Travis Wright of The Bad Crypto Podcast talks about how Bitcoin may never crash and how he made his podcasting career happen.
The Bad Crypto Podcast is the World’s Top Bitcoin Podcast covering Blockchain, Cryptocurrency, Ethereum, ICOs, Altcoins, Fintech and Digital Money. Hosted by Internet pioneer Joel Comm and Marketing Technologist Travis Wright, The Bad Crypto Podcast makes crypto easy to understand for newbies and crypto enthusiasts alike!
Anthony Pietromonaco is a hollywood based filmmaker who just released an unofficial Star Wars Fan Film called Dark Legacy. He studied something completely different at the University of Pittsburg and we met through an ad for a video director on Craigslist. How random is that? How do you go from freelance video guy to the cusp of making your first feature film?
Ilya Polyakov was a top battlebot maker when the movement was fresh. For the past three years he has had a spaceship/art car/roving music venue called Icarus on the playa at Burning Man. It is now become an international music community. We spoke to Ilya from American Steel, the legendary Oakland warehouse for the arts.
An interview by Jonathan Zarov of WORT with Jeffrey Goldsmith, author of This Book Can Make You Famous. But, no one calls in for brainstorming on how to become famous? What’s up with that Madison, Wisconsin. Must be the cheese. Maybe your radio listeners want to be famous more than they do. Or is it a Midwest thing? Let’s discuss.
Bobby Edwards is the C.E.O. and co-founder of Squatty Potty, the device that goes under your feet while sitting on the toilet that helps constipation. The device made it on to Shark Tank, and then Squatty Potty launched the most viral video ever, with unicorns who poo soft serve ice cream. Lately, Bobby has been featured in the news because they had to drop Kathy Griffin who is featured in their newer videos. Welcome Bobby.
Bobby: Hello Jeff, How are you doing?
Interviewer: Good, nice to meet you. Congratulations on your success. Let’s get the elephant out of the room first. Kathy Griffin, I’m sorry I didn’t even get to see those videos because I wasn’t following but it’s a shame. Do you want to comment that? Bobby: Well we are in the business to help people poop better and everyone poops. We’ve used a lot of different techniques and a lot of different people to help us with that. A lot of different contributors. Early on it was people that we could reach; people like mommy bloggers and carrier bloggers. We were able to find contributors who were able to reach. We reached Howard Stern. You may or may not know but we have used Dr Laura and we have used Glenn Beck. I wanted to target a certain demo; that’s women 35 to 55 years old and reach out to the gay community as well. I was looking for someone that i could use that was within our budget. She came up and she did a great job on the spot.
The concept was “Full of Shit”. Everyone’s full of it because we’re not pooping correctly. Squatty Potty helps with that and she clearly did her stuff very well. It was a funny spot. Then of course the controversy happened. Just like I said, we’re not in the business of politics; we’re not the Ben and Jerry’s of poop stools. We are just trying to help people poop better. The controversy happened and we got so much negative feedback that we just had to pull the spot completely. Then we got some press on that so it’s kind of funny how things worked out. Unfortunately we did spend quite a bit of money on that and we had a pull it. Now I’m scratching my head and thinking well that was kind of a mistake. Maybe don’t choose political people when you are trying to sell poop stool.
Interviewer: It hard to know in this climate who’s going to end up being political. I mean PT Barnum said no press is bad press. It’s good, you end up sounding like an equanimeous person who is just trying to help people rather than being political. So in a way, being neutral is a good thing. I think that’s a positive in our culture right now.
Bobby: The main concept of Squatty Potty is interesting. It’s my parents who are a really traditional Mormon family. So it’s me and my husband, not that there is different categories of that but within our atmosphere we have immigrants and we have Mormons. We are in Utah so there is this weird dynamic here. We all really just like to reach out to everyone. I kind of just let people have a long leash and let them go where they want to. Cathy Griffin came up and i think she is funny, I am a fan and why not. We are all doing what we think is wright. Then we realize sometimes we make mistakes.
Interviewer: But it wasn’t a mistake to, you mentioned Ben and Jerry’s stool earlier but we get back to that in a few minutes. Tell me about the inception of this, I read that your mom had trouble pooping. How did you know that that was the problem to be solved? That’s what they say in business, find a problem to be solved and you have a legit business. How did you know?
Bobby: It’s one of those alternative help things that people have been talking about but it was always alternative help type of things that will cure your problems. There was some buzz about proper toilet procedure and how anatomically we were designed to squat and how we deviated from that procedure in the mid 1800’s. That’s when a lot of the other problems started happening. People are kind of attributing it to a change in diet. I think that’s part of the problem but the anatomic part kind of makes sense to me. My mom was telling me over dinner one night while my dad was there we were talking about her poop problems. She was miserable; she was avoiding traveling and going on trips because when she leaves she becomes so constipated she becomes miserable. So I said have you heard about the anatomy? She tried everything; she tried powders and potions but it only made her more uncomfortable. It didn’t really help.
We started talking about the toilet posture thing. I said I have friends who go on the toilet and squat. She said I can’t squat, what am I going to do, go in the back yard? That’s when we came up with the idea of creating a platform around the base of the toilet so she could achieve that posture. She started using a regular stool and the stool worked. It really helped her but it was not ergonomic. It wasn’t super comfortable so what I want you to do to the stool is this and this. So I sketched it out and we changed the shape of the stool and fit it around the toilet to make it more anatomically correct to mimic a natural squat. We spent about 3 or 4 weeks working on this project and it worked. She said this is it, this changes my life.
Interviewer: So your mom was your beta tester?
Bobby: Yeah mom was the one. I knew that the concept was out there. People have been talking about the concept but there is nothing available. You go on amazon and do the usual search for something you need and it’s not there. People are talking about it and most people are talking about climbing up on their toilet and squatting. We knew that most people with this problem are in their sixty’s couldn’t do that. Only people that are healthy and agile can do that but not the majority of Americans. So we just create the solution to that problem and then we went out and let people know and can educate people. We let them know that if you have a problem this is the solution. Even if you don’t have a problem this is the solution. That’s what it has become.
It’s become something that millennials are using to avoid problem. People of all ages are buying because they just want to have a better elimination. That’s what the Squatty Potty is; it’s a complete one and done even if you are not constipated.
Interviewer: If you pitch it as preventative then you have an even bigger market.
Bobby: Right, that’s true. The other point is that it’s not just preventative. This we use in our marketing as well. Howard Stern knows it; he was the perfect spokesperson He could really get to the point and be as graphic as he wanted to be. The audience just loved it. He said I just love the way i feel after i use the Squatty Potty. When I go in go in a bathroom and I don’t see a Squatty Potty I am sad. When U I go in a bathroom and see a Squatty Potty I am happy because I know it’s going to be this nice feeling of a complete elimination. He didn’t use those words; he just said that’s the best I ever had.
Interviewer: In my notes I saw that you had to invest, this probably doesn’t seem like a lot of money to you now but in theory a lot of people want to start businesses. You had to shell out thirty five thousand dollars to get this started. How do people get the courage to do that? What did you have to do to know that this was a good decision?
Bobby: So we figured that for that we could at least build a website. Then get enough push behind the website, get all the trademarking. By then, we were also just making them by hand and by wood, one at a time. We actually had my neighbour make them; he has a workshop and he put them out for us. We would put in an order for like a couple dozen, he would make them and we would pay him for them. We kind of just bootstrap it from there to the thirty five thousand. That built us the website with the legal stuff we needed. That included the url and trademarking. Then we were supposed to reach out to inferences and other people to help us sell the product. That was really bootstrapping but we invested a little bit more after that initial thirty five grand when we were looking to make plastic injection moulding process. We had to invest more into that so pulled a little more money. We essentially grew it from nothing. This is an all American dream story; it’s just crazy that it really happened with this product but it did.
