions answered.

John: You know is also fascinating Matt. I have so many friends that go to the gym and go to SoulCycle or ride their Peloton at home and all these are great tools, that are out there for us now that exist to help us stay healthy and well, but the problem is so many people feel that because they worked out whatever it is in the Gym or Crossfield or one of those other biking things or a hydro. But if their diet is poor, they do not understand that they really can not outwork a bad diet. So getting that inline using a tool like yours, which is now delivered right in the palm of their hand. Is I believe probably the greatest use of technology that someone could have because it is literally The Gift of Health in the palm of your hand.

Matt: Well, that is a lofty way to describe it, that will have to live up to do my best but I could not agree more, if you look at the numbers it is not complicated, something like 87% of all Americans which means almost of us are going to succumb to one of the four top killers of Americans right? I believe the accidents are number three. So let us say that we can not prevent all accidents, but the other ones are in so many ways preventable, right and that’s a cardiovascular disease that is hard disease right cerebrovascular disease, Alzheimer’s, Strokes Etc. Highly really related, vascular there is an overlap there, and then Cancers and more and more research. Every single day is coming out and pointing to how you live. And what you eat is directly correlated to whether or not you will suffer from one of those diseases. that is really our motivation. We are going after those big three killers of Americans.

John: That is really a setup for my next question because you bring up great points. just in what you just said, so given the timeliness of your app and the absolutely tragic period in world history that look we are living through right now with COVID-19 how much more important is it today that people pay attention to their diet and nutrition, given that this pandemic is still upon us, it is going to be with us for an unlimited amount of time at this point and they say, Matt, unfortunately, this might not be the last pandemic that we are forced to deal with so share your thoughts on because I know how much knowledge you have and how really you have applied yourself over the years as you shared at the top of the show to this topic of diet nutrition Wellness. How important is an app like yours and what role could it have for all of us given that we all should be living a healthier lifestyle right now to prevent getting sick?

Matt: I appreciate the question and the implication that I know anything about this stuff. I will try to pretend like I do but I disconnect it from our app because I want to make sure that the message comes across without potentially being promoted by some commercial ads. What I truly believe is that If you look at the data in terms of mortality rates right patient outcomes than those who are admitted to the hospital with COVID positive test. I mean it is just day and night, if you have comorbidities, like Heart Disease and Diabetes those two things go together, your likelihood of survival goes down precipitously. This is something that hits home for me. I lost an aunt to COVID just six weeks eight weeks ago and she is literally, the textbook case of what you do not want to be in the middle of the pandemic.

Matt: She had been struggling with heart disease for a long long time. She was 72, I believe she had diabetes, of course, she was in the hospital for an unrelated matter. She contracted COVID spread through her family. Thank God her husband, my uncle, my cousins, they are doing just fine now, but she did, unfortunately, succumb to that after a battle that we all are too familiar with now, then to question again, I can not think of anything more important than trying to cut excess weight which is not a vanity thing. Your vascular system your arteries, the fat that you see on the outside of your body is highly correlated to the amount of fat right lipids, cholesterol that is going around in your blood creating plaques blocking arteries. Now is the time to go and start working out if it is not already a big habit.

John: The truth is, I will do the commercial side of this having another tool that is a seamless as your app and website to leverage to just help you in the journey to help you as one of our listeners navigate the truth and separate fact from fiction when it comes to diet nutrition, which is sometimes hard because the advertising that is spent the billions of dollars that spent to obfuscate the truth and to trick us into believing some things were healthy when they are clearly not, I think it is just wonderful that you put that out there. It is literally why I have done this why I have brought back this show and call it impact because it is people like you creating tools like this that I do this show with no advertising dollars or anything else because this is the kind of stuff that we need to continue to promote out there and it just the impact that you can make with this just amazing website and app matter it is just incredible.

John: If this is all you did, which I know you have done way much more before this. I know we are going to get to some of the other great Brands you are also running right now. It is just truly remarkable and I am just such a huge fan. So thank you for creating this. Thank you for putting it out there again for our listeners to download this app and get your free trial. Please go to www.80/20plants.com.

John: Let us now switch topics to your great product compliment which I have taken many times before especially when you just launch it and you shared it with me to be able to see the difference that it makes and it is a difference-maker. Can we go and share with our listeners now what you are doing with a compliment and also the evolution in the product that you have made and for our listeners out there to go see compliment you could go to www.lovecompliment.com share a little bit about the journey with complement which is a tremendous product as well.

Matt: Certainly, by now most people can probably infer that I do eat a plant-based diet, and complement is a way to you guessed it, compliments bad diets. We do not believe in supplements, It is heretical. I know because according to the FDA it is technically a supplement but supplement means adding on, its means in addition to, supplemental and what we did was take a different philosophy and say look if you eat a well-rounded diet, you should not need supplemental nutrient. You really should just complement those nutrients that you are already getting in abundance from food with the ones that may not come from food and this philosophy really can extend to any way of eating. Obviously, we built one for a vegan diet.

Matt: But when you really think about it, and I encourage folks again to really think about their own health their own diet and you need a health coach workers one of ours at 80/20plans. But when you look at it, like all of our diets follow a certain pattern because we have preferences and we have allergies and we have access to different foods, as a result, it is very likely that you are getting a lot of one nutrient and maybe a little bit another nutrient and on top of that, because of modern agricultural practices so much of our soil is just decimated. We do not have the kind zinc or iodine [inaudible] and B12, these things just do not exist, and nature and the same levels as they used to because of the way that we have effectively degraded the quality of our soil. And so what we really did with our product line up and we have three now.

Matt: We are launching a fourth which is a whole food modality is really to look at how do we complement a plant-based diet with just what might be missing from your typical plant-based meal eating pattern and nothing else. Our third-party tested is absolutely no fillers preservatives excipient. let me tell you as someone who is running a supplement company. It is a very scary world out there you can get away with absolutely shocking levels of Obfuscation. Obfuscation is one thing, that implies some sort of malevolence but just like carelessness. People who truly are just trying to make a buck, the true snake oil salesman. You got to worry about both, You can not [inaudible] intent, but you also just maybe more prevalently have to worry about, the kid in New Jersey, who can easily white-label some turmeric supplement out of China and sell it a and there is nothing to stop them. Absolutely nothing.

Matt: So you really have to know who is manufacturing this since we really pride ourselves, on the fact that my whole family takes it, my wife is taking our products through two pregnancies. Which is a scary thought but something that I am very proud of now in hindsight, my toddler takes it, That is the level of trust they have to have and so we are very proud to be exceeding the standards I can set or else I would not give it to my own family.

John: love it. And again, I have tried your product compliment it is wonderful. It makes me feel stronger than I really am and it is just I highly recommend it to our listeners out there and for anybody that wants to just feel better every day. It is www.lovecompliment.com. And again, I am on that website and you just have a way of also articulating the information so clearly, on all of your websites my hat is off to you because even when you have a product that is Head and Shoulders Above the Rest sometimes navigating the territory of communication is difficult, it is a whole different skill set than creating and I got to tell you, Matt, another great website and another great platform where we get to share the truth. And also just another great product. So for our listeners out there, I highly recommend compliment. Now let’s move on to huh. That is on my desk right now your latest and your greatest plant bites. I mean the Fig and Triple Berry plant bites, which I have already worked myself through one bag full.

John: When I swore that I was going to just start with two cubes a day and that held for three days and then one hungry afternoon. I work myself through 68 of these delicious Fig and Berry plant bites. Can you share with our listeners? What was behind creating this new product which I think is fabulous? which I think you are just going to kill it in the United States and around the world when you make this an international brand, this is just delicious talk a little bit all plant bites.

Matt: Well, thank you for that and I have to go back and you complimented our websites and I have to emphasize that I have nothing to do with that. In fact, my team, Michael and Doug, and particular keep me as far away from that stuff as possible. So I will be sure to pass along your Kudos. Thank you for that.

John: You are humble and your hand listens, I know you very well and there is nothing that leaves. Your name is going to be attached to that is nothing less than just about perfect. So although that is true and we can not accomplish anything really great without a team and without collaboration that is important that you are not letting something subpar get through your hands and that represents you, your brand Matt Frazier and your partner’s so my hat is off to you for creating a team that creates now a great product but also great communication so we could understand it, this transparency and we could enjoy your products. Now let’s get talking about this. How you even came up with coming up, why you created plant bites? What was the vision behind it? And your new launch of this wonderful delicious product?

Matt: Yeah, the truth is yet again, I did not come up with plant bites. The original recipe is made by a brilliant woman named Izzy Fisher who is our partner in this Venture and she is the CEO and our co-founder. But again the innovator behind this concept and she really educated me in so many ways, we have a Team, No Meat Acid, Endurance Athletes. So we all are always thinking about fueling right fueling your day for maximum efficacy, whether it is at your desk, or as a parent or on a trail runner on the bike where ever might be, The problem that she faced and she is a world championship qualifier in the Triathlon Sport, just an incredible woman and when she was Finding is that like she was eating a really healthy plant-based diet, 23 hours out of the day, but then when it came to training and when it came to fueling her competitions she eats literally anything. And it is an amazing thing when you look at some of these quote-unquote, Health products that are made for endurance athletes, in particular, they are effective, refined glucose and preservatives, and these are people who really care about their body.

Matt: They do anything to make their body perform at the highest possible level and yet they put junk in when it comes to the moment that they need to perform at that highest level. And so what is he figured out was, maybe I can do this on Whole Foods, our shared philosophy is that fruit is a good thing, the fruit has sugar. so I will compete, just with fruit, and fuel these ungodly competitions, hundreds of miles and obviously the next challenge was well fruit has some drawbacks, you got slow-burning fruit like bananas, you got quick-burning fruit and then you have got portability issue. You do not exactly want to go on a run with the knapsack full of apples and oranges, so she really focuses on this for a lot of years and then through a process where we engaged about 2,000 of our community members to a No Meat Athlete to help refine the product and really hone in on what we were trying to create we had it in some superfoods like beets which is a vasodilator and other words your sends more fuel to your muscle in the form of blood.

Matt: We launched this just a few weeks ago. It is not actually publicly available. Although you may be able to find it online. We are going to be solely rolling this out as we ramp up production. And now that was truly the story where our vision is to help athletes to, form at their best and to educate athletes said, they do not need these highly processed products to be able to do that you can get the convenience and the precision as well as a health component through a product like plant bites. So the coolest thing is that what we found is that we designed it for athletes, but guys like you and me who may not be putting in hundreds of miles every day, they are a great snack, my son and I go through at least a bag every two or three days.

John: I do not blame you that they are so good. They taste so good. I mean and they just make you feel so good. I got to tell you. I mean they do not affect my blood sugar at all and they just keep me totally fueled the whole day. So I just got to tell you I love it. Where can our listeners find these online or what stores do you intend to sell them in once you roll them out? What’s your vision, Matt?

Matt: The best thing for listeners to do better to go to nomeatathlete.com, to sign up for a newsletter and over the next couple of weeks really about a month from today actually, we are going to be launching this to the public you might be able to Google and find a website out there because like I said, we are slowly rolling it out to be pretty sure that we do not make promises before our production capacity can fulfill it. But like I said nomeatathlete.com and you will be able to find, we will be sending out the details over next month.

John: Wonderful. That is wonderful, Matt before we sign off for today. I just want you to share any last thoughts because your wisdom is Way Beyond your years when it comes to health management wellness, and all the issues around plant-based eating and the effects and the positive effects, it can have on how we live and work through our journeys of Life any final thoughts for our listeners out there for those who want to improve their lives and not sure yet. If they are ready to make the dive into the pool of veganism or plant-based eating, but how do people who just want to start putting one foot in front of the other move forward nowadays after listening to you and being inspired by you?

Matt: Yeah, I would just start educating yourself and there are lots of ways to go about it. But the thing that I tell folks is that if you want to follow the paleo diet if you want to follow this, the Mediterranean diet the longevity diet you name it or vegan diet or plant-based diet. There are a lot more things in common with those diets, even though there might be a lot of rancor and animosity between those tribes. There is a lot more in common because it is the intention that goes behind following a diet that leads to self-improvement. Once you get on that flywheel and you start turning in creating some momentum you are going to do other things like you are going to go to the gym or you are going to just start doing some push-ups every day. It does not have to be big things. Just taking a walk around the neighborhood since I know no one is going to a gym anytime soon, unfortunately, just as baby steps.

Matt: But again, I would encourage everybody to just think deeply about the way they eat because whatever the diet you choose to follow as long as it is not the standard American diet, that would be my big ask [inaudible] because I might have said this before but by 2050 we are going to have a hundred million Americans who have type 2 diabetes that will not only bankrupt our economy, but it will cause so much undue suffering. It is unimaginable. Just today we have a hundred 40 Million Americans it is 40% of us, It means one out of two listeners are living with a chronic disease and maybe two or three, we are in a very sick country and it always comes back to what are you putting in your body and what are you doing with your body on a daily basis?

Matt: So again, it does not have to be 80/20 plants. It does not have to be plant-based, it is just starting with a walk every day some push-ups, some meditation drinking more water, and thinking about what you eat, It will make a tremendous difference for you today tomorrow your kid’s Next Generation our country our society. We need to take this more seriously. That is the big message. I try to get across no matter who I am talking to.

John: that is a great message. And for listeners out there one more time, please go check out Matt’s amazing websites and all the important items that they have on them, chock full of information, www.80/20plants.com, www.lovecompliment.com and www.nomeatathlete.com, Matt Tullman. I am always inspired by you. I am lucky to have you as a friend. I am so honored that you came on the show today. Thank you for making all the important impacts that you make on this planet right now and making the world a better place. I can not wait to have you back on the impact podcast. Once again.

Matt: Pleasures all mine. Thanks for doing what you do to shine a bright light, on all of our work.

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 to have with us today the founder and president of First Healthcare Compliance, Julie Sheppard. Welcome to the Impact Podcast, Julie.

Julie Sheppard: Thank you, John. It is great to be here. And I appreciate you having me on today.

John: It is wonderful to have you on, and you do important, important work at First Healthcare Compliance. But before we get to the entrepreneurial side of Julie Sheppard, these are big backstory here. Can you share a little bit about your journey in bio leading up to the founding of First Healthcare Compliance?

Julie: Sure. It probably makes sense to start at Clemson University. That is where I went to school. I ended up there thinking that I was going to become a microbiologist, and I did not – spoiler alert – we all see that that did not happen. I met my husband. We were in freshman biology together. So, by the end of college, we were dating very seriously. I had switched my major to nursing, and he went to medical school at the Medical University of South Carolina. So we got to spend those years in Charleston, South Carolina, a really beautiful city. We were married. During that time, I worked as a nurse, and our first son was born in Charleston, about a month before we moved to Syracuse, New York for my husband’s residency.

So we were in Syracuse. Spent five great years there while he completed his Otolaryngology residency, and we ended up in Wilmington, Delaware and we still call Wilmington home today. In the meantime, two more sons were born in Syracuse, and fast forward to being in Delaware for a couple of years, younger son was about to start preschool. And so, I was kind of turning some attention back to doing something professional. Again, was not sure what I was going to do. I think I was looking over some materials about becoming a legal nurse consultant. And my husband who is incredibly supportive, looked at me, just like someone who has that surgical background, who has done four years of medical school and five years of residency. And he said, “Well if you are going to do that, just take LSAT and go to law school. I am sure you can do it. It is just a few years.”

John: Wow.

Julie: So that is how it started. I took the LSAT in June and applied online through local law school, federal law school in July, and by August I was starting law school. A lot of people thought that was crazy.

John: Wait, let us take a pause there. Wait a second, Julie, and you already had three children at this time?

Julie: I did, I did.

John: Going to law school, you are an L1 with three children, incredible. I love it. That is inspiring unto itself. That itself is just amazing.

Julie: Yes.

John: And what confidence your husband had in you to just say go all the way if you are going to do the little bit of legal stuff. Just go all the way, that is wonderful.

Julie: Exactly. I think everybody should have a supportive spouse like that.

John: Right.

Julie: So I did it, I had a great support system, went through law school. My kids are kind of with me through all of that which, I think, in the end was great for them to see.

John: Right.

Julie: And then it was a bit of time between law school, and then having this idea, but that kind of shows the perspective that I had, going into law school as a nurse and as a physician’s spouse. Looking back, it just seems natural that I ended up thinking about compliance and if you think about, back in 2011 feels so long ago now.

John: Right.

Julie: But, there were a lot of things changing and happening that really caught my attention as far as compliance in medical practices, because I was looking out for my husband and his partners and their administrators and their growing practice and thinking. “Wow. How are they going to do all of this? What is available to them?” And we have a lot of friends through positions and so I would speak with them, and try to get an idea of what they were thinking, or if they even knew what was expected of them and many times they did not, because there is so much expected of them in so many different areas. I know that you have a really strong understanding of cybersecurity and what is expected, but there are a gazillion other things that they have to think about…

John: Right.

Julie: …and act on at all times, and that is on top of it.

John: Right. What kind of doctor is your husband?

Julie: Ear, nose and throat. So I think I said otolaryngologists earlier, but most people know that as your nose and throat.

John: Got it. It was during this journey, and having great knowledge of your husband’s business and also your circle of friends as you say were doctors as well. You started seeing gaps or voids that could be filled or opportunities? What was it? How was it showing up or manifesting itself to you for you to say there is a business there?

Julie: I would say, do you realize that this is required of you, you have to… For instance, you have to… We need a very simple example, you have to offer the Hep B vaccination to all of your employees and if they refused that you have to have them find a Hep B declination form. Sort of basic compliance.

John: Right.

Julie: But it was just kind of slipping through the cracks. You can imagine. It is a medical practice. This is a business and you want your doctor to be focused on the patient care aspect, and then the administrators have so many other things to deal with, to think about all of HIPAA, all of OSHA, all of the billing, coding, documenting portion of it. And then, of course, there is the whole HR piece that seems to integrate more and more and especially in a medical practice or any healthcare setting. There is a lot of extra training and i’s to dot and t’s to cross and such. So there is just a lot going on. They needed a way to streamline things and to tract thing.

John: Wow. So I am on your website now. For our listeners out there, Julie’s website is just chock-full of information and really easy to understand and get a lot of great information to get going on. It is www.1sthcc.com, first with a number one. 1sthcc.com. So it is simple. It has tons of resources on it, including just a very recent compliance manual on COVID-19, which we are going to get to in a little while. So what you are saying to me, Julie, and what I am understanding, but tell me if I am misinterpreting this at all. It is a blurring of the lines where you are filling gaps in HR, EH&S, HIPAA, and other regulatory compliance issues. There is a wide array of roles that you play in a medical setting, it sounds like that. First Healthcare Compliance fills gaps in all those areas.

Julie: Well, I think we are there to help the people who are playing all those roles, and sometimes it is one person wearing the hat of HR and wearing the hat of compliance along with three other things. So we are there to aid that individual or those individuals and by the way, you called it my website which is flattering, but it is not at all true. I do not do this by myself. I have a team of people who are just excellent and really are the reason for success. And you mentioned the COVID-19 ebook, I think you probably fill the pop-up.

John: Yes.

Julie: That was compiled entirely by Sheba Vine, who is also an Attorney. And she is our Vice President and General Counsel, and she just contributes a lot of really excellent content and educational material.

John: So now, you are a nurse, you are an attorney, you are a mom, you are a spouse of a doctor, talk about then. Okay. I think I have enough to make this a business. How did that happen? Where is the tipping point? And what was the first foot forward into that? And then how did it evolve since your launch?

Julie: So I am not sure about everybody else who has ever started a business, but I do not think anybody is ever completely sure, that they have enough…

John: You are right.

Julie: …to start a business. Right?

John: Right.

Julie: So I said, “It looks to me like this could be really helpful. I think this could be really helpful.” And I kept talking to people and a lot of credit goes to our clients and the physician who so willingly talk to me…

John: Right.

Julie: …leading up to the launch because they are really generous with all of their answers and helping me see exactly how they do things. We still meet as a team once a week, by the way.

John: That is great.

Julie: We look at the client requests, how they are actually using the system, and how we can enhance it and make it better? Because it is always changing.

John: Yes.

Julie: But I had a really strong hunch that putting this together, streamlining everything into one platform, so that they did not have to go to different experts and different vendors to achieve all these different elements of their compliance program, keeps it all in one place for them and makes it very easy to train their employees and to track that online because that is one big part of it. All the payers required a training log.

John: Right.

Julie: So that is one piece that everybody sees as very critical. It evolved over time. We started working just with physician practices here in Delaware and the Philadelphia area, and some of those folks, most of them I would say, are still with us today. So we are really so thankful to those practices who have had faith in us and been with us for so long.

John: Just for our listeners. What year was this that you officially launched First Healthcare Compliance?

Julie: It was in 2013.

John: 2013.

Julie: Building version 1 in 2012.

John: Right.

Julie: We had some guinea pigs, but then we officially launched and people started actually purchasing and buying our services in 2013.

John: Wonderful. So it started mostly in your local area at that time with people you know, and how has it evolved over the last seven years?

Julie: So it is just amazing and hard to believe, but we have clients all over the country including Alaska and Hawaii.

John: Wow.

Julie: And I think a lot of that success, it is obviously my team and the content that they produced. I know that you met and worked with Catherine Short, our Partnership Marketing Manager.

John: Right.

Julie: We do a lot. We just believe in content marketing and producing our content. So we are always offering. We have a blog every week that has an e-newsletter that goes along with that. We have compiled a lot of our materials and we create a digital monthly magazine now that is also free. And we have a webinar series and a YouTube channel. It is very robust, so that if you are looking for any particular topic about healthcare compliance, there is a good chance you could go to YouTube and end up on our YouTube channel. And that is just part of what we believe. It is our mission to serve as a trusted resource and to provide as much as we can to our prospects and our clients.

John: Now, in terms of… Explain your client base now. Is it medical offices like your husband’s office? Is it hospitals? Is it urgent care, or all of the above?

Julie: So we have a very strong base in the physician practice market.

John: Okay.

Julie: Because that is where we started. The reason the business came into being, we were looking out for practices, but quickly began to evolve, and we built platforms that are specifically for long-term care, or for hospital systems, or billing and management companies in the day. That happened almost immediately. We were working with physician practices, where people kind of found us through our website, and our blog, and our webinars and such. And billing company owners would call me up and just say, “Hey. Can you build this for me, for my billing company because we need this?”

John: Right.

Julie: And so that is what we did. We have been interned worked with a couple of billing companies and created a platform for them, and then they like to see that their clients, the physician practices, or sometimes an ambulatory care clinic or something like that, physical therapist, dentist, we have a lot of different types of healthcare facilities using our system. We have not really taken the time to go out and market to each one of them separately, but the thing about federal rules and regulations as they apply to everybody.

John: Right.

John: Our system is really helpful.

John: Got it.

Julie: And then the resources we offer. So within our platform, within our cloud-based comprehensive compliance management tool, we have sample documents and all kinds of sample policies and procedures and things like that. They are really helpful.

John: For our listeners who just joined us, we have Julie Sheppard on with us. She is the founder and president of the First Healthcare Compliance. You could find her great company at www.1sthcc.com. Julie, when you were sitting at the kitchen table with your husband, I am sure with your boys at some time, and other friends, other doctor friends that were part of your social circle and friendship circle. Your original vision of First Healthcare Compliance compared to where you are now, how is that journey been? Because my experience is it is never a straight line from 2013 to 2020, and it goes exactly the plan, there is zigs, there is zags, there is ups, there is downs, and there is new pockets of opportunity. Like you said things are ever-changing. How did the original plan apply to where you are today?