Interviewer: When you ordered that initial run from China, I know they have minimum amount of a few thousand, did you have to go to China or did you just trust and say it’s going to come back to us?
Bobby: We trusted, we had some sources. We live in Utah where there is an influx of Mormons who have been to china on their mission. So they have connections there. We knew somebody who knew somebody who was manufacturing in china. We sent the drawings over and four months later they built a mould and we got samples of the first plastic one. I want 2000 stools which was like half of a container; a twenty foot container. They arrived in St. George Utah on a hot summer day in the middle of July. We were unloading them into this storage unit that I had rented just for these stools. I thought, we are never going to sell these. How am I ever going to sell this many stools? That’s the story.
Interviewer: When did you get on the shark tank, was that before you got the 2000 or after?
Bobby: That was after. We were reaching out to a lot of different alternative media. About a month after we got that 200 plastic stools, we got a call from Dr Oz. A producer on Dr Oz actually called. She said I am Fiona Wozniak, I’m the producer at Dr Oz and I’d like to put you and the Squatty Potty on the show. My dad was like yeah and I’m President Obama. He didn’t believe; he thought it was a prank call. We like to tease each other so we do prank phone calls in the family all the time. He thought it was one of my brothers or sisters or a friend. He didn’t think it was for real. She said no, I have been using this Squatty Potty ever since somebody recommended it to me via a reading blog that I like and I want to put it on the show.
So we had a few press hits before the show. Actually, Howard Stern started talking about it before Shark tank as well.
Interviewer: Yeah Howard Stern does seem like the constipated type.
Bobby: He is not afraid to talk about bowel movements. That’s what made him. he has a huge following and people don’t know he has twenty five million listeners of Sirius XM that are following Howard Stern. I listened to it once but he’s got a huge following.
Interviewer: There’s a lesson in this for everyone who’s listening. You are reaching out to press and to bloggers. Vegan blogger gave it to Fiona Wozniak who is a producer on Dr Oz, she called up, your dad didn’t believe it but it was true.
Bobby: You never know where things are going to happen. That’s what got this ball rolling with those three dozen stools that I had made for influencers and bloggers. It seemed like a big expense because we had to ship them. To ship a Squatty Potty, a big wooden stool, it was eighteen dollars. I had about three dozen of them made and our cost on the stools was about twenty five dollars at the time. My mow was like, are you and I’m like we need to get this to the people. They will talk about it. That really got the ball rolling.
Interviewer: I see this too. I just published a book, a guy from Buzz Feed just asked for it and a guy from Washington Post. So I sent it off but every time I do it costs me money. It makes you worry, this is insane direct marketing because you’re throwing money out the window and you hope more comes back in than you threw out.
Bobby: They could have hated the stool. That was our biggest fear. I guess we believed it enough to know that it works for enough people. So if there was some kind of market out there. A lot of my friends and people who tried it and said I don’t want this thing around my toilet. This thing is ridiculous.
Interviewer: It’s odd to look at until you get used to it but this is the classic childhood fear or human fear of rejection. I have kids and I remember one of my sons saying so and so don’t like me. I said you know, tomorrow he might. The next day my son said you were right dad. It turned around. When I first saw the Squatty Patty I was like what in God’s name but now I think I get it.
Bobby: It was extremely hard six years ago when we first got started; we got a lot of rejection. It was pretty difficult but then it got so many acceptances. My biggest fear was like; people aren’t going to want to put this thing in their bathroom. This is changing something they have been doing their whole life. Especially if you are asking them to put this thing around their toilet that their friends and family are going to see. How do you make this into something that is socially acceptable, cool and fun?
Interviewer: Speaking of cool and fun, the unicorn ad, and as soon as I saw it I thought, you guys are going to be gazillionaires. I use to work in advertising, I’ve made all kinds of ads but that add is genius. For anybody who hasn’t seen it, search for unicorn squatty potty YouTube and watch. How did that happen?
Bobby: It won the Webby that year. This is the academy awards of the internet. It was a popular ad. I can take credit for giving it the green light but I can’t take credit for creating it.
Interviewer: I didn’t research it, was it an agency?
Bobby: It’s a small marketing team out of Utah called the Harmon Brothers. They were on our radar because my mom’s friend invented this tongue scraper called the Orabrush. It scrapes your tongue. Jeffrey Harmon started out marketing this Orabrush for my mom’s cousin. He did it really successfully. He got this thing in the Wal-Mart because of his YouTube ads.so he trademark the term as seen on YouTube. He created a big following around this simple tongue brush. So he was on my radar for how they marketed what was a random product. They did it in a way that they got enough followers to get it in a Wal-Mart which I thought was really cool and also sell millions of dollars of the product.
When we first talked to him with this idea of the Squatty Potty and concepts on how to sell this product. How do we educate and entertain with a product that helps a poop better? He came back to me with a bit and without of what it would cost. It was about two hundred thousand dollars. I thought it was a lot of money so I said; one of these days when I can afford you guys I’ll use you guys. They had been thinking about it too and about a year later we got back in touch with them. We had gotten the money from Shark Tank so we had a little bit of money and a little publicity. I was like finally we can afford you guys. They were like, we have been thinking about this product nonstop and we have the best idea. That’s when they pitched the unicorn and the ice cream. The call got a little quiet, I got the unicorn but I couldn’t quite get everyone on our Squatty Potty on board with this concept. They were like, we are a help product, and we are not a novelty. We spent all this time getting credibility for our product; let’s not throw that all down the toilet. Interviewer: What was the offensive part, what was the most shocking part? Was it feeding soft serves?
Bobby: It was just a unicorn pooping. It was a kind of using a mystical magical unicorn. Now it seem so real, it seem like the perfect fit but at the time it was very scary because we had built this credibility as a product that actually works. Three or four times in the video we say yes, this is the real product and yes it really works. That was written in the script because I didn’t.
Interviewer: Like a joke add.
Bobby: It was so funny it could make it seem like it’s not a real product.
Interviewer: I thought that when I first saw it. They did something though that’s a classic Proctor and Gamble device; they do in our R.T.B. a reason to believe. You know when you see a shampoo commercial and a molecule bond to the blah blah blah? Well they do this thing where the colon straightened out and that’s a reason to believe this thing actually works. It’s very well done.
Bobby: That’s embedded four or five times in the commercial.
Interviewer: A friend of mine who is an old mentor was responsible for the drain-o ads where they showed side by side, look Drain-o works. It’s quite a similar thing oddly.
Bobby: Yeah it is similar. It is funny now.
Interviewer: Well like is more and more interesting as things fragment into weirder particle. Do you have advice? We’ve covered a lot of stuff that I think other entrepreneurs might be interested in.
Bobby: There is so much information out there about how to make your product successful. One of the models that we use at Squatty Potty is, before we went to the market we had a product that we had pretty much nailed. We had the messaging down, we had the product down and it was ready to go. So when Dr Oz called, it was ready. We had pretty much everything ready to go. When Howard Stern talked about it, it was ready. When it was time to scale we could do it very quickly. I think that is very important. If we were unprepared and Dr Oz called, it could have been a disaster. A lot of people put things on kick starter and they put it on too early and by the time they get their product ready and out (I’ve seen this happen hundreds of times) there are knockoffs on Amazon. So you have to have everything nailed before you go out there to scale it. That’s the scale model. At least put up a manufactured product. When we are releasing new product now, I just want to make sure the product is ready to scale before we release it. We have made a few mistakes on some of our products because they weren’t ready and we suffered.