Julie: Wow. If someone really held through, the whole idea of providing something streamlined to physician practices was there at the beginning, and it is definitely at the core of what we do now. But I think it is hard for anybody to anticipate or to have anticipated the evolution that has occurred since then. So back in 2011, 2012, and there are a lot more solo practitioners, a lot more independent physician practices, we are seeing more and more. Everybody consolidate, will be acquired by a larger system and some of that was happening before COVID-19. And I think so many other things that have been accelerated due to this crisis. I think that independent practice is definitely facing more and more challenges. So, we are seeing a lot of bigger practices now.

John: Got it. That makes a lot of sense. When in the journey in the last seven years did you turn to your husband one night and say, “Is it going to work?” This actually is because, as you said when you put the first foot in front of the others, no entrepreneur that is a hundred percent sure. Because that is impossible. Otherwise, everyone will be doing this if there was no risk in and everything was just with certainty. It is never certainty when you are out on the high wire as an entrepreneur. So when did you actually say, “Okay, we got something here.”

Julie: Wow. Yes, I think it was pretty early on.

John: Good, that is good.

Julie: I am so very optimistic. The thing that I look for proof may not be somebody else would see as proof. Before we ever reach any kind of financial sure sign that the business is thriving, for me it was seeing people who are real users of the system actually say, “This is what I have been looking for. This is what I need. Wow. I cannot live without this.” So for me as soon as I saw those signs and it was very early on, we did not have to do a lot of marketing. People found us because the content we produced. That gave me and my team, I think, a lot of a lot of reason to keep going.

John: So now, it is 2020, and you had initial goals when you started the business to succeed. Everyone first wants their businesses to succeed. No one knows truly how big it is going to be or small. But everyone takes pride when whatever they have started. It is like another child. That is birthing another child, planning, giving birth, and then trying to help the baby to grow. What were your goals when you started compared to your goals today as you look forward to post-COVID? God willing. This tragic period gets behind us and science wins, and vaccinations come out and it is like the third grade. It is not the super ball. Not one vaccination wins. It is almost like the third grade where there are fifteen winners, or at least ten and we get the world as vaccinated as possible, and we get beyond this. What does your business look like going forward with your visions? And your goals now compared to 2013 when you had other goals?

Julie: Well, I do not know that the goals have dramatically changed. I mean, I feel really lucky that I am here talking to you in 2020 and the business is what it is. So you start and part of what makes it reeling I guess is not knowing whether or not it will succeed.

John: Right.

Julie: But it has and we are still here, and we are still viable. And our goal, our overarching priority as a company is to serve as a trusted resource and to help create confidence among compliance professionals around the country, and that is what we are doing. That is what we aim to do every day.

John: What is… Obviously, it is so exciting and I can hear the pride in you and the I know how humble you are, but to succeed in anything. It is very hard, entrepreneurship, whether they some sort of stat out there and I do not even have the stat in front of me, but there is something like ninety percent of all new ventures fail. Some ridiculous number, so the risk level is high no matter how talented people are and entrepreneurs are or no matter how hard they work. What do you enjoy the most about your work? But also, give me the flip side. Talk a little bit about what is also some of the, what do you least enjoy as well?

Julie: All right. Well, that is a lot of questions that blew up, a lot to talk about. I think I really enjoy learning and enjoy working with people. I mean, both my team, and then you know all of our clients and all the other experts we get to work with. I think people in general and healthcare are just really tough resilient people. I think that is playing out right now with COVID-19. I mean, I know it is tough to be working on the front lines. I cannot imagine being a nurse in a hospital right now and working with the COVID population. So I think it is just nice to be surrounded by smart, strong people who have an optimistic outlook. I also am lucky because I like to learn and I get to learn something new almost everyday. So, compliance, like we were saying your business, ERI.

John: Yes.

Julie: Gives you a window into the cybersecurity piece of it and that is huge

John: Right.

Julie: That is one little piece of… [crosstalk]

John: Right.

Julie: I get to try to learn. I cannot learn everything, but when it comes to HIPAA, or the whole billing-including piece or right now, there is so much, and it is really been shining a light on the importance of infection control and patient safety and all the OSHA standards. So we get to meet people from a business perspective, or legal perspective, or healthcare clinical perspective. I think that is really lucky. How many people get to engage with so many different types of professionals in one job.

John: Experts, really, smart people.

Julie: Yes.

John: And it is not even what you dislike the most. It is just what is the hardest part of what you do? It does not have to be a dislike, but it just what is like the “hmm”?

Julie: Well, I mean, I think it is… I find this role right because I was a nurse and then I went to law school.

John: Right.

Julie: I did not even really practice as a lawyer. So I think I jumped into something because I got excited about the business idea, but I do not really have a business or leadership background. And so there have been some times I really not done the right thing or I kind of messed up when it comes to hiring or leading.

John: We all do. It is hard.

Julie: It is hard, yeah.

John: It is hard. Leadership is ever-changing as well. I think, one type of leader successfully ran companies in the 70s and 80s and even early 2000s, and I think leadership is evolved now to a much more, how do we say it, a macro perspective almost of both, leading by example, kindness, empathy, respect. There is a lot more that goes into leadership than just the ability to hire and fire people and make a good speech or make a good presentation. I think it is the human condition has evolved and I think leaders had to evolve with it or not succeed, frankly.

Julie: I think that is so true.

John: So what is next? Something gets you out of bed in the morning, so what is next? What is the next goal that you set or hurdle that you have created in your mind, even if it is not on paper to get you out of bed and says, “Okay. We have got x amount of clients today and by 2025, we are going to have 5x or 10x or 3x.” What is your… How do you gauge constantly push yourself? Because obviously, Julie, and I know you are disarming in your humbleness, but I mean someone who has taken that. First of all, there is no easy being married to someone who is a high-achieving, really smart person. That itself. Marriage is an evolving process and to be married to a doctor or a lawyer or someone else. So A, marriage you got three great kids that are now evolving to adulthood, etc. But you are a nurse, you are a lawyer, you are a high. If someone is seen as an A+ person, you are A+++. What are the goals? How do you… People find different ways to motivate themselves. How do you stay motivated to continue to create goals for yourself to achieve?

Julie: I mean, I am very motivated. I do not know that I have to try to create goals for myself.

John: Okay.

Julie: Since it started, I just think about it all the time to the point that my husband and my kids will make fun of me. “Here we go again. Every conversation leads back to First Healthcare Compliance with you, Mom.”

John: But Julie, I take that as a strength. I do not know. My kids say the same thing to me and my wife cuts me off and she is the CEO of our company and she says enough talk about this. I mean, she just herself wants a break so, but they say, I mean when you really listen to a podcast or read a book or read passages by any of the great ones and there is a bunch of them, but we will call it gates. We will call it bezels, the musk, just for some reason folks out there. They are obsessed with their business. They are obsessed with their what they have created so that… And I am not sure if I am using the right word obsessed but that is what that is on their mind. They wake up, they go to bed, that is what is on their mind. That is a strength. I take that as a strength. I think that is wonderful.

Julie: Yes, I mean, I think if you enjoy what you do and you are really motivated to see it through and I am. Whenever I committed start of business, I wanted to see through and see it succeed. And so it takes up a lot of my mind space.

John: Yes.

Julie: And enough of my time. But I do really enjoy having time to do other things, too. So I am not someone who works 24/7. I do enjoy time with my husband and our boys and we have had a lot of togetherness with COVID.

John: Right. A couple of things. I want to go into a couple of other things. First of all, I do not want to not mention. You also have two other books besides what is on your website in terms of your COVID-19 manual. You also have two books on Amazon, “HIPAA Privacy and Security” and “First Healthcare Compliance: The Fundamentals”. They are available on Amazon, correct?

Julie: Correct.

John: Good.

Julie: So, yes the COVID-19 ebook that you mentioned is a downloadable and we created those periodically and we try to do that at least a few times a year, and obviously, we needed to create one with all the changes occurring around COVID. The other two books are available on Amazon. You can also get to them from our website. We have a shopping cart with some online modules. So the fundamental corresponds to a four-hour course that we have created that covers the fundamentals, so HIPAA, OSHA, Federal Fraud Waste and Abuse, and some of the employment law. So that is really a great course for someone who is entering the profession or things that they would like to. Maybe take a pivot into Health Care Compliance or even just somebody out there trying to earn CEU because if you are certified through HCCA like I am, you have to have forty CEUs every two years to renew. It sounds like a lot, but there is always a lot to learn and to catch up on. Our course is a great way to get a few of those. And then the HIPAA Privacy and Security book is obviously just something that we find people asked about a lot. We do a couple of live events each year. Well, lately, they have been online like everything else. But we enjoyed before COVID-19 having live events at the Delaware Law Schools in collaboration with Delaware Law School in their graduate programs in compliance. And we have one that is solely on HIPAA in the fall, and I believe you are going to be a speaker at that event in November, John.

John: Right. Thank you. And I appreciate the invitation, and thank you. Your husband and the doctors that you are friends with and that are your cabinet of advisors, have they all been leveraging this telehealth trend now due to COVID-19? And is that becoming a bigger trend that is here to stay? And does that create new opportunities for your business?

Julie: So yes, I think. I will start at the beginning of your question. Almost all of the physicians I know or that we work with leverage telehealth in some way during the pandemic and most of them are continuing on in some way to varying degrees and I think it is all speculation. It is all we can really do right now. Kind of points to the fact that this just accelerated, the movement toward telehealth and it is here to stay. I guess it remains to be seen at what level, but I personally think it is here to stay. I think we are going to see a lot of permanent changes, not just in medicine, but the world in general.

John: Interesting. Make sense, I mean they say the teleworking from people working from home now is here to stay even if it is not at the levels that we are today. It is going to be it is still at some increased level compared to pre-COVID. So it makes sense that telehealth is also here to stay at some baseline that I guess is yet to be seen what it will be.

Julie: Right. Yes, and I guess you ask does that increase our business and really, and we have not seen big swings with our business either way, because we already provide an online service. As I said, we were based in Wilmington, Delaware. We work with people all over the United States and that is because we already provided online training, and we work with people full free and online and that is our business model anyway. So it has still been pretty much business as usual for us except, we have been busier, creating all the content to help people with all the changes that have come about.

John: Right. We have a lot of entrepreneurs out there or aspiring entrepreneurs that listen to the Impact Podcast, any advice in the rearview mirror now that you could share with young and aspiring entrepreneurs that want to be the next Julie Sheppard?

Julie: Well, I can try to give advice, but I think everybody has their own paths. Every business is unique.

John: Right.

Julie: If you have a great idea and you are committed to it, do not listen to the naysayers, and just try to get past your fear of failure. Everybody has it. I am convinced that everybody has some fear of failure or some a little bit of doubt. You have to have that back there somewhere, but just get rid of that and keep going because sometimes it does not work out. Sometimes you will not have success. You know, with every step of the way, you are going to run into some obstacles that just stop you a little bit. But you have to be willing to just work through those or work around them.

John: Right. I think that is great advice getting over your fear of failure and just do not listen to the naysayers. Those are two great pieces of advice because there are always naysayers out there. There are always naysayers.

Julie: Yeah. Right.

John: Julie, I just want to say thank you again for all that you do. Thank you for spending time with us today. For our listeners again to for that want to find Julie Sheppard’s great company, First Healthcare Compliance, they could go to www.1sthcc.com. And they can find her, they can find her books, all the resources, massive amount of resources. I am on your website. The number of videos and information and now, you have the downloadable ebook on COVID-19. There is just so much there. I really would like you to go there. If you need her kind of help that her firm offers. Julie Sheppard, thank you for your time today. You have been more than generous with us. You are making a great impact and making the world a better place, and I thank you again for joining us and look forward to having you back on the Impact Podcast.

Julie: Thank you so much, John.

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 so excited and honored to have my friend on with us today, Michael Weiss. He is the co-founder of AI4. Welcome to the impact podcast Michael.

Michael Weiss: John thank you so much for having me. Awesome to be here. Always love talking with you.

John: Oh, yeah, and I know I am in Fresno today and we were talking a little bit off air. We are just starting to come out of this COVID-19 tragic period in the world history. I know you are in beautiful Cape Cod, which I have been blessed and blessed before to go in my life. So we are having a Coast-to-Coast conversation today. It is just great to have you on with us and be able to share your journey. Michael before we get talking about your great organization AI4 for our listeners that like to learn more about Michael’s great organization on what he does and what they do you can go to www.AI4.io. The number 4 dot IO. Share a little bit about before you founded AI4 what you did and what your journey look like and your background.

Michael: Yeah for sure. So my extremely short bio, I grew up in South Florida and Fort Lauderdale, went to school in St. Louis at Washington University, graduate in 2012, works for two and a half years at this like media & events business called Bisnow, and then I left there in 2015. I started my own venture you could call it which was to bring a World’s Fair back to the US. Pretty much our goal was to organize the world’s first privatized World’s Fair in the US. The reason why the goal was to do a private World’s Fair as opposed to a government-funded World’s Fair was because the US government actually like had canceled the US’s participation in the treaty organization that oversees World’s Fairs known in the present day as world expos. There was not really room to have one be funded by government. So anyway, long story short we started this project to privatized a world fair in the us.

What we did for just about three years was we organized these mini World’s Fairs called World’s Fair Nano. Which were pretty much these like big technology kind of future festivals and we convened 20,000 people through those events and they were awesome. People got to experience VR for the first time or robotics for the first time or try lab-grown whatever for the first time. It was a really cool experience for people.

John: What did you learn? Give our listeners like everyone should learn something from their experiences in life and the more we learn the more we experience the richer our life becomes and the more perspective we have and we take it to our next venture. What were your major takeaways that you have been able to apply to your next venture. Can you just share with our listeners what you took away from the the nano world’s fair opportunity?

Michael: Yeah, definitely a bunch of stuff. I mean one sort of Technology take away I had from just witnessing all of these people and companies that were working in different like innovation categories, whether it was transportation, space tech robotics, was that AI and just the idea really of being able to automatically take novel insights from data, which is really what AI is right now. That was just becoming ubiquitous and powering, you know, innovation across every industry.

Then I will make a more personal level. Something I learned from it was I was 24 at the time when I set out to organize this World’s Fair. My plan to actually get it done in retrospect sucked. It was a very ambitious goal and I did not achieve it but we did a lot of cool stuff and even the World’s First Nano as like a business and as you know a goal to bring this big World’s Fair back failed ultimately it did some good stuff, but I would not have done it any other way. So I think what I learned was I came up with this big audacious goal because it just intrigued me and I went forward and I failed. Now as I started the next thing and I think about the future. I try to get just as excited about having big audacious goals that interest me. Hopefully I will have learned along the way to figure the next one out.

John: Well, let me tell you something. You figured it out Michael. So to your credit I met you still your extraordinarily young and I have been so honored and privileged because of you and your partner’s to be invited to your AI4 conferences which I came to in New York in the last year or so. I spoke at a couple of them, we exhibited at some. I could just tell our listeners out there, you put on one heck of a conference. I go to these conferences all around the United States and actually around the world and yours are one of the most not only relevant and timely conferences but I mean well attended with leaders in all different sectors, whether it is retail, or cyber or all the different things that you are touching is just incredible.

For our listeners out there. We have got Michael Weiss. He is the co-founder of AI4, to find them you can go to www.AI4.io. AI4 for which is the gold standard community to growing AI industry that connects fortune 500 companies, AI startups, investors, and government AI leaders, and top app academics, Talk a little bit about how you then transitioned from your first vision of the world’s fair bringing back the world’s fair and then putting on some of the nano events to then dreaming up this conference that has been just a runaway success.

Michael: Yeah. Thanks John. So you kind of had a World’s Fair Nano. we still like technology and we kind of fell in love with AI. It was clear that smart computers and machines that can literally think for us or going to represent a massive part of the future. So we decided to focus on AI. Through World’s Fair Nano, which was a consumer-facing kind of event. We decided that it would be much better business model if we focus on industry and business people. Yeah, so we decided to do AI for business was really the initial concept.

We entered sort of the market with a very niche approach and so we did one event that was all focused on AI for financial services, another event that was focused all in AI for healthcare and then AI for retail and for cyber security. Over the past 2 years we have been doing those and they have been going great. They are application only events to attend. As you kind of mentioned, we get a really legit crowd there. I think we have helped a lot of you know, really big Fortune 500 type companies just make more sense of how to approach their own AI projects.

John: Did you do this with your partners from the World’s Fair Nano or did you come up with a new group of partners that you co-founded this great conference?

Michael: Same crew, same crew.

John: Same crew. Isn’t that nice, you guys stay together? That is awesome. I love that. I have done that before in my life from business to business and I have had a lot of success doing it with the same crew because then we were able to focus on the vision forward instead of worrying about is this the right partner is that partner doing the right thing you already had a relationship with them and a trust in them. So obviously it makes the execution in my experience easier. Did you find the same with you?

Michael: Oh definitely. Yeah. My my main co-founder Marcus, I have known him since college for a dozen or so years. Very very solid relationship which is the key to success.

John: Awesome. Yeah. So talk a little bit about the first conference’s you put on in New York City and why you subdivide in fascinating by topics and how did that work out? Because I went to them, but I want you to share from your vision why you chose certain topics and how those conferences evolved and worked out in New York in the last couple of years.

Michael: Yeah. You know, to be honest we chose these niches of like AI in particular industries. Just just to provide focus to the theme. There were a couple other events. We had seen that were more generally theme like AI for everything and we wanted to be different. So we came out with this niche of the AI for these particular industries and we chose the industries based on our assessment of the current value of AI within them.

Financial services, banks, hedge funds, credit card companies, insurance companies, they are all going crazy with machine learning models to give loans, fight fraud, or build chatbots or whatever it is. So we chose that and then healthcare, also just amazing adoption rates within health care whether it is hospitals for models to predict patient re-admittance, or read medical scans, or pharma companies trying to predict new drugs. So we chose healthcare and then cyber security in retail, same reasoning. There is just really compelling use cases in those domains.

Then you know as we have kind of gone over the past couple years what we realized was that while we were doing these like 400 or so person events in each of these industries. We realized that there was just not enough consistency to like this AI industry community in terms of no one knows the rule book yet for how to actually approach AI within an enterprise setting. People are just confused whether they are a business person, whether they are a data scientist. Confusion abounds right now when it comes to AI within these enterprises. Which is okay because it is just new, people are just still figuring it out.

While its new there are leaders in this space. There are certain company, certain people who are just father along their own AI journey. We felt that it is critical for the longevity of AI as an industry to to really provide the same group of people who care about how I with a place to meet. So what we ended up doing in 2020, which obviously is a bit different now because of the virus was we decide to combine our four events into one larger AI for show. So we cover finance, healthcare, retail cybersecurity. We also added telecom, energy, and automotive. Always separate tracks that you have like your own unique content, but then you get to kind of cross pollinate with people who have lessons from other Industries.

John: Got it. So now we are coming out of this COVID-19 tragic period in the world history. Originally, I know your event was scheduled to be in Las Vegas in the end of the summer in late August early September. Share with our listeners how you have re-envisioned this year’s conference because of the COVID crisis and how as an entrepreneur you have remained flexible and evolve your thinking as to how to best put it on this year and some thoughts about your conferences in the future.

Michael: Yeah. Good question. There is a couple thoughts we had, so A, obviously as an event business that makes 95 percent of your money doing a big physical event then you have a pandemic hit. The key thing that cannot happen is a large gathering. It is almost laughable as far as like the macroeconomic climate impact it has. But anyway, so that happened which was curious to say the least. Then it was like, okay. So what do we do?

So what we kind of realized is that, the value that an event like ours provides it is mostly two things. It is education and its commerce. Its education in our case in the form of learning how AI is impacting different industries and it is commerce in the form of facilitating like AI companies meeting and users buyers at banks or healthcare companies, or retailers. That is why people go to events. That is why people buy booze. That is why people listed in the audience. That why people speak. It is education and commerce.

So in this air of COVID over the past few months have been like well, can we still provide that value prop to people without a big physical event and the answer is of course, yes, because the internet is a beautiful thing. The most one to one thing we are doing to the event is we are just porting the physical experience into a digital platform. It is going to be great say. It is August 18th through 20th. So it is three days and we are going to have all the same tracks, a bunch of speakers. You can like schedule meetings with people and take video meetings you can filter through, really cool networking function. We are building like a whole sort of exhibitor booths section on our website where you will be able to filter by type of companies you want to meet and you will be able to request meetings all the stuff.

So we are going to have a great sort of just digital event. Honestly, we are expecting like 2 or 3,000 people or something in Vegas. We will probably have, because no travel cost, easier for global audience. We expect to have 5,000 or more, you know tune in which is going to be cool.

John: I bet you your participation now, will even be more international and diverse than ever before given that like you said, people can be coming in from all parts of the world whether it is Asia, or Europe, or Russia, or anywhere South America, easily because there is no travel or airplanes and hotels needed. People can just either participate, speak or be an attendee from all different parts of the planet now, that is fascinating.

Michael: Yeah, totally. So I think there is lots of cool opportunities on that front to just have a much bigger audience.

John: For our listeners who are excited to either attend or request a sponsorship opportunity and do they find you just at www.AI4.io or there are other ways to interrelate with you that I am missing.

Michael: Yeah, the website’s great and you can always email me personally. Just [email protected] is always fair game.

John: Perfect, [email protected]. So, you have this coming up on August 18th to 20th, the big conference. That is going to be fascinating. So you go from two to three thousand participants now to five and people can be sponsors, speakers, or just attendees.

Michael: Yeah. Exactly. It is really all the same characters will be there. We will have amazing speakers, sponsors, attendees. There will still be press that attend. Yeah, it is really the same vibe. The main thing honestly you miss out on is like the entertainment component. That said we are going to do some fun stuff regardless. We are going to do each evening like sort of a big virtual video networking thing. We will have like some drinks, we will have some music. We have been thinking I will give you a fun tip. Do you know this thing called Cameo?

John: Yeah.

Michael: So I think we are probably getting we will do like a cameo or two to get like some fun celebs to tune in for these networking things to make it fun for people.

John: Awesome. That sounds just awesome. I think cameos’ wonderful. In fact my son just when he graduated from law school, like I shared with you. We were both, comedies a common theme in our family. We all grew up loving Seinfeld, he grew up loving Seinfeld. We all used to watch it as a family. I actually have the actual Soup Nazi from Seinfeld.

Michael: Yeah, he is on there.

John: Yeah, he taped the most wonderful message for my son because it was a just like your event we had for him. It was not a in-person graduation, which is a very special moment in both parents’ life and of course the student’s life, but it was a virtual graduation. So it made the virtual graduation even more fun because he referenced it and he talked about it. It was just it was just great. So I think Cameo is just a great brand and they are doing really fun things that I know a lot of people that have used their talent in their platform and the results are just wonderful. So I think that is a brilliant idea. That is just brilliant.

Michael: That is awesome. Sounds like you beat me to it. So that is awesome.

John: Yeah, talk about other things you are doing in in this soon to be post COVID new order for this year at least to keep your brand and your tribe as I would like to call it engaged and relevant with your platform. What are the things you are going to be doing besides your big event on August 18th, 19th, and 20th.

Michael: Yeah, totally. Through this whole COVID thing, we had to reflect a bit on what AI4 is and the value it provides. As I mentioned earlier, the two main things we do with the event is commerce and education. So while we are going to still provide those things in this big digital event, we have also come to learn and realize that we can provide both education and commerce in other ways as well.