Interviewer: That’s very good. We often hear people giving development advice in that context so that’s all true. My last question is a little bit of levity but tell me about Dukie. This is interesting. You have a plush story unicorn that poops.
Bobby: You never know what the market will demand and we are opportunistic and it can become pretty popular. He can become even more famous than me or any of us. So people like him; he is cute, he is funny and he was the start of the commercial. We file that under the merchandise category of our website. We sold a lot of this little stuff and he poops ice cream which is cute.
Interviewer: It’s funny you said he is more famous than me. There is a chapter in my book about creating a character that could become more famous than you. A friend of mine named Rob Ragger created Emily the strange and nobody knows Rob Ragger but everybody knows Emily the strange. Also Toshi Nakamoto created bit coin except Toshi Nakamoto doesn’t exist and Tweety Bird and so on. I know the inventor of Tweety Bird daughter and people don’t know about Bob Clampett so much. Dukie, now that you mention it, you can go to CAA in LA and say Dukie can be in movies. Even Amazon Studios for example.
Bobby: Now we have requests for licensing and video game usage. So we are kind of trying to figure out what to do with Dukie.
Interviewer: What to do with Dukie? OK, perhaps we could we could end it with that and in a couple of years have a follow-up: a Dukie reprise.
Bobby: My favourite line in the unicorn commercial is the Squatty potty haiku. It says Squatty Potty you fill me with endless joy, yet leave me empty.
Interviewer: I remember that. You know what’s odd bobby? twelve years ago I did a book called Cafe haiku, I should send you a copy of it. That book I got a ton of press around but it didn’t sell well because it’s a cute book and nobody needed it. Fame on the other hand I think a billion people want for various reasons. Be it for a career, they want to famous, they want to do good in the world but haiku it’s just too ephemeral. I love that, when I read it I completely forgot there was a haiku associated with that. Well thank you very much Bobby. I appreciate the time.
Marcy Mendelson has been documenting in advocating for wildlife in Africa for a decade. In this shot for media organizations like National Geographic and a far. She runs Geo-watch and runs safaris to Namibia. She currently is directing her film Chasing Cheetah. Welcome Marcy.
Marcy: Thank you very much glad to be here.
Interviewer: I’m sure a lot of people want to know this, how did you get your first job reporting for National Geographic and shooting for them?
Marcy: I was at the time working in advertising and working at the CR club. It was a world collided; it was a fortuitous meeting and introduction. I was just reminded of this thing that I wanted to do since I was a little kid. It would help save Cheetahs or be involved somehow. To shoot for National Geographic it’s every child’s dream really. Once I made that decision, I found a fundraiser within a week. It was within an hour’s drive at the Wildlife Conservation Network. I met the head of Cheetah Conservation Botswana, Rebecca Klein and some people with a wildlife sanctuary in Southern California called Cat Haven. Everything started to connect and started meeting people in the World Conservation. I decided I’m going to go to Africa and I’m going to do this thing. I wound up applying for a big cat initiative grant but that grant was mainly geared toward scientists. So just speaking with advisers there and it is connected to National Geographic. Then that adviser had their light-bulb moment where they said you know I really think you need to speak with an editor at National Geographic.
Having the intention behind it and the passion behind it once I spoke with that editor we sort of really understood each other in a really great way. He took a chance on me and gave me that opportunity because he knew I was going to go there regardless. It was a win win for National Geographic as well. Obviously it helped open up many doors for me in my travels and connections in my work.
Interviewer: So you met the National Geographic Editor and then you went and met other people and told them I’m going to go to Africa they help you raise money? Why did you make that second step?
Marcy: It sort of all happened at once. I met people at a fundraiser and then I had decided I wanted to go to Africa and how am I going to get this money and oh my god what is my life going to be and how am I going to do this. Then I applied for a grant that was connected to National Geographic. It wasn’t a grant for media producers like myself. It wasn’t a grant for photographers so they said well apply for the grant, we really think you’ve got a great idea but at the end of the day this is who you should be speaking with, this person. Then I raised money on my own, it was the early days of Kickstarter. So I raised some money via Kickstarter. Those were the days when you people were very easy to find and Indiegogo didn’t even exist then. I did that, I took some credit cards. By that time I had written a few articles for National Geographic in America. I just went for it.
Interviewer: I see, so the lesson in this is once you get the opportunity then you go and meet as many other people as possible in that world and then they help you with your fundraising and boom you’re off to the races? Marcy: Yeah and I think what I’d also drive home is the intention behind what you’re doing. You meet kindred spirits. Interviewer: Let’s talk about that intention. Why cheat watch, what is it about cheetahs that are so interesting to you?
Marcy: Well they’re fabulous. I can’t quite explain it. I got a chance to meet David Attenborough a few years ago and thanked him because I think it might be all his fault. It’s just watching this enigmatic cat running across the Savannah on a little television in the 70’s. I was just completely hooked, there’s something so epically mysterious and powerful about this animal that has this very Buster Keaton like expression and this beautiful speed and this fragility at the same time. The cat itself is very mysterious to me so it stands out. I love all animals but the cheetah really stands out to me as having this kind of mystery to be solved with a vibe about it. Even in my art school days I loved cheetahs.
Ron Turner helped the comics scene happen in the US. Friends with Crumb, Leary, everyone, he’s been distributing and publishing comics for over 30 years.
Ron: Thank you very much Jeff, it’s good to be here.
Interviewer: It’s good to have you Ron. You were the first person I was introduced to in San Francisco when I moved here in 1995 by Howard Jurofsky of Heavy Metal Magazine. He use to write for them years ago. I’ve published this book called This Book Can Make You Famous. So I thought it was appropriate to talk with you because you’ve seen so much happened over the past 34 years in the comic strip, comic book and art book publishing world. What do you think it is that catches the attention of the public now? Why do people glam on to R Crumb or certain manga? What is it that people are seeking in comics that makes one thing succeed and the other thing fail? How do you know when you when you look at something? Give us some of your views. Ron: How do I know it’s a good thing? How do I know it’s an interesting thing? Well I guess I have little sense or somewhere in me that start turning on when I see something. I was pondering about that just this morning; what sensors do we have where is the guilt to land in our head or what motivates us to do things or to not do things? Who scour the pot clean so you can use it again? These little things swinging down from the lid of the pan that influences the cooking. What’s really going on in somebody’s brain when they take in information? The eyes are where we take most of our information through. So it’s mostly visual although it’s not the only thing. There is string theory now that’s finally arriving that there are some kinds of vibrations in the basic universe that allows for all of our thinking, being and sensing.
Listen now to more Ron Turner’s approach to content from R Crumb, George DiCaprio and more.
Annabel Lee is a publisher, poet and the Brooklyn-based editor who helped Jeffrey Goldsmith tighten up This Book Can Make You Famous. She’s been working in the lit and art scene in NYC for decades. In this special podcast, we talk about the book, and what intrigued her about the Make You Famous project.
Annabel: Hi Jeff, How are you today? Jeffery: Pretty good. So you’re a highly sought after editor who already have too many projects, but I’m really glad my mentor Jeff Goldberg introduced me to you. What intrigued you about this book about fame? Annabel: It’s something that everyone needs to know about in order to understand how to get along in the world now: social media, the news, the way it is, enjoying your life, fame is really important and success is really important. Jeffrey: Okay. And in a way that’s true. So when we say fame, success might have been a similar — might have used that in the title, but it really focuses how to become known, how to become recognized. One thing you mentioned is that you feel like each chapter stands on its own. Are there any particular chapters that you related to that you enjoy reading and thinking about? Annabel: There was the — I think the tension… where you talked about activism and being active within the world and issues that really matter to you. That one was really important to me — getting your hands dirty; even though a lot of that was about gardening, which is something I’ve only done as a hobby a part of my life and a bit about cannabis in there, not the specific things, but it is that idea of getting your hands dirty because I’ve been a printer, I’ve been a very hands-on person and that’s something that I really could relate to. The measuring fame, I found I could relate to a lot because there are a couple of chapters where you talk about sort of data gathering and how it works now and those were really relevant to me because social media is so important, and the kind of responses you get and where they come from. Those were some of the ones that I think of right off the bat. Although, of course self-publishing which is what this book is about and I’ve done some of that on my own is very relevant to me.
Jeffrey: So the altruistic approach, approach testing something so that it may change in the world, you know, the one about gardening you can actually become famous by gardening is also super interesting. So those sort of relate, I mean, it’s less the flashy lifestyle and more of the… and even self-publishing it’s more of the doing the work to become known for something, something you believe in whether it’s a book or whether it’s a cause or whether it’s something you’ve actually grown with your hands; you like these ideas? Annabel: Oh, very much so, because when you’ve got something that’s an inner passion for you and it can get to this point in your life where you wonder like, “Is this something I should pursue?” Like, “what’s the point of this tiny little…?” Whether it’s a hobby or an interest or something; there is a reason to do it, and that is that if you go deeper with it, if you really follow your heart and really do the best you can with it because you love to do it, it is going to make you famous. I mean Busting chapter also have a lot of that kind of idea where you’ve got a Rod Stewart just doing his thing, but the thing is, he didn’t get himself all scattered, he didn’t go all over the map “you know, maybe I should be doing this in order to make a living,” no, what he did is say, “this is what I love and I’m going to stick to it.” And he became famous for that. He became famous as much for his talent as for his perseverance. Jeffrey: Right, so that’s something the listeners probably don’t know is that Rod Stewart started out as a harmonica player on the street and got his first gig as a harmonica player in a band and became the guy who sang, Don’t you think I’m sexy… What’s the song? Don’t you want my body? Annabel: Yes, if you think I’m sexy and you want my body, come on baby, let it go… Jeffrey: Exactly. I saw him on the street. I think I saw him on 57th street like 20/30 years ago with an old girlfriend Yona, and he ran away from us once we recognized him. Annabel: What I think will be interesting for readers is how much you want some of the experiences that you’ve had where you gained some wisdom and knowledge about what fame is and how famous people have come into it. You have something that you’ve bought to this book that you’re bringing up here when you mentioned meeting Rod Stewart, you know, seeing him — that throughout the book, scattered throughout are personal experiences that you valued, experiences you had personally. So the readers get to be your buddy and live some of those experiences with you and learn what you learned and we find out how you gained the wisdom to be able to write a book that has the validity that this book has. It’s not only that what you’re saying is true, it’s that it’s lived experience and we get to re-live it with you.
Doug Menuez is a remarkable photographer who has traveled to the North Pole, the Amazon, Vietnam, Africa, Dubai, Japan, to record the human condition, covering everything from the orphans of Uganda to, most notably, the rise of Silicon Valley in the ongoing Fearless Genius project.
Doug: Hey, great to be here. Thank you for having me.
Jeffery: One thing that really interests me about your work is, you know what’s interesting is that I’m living in San Francisco and you’re living in the town where I grew up [inaudible 00:00:39] New York. And what’s interesting is you lived here in the early 80s and began covering the technology scene in the early days before anyone knew about what was going to happen with the technology revolution. Tell us about some of the people you photographed and what you saw and what you experienced in those early days.
Doug: So I went out to San Francisco to go to the Art Institute to study art and be an artist – fell in with a group of photojournalist and shifted my studies to photojournalism and began working for newspapers and the Times and Newsweek and began covering assignments in the US and around the world. And I was documenting a lot of social issues: the aids crises, the [inaudible 00:01:22] crises, but coming back from the Ethiopia, began looking for something that was a little bit more positive for the human race and that’s when Steve Jobs announced he was going to build the super computer for education. He had been fired from Apple and he was starting over.
That’s what really attracted me to Silicon Valley. I wasn’t into technology per se, although, I had bought a Mac. I bought one of the first Mac so that was interesting — seems to be a creative tool, but what attracted me to Silicon Valley was once I got down there you could see this hidden power and it essentially was a misunderstood in kind of a hidden tribe with this astonishing power. You could see they were going to change every aspect of human life even then in the early 80s. If you just showed up and went and talked to them you would see that it was going to happen.
Jeffery: When was that Doug? What year was that?
Doug: I really began seriously covering the valley with Steve Jobs for Life Magazine in the end of 85 into 1986, but I have been going down there. I’d gone down there on a few assignments as early as 1982. He founded Apple Computer in 1982. It wasn’t about tech; it was this group of humans on a quest to invent the impossible that just really got me interested.
Jeffery: And what is that? I mean, they are probably people today on quest to solve the impossible. How do you find that and what do you look for? Tell us about that, because I’m sure there are people out there who are craving finding some –discovering a tribe like this somewhere?
Doug: Well, what I’m looking for is this intangible you can’t put it in a business plan. You know, we have this big startup culture — in the 80s it was very idealistic and naive almost, they knew they would make money but that was secondary. That led to huge breakthroughs because, money, as it turns out isn’t enough to walk through this, like, blazing fire of innovation; it’s just too fucking hard, excuse me, it’s really hard.
So what’s happened in the last 10 or 15 years since the crashes is innovation is iterated. We’re building on stuff that’s foundational from the 80s and 90s creating a really cool stuff and that is innovation, but it’s more iteration of previous stuff. And to go to the next revolution, to go to the next level and really create some amazing new stuff you have to have, I believe, that spirit, that original spirit that was about inventing tools to improve human life. They weren’t purely altruistic, but they were very idealistic; and yeah, they want to do cool stuff, but what attracts me is that sort of sense of purpose where they created meaning in their lives because they were so passionate about what they were doing that they would sacrifice anything to do it. That attracts me because it gives hope for the human race when you see that. That’s been quite a crush. That fear has been crushed, so I see little green trees of hope coming back with this next generation of entrepreneurs. They are looking for — some of them are very idealistic and want to… you know, have you heard of FB corpse and there is more…
Jeffery: Oh yeah, I know people who run B corpse and work, you know, I’ve met folks that are part of that organization. They commit themselves to social justices and social improvement and fairness and those kinds of things. Before we started recording you talked about purpose and it’s something that I have noticed. I spoke to a psychologist in New York, Dr. Donald Rockwell who help celebrities who are feeling alienated by their success and one thing she said that help folks who become successful is that they find a purpose or a higher calling to focus on to help them to give meaning to their work and we talked about you doing that before we started recording. It was some of your projects.
Doug: For me, I started as this kid just documenting in the streets of New York, but later on I realized that was just about me trying to figure out who I was by photographing the other are strangers and then sort of seeing where I fit in the equation. I think that’s why people still look at still photographs to understand the back of their minds they’re saying, “Who am I? Why am I here?” because we frame that subconscious and photographs seem to be a great intercept for us to understand the world around us and who we are and where we fit in.