On the education front we have started doing these trainings and tutorials which are 5 up to 16 hour trainings for either like business execs to learn AI or data scientist to pick up new skills. They have been going great. We actually had our first one happened over the past two days. We had 17 students tune in, 2 1/2 hours each day. It was like the business exact one. We partnered with this amazing person who has been teaching such stuff for years and it was awesome.

So now we are building a little AI training part to our business. Then on the commerce side. Yeah, we have realized one of the key values that people get at any event. Our event included is just getting to meet people who might want to buy your stuff. Then on the other side getting to meet vendors who might have solutions that you have not thought of before that could help your company solve some problems.

So we realized that commerce component, we could kind of take from out of the event and just do it on its own. So we started now essentially matchmaking digitally like AI companies with and users through right now very simple, you know fairly manual system, but we are slowly building more of like a platform around it. So that has been really interesting too, just to see that kind of growth.

We are going to do the digital at this year. Next year, hopefully a physical event if not a digital event and I think events will remain part of our our ethos, but I think we are also going to expand the ways that were able to provide AI education and commerce as well, which is cool.

John: Which is really cool because here I am an old school guy. You are a very young man and I am now 57 years old and during this COVID-19. I took two online courses. Not only thoroughly enjoyed them, I felt so engaged by them. I got so much out of them, much more than I ever thought. It forced me to improve and learn and expanded my horizons personally and professionally. I think that is a tremendous use of the online platforms now that you will be able to leverage.

Not only will you be able to next year have in-person events, which or at least one huge event and I have been to your events before and then not only packed but they are packed with the best of the best of each industry. You will also be able to have such an international flair to the people that who want to be engaged with your organization, get to interact with because if you do digital events as well, it keeps people year-round attached to your brand but also constantly learning whatever is the latest and greatest and as we know AI is really a very quick evolving industry. So you get to really keep up and keep your people very engaged with the latest updates instead of just having a one-off every year which is fine. You get to really actually have a much larger organization, probably. Following than ever before so you take a crisis and you make it a huge opportunity. I think you are going to grow faster than you ever expected.

Michael: Thanks John. Yeah, I am weirdly hopeful. I wish I would not have thought maybe four months ago when I realized our entire business was impractical for the next 12 months?

John: Yeah, but again like you said, we are all forced to think differently from the circumstances that none of us created but the great entrepreneurs they are flexible and they roll with it and they take issues and crises and they really figure out ways to evolve and you have done that and I really am impressed and I am very excited of course to participate again, August 18th to the 20th and for our listeners out there that want to participate, want to get engaged, want to learn more about Michael’s great event, also other programs he is putting on with his organization AI4. You could go to www.AI4.io. Michael any final thoughts before we say goodbye for today until our next visit together.

Michael: Final thoughts, I guess who is like the main type of person John who listens to this would you say?

John: Well it is actually interesting. It is people from all different, it is around the world and a lot of young people your age and even younger so you have a lot of young listeners out there. That actually want to be the next Michael Weiss.

Michael: Yes. So if its young people which I still consider myself mostly one of. Yeah, just just go for it. I think it is really easy to especially with social media and online to be like, “oh, I can’t do that. Oh, I can do that” like that person in his credential. “Nah, fuck it.” If it is something that is interesting to you, just do the damn thing. You will figure it out as you go and if you do not figure it out, it does not matter because you will have learned a lot. So you will forgive the next thing up.

John: That is just great advice.

Michael: Just go for it is the main the main thing I would share.

John: It is funny. I was interviewing a someone on a podcast just the other day and he said people talk less about fear than sex, they talk about their fear, their own fear, less about their own sex life because they are so embarrassed about fear and overcoming their fear to start something in your advice is great. Just do it. Do not worry about failing. You know, there is no such thing as failure if you learn something from. Look at you, you learn from your first experience and it is not a failure, you learned and now you have made a massive success out of this next venture and you are still amazingly young. I mean like super young.

So I have been to your events and as I said, I am very discerning about the events that sometimes I am invited to a lot to speak and also participate, or sponsor, or whatever, or just exhibit. Your events are second to none and you have really figured out a way to make them feel both special but also very expansive in terms of the people, and the visibility, and the diversity that you have at your events, massive success. Now taking it online and having the whole world be able to participate. I can only imagine what is going to happen at this upcoming event. I think it is going to be a huge success Michael.

Michael: Thanks so much John, for the record. I turned 30 this year.

John: Oh my God. Like I said to my listeners and to you as well. Super young, 30 is super young. I have a son that is 28, and a daughter that is 33. So to me, you are super young. For a listeners out there to find Michael and his partners and his great organization and to learn more about his great event coming up August 18th to the 20th. Go to www.AI4.io. Michael, you are making a great impact. You are making the world a better place, and I thank you for coming on the show today, and you are always welcome back.

Michael: Thanks so much, John. You are absolutely the best and I hope you have a healthy and safe 2020 and I will see you digitally in August.

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 to have with us today Scott Sergeant. He is a longtime friend. He is also the managing director and the head of environmental services at Houlihan Lokey. Welcome to impact, Scott Sergeant.

Scott Sergeant: Thanks a lot, John. I am happy to be here.

John: Well, you know, you have been a longtime friend Scott, and our working relationship goes back as well. I have seen you grow this environmental services practice at Houlihan Lokey over the years, and your always seem to be in and around every relevant environmental deal that is going on in the United States. I would like you to share a little bit about your background, first leading up to before you joined Houlihan Lokey, and then talk about joining them, and how and why you grew that practice.

Scott: Sure, Jack. Well, look, like it has been a pleasure. Yes, we have known each other a long time, and I always cherished both our personal and business relationship. I am so happy to be here, and I love what you are doing on this podcast.

John: Thank you.

Scott: And you know, what you talked about on this podcast is definitely something that hits very close to home, and really resonates with me and my practice. As you mentioned, I have actually found in our environmental services practice several years ago, here at the firm — before that, you know, after college — working in corporate banking for a couple of years — went back to business school, and out of business school, joined Houlihan Lokey. I have been with the firm now for 19 years, which is a long time with one firm in this industry, but it is not uncommon at Houlihan Lokey.

People build their careers here and stay here for two main reasons; one is we have fun doing on what we are dealing, we have a really strong culture, enjoy working with one another until we just keep growing every year as a firm. And so, it is never — every day is an exciting day. After working at Houlihan for about 13 years or so — doing a number of things, financial restructuring — for the first couple of years being more of a generalist, and then a person. I got to a point in my career where I wanted to focus on a particular sector, that is what most people do in the industry. They dedicate to an industry, become an expert in that field, and it is the way to differentiate and really build a career.

So, when it was that time for me to pick a spot, I had try to find something where they really had meaning to me, and the environment, as well, had always been something that I have had interest in. We had not done a number of deals in this space, and that is what I decided to do. I did not want to call on companies that just manufacture widgets for a living. Nothing. We cannot stop manufacturing, but I wanted to do something where, you know, really, I could marry my key passions with my banking career.

John: You know, Scott — but you were really early. I mean, you were one of the first people I ever met in banking in all my travels that was really focused on the environment. Did that come from something in your upbringing, either mom or dad, family oriented or education oriented, when you were growing up in New Jersey, or is that just something that evolved as an adult when you got out of university?

Scott: Yes, that is a great question. I do not think I consciously, really thought about it until my professional career. But certainly, I have always had a passion for growing up on the Jersey Shore, and as a kid going to the beach every day and in the early 80s, you know, being mindful of where you step on the beach when I was, you know — I was very young when there was a period of time where medical waste was washing up on the Jersey Shore, on a regular basis, one or two summers that really got bad. And that is when organizations like Clean Ocean Action and others, really stepped up. And I saw all that happening when I was in school and was able to participate in that to some degree.

And then, I spend most — actually, spent several summers in the area to landscaping, you know — I mean, going back to as a kid, you know, 12 or 13 years old. I was cutting lawns and watering all my neighbors’ yards for several summers. You know, saving up for my first car. And then, during college, I worked several summers for a landscaping company. Not just cutting lawns, but planting trees, planting bushes, and make — you know, transforming the look of homes, and I love doing that. Actually, that is something that I have reminded myself during this pandemic of shelter and place. You know, looking for things to do and getting outside.

That is something where I could spend a lot of time on, and you know, just — and I remember how much I really enjoyed doing that. And so, just be outside, enjoying nature, and keeping — making things greener and greener, and as clean as it can be.

John: That is so wonderful. So, talk a little bit about the journey. So, when you started your practice at Houlihan Lokey, for our listeners out there that want to find Houlihan Lokey, and find Scott, you could go to www.hl.com. Talk about an easy URL, www.hl.com. How did it start, and what kind of companies were you representing years ago? And now, how has it evolved over — how has your practice evolved over time?

Scott: Well, it started out just having worked on a couple of environmental related deals. I would say the first real environmental services company I work for is 14 years ago. I always remember because it was right the time of my son — was born. It was a business called Soul Safe, and they take — they manage contaminated soils that have some sort of hydrocarbon contamination, and then they traded, and then beneficially reuse that soil for a variety of reasons. And that was — we sold it from one private equity firm to another, it was a great transaction. There is a lot of interest in the business.

But it was still limited, I think, it was still their only — you know, some you know, percentage — probably some small percentage of private equity investors that would invest in a company like that. Just give him some of the pursuit of liabilities. That same business, all else being equal, actually would resonate with virtually any private equity investor today. Just given, you know, how — recognition and the interest in the sector has evolved in that short period of time. So, you know, after Soul Safe, and having done a number of other transactions, you know, I still have a generalist banker. And when it became time to really go in one direction, I built the business plan around the space, and I wanted to leverage. Somewhere, we had a critical — and expertise because experience and deals could get more deals, right.

John: Right.

Scott: We had a good grounding of it, and you know — and then, part of the business plan, we really came down to just a few key principles. One is, you know, it is a huge industry, depending upon how you define it. There is at least 200 billion, maybe much more of revenues. And it is essential in nature — the industry is not going away, right, so that is one.

John: Right.

Scott: Two is that it is extremely fragmented. There are thousands and thousands of companies in the sector. And there are only a handful — less than a dozen, really big billion-dollar companies, right. So, that suggests that there are a lot of small medium-sized companies out there, and a lot of them M and A to be done in consolidating it, right. So, an M and A banker could make a living in the sector.

John: Right.

Scott: That was two. And then, three — like I said, you know, I wanted to be something where I had a passion for — and working with companies — it is working with companies that are keeping the environment clean and safe is very rewarding, right. So, you can, again, you can marry those two concepts, be a successful banker, but you know, it will also be rewarding — and working with — the same time.

John: You know, Scott, you and I have lived through an interesting evolution in the United States. We both were professionals trying to build our practices when Al Gore came out with Inconvenient Truth and won the Academy Award and Nobel Peace Prize. And for a while sustainability seemed like it was really picking up a lot of steam, and we had the advent of the chief sustainability officer role at many organizations. And then, for a while, it seemed like things die down a little bit. But now, we have a new generation of young people — the Greta Thunbergs of the world, and I know you have young children, and my children are all so young, and they seem to have a huge passion for sustainability, and making the world a better and greener place.

How is that rise of the Gore to Greta and onward trend affecting your practice, and do you feel a renewed interest level in environmental services and companies that are truly making an impact and making the world a Greener and better place?

Scott: It is. And it is because the concept of impact investing has become so prevalent over that period of time. And see it through the advents of the now, impact funds, one of the larger private equity funds are developing separate impact funds. We just sold a business earlier this year to TPG, Texas Pacific Group, one of the largest, oldest run equity funds. They have a big practice within that KKR, Goldman, Apollo, they are all developing — these are all the household names in private equity that are developing, you know, impact investing funds and strategies. There are a whole host of other funds out there that were designed just for impact. I forgot Bane. Bane has an impact fund that was started by Deval Patrick.