James Bailey is professor of Leadership Development at the George Washington University School of Business. He was named one of the world’s top ten executive educators by the International Council for Executive Leadership Development. There are 3 million CEOs on Linkedin. The question is, why aren’t all of them famous?
James: Hi, thanks for taking the time to talk.
Jeffery: So we’re going to talk today about what distinguishes some leaders in business from others. One interesting factoid that I noticed the other day is if you searched for the term CEO on LinkedIn, you get 3 Million results. Most people don’t even know the names of the handful of CEOs. What do you thing to distinguish those that become known from all the others that are out there?
James: Well, I mean, first thing, a lot of those CEOs that you’re seeing of those three million impressive number to be sure are probably CEOs of very, very small sole proprietorship organizations. So a lot of them are just the them, right, it’s one person. And so you’re seeing an enormous amount of people with that title and that’s not necessarily the CEO’s that you and I tend to think about, which are those big names CEOs and that goes directly to your question, is the ones we see are the ones that are in the news and those tend to be Fortune 500 companies.
And most fortune 500 you and I wouldn’t know their names; very educated people within the business world who wouldn’t even know their name. Generally, we tend to know the ones that are in charge of public companies with a clear consumer product; that’s why we know Apple, that’s why we know General Electric or IBM or Disney because they have this thing, this product or maybe it’s a service that you and I use on a daily basis and the press knows we’re interested in them.
If some CEOs and his/her firm make a particular integrated circuit that’s used to monitor the electrical systems of automobiles we never hear about that person because that particular thing we don’t live with, we don’t stay in touch every day. Yet there are folks who create that business, that service, that product from nothing; there is the Richard Branson, the Elon Musk and the Jeff Bezos who started companies and became household names to some extent. What distinguishes these kind of guys and these kind of women from people who start businesses and don’t become, you know, don’t start space companies as it were, each of these guys try to land on Mars.
Well, I mean, we’ve got to include here the element of luck, that they were in the right time at the right place and maybe they also hired a few critical people who saw an extraordinarily critical element to the firm and its future and its development that that person wouldn’t have seen. And Branson is an interesting example of this because Branson is functionally a dyslexic, and so he takes a look at the spreadsheet, basic balance sheet and its all props and whistles to him and so he needed to surround himself with some extraordinary people that could take care of that part of the business.
The other thing is that many of these other firms where we don’t know the CEO that he or she is not in the public spotlight; there was a founder at one point, maybe a hundred years ago maybe even longer than that. There was the charismatic founder of this firm and that firm has grown beyond the need for charisma. If the firm gets bigger that founder becomes less and less important. You need to take that charisma and that energy and you need to codify it. And by that I mean formalize it and bring it back into the organization. It’s too big to be a corporate personality. And so you’re talking about Elon Musk and the Jeff Bezos of the world and the Richard Branson’s, they were the founders of their company and they are still there, they are still growing, they are still pushing; but they were the ones smart enough to realize that they had to professionalize the firm and they went from being operations to ideas and that’s why they’re still relevant.
Jeffery: Right. And so there’s this idea of they hired A-list talents and those A-list hires then hired more A-list people because of their charisma they were able to attract this talent and then thereby grow this A-list company.
James: That’s exactly true. So it’s kind of a pass through or trickled down where they made the right decision close to them in terms of people, which allows them to focus more on the market, on the products and then allow those other folks – they are still sweet executives, but they’re handling the day in and day out of the organization, including the negotiations with Wall Street, including making asset managers and shareholders happy.
Jeffery: You mentioned charisma, how do we define this in the business literature, like, what is charisma? What kind of person…? And can you develop it if you don’t have it, I wonder? I mean, this is probably pretty deep question for a Monday, but what do you think?
James: Well, let’s say it is a big question. Charisma is one of those things that we know it when we see it but it’s hard to define.
Denise Mueller not only holds the world speed record for women’s cycling which she set on the Bonneville Flats in 2016, she’s now intent on beating the men’s speed record for cycling as well. Her intensity makes one think she will do it – and it was her intensity that got her on the cover of the Wall Street Journal.
Jeffrey: So Denise I think people are really going to be interested in how not only you set the world speed record but how you got such great publicity including making the cover of the Wall Street Journal. So where do you want to start, Denise?
Denise: Well, definitely there’s a two parts on the how the heck did I end up doing this it’s the actual part about how the logistics of doing a land speed record, which was accomplished in September at the Bonneville Salt Flats in 2016 during an event called world of speed and it was in the draft of a Range Rover that we were using and I had a specialized bicycle that was sponsored by KHS that had double rejection gearing, motorcycle tires and wheels, a set of gearing stabilizers, shock absorbers in the front, there’s a technical effect as far as what I did but then on top of that there’s also the “why the heck would I do this?” element of how I also accomplished it was the thought of it; but then also the mental and physical preparation that went into that.
But to answer a little bit on the cover of the Wall Street Journal sometimes it’s just too lucky break when it comes down to some of this and also the connections with people that you know. My bicycle racing coach John Howard did this land speed record in the male category in 1985 at a 152 miles an hour and he have been long time friends with Bill Walton and he was being interviewed by Wall Street Journal for a story that they were doing on Bill Walton and happened to interject about this whole land speed record that we were doing — the first ever female pace bicycle land speed record and they actually had an interest in covering the story. And they were very active — you would think it will be something like sports magazine or something a little bit more in line with the sporting side, but Wall Street Journal was really interested in it and Jason gave one of their reporters who is also a cyclist and they happened to be looking for opportunities with virtual reality because we had a virtual reality 360 degrees video made that’s about 13 minutes long that the Wall Street Journal…
Jeffery: Okay. So lets me interject a couple of things. So it pays to be friends with someone who had done a similar thing and have already gotten press because they are probably still getting interviewed and stuff and they mentioned you. And now you mentioned that you have a technology angle that was part of your endeavors. So that’s interesting because if people add a new twist to something like a bicycle land speed record and the bicycle that’s interesting — an interesting angle on the story as a journalist. Tell us about how did the thing VR thing happen?
Denise: The virtual reality side of it really was a pure opportunistic situation with the Wall Street Journal; they have an app and they were wanting to get more virtual reality video up on that and this was one of those very high speed ones that was going to test some of the technological abilities of doing this because it’s like a series of 6 to 8 go pro cameras facing in all directions to be able to capture the 360 degree video and they thought this would be a great opportunity because of the speed we were going, it was going to test some of the limit. With virtual reality that you’ve seen out to there a lot of times is very fix objects or very slow moving object and this is going to be an extremely fast moving situation that sort of pushed the envelope for them, I believe, in a way and they saw that as an opportunity so that was almost like the cherry on top, as they say.
Jeffery: You did get a little press earlier and I think you even did [inaudible 00:04:13] to raise money and there were other things that that you did that generated smaller press for your endeavor along the way. Tell us about those things, you know, we started at the top we should work our way backwards. How did you begin this project and then who helped you in the early stages getting early publicity to help rally funds and those kind of things? Tell us about that.
Denise: A little bit of two-fold. One, again, it comes to who you know and having a great story or a great angle — being the first woman ever to do this was a great angle to get people interested. So where we really started was home town. So some of our first interviews were not only a friend of mine freelance for a local magazine which is where I happened to live. So she very early on did an article, which then, once you have one article printed then you can start mentioning that towards getting other articles because now you’ve already received a press, so it’s almost like a little bit of a tipping point. Once you started receiving press then more people want to start covering that in different venues.
The other thing is that we sourced out different angles; one of which is I happen to be a business owner and my business is a security company and so we went to the security journal, which is a very different group than the cyclist and a very different one from the [inaudible 00:05:41]. So we went and we asked everybody that we know who they have contacts with and would they be interested in doing a story so again who you know and also having a bit of an angle. So we started with local little area code, you know, [inaudible 00:05:55] and 92009 Magazine a year and a half, two years almost before this..
Dr. Donna Rockwell speaks on the negatives of being famous, and how to transcend the downside and leverage fame to do good.
Fame isn’t just glory and adoration. Fame objectifies people, creates mistrust of others, and eliminates privacy. Children whose parents help become famous bear a responsibility to help their kids not lose touch with reality. But ultimately, fame can be used to help others, by helping to solve critical issues in our world. By serving others, celebrities, and all of us, can give meaning to our lives beyond being liked, followed and admired for our material gains and popularity.
Dr. Donna Rockwell is a Mindfullness and Celebrity Mental Health Expert who has appeared on Katie Couric Show, been quoted in the NY Times, and whose articles have appeared in Huffington Post and elsewhere. Her paper, Being a Celebrity: A Phenomenology of Fame, looks at the effects of fame on 15 celebrities in various walks of life – from actors to business executives.
Excerpt:
Dr. Donna: It’s lovely to be here. Thank you so much for having me.
Jeffery: I’ve asked you to connect with me because I’m writing a book about how to become famous. It’s called This Book Can Make You Famous. So I thought it would be great to talk about some of your work because I’ve read some of it and so you can share your thoughts for the wider audience so you can give everyone listening, a realistic assessment of the experience of being famous. You’ve seen a lot of people, so what is it when people become famous? What happens to people? How does it change and their mental health?
Dr. Donna: In addition to seeing celebrity as Clinical Psychology patients I also did my doctoral research on the experience of fame by interviewing 16 famous celebrities; national and international. So a lot of my information about the actual experience of becoming famous, what it feels like to become famous and the effects of fame comes from scientific qualitative inquiry research into that experience specifically. So it’s not just from seeing clients and hearing what their life experiences are, which I think gives it a different edge.
But to answer your question, what’s interesting is that most of us don’t realize how precious or how valuable anonymity is, and when people become famous I find that the thing that they miss the most is this precious anonymity that the rest of us have in the sense that we can walk down the street in complete privacy, where as, a famous person sort of surrenders their privacy when they achieve fame and they spend the rest of their life sort of craving it again, that privacy, that anonymity.
There is a great quote I love from Harrison Ford who says that “being famous is like walking down the street with a skunk on your head”. Everybody wants to be famous but the intense scrutiny and the living under the microscope of society and especially today with the Internet it’s so intensified so quickly that it’s pretty hard to be famous actually. And the other thing that happens is the sense of losing trust, so who do I trust? What can I trust? So some pretty existential and fundamental issues come up.
Jeffery: Yeah, I was going to ask you about mistrust, absolutely, because you end up surrounded by people and you don’t know whether they’re really your friends or they just want to be with you because you’re famous.
Dr. Donna: Exactly, and there’s this notion called reflected glory, which shows that — and speaks to the fact that we all love to be around fame its a sort of a high, its a kind of a drug and it feels kind of trippy to be around famous people, to be in that world of fame. It’s very heavy, and so addictive and its own way for the celebrity as well for the friends of the celebrity.
And yes, I mean, I think the famous people — and they often speak to this, “why do you like me? Do you like me because of who I am or because of what I do?” And that feeling of mistrust never really goes away, both for real old the friends and for new ones. A A-list movie star I interviewed for my dissertation, for my research said that being famous when you go out with your friends — he said, “Fame sits between them on the table like a bloated cod,” you know, it’s always there and the feelings of jealousy mixed with envy, mixed with excitement at being amidst the spotlight and the reflective glory that comes from that can create incredible mistrust and sort of a lack of joy. People may look like they are partying, but are they joyfully partying?
Jeffery: So then why do you think people want more fame? So you’ve become a little famous, you get recognized for something, which is normal to seek recognition for your talent and so forth, but then, why do you want to more?
Dr. Donna: Your passion and your art, why do you want more? Well, why is it there such a thing as addiction? Why do we start out with a small amount feels good but then I need more? In many ways, it could even be about ice cream; but we’re not satisfied, our threshold rises and of course, as human beings we have a natural level of competition, so there is such a craze celebrity culture environment in which the petri dish in which were all living right now.
Always innovating on his life, Steven Hoffman, known as Captain Hoff, has tried more professions than cats have lives, from game designer to venture capitalist. After starting three venture-funded startups in Silicon Valley, Hoffman launched Founders Space with the mission to educate and accelerate entrepreneurs and intrapreneurs. Founders Space has become one of the top startup accelerators in the world.
Excerpt:
Jeffery: So I’ve known you for a long time, so I went back and looked and I met you 2010 when I came to some early events when you were just starting Founder Space. Now you have over 50 partners in 22 countries. What were the key choices you made to go from there to here?
Steve: I can tell you. So when we first met, I was really just beginning. It was just an experiment for me. I didn’t even think of it as a full-time job; I was just out there kind of helping friends doing business like you. We’re both guys here in Silicon Valley, we’ve both done a lot and I was helping out a lot of my friends get funded at the very beginning. You know, they came to me because I’d done startups: “where do you go? How do you get this done?” So I was helping them do that.
Then, I saw an opportunity, and I think really one of the keys to growing a business to becoming famous, to doing any thing that grows into something much larger is to recognize an opportunity when you see it. There are opportunities all around us everyday, and, you know, most of us walk right pass them… we never see them, including me, you know, if I saw these opportunities I would’ve started Uber or Airbnb or all these other things, but I didn’t see those opportunities.
But at least I found one opportunity that I did see at the right time when I was in the right place to do it. And that was, we had to position ourselves different than anybody else. So when you are doing anything in business, if you are the same as your competitors, you are instantly in “everybody destroys everybody” mode. It’s also competitive and it’s very hard for you to get out ahead of somebody else and actually make wave and become known for something because you’re just doing what everybody does so there is nothing special about you
Jeffery: I get it. So make a choice that distinguishes you from other people.
Steve: Yeah. In my business in particular, there are a lot of incubators here in Silicon Valley, a lot of people doing a lot of great stuff out there, like 500 startups. You know, they were ahead of us, but I saw that there was an opening… that innovation was happening globally, startups were sprouting up all over the world, and each of them had different advantages and disadvantages in each country, you know, everything from Israel doing high-tech security stuff to Germany with there precision machine, mechanics and all that and in China and all these other markets. I thought we will position Founder Space as the global incubator in accelerator. So instead of just bringing startup founders to Silicon Valley like our competitors, we would bring Silicon Valley to them. And that was just the fundamental decision at just the right time because that’s what the market wanted. There were all these startup founders all around the world who really wanted to form startups both here in Silicon Valley and learn from us, but also do it in there home country. And we became the one to kind of export the knowledge of Silicon Valley around the world.
Jeffery: Brilliant. You know, coming from that, you just came back from China and I followed your exploits on Facebook. You were speaker at all these events, you got a lot of press, but the phrase “with great power, come great responsibility” comes to mind. So what does that mean for you? You’re in the position of high public visibility in international relations, so what does this mean?