And my team sold them their first impact investment business called —green waste. And so, between that, and then you have the money going into infrastructure funds where one of the key areas is environmental services. This all adds to a tremendous amount of capital out there — billions and billions of dollars., right. And so, with increasing amount of capital with a finite number of opportunities out there suggests there is a supply and demand imbalance. And so, you know, we have benefited from being able to sell in a lot of companies in that environment. And then, you see valuations increasing because of that imbalance, and because people are increasingly recognizing the value of these businesses. The essential nature, the opportunity to consolidate that I mentioned, the fact that they are relatively recession resistant, right. So, it is a safer place to put capital to work.

There are a variety of reasons, but that is definitely been a trend over that period of time, and there is a short period of time between that initial deal that I did and today, and having — now, built a really large book of deals and portfolio, successful transactions.

John: For our listeners out there, who just joined us where we have Scott Sergeant with us. He is the managing director and head of environmental services at Houlihan Lokey. You can find Scott and Houlihan Lokey at www.hl.com. Scott, I have been lucky enough and honored enough to be invited to some of your great conferences, one as late as the fourth quarter last year in New York City, and it is always a packed house of not only great Houlihan Lokey people, and I do love the culture that you do — that you referenced earlier at your company. Everyone is so — let us just say atypical from traditional Wall Street banking personalities that have been highlighted in movies or on television, or things of that such, and by Hollywood.

Everyone is so nice, but you are always pack the house with so many interesting companies and potential investors as well. I know you have, right now, planned an event for October 1st of this year. Can you share a little bit about with our audience about what you have upcoming this year on October 1st, and why and how you typically arranged your great events?

Scott: Yes. We would love to talk about that. We have our annual business services conference scheduled for October 1st in New York City, the Palace Hotel, the lapels. And it is what we do every year as he said. And the format of these conferences as we have our roster of really high-quality private companies presenting their business to the attendees at the conference. We will have, probably you know, 25 to 30 high quality companies, environmental services is — it is not all of our — environmental services, but in environmental services will have its own roster of companies that are presenting. They present for about a half an hour each, and it is — the conference itself is just very well attended by a pretty diverse group of corporations, executives, private equity investors, hedge funds, lenders, other intermediaries that are involved in the deal world, in some way or another.

And we typically, have 500 or so attendees at this conference. And like you said, it is October 1st this year in New York City, and we hope that ends up being a really ideal time because over the last two months and into the summer, a lot of other events that are being postponed or cancelled. And so, there is a big pent up demand for content like this, and we hope that October, things are back up and running and the city is open and large events are accessible again. There is no doubt that there will be a lot of demand for the content and in getting together and networking, which everybody misses right now.

John: It is always — people totally miss the networking, and the personal contact, and relationship building that — especially, your conferences foster and really make it a great way to see a lot of people in a short period of time — will the information about that conference be residing on HL.com?

Scott: It is. I believe it is there now. So, it is up there. Yes, thank you.

John: You know, Scott, there are a lot of young people that listen to our podcast, so can you do two things? Share some of your favorite sectors if you were to be counseling and mentoring young people that are in grad school or in college or even in high school that want to no longer just go make widgets to make money when they come out of their higher education process, but they actually want to work smart, but also make an impact besides making a living to pay groceries and buy their essential goods. What sectors do you see as growing in hot in the next three to five, maybe seven year period that people can focus on in terms of where they are applying for jobs, and what sectors do you think are going to see growth in the years ahead?

Scott: So, I think, that the key areas will continue to be cleaning up the world, right. It is going to be dealing with air, water, and soil contamination, pollution, right. There is such a — there is like an endless supply of work to be done, and in this country. So, one area that I like a lot, I think, that will continue to be a faster growing area for professionals would be the environmental consulting and engineering space. I think, there is some — if I were going back to school and you are studying engineering or science, that is an area where there will always be a strong demand for talent. And there is just — I think, that the — continue to get higher — in terms of the cleanliness of the air, and the water, and the risk of groundwater contamination, etcetera.

I have worked with enough companies to know that there is a never-ending supply of work to be done around that. And there is so many firms out there that are looking to grow that — grow their businesses and develop their environmental practices even though largest or smallest independent consulting engineering firms. The other thing would be anything around recycling — for those that are innovative and technically oriented. We need better solutions where it is more economical to recycle with the challenges of commodities, the pricing, the cost that we — for some waste streams that we would love to keep out of landfills like food, organic waste streams. It can be — there are municipalities that would otherwise have to steal, maybe subsidize some of these programs to make them work, are finding a hard to do so in this environment.

New York City — they just postponed — put off their organic waste collection effort, you know, that rotate. That was something that, I think, New Yorkers were getting really used to, and now that program is being cut because it is a way in the area to save money. We would hate for that to happen, more broadly, with our waste streams, or for that to happen that in other cities around the country. And so, I guess, the point is that there must be ways to do all this more economically and technologies to be developed. And so, for those that want to get involved in that, I think, there is a big opportunity.

John: Interesting. You know, we are all living through this tragic pandemic right now, Scott. How is that affecting both the banking industry as a whole, but then more specifically, the environmental services industry? Can you share a little bit about your thoughts on what we are all living through together, and how that is affecting banking and your specific specialty right now?

Scott: Well, there is no doubt that with the uncertainty and the volatility in the markets, it is a challenging environment to work or to close M and A — just kind of, traditional M and A. But there is a lot of opportunities on the other side that come out of it from banking perspective. Companies that need help managing through these tough times, whether it is dealing with their creditors, or helping them raise capital through it, improve their liquidity needs. And there will be other forms of M and A through this period too for businesses that make sense to be putting together to make sure that they are stronger.

In this particular sector, environmental services, it is still early days to really see the true impact. The earnings of the public companies are just coming out, the studies that are just coming out that show how businesses are performing, but still largely anecdotal. But the positive is that the government and other agencies have deemed virtually all environmental services companies to be essential. That is the term that we use to describe you as a banker, as I described, a company that was selling now. And so, it is nice to see that that is a special term now that is being applied by the government, which is universally. And so, that has kept most of the businesses, if not all of them running and operating to some extent, if not, virtually not uninterrupted.

Now, not to say that they are not impacted to some degree, right. They need access to a commercial site, or their beneficiaries of collecting commercial ways that are — whatever restaurant and retail. In the facility, you are going to see impact. If there are — if you cannot get onto an industrial site because there has been an outbreak. Obviously, there is going to be temporary delays. Varying degrees of impact, but I think, when we get on the other side of this, you will see that most, if not all environment services companies, will have fared relatively well compared to most businesses out there for sure.

John: That is so interesting because they have been deemed essential over all the sectors relatively healthy and will recover quickly, hopefully. That is interesting. That is interesting. You know, Scott, when I was recreating green is good, which you have appeared on and you were so kind to invite me to your conferences, and many of your portfolio companies or other companies you were covering have appeared on it. The reason why I came up with the name impact is because truly what I see is your environmental services practice — we could really — given the times we live in as you pointed out earlier, all the impact funds that TPG, KKR, Bain, and all these other great banking institutions have created, really what you are also running at Houlihan Lokey is really an impact services practice as well.

I mean, all your companies that you are following or banking, or will be banking later this year and into next year are impact companies. And that is why I named the show impact. So, to me, it is so exciting to have you on because truly, everything that you do in banking, the companies that you support and help and back, and also help sell to move on to a bigger platform are making an impact in making the world a better place. We are down to the last couple minutes. Are there any last thoughts that you would like to share with our listeners before we sign off for the day?

Scott: Well, I guess, I will say one thing just based on what you just said. I totally agree with you that environmental is a key theme amongst the impact. I would say, Houlihan Lokey is as a whole, we have built out a very unique practice where we have dozens of very specific niche focused industry sectors, environmental just happens to be one of those. And there is a — others in the firm recognizes filling out that broader impact theme, right. So, we have folks that work on the relevant consumer products areas, fitness, and healthcare, right. So, there are other areas that I would think, would round out a more wholesome impact theme, not just environmental, but we cover through — all the senior bankers in the firm are dedicated within a specific industry sector like myself. We all are M and A professionals. We kind of lead with that M and A capability or capital raising capability, but we are experts within our respective niches at the same time. So, that is how we built the firm. That is what we think is unique, and the other component, certainly, that are important to you and your impact.

John: And with that, I am going to — we are going to say goodbye for today, Scott. I wanted to share with our listeners again, for those who want to learn more about Scott, and also his great practice and the wonderful company Houlihan Lokey that he works for, you can go to www.hl.com. Also, you could go to www.hl.com to learn more about his upcoming event on October 1st in New York City. He has a great conference every year. It is one of the greatest places to meet, and visit, and get to know all the relevant people in the environmental services and banking industries. And Scott, we are so honored, I am honored to have you as a friend, also as a business colleague. The world is a better place because of you and the impact that you make in all the work that you do professionally and personally. So, thank you again for being on the impact podcasts. Scott Sergeant, you are making the world a better place.

Scott: Thanks a lot, John. Real pleasure.

John Shegerian: This edition of the Impact Podcast is brought to you by engage. Engage is a digital booking engine revolutionising 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 so excited to have two young co-founders with me today Colin Hively and Anwar Khan are the founders of cycle. Welcome to the Impact Podcast guys.

Colin Hively: Anwar, [inaudible].

Anwar Khan: I am happy to be here.

Colin: My name first Anwar.

Anwar: Little upset.

Colin: Thank you, for having here us John.

John: More than happy to have you guys on. We are doing this in a triangle today, were I am here in my studio in Fresno, California, and you guys are in, who is in Rhode Island and who is in Omaha, Nebraska today?

Colin: I am in Omaha, Nebraska and Anwar is Omaha.

Anwar: Yes. Colin here and I am in Rhode Island.

John: Got you. I want for our listeners out there to find their company cycle. You could go to www.cyclegreentech.com. I am on their site right now. It is www.cyclegreentech.com, and where else can they find you in social guys?

Colin: You can get us on the another link that works as well as www.cycletechnology.com and you can find us on Instagram at recyclesmarter, as well as LinkedIn where it would be you can find on cycletechnologyinc.

John: Perfect. So guys talk a little, you are both young. I mean, Anwar you are 20 and Colin you are 21.

Colin: Yes, recently turned 21. Yes.

John: Super young guys, so which is great and fun because everyone can serve and everyone can make an impact and that is sort of the theme of today’s show. Talk a little bit about being students at the University of Miami and how did you guys meet and even dream up becoming entrepreneurs together?

Colin: Anwar, take this one away man.

Anwar: Absolutely. Well, I mean these whole things really been a journey. Me coming from a place in the heartland, Miami was more so of a polar opposite. I will say to say the least but no, I mean going to school down in Miami as well as kind of the balancing act of entrepreneurial ventures and school has been quite the learning experience as well as you know, just a fun thing to do with friends that care about some other things right and something that comment I like say is we like to keep it light. We were lucky guys we get to work on things that we enjoy every day and a beautiful place and love being surrounded by people with similar goals. So I mean, it is been an incredible adventure so far and Colin are kind of let you take how we met there.

Colin: Yes, so as far as my relationship with Anwar, I actually met his roommate, Connor, who is another one of our co-founders and integral member of the team. In my English class freshman year and we just became friends and Anwar and he obviously we are buddies. They, the two of them had joined a business club at the beginning of the year and I– correct me if I am wrong, but I kind of, I mean, I study environmental policy or ecosystem science and policy, so when Anwar had approached me about maybe changing up one of his majors and moving into that section, he and I kind of developed our own independent relationship and then, when Anwar volunteered for this business club to do a presentation, he came up with this idea of really wanting to renew and reinvigorate these ideas of like recycling incentives kind of similar to bottle deposit schemes. So he enlisted, Connor Pohl, his roommate, Noah Barrows another one of our co-founders and myself was on the tail end and we got together and threw together really, really short presentation. We did not win, but we did turn some heads. Actually the assistant dean of the Miami Business School, Miami Herbert Business School, EllenMarie McPhillip who is been a huge mentor of ours. Basically, took us aside and said, this could be something, what you guys are talking about here, you guys could actually you can impact here, and if you guys are serious about this then Miami will work with you. That just kind of set our– and then she gave us a basically idea of, well, if you guys keep on this between now, this is November and like 2018, right Anwar, 2018?