Steve: So it’s funny, because I’m well-known here in Silicon Valley now because of Founder Space, but I’m even better known abroad because we took that opportunity to become kind of the leader in global, so now I’m literally spending 70% of my time travelling, as you mentioned. I spend a lot of it in China and in china I’ve actually become a super star there, like, it’s bizarre to me, you know you say how did you get famous? I don’t even quite understand how it happened, but I’ll just enlightened you on this point and then I’ll get to your responsibility question, but my feeling was it happened because we had Founder Space already successful here and our mission was to bring Silicon Valley abroad and we came there at just the right time with Founder Space and just being there at the right time with the right thing more than anything else is what propelled us very quickly into kind of the star player in incubation in China if people wanted to get the knowledge we have in Silicon Valley. And so that was amplified even more abroad than in our own country.
Now, because I’m so well known in places like China, Korea, Thailand, all those countries, you asked the question about responsibility and I’ve actually thought about this quite a bit because I feel like I don’t want my life just to be about making just money because… well, we all want to make money and it’s nice to be well-known because it give you a lot of power to do a lot of things.
Rob Reger is creator of Emily the Strange came to life in the early 1990’s and quickly became a beloved counterculture icon all around the world. The complete Emily the Strange, published by Dark Horse Entertainment, made the NY Times bestseller list in 2016. Now Reger and his collaborators are in negotiations to finally produce the Emily the Strange feature with Amazon Studios animation.
Rob: Hey, Jeff.
Jeffery: Hey, you know, we’ve been friends for a while and I know that you’ve been talking with Hollywood for quite some time. How is that going recently? What’s going on with that?
Rob: Well, we have a new partner, Amazon Studios. I like these guys. They are a studio that really wants to make quality programming and movies and entertainment. They are very artist and creator and writer and director driven. They don’t put a lot of emphasis on most of it being authentic to the awesome people they’re working with and I think that’s one of the things that’s driving their success. Anyway, it’s music to my ears that they actually want to make a movie about my character and not use my character to make a movie for some notorious reason.
Jeffery: That would be because you’re character has a struck a nerve with people. Why do you think Emily have such a staining power? What do you think people love about Emily?
Rob: A number of things, but I think maybe in the beginning it was perhaps different than it is even now, but overtime I certainly know that one of the things people appreciate about her is that she’s a character that kind of represent certain things that often we’re all a bit shy to put out there. She stands up for herself; she’s very, very comfortable in her unique way of being. I think that her merchandise in the early days, in beginning the t-shirts and the slogans and stuff on her, you know, different things we made really represented, like, an attitude that the person who wore the shirt or have the notebook or backpack or something– it kind of portrayed the attitude that that person would have wanted or help people get to that voice themselves.
Jeffery: So Emily, she has an attitude that people want to have and so they gravitate towards her because they identified with that what she’s expressing?
Rob: Yeah, I don’t know, it’s a multi faceted or part thing but I would say that’s one of the thing, then also once you kind of start to understand the mystery behind the girl you also just identify with or, you know, I think that everybody has a little bit of that part of them that has at one point in their lives at least felt isolated or alone or that no one truly understand them and with Emily that’s okay. And so I think there’s something about relating to a character that enjoys that part of her, whereas a lot of the stuff, the most difficult part of her life something to come to terms with. So Emily kind of represents it being okay that you’re an outside person.
Jeffery: Yeah, I get that because a lot of people feel that way. I get that.
Rob: The third part to continue on that thought, I think just the darkness of the character and the fact that she has cats is also a big part of it. A lot of people in the early days and now might be drawn to her because they like cats and I use a lot of cats in there imagery and so they might identify with the coolness of the cats or, like, that kind of thing and then kind of get to know Emily afterwards. So I think the cats are sometimes the gateway drug to Emily.
Jeffery:The cats are the gateway drug to Emily. So speaking of cat there was Sylvester the cat and then there was Tweety Bird; people who are listening might not be familiar with Emily yet. There’s the Tweety Bird dynamic from years and decades and decades ago, why do people like Tweety bird when you can pick another historical animated character if you wish, but why do you think people like Tweety Bird or whomever?
Nicole Perretta has appeared on Ellen show and Jay Leno because of her unique talent imitating bird calls realistically. She’s now up to 165 calls. Nicole has written several books, like How to talk to birds, and performs at birding events and teaches classes about bird calling. She was a zookeeper at the San Diego Zoo for 7 years and is available to call birds for you!
Transcript of the 1st 5 minutes.
Nicole: Hello, how are you?
Jeffery: I’m good. So we’ve been chit-chatting a little before starting to record and this is going to be a really interesting call. We met at, you know, I heard you perform at a birding event and you described besides doing a lot of interesting bird calls, and I’d like to hear you do some of those during our call; but you described how you discovered this talent, you know, I’d like you to start there and tell folks how you discovered your talent for this.
Nicole: Oh, sure, you bet. So I was doing bird calls at the Anza Borrego birding festival. I started when I was pretty young. I can’t remember, maybe six years old about, and I was very fortunate to grow up in East County San Diego and we used to own some property out there that was out in the wild and I had a lot of birds, you know, hawks and ravens and quails and I used to listen to them all the time.
First of all, I think I have to say that I grew up in a very open type family. My mom loves animals and my mom is the kind of person that if she sees a cat or a dog or a bird she’ll talk to it in its own language. So she’ll see a cat walking down the street and she’ll go, “Meow,” and the funny thing is the cat will turn and run to my mother, like, she can call any cat and it will come to her. So I grew up with watching my mom bring animals to her. So I saw that and said, “Hey, maybe I can do the same thing.” So I practiced and practiced and it wasn’t until I was in elementary school that I really started to get the hang of doing the bird calls. And one time I was walking home from school and I saw a pair of ravens sitting in a tree and I heard them calling and I decided to call back. And this is what a raven sounds like [making bird call sounds], so I did that, I went [making bird call sounds], and then the Raven answered me back like that [making bird call sounds], and I’m like, “Wow! This is really cool.”
So I just stood there and call at them for a while, but then you know like most kids I had to get home by a certain time so I said, “Okay, I better go.” So I just kept on walking and the ravens kept calling. So I’m walking home and I’m a couple of blocks away and I’m going [making bird call sounds], and I can hear them for way [making bird call sounds], like that. So I keep walking and calling and all of a sudden I hear, [making bird call sounds], like, right above my head and I look up and the ravens are right in the tree right above me. They had basically followed me on my trail home. And so I kept walking and basically got into my house and I had two ravens circling over my house. I kept calling them from the window and then there’s these two birds just keep circling and calling so it was a wonderful introduction because as a child I said, “Wow, if I can get these birds to come to me,” and that was it, that was a very beginning.
Jeffery: That’s amazing, Nicole. It’s very, very rare that people discover this kind of talent. What happened then? I’m sure you kept talking to different birds and having different experiences. Are there other interesting stories like that that you can relate along the way when you were little older?
Nicole: Okay, yeah. When I was in elementary school, again, I was playing in the playground and I saw a red shoulder hawk soaring in the air — and they’re very vocal birds and they’re often up there soaring and then you can hear them going [making bird call sounds]. So I decided to imitate that call because that’s one that I’ve been practicing. So I called back to them and sure enough this bird had been a speck in the sky and had dropped down almost right above my head, I mean, maybe roof level and it was circling around calling and calling because it thought I was another bird. So it was pretty amazing to see that happening and I just kept doing it. I started going bird watching and part of bird watching is walking around and looking at birds and if I heard a bird I didn’t recognize I would follow it until I found it.
Dana Ullman has great advice for how to do good in the world by creating a platform for yourself.