Anwar: Yes.

Colin: November 2018, and she said if you guys are serious about this and keep on it, then in the summer, the school will fly you guys out to a pitch competition out in California, in Diego. So that kind of was our original goal post and we just really shot for it and worked for it and we ended up going to that competition and we did other competitions in the spring and ended up actually winning some and winning some money which much to Anwar should run into paying for I think at minimum one dinner in California and then from there, on the other side of California, then things really got serious and we started raising money and initiating software development and there is a few other stories along the way but I am sure we can get to those throughout the podcast, that is the general idea.

John: How much money did you guys raise?

Colin: Right now, we are nearing around two hundred thousand dollars.

John: That is a lot of money. Harder than it seems, harder than you thought it would be or…

Colin: Oh, God.

Anwar: I got to call at six AM every morning about it.

Colin: That is me, his talking about.

Anwar: Oh, my God.

Colin: I do not know. I mean it is, you know, one of the things that we kind of found early on is that, that is a full-time job in and of itself, right? Building a company and financing a company are very different things, although obviously related, but it really just came down to what we found to be the best strategy was just like, just putting our heads down and kind of really working and show do not tell us what we always say that is kind of a corporate culture we have tried to develop with our team and it really comes down to when we are having these conversations with prospective investors or business partners. The maximum that we can just show them, you know what we have done rather than having to tell them what we want to do, that always tends to make the conversation a little bit easier, but obviously when you are just starting out, it is not really there yet.

John: So what you learn so far is envisioning or dreaming up a business, building it, and raising the money for three different skill sets, three different challenges in the process of becoming an entrepreneur.

Anwar: I have sent…

Colin: From the class some time.

John: Getting good grades for mom and dad just stay on the rails.

Anwar: Something like that.

John: Guys help me out of here. As you guys know, I am in the recycling business myself and I have been doing this almost 18 years, but it is always great to hear young guys like your perspective. What is your generation? Think about the sustainability revolution, green solar, green cars, Tesla’s Priuses and recycling in general.

Anwar: Well, John, let me say one thing on your recycling business, it was funny. Colin and I were actually two weeks ago an Aurora Colorado making our way up the Rocky Mountains there and we passed by your facility out there. We saw the ERI and we say, “Huh,” interesting that that logo looks so familiar, kept that in the back of our head and then who knows two weeks later on the podcast with you.

John: Sort of small world, we have eight facilities nationally so that is sort of nice but thank you for that. Our Denver locations very busy, but we had a location in Denver for now almost 12 years. So yes, that is a small world, but when you really like, when you are starting to think about a business, you start connecting the dots. So just when you start seeing things, you are connecting the dots in your head like, who else is doing what I am doing or in adjacent space, so it is not shocking to me that it would stick out maybe if you were not in the business you are in or you are just too young guys having a blast but not doing what you are doing, maybe we never noticed it probably.

Anwar: I can tell you, I definitely would not have noticed it.

John: Right, right, right.

Anwar: No. On your point kind of discussing more so about our generation I would say, recently even over the past 10 years, you see these Gen Z’s, the common term is the millennials but really the Gen Z’s who are this hyper socially conscious group of individuals who are worried about the environment, worried about carbon emissions and you can see it reflected often times and now our consumer, consumption rather. It is interesting to see how much our consumption habits have changed and I actually saw stat the other day, consumers are willing to pay almost a quarter of the price more for products that are sustainably made and are willing to support sustainable companies and I would say overall. This whole idea of this social media and hyper connection to everyone shows, really shows you how important it is for millennials and Gen Z years to show this idea of social proof and virtue signaling that, hey, I am behind this green movement and I am doing my part to support that. That is something that we really thought we could take a hold of is utilizing this whole idea that everybody that is my age I would say, generally has a very positive outlook for where we are going and wants to show that they are doing their part to help.

John: That is awesome. Going back to the 200, is that enough to get you guys to where you want to go or you raising more money right now?

Anwar: I will let Colin answer that. He handles the fundraising.

Colin: We are always writing you, John.

John: Yes. So you know what? Perfect line as an entrepreneur, if your entrepreneur the rest of your life that is actually you are going to be your mantra, so that is actually makes a lot of sense.

Colin: Until the IPO which I guess actually ironically is just a way of raising more money. We are going to be raising money.

John: Right, right, right. What did you guys learn? What have you learned so far, and Anwar, I am going to throw this to you? What is the importance of increased demand and access to recycle retail products? Do you care now? If the new phone you buy or tablet you buy or nest that you buy or whatever and all these great gadgets and products made by great OEMS if they are making it out of more recycled material, more recycled aluminum or plastic or copper. Does that make a difference in your buying habits both of you and your friends with? I will throw that one to you, Anwar.

Anwar: Well, here is the thing John. As I understand, ERI is primarily in electronic recycling. So I am inclined to say yes at least on the podcast, right?

John: Well, I appreciate that. Thank you very much.

Anwar: I would say so.

John: Okay.

Anwar: You know, increasingly right and in terms of the day to day consumer, marketplace you see a lot of these larger brands making pledges, right? All of our materials are going to be made of recycled plastic, fifty percent material but recycle plastic by 2050 all these align goals, right? We see that and we see the value that it has not only on the company side to display that they are being socially and environmentally and ecologically conscious, but as well on the consumer side to see that, okay, I only purchase recycled goods or I only purchase upcycled products and that as well we saw as a way to integrate into our platform, so what we are doing now is to close the loophole most in a way, right? We allow users to accrue points for the recycling habits and then within our application at the same time, they have the ability to shop for recycled– upcycled goods. So at the same time that user is recycling their plastic, they can now find a product that is made of that same recycled plastic. So you are really this whole idea of consumer material, new product that consumer and that is really what we are trying to do here.

John: God it is you are connecting people with a recycling habits to their buying habits and you are sort of the democratize, you are flattening the information curve on their activities both on there– on the back– end of life activities to their buying habits, is that sort of it or I might misstating that?

Anwar: Yes, exactly.

Colin: I think, we actually ironically we had a conversation with Julie Young, one of the members in our marketing team today and we were talking about, what is our core value add? In terms of forward compatibility, the things were…

John: Right.

Colin: What is it beyond just this app that we want this brand to be and what we want to represent and really what it is, is it is empowerment, right? So it is, what we do in a way it is, I think it is super cool and maybe I will take this opportunity to explain a little bit about what cycle does as well. So…

John: Go ahead.

Colin: …hanging one out there who is seen a ball deposit machine before the term of our for the more kind of new fangled versions are called RVM Reverse Vending Machines the cycle app connects with reverse vending machines and allows you do to accrue refunds in the form of points into a wallet which you can either do a direct withdrawal through PayPal or into a bank account, donate the value of your recyclable to the charity of your choice or use them as potential refund– as placental discounts on a marketplace. So that is principally what we do and what that is empowerment, right? Because if I am– you know, Joe Schmoe sitting on the side of the road and I have a plastic bottle, all I can do is throw into a trash can, that is not a particularly empowering moment and actually what it did. It is disempowering because that person might want to recycle it, they might understand that there is inherent value to that product into that material but they do not know how to do that, right? So what we do with this platform as we allow people to turn their waste not only into rewards but into a voice for them to create a demand loop on these circular economic products, right? So that is principally what we are doing and we think it is actually really disruptive and has the potential to make a lot of change.

John: Got it. Colin, what has been the– everyone before they start a new journey. Obviously, what you write out a business plan, my experience as a serial entrepreneurs when you write out of business plan at the kitchen table, when you get into it and by the time you start really creating the venture, it is not what you had in the plan. Things change, you got to evolve, you got to stay flexible, you got to be adaptable to things you learn along the way and market changes and market forces. What is been the most eye opening experience for you guys, Colin, while you build this company?

Colin: Well, the first thing I would say is if you think writing a business plan on a kitchen table is hard imagine doing it any university cafeteria. Principally what I would probably say is, a company is an organization of people, right?

John: Right.

Colin: We could talk about software all day. We could talk about infrastructure all day, different technologies, what works, what does not, ways streams, but at the end of the day, what we are trying to do is we are trying to connect people we work with. Users to this element of the economy and this problem set in a unique and kind of new way. So, you learn a lot about people through that whether that is through design thinking around building the app and building the user experience or working together, I mean, we were talking obviously kind of be, before we came on air about this, their ridiculousness and kind of absurdity of the past year in terms of in one way our growth but also just the experience so, for everyone obviously, every listener that was not on before the show started. We all were, some of us were roommates and some of us were not, before our sophomore year since we started this our freshman year, in our sophomore year all but two of our core team members moved into the same house together. We are still 21 year old college kids and having all those experiences and still going through all that and dealing with those trials and tribulations. Then on top of that, we are trying to build this thing that we are all extremely passionate about and that we know has, like, I said write a potential to make a real impact.

John: Colin, I see a lot of young people on your website, how many of them are the core teams? I just want to understand how many people were living in this house. Please help me out and help our listeners out here.

Colin: So there were eight people in the house actually.

John: Or their cameras and video cameras, this is going to be a Netflix special or something on MTV or something like that?

Colin: No comment. So six of those members were actually now as I suppose, yes, six. We are kind of part of the core team now and then Julie Young and Noah Barrows who are part of our new Miami team. We are not living in the house with us. Not that makes them any less valuable to the team, but it is just not the way to trick out and yes. So it was Connor Pohl, Anwar, myself, Harrison Mount, and Jack VanderMolen, all living together. Yes, I mean that right there that is a pressure cooker. I mean it really is and actually on the MTV special joke, Harrison makes the point of joking around about how so you said when someone makes a movie about this, there is going to be a montage of every morning, me waking up at eight AM to and walking across it in my boxers to Anwar’s room to go do a software development meeting and with what the developer team were working with. So, I mean, it is just an experience, right?

John: So simple.

Colin: Learning how to work with each other and learning how to build something, I think is probably been the biggest eye opening experience. What do you think, Anwar?

Anwar: Yes. No, I totally agree, right, it is been a fun experience just being in that house and living together. It is funny for about 2 months there, we had that our first reverse vending machine, just sit in the house, we are working on it. We, prototyping and sometimes we had have friends over and they want to put cans.

Colin: Fruit cans.

Anwar: Yes, fruit cans for the Super Bowl and it is a whole thing.

John: I mean, when you think about it, if garages are the domiciles of the great ventures that come out of Silicon Valley house in Miami Beach sort of makes sense, but it is sort of like, you use the words pressure cooker. Yes, but it really is hard for you guys to take your eye off the ball when you are all living together, you got a machine right in the house.

Colin: Exactly.

John: I mean, literally. I mean, you are these no way of not thinking about what you are doing, even if you do not want to be thinking about it that they given time. It is still always now these reminders or people reminding you or the machine reminding you that huh, maybe I should be focused back on our business enterprise.

Colin: I think that was part of the core idea.

John: Yes.

Colin: I…

John: There is genius to that, there is genius to that.

Colin: It was great. I think, and now I am actually now moving into an apartment with someone else although we are not breaking the relationship with the company. Anwar could do that, he tried. Then now, yes, still most of the guys are there. Everyone is going to be and girls everyone is going to be working together and living together and make a great experience.

John: Anwar, where you going to live after when you guys go back to the Miami?

Anwar: So we are moving into a different house now and thank God, we got five now instead of the eight that kitchen was getting a little cluttered. Four out of the five members in the house or on the core team, so I imagine it is going to be kind of a restart.

John: Similar. Is there going to be a machine in the house?

Anwar: Hopefully. Well, I kind of like what you are saying John. I might put one right at the front door just so it stares back it.

John: I like it. No I really dig it. When you are coming and going you are thinking about it and it is always a reminder. It was genius.

Colin: Believe me, it was the worst, John. There were a little bit and through not necessarily do the fault of anyone on the team but we are a little bit behind on launching the pilot. So, the original target was January, end up being a little bit later. Talk about our minor, I mean, every single day walking into that house, walk into the living room or the garage where we had our white board set up and stuff and we are drawing on the white refrigerator and it yes, it was a reminder not always a good reminder, but it was always a reminder.

John: Hey, listen. There is genius behind that and I give you guy’s credit. I just want to understand somehow, how many investors make up to 200,000 is that 1, or is it 10, or is it 30? Give me a rough number?

Colin: Closer to 10 than 1, but not 30.

John: Okay. Good. Okay. Did you ever have investor meetings at the house or investor meetings were at other places or their on Zoom coals or conference calls?

Colin: So Anwar and I, I am trying to think if we ever had an investor meeting at the house, Anwar? I cannot think of it but although it would have been. Well, we said we were going to get Rose down, but Ryan Rose his a huge advisor of ours and one of our first investors and shadow Ryan Rose, his actually in the podcasting business. Yes. I do not think we ever had a meeting at the house, but it was– Anwar and I, we took some flights to get some deals through the pipeline one up to New York and I am trying to think but no mostly through phone and or office space.

John: Got it. Colin, you are the head of strategy for cycle, from a strategic perspective, talk a little bit about leadership in this country, leadership in our cities. From a policy perspective, from a political perspective, how can we get all stakeholders involved in mitigating waste issues and not just leave it to your generation to shoulder the burden for the mess, my generation and generations before mine have made and created.

Colin: It is a phenomenal question, John. So I think for any leader, in terms of uniting a group of people, it is about finding common ground, right? Especially as people continue to have divergent information streams or worldviews, even faint systems, right? It is harder and harder to find common ground. Everybody’s mom tells them to clean up their room, right?

John: Right.

Colin: So I think there is something to be said about and very few people walk around a dirty city and they say wow, how great is this.

John: Right.

Colin: I think honestly waste is a unifying element. One of the things we talked about, one of our earliest meetings. Someone said, well, how do you feel when an investment said no, actually what you tend to learn more from than the investors who say yes, but they said, well, what about you guys are talking all about climate and the environment stuff and he was kind of a climate change, not enough deniers right word, but was not necessarily fully bought into a lot of environmental principles. He said, well, no one here is talking about atmospheric models. You know what I mean, John. We are talking about a turtle biting a plastic water bottle that should not be there. There is no one, you know in any corner of the country or the world for that matter that looks at that picture or of a seagull with an open stomach full of micro plastics or statistics about plastic bioaccumulation in the fish we eat and they say wow, that is a great. That is a great thing. So I think it is actually a unifying thing.

John: Got it. Anwar, you are collecting data and part of what you are doing what part of your value proposition and mission is data and waste collection and monitoring. Explain the interconnectivity of that all three of those and the value of data in this whole process.

Anwar: Right. So you kind of thinking right as that, you know pay as you throw model right. You are giving money on the front end for your recyclables instead of incurring all the costs at an institutional level on the back end, but you see a lot of these companies coming out now, right? Talking about block chain, enabled waste monitoring and what does is, right. Largely when you look at the waste management system, there is a lot of for lack of a better word, maybe sketchy activity that goes on in kind of a whole process. So the value of data, block chain and establishing where these lots of waste are going, who is handling them, what processor is taking this on really streamlines the whole process and allows for less plastic and waste to fall through the cracks for lack of a better term, right? So I think that when you look at it in the overarching view at least on our end, if we can get, if you can look at down to the bottle where each of these is coming from, at what region of the world is certain type of plastics or consumer products more valuable or more so more available. Then you can kind of see in pinpoint almost down really far to where the issue is really starting and I think that, it adds to a larger picture of improving our whole logistics chain. Right from the user, to the collector, to the processor, to the re-processor. Right, it all leads to that larger picture of a more concerted and an accurate representation of where our waste data is not and how we handle it.

John: So in other words, what you can measure you can manage better.

Colin: Exactly. Right, right. I might even hop in it and another thing and say, on the marketplace side which are not touched on earlier obviously, for those, if we the people who are using saying our platform are people that care, right? That is an important demographic and a growing demographic and access to those users behaviors, where the machines they are using are and even to a degree, what products that they are buying both on the marketplace and what products they are disposing of all of that allows us to create a fuller picture of this economy that we are trying to draw into a circle basically.

John: Got you. For listeners who have just joined us, we have got young entrepreneurs, Anwar Khan and Colin Hively with us today. They are the CEOs and co-founders and the head of strategy and the co-founder, but Colin and Anwar of cycle technology they are better known as cycle. You could find them at www.cyclegreentech.com, cyclegreentech.com and on Instagram and other social media platforms. Guys, we are living through weird times right now with this Covid-19 their tragic. It is hit America. It is hit everyone in the world, businesses, governments, city, states, universities, everyone is affected, families obviously. How has it impacted your business as a young venture? How has it impacted you guys and how you guys made adjustments and foresee coming through this and getting to the other side?

Colin: You want to say this one, Anwar?

Anwar: Yes, sure. Absolutely. I can touch on that and you know John, I definitely say that when you look at it from a young startup, this time unfortunately for a lot of startups is almost do or die right? There is lack of capital, there is a lack of investment and something that we even saw right is with us, the way we actually started, accruing funding was through these startup competitions at our universities that kind of allowed us to bootstrap that whole thing there, but I would say that we have gotten pretty lucky in terms of the ability to adjust and to use this time as a business development period as well as a technology period. Right now actually as we speak we are adjusting our user experience and our technology experience to relate to and kind of keep in mind the whole Covid pandemic and this new consciousness of no touch user experiences things of that nature. In terms of adjusting from this on the business development side and I will let Colin kind of touch on some of the more exciting prospects. We kind of have coming, I would say that largely the team used this opportunity to really, really go all in and just develop the technology the marketing and so that when we come out of this, we talked about a lot within the team. We are kind of loading in spring right now, right? W are loading a spring so that when the world hopefully does get back to normal or some version of that, we are ready to go and we are ready to hit the ground running, but yes, I will let Colin can I touch on you know on the biz div side where we are kind of seeing our resiliency.

John: That is great.

Colin: Yes. So yes that was exactly our point, Anwar. I think that they are, so for example, so there all these articles and stuff that are getting ready right now about how a lot of the startups that are now ironically household names and feel as ubiquitous, as American brands as Coca-Cola, whether that is Uber or Airbnb or Lift or others, developed out of 2008 and the need for a level of economic restructuring there, right? Those are all sharing economy applications, someone being able to turn their empty bedroom into a hotel room, allows them to have more resilient financial future and we think that what is going to come to the other side, what is going to come out on the other side of this is going to be really a resilience and sustainability focused growth period. One of the places that everything, everybody is talking about as somewhere where we need to do a lot of work on resiliency as our supply chains, right? Whether that is dependence on a foreign manufacturing base, an inability to efficiently manage process or export plastics obviously after the 2018 China ban on imports. So I think that– and on top of that obviously, people are going to want to give back and people are going to want to work with their communities to improve. So I think, we are, well actually well positioned to come out of the other side of this as a kind of one of the silver linings if you will, but yes, kind of like Anwar says as well. We are taking this time to really focus on partnerships, whether that is prospective clients, we have been able to have phenomenal conversations with whether it is big companies that own ski resorts or even some foreign conference centers, all these different things have kind of come to light in this time because we cannot focus as heavily on operations because operations are largely halted in terms of the logistics and ground operations.

John: Right.

Colin: We really, you know, nothing stopping us from sending emails or doing podcasts, right? So right now we are focusing on strengthening the team and just building those partnerships. So like Anwar were saying, we hit the ground running.

John: What do you guys want to be here from now?

Colin: Everywhere.

John: Where does everywhere being guys?

Colin: You want, Anwar?

Anwar: Yes, yes. I will take it.

[crosstalk]

Colin: So I guess the best way to answer that question is to look at our growth strategy. So, the initial growth strategy that we had targeted was through this campus expansion program where we reached out through a network, our own networks and our co-workers networks and others to college campuses across the country. So I think right now, we are talking with– we have campus directors at 13, right 13, American universities, Anwar?

Anwar: Yes, I would say something around there, yes, 13.

Colin: That is everywhere. So that is the West Coast, that is the southeast, the southwest, the northeast, and Midwest, obviously that is stalled right now, but what we found is that we have actually had people reach out to us. Corporate workspaces, I mentioned conferences and others. So to look for our programming or to get our system implemented on there as part of their waste management infrastructure. So I think we are just really going to focus on big partnerships, whether that is, if we can get on the phone with people from like six flags or any down to the port authority in New York or something, places where we can work to implement large scale distribution of this machinery as well as our software is what we are focusing on and the university growth program is still very much so going on, but that is obviously largely dependent on how things unfold gone through fall.

Anwar: John, something I would add to that is, as Colin mentioned right speaking with a lot of private corporations about implementing our infrastructure but as well at the municipal level, right? Municipalities often have trouble managing their waste even down to the consumer level. So I think it lends itself and something that is really, I would say one of the largest value adds of our infrastructure is we allow for our– or I guess in essence the technology and system itself allows for it to be ubiquitous in a sense that it not only is available in a bottle deposit state, of the tender bottle deposit states but our system and the way that our redemption and deposit scheme works, it can also be utilized in non-deposit state. So in place like Florida, that does not have a bottle bill in place where the value of the plastic water bottle aluminum can be inserted, there is no set price for that. We have found a way to essentially incentivize that recycling with a financial reward, even if that reward maybe ever changing based off the commodity value. So, like Colin said right, we are really putting feelers out there and you look at the municipal level, the event waste management level and as well private corporations, it all lends itself to the idea that this thing can be very ubiquitous in the ecosystem where ever you are and we are really excited to get our name out there and get some going.

John: I am really excited about what you guys doing. Before we say goodbye today, give me one role model that each of you look up to?

Anwar: I would say Leonardo DiCaprio is definitely someone I have always wanted to talk to you as an environmentalist and I have always wanted to be in Hollywood.

Colin: You got the list, right?

John: Okay.

Anwar: Or role model.

John: I mean, someone who you like what they are doing. Is it Elon Musk? Is it Bezos? Is it is it the Al Gore? Is it somebody else?

Colin: I mean, I love Elon Musk, anything with space. I am a nerd about space, but I might go for someone out there kind of as well. Ironically that is had a huge impact, maybe, actually, I will say that for the next time we are on, but yes, I will go with Elon Musk. I like Elon Musk.

John: Got it. All right, well, guys, we have come to the end of this episode, but I want to thank you both. I am proud of you both, you both are making tremendous impression and impact on not only your colleagues down at the University of Miami, but the listeners out there. Does not matter how old you are, you can make a great impact in your community and make the world a better place and that is what you guys are doing to find, Anwar Khan and Colin Hively, you can go to their great website, www.cyclegreentech.com. You can also find them, guys, where can they find you on social media, on Instagram and everywhere else?

Anwar: Instagram is a recycle smarter. LinkedIn too.

Colin: Everyone can find us on LinkedIn.

John: By the way LinkedIn is a tremendous business resource and I am so glad you called out LinkedIn as well. Anwar, Colin, you are always invited back on this show to give me updates on what you guys are doing. We could even do the next one on Zoom or Skype, live from your new Miami home, right into my studio here and we could give the listeners a little view of what it looks like to be in a real entrepreneurial incubator for cycle. I wish you guys really great. Great. Luck in the next semester coming up down in the University of Miami. I want you to continually succeed at cycle and you are always welcome back on the Impact Podcast because both of you are making an impact and I am really grateful for that. Have a great day.

Colin: Well, we are going to have to talk to our lawyers before there are any cameras in the house, John, but I appreciate it.

John: It is an open invitation. We could do it over the phone lines as well like this, too.

Anwar: Thanks so much, John. Really appreciate it. Thanks for having us.