By unknowingly practicing medicine without a license in 1973, Dana Ullman was accidentally thrust into the spotlight – and found innocent. The publicity gave him a platform, and his subsequent public health policy studies gave him the knowledge to create change. In 1984, he published his first book, and for years he has been deepening his knowledge of homeopathy and spreading the word. ABC News 20/20 described Ullman as “homeopathy’s foremost spokesman” and Time Magazine “leading proselytizer of homeopathy.”
Excerpt:
Dana: Alright. Well, hello everybody out there. My name is Dana Ullman. I’ve written ultimately 10 books on homeopathic medicine. I am honored that two of these books include forwards by the physician to her majesty Queen Elizabeth II. So Homeopathy may be new to people out there, but it’s not some type of new aged fangled thing, unless you want to consider the Queen of England to be a new aged woman — I don’t think many of you would do that.
Jeffery: So I think we originally started talking about doing this podcast, Dana, because you didn’t tell me the story I’m curious to hear, that you became widely known, famous as it were, in an unusual way. How did you come to public attention?
Dana: Well, 1976 I got arrested for practicing medicine without a license. Ultimately 10 months later we ended up winning the court case that created a lot of media for me. And basically, it gave me a platform — and I still on that platform. Though I think it did change my life professionally because instead of going into practice (although I am in practice now) I ended up going to the School of Public Health at UC Berkeley and getting my masters degree and decided to work for several decades on… not just writing 10 books and publishing 40 and writing in medical textbooks, including ultimately four medical textbooks, a chapter on Homeopathy; instead of practicing, I worked on educating and health policy issues and ultimately changing the world.
Jeffery: That’s what everybody wants to do in some way. Was that — it brings to mind the expression “it’s better to ask forgiveness than permission”. You went and practice medicine without a license and then you — tell me why, I mean, what motivated you to do that and how did you win the court case and what kind of press did you get at that time?
Dana: Well, I come from a medical family. My father was a pediatrician with a specialty in allergy. It’s little ironic that his specialty would be allergy because in allergy they give you small doses of that which you’re allergic to to help build up resistance to that particular allergen. It’s karmic because that principle of using small doses to build up body’s immune system to what larger doses may cause derives from homeopathic medicine.
And so my bottom line is I didn’t actually purposely seek to be arrested, that was not my goal or intention. I knew that that was a possibility and in fact, what ended up happening I was living in a household of six people: four women and one man. And the other guy didn’t fit in well; he was a Libertarian and have a nine-to-five job, he was sort of what you might call a hyper-rationalist. He was skeptical of homeopathy. I have no problem with anyone being skeptical. I challenged him even if you wanted to do an experiment on himself where I would give him a homeopathic remedy and he refused. So when he moved out of the house, he wrote a letter to the medical board saying that I was hanging out with people involved with yoga and bioenergetics and the like and preying upon Berkeley types.
And ultimately, they sent out an agent posing as a patient and it’s the only time in my life I actually ever had a sense that the guy was an agent and I asked him directly if he was an agent but then didn’t even give him a chance to answer and I simply said, “Well, you know I’m not a doctor. I’m not doing anything illegal,” and he came in and I ended up taking his case and giving him a homeopathic medicine. He came back a week later saying that he was having a fever and I said, “That’s a very good sign; it’s suggesting that the homeopathic medicine is working. Come back in a week when you’re better. He was really trying to nail me, you know, of treating him when he’s formally sick and here I was telling him to come back when he is better because the homeopathic medicine may have initiated a healing and this acute illness was simply a part of it. And then I gave him a second medicine when he finally came back for the third time.
We ended up winning the case because my lawyer who had a special interest in alternative medicine felt there was a difference between medical care and health care, and that most of the laws that defined the practice of medicine define the practice of medicine as the diagnosis and treatment of diseases –sounds like that’s what it is indeed, but I made it clear and my lawyer made it clear that I never said what disease he had, he told me what disease he had, he had eczema and he had a chronic cold and I elicited his unique symptoms of these particular syndrome of symptoms and then I ultimately prescribed the medicine.
Mark Mullen explains how volunteering led to making a huge political impact in a far away place.
As a young backpacker volunteering in Malawi, Mark Mullen had no idea he would become a spokesperson for the West leading up to the peaceful revolution in the Republic of Georgia. Eventually, he would be known by many of the 4.5 million citizens of the ex-Russian province as the guy who helped bring down Eduard Shevardnadze. He wasn’t working towards that goal at all, but by diving into Georgian culture and getting to know everyone, he became the go to guy for Georgian journalists looking for a statement from “the West”. Mullen was there for 15 years, instead the the typical two year tour for foreigners. Also, unlike many diplomats, Mullen was willing to stick to his neck out and say something substantial on TV. When Shevardnadze finally fell, the Speaker of the House became President. Of course, she asked Mullen for advice. He told her to simply say on TV, in English, and thus to the world, essentially, we’re good here in Georgia.
Mark: Well, to try to not have too long of a backswing, I graduated with a degree in history from Wesleyan University with not much of an idea what to do with it and ended up traveling around. I was in Japan for a while and then ended up getting a job distributing food during a drought in Malawi in East Africa. I mean, it wasn’t really a job I sort of volunteered for 80 bucks a month, but then they had a referendum there on whether to become a multi-party democracy and it was very exciting and I observed that and sort of put myself into the middle of that and then I found the National Democratic Institute or NDI when I came back and got ready for a lengthy job search and they were opening a office in Malawi — didn’t know anyone who’ve ever been there and so they hired me and I moved back there and did a civic education program there.
Jeffery: That’s something because it’s almost like a random beginning, right? You were in Malawi and you were traveling around, you started to help distribute food and then you came back and you look for a job and you had this credential from Malawi which allowed you to get a job at the Democratic Institute…
Mark: NDI…Yes, exactly. It was totally random. I mean, even how I got the job in Malawi to distribute food was kind of somebody I talk to… it was all completely random. Now, my first year in Malawi I was really just hired because I’d been there and I kind of just did the run to the office and dealt with getting a telephone line, which at that time was quite difficult, you know, all the certain logistical stuff; but I’d been there for a while so I ended up having influence in sort of how we design the whole program there. They had never had elections and all that stuff.
And then after a year there I went directly from there to — I was promoted fairly soon after the Oslo agreement was signed to do what was supposed to be a voter education program ended up… I was supposed to be there for three months, it ended up being almost 3 years because the status negotiations took so long and so there I designed a civic program and set it up throughout the West Banks and Gaza and East Jerusalem.
It was at a very interesting time, I mean, looking back everyone says, “Oh, that was such an optimistic time.” I mean, it don’t really feel like it then because the closure was on and it was pretty tough, but I guess compared to now probably so. So then at that point I thought, “Well, okay, I probably ought to get a life and do something real,” I thought maybe I should get a master’s degree because I never studied any of the stuff that I was doing and I thought development studies seem like a good idea, graduate school in the UK was much cheaper. And so I applied to graduate school in the UK, got in, was ready to go and my employer said, oh, you’ve done a good job and stuff like that and I said, “Okay well I want more money and I will only go to the these four countries and I will only go if I’m the head of the office and I only want to do civic work, I don’t want to deal with political parties, you know, whatever else or Parliament. It was sort of like I was leaving anyway, I had already paid my deposit in graduate school and I didn’t think they would take me up on the offer and the four places I said I would go were Ghana, Sri Lanka, Vietnam or Georgia and they were just places where we had stuff going on and it seems like interesting places I couldn’t complain about and so they offered me the job to go to Georgia.
